Amos and Amos take advantage of the switch to whiteboards by dumpster-diving for the broken slates, carrying them piecewise to their secret and illegal attic room above McInerny Hall. According to the paperwork, the attic is filled with asbestos. The paperwork is probably right.
Amos stopped attending classes weeks ago, which is fine, since Amos sits exams for both of them. They’re passing, barely. Amos spends his stipend on a space heater and white chalk. They keep a CD on repeat.
They winter together, plotting the perfect murder, while a man from New Jersey sings a song about burning alive.
The raids on the People’s Linen Closet were tolerable, and Yamin didn’t mind his censoring the cat–it’s only when Benny starts wearing fatigues that the threat of an apartment dictatorship becomes serious.
“We need to talk,” says Yamin.
Benny smiles. “The Humble Minister enjoys conversation with his fellow citizens!”
“First, why does People’s Rent Scheme mean I pay–”
“How dare you question the People’s will!” Benny shouts. “Go to your black site!”
Yamin gives up and shuffles away. His cell phone rings. “Hello,” he sighs.
“Listen,” whispers Benny, “roommate unrest is growing here, can I trade the cat for arms?”
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
A glitch turns the city green for an afternoon, and the (green) Lord Mayor powers up the ancient patchwork of public address. “Full chromatics will be restored soon,” crackle the bullhorns and gramophones. “We anticipate no reboot.”
The morning does show improvement: dark things are yellow, light things blue. “Recompiling,” says the Lord Mayor, “better soon!” By five o’clock Spaks and his shop friends have a homebrew fix. They try it at an intersection. The police arrive quite soon.
“I personally don’t mind,” says the arresting sergeant, “but it’s a matter of principle,” and Spaks’s mouth sprays gold on the wall.
Leech knows that outside the Ferrarium, people eat the flesh of animals. The thought makes her sick; or rather, she expects it to make her sick, and feels guilty when it doesn’t.
The blood girls eat only their garden vegetables, and flatbread, and drink milk from their goats. The life they grow within themselves is only once removed from the pure earth. So long as they remain pure, the blood they give the Honchos is once-removed as well.
This is sacred doctrine, and Leech never questions it. She only wonders, watching the returning Honchos, how all that purity is spent.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Once upon a time there was a purple dragon princess who was the ruler of a magical land. She and all her varicolored compatriots spent their days soaring over the green and dimpled hills, rings of silver on their talons and amber wands on their backs, awing the proletariat and teaching rabblerousers the error of their ways. By night they returned to their nacreous palace, Candide; they feasted on elephant and guzzled peppercorn wine. The peppercorns stoked the furnaces of their mouths, so that during the Great Purgings, all those endorsing dangerous ideologies could are you asleep yet? Please be asleep.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
“This is an aye-aye!” says Boris the Zoo Friend, as it scurries up his arm. “It’s an endangered lemur–whoa!–capable of some spectacular acrobatic feats.”
“It’s a mankiller,” pipes up Alava.
“You’ve said that about every animal the class has met today, Alava,” chides Boris, “and I promise, Willikins here eats bugs! It knocks on trees to find–”
“I’m really serious this time,” says Alava, but she’s drowned out by laughter as the aye-aye raps sharply on Boris’s head.
“That’s right, little guy,” he laughs, “it’s hollow!” Then Willikins inserts its four-inch middle finger into his ear.
Chastity is Hector’s partner in Bad Relationships 110, which isn’t their assigned disagreement, thank goodness. Instead they get jealousy, and scream for three hours weekly before tackling each other for angry sex. Chastity gets an A and ice cream; Hector gets a C.
Next semester it’s Slacking and Associative Guilt. In the winter he passes Binge Drinking with an A and a mop, but it’s exhausting.
“Nostalgia Prep and Poli Sci this term!” he moans at dinner their first night back. “And Random Hookups has a lab–”
“Wait,” says Ayane, “Poli Sci?”
“Does that even count toward your major?” asks Kai.
Kehoe’s ankle grinds its teeth as he slides from the embankment onto the road. It won’t offer him any cover, but that’s fine, they need it more than him. He hauls himself from a limp to a jog.
“Only so many giant rabbits can join a miners’ union before somebody starts making connections!” He glances back at their blue eyes and long ears, flickering tree-to-tree. “Filthy strikebreakers! If you get me the others will know!”
Silence. Kehoe spits behind him: “Aren’t you going to ask me to come quietly?”
“Pinkerton pinkerton,” giggle the Pinkertons, and Kehoe shivers in fear.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The Very Important Debate of Ten Thousand opens with stirring rhetoric. “Us good,” says Grung, before pointing keenly to a hill where Thag maybe saw somebody he didn’t know once. “Them bad!”
His opponent Hoog chuckles. “Well, us good,” he agrees, then jerks a thumb Grungward. “But them not good.”
Grung’s brows climb nearly above his ears. “Them good?” he asks in disbelief, pointing again.
“Us good,” Hoog clarifies.
“Them bad!” cries Grung.
“Us good, them bad,” explains Hoog quickly. “Them bad; conversely, us good.”
“Us bad?”
“Us good!”
Then a tyrannosaur eats all of them. Shut up, it could too.