The log became a crocohippolion and its bone-snacking jaws vanished Stevie’s reed.
“Double trouble!” gasped Stevie. “I hope you’re ready for this, boy!” The Justin sank his toes into river mud, took up gedan and met its eyes.
My name is Amemet, they said, and I was never worshipped. Once I ate the hearts of men and gods, until the river of their fear ran dry.
Do you know how one acquires a taste for souls? Do you see how long I have starved, undying?
Do you see that I am hungry?
The Justin threw down his blade and ran.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
One thing to remember about any given swampy river: there are crocodiles.
Except in the afterlife there weren’t, which made sense: their chief function (in human perception) was largely abrogated. Denied symbiosis, the white plovers wheeled and dove and annoyed the Justin, who was trying to spar.
“Concentrate,” hissed Stevie, reed low and steady.
“I don’t want bird poopy on my soul!” the Justin protested.
“Just concentrate on your time signature. Soon enough you’ll have to deal with more than birds!”
Not far down the river, ready to prove them right, the crocohippolion lurked; and the plovers went nowhere near her.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
“If anybody was going to teach me guitartistry in the afterlife,” grunted the Justin, swinging wildly, “I’d’ve expected–”
“Ol’ RJ’s off in his own hell,” chuckled Stevie, and swatted the blade aside. “Very special. Very private.”
“Whereas you?”
“Understand about floods,” murmured Stevie. He glanced at the Nile for a moment.
“How do you always know what I’m about to do?” said the Justin, finding himself on his back in the mud.
“We’re alike. Get right down to it, we’re white boys. The blues ain’t ours by right.”
The Justin frowned. “I’m nobody’s thief.”
“Done right,” shrugged Stevie, “theft is art.”
Thursday, September 13, 2007
As soon as they touched the opposite shore, Stevie took his shot at stealing the Martin.
“You kutchering punk!” shouted the Justin, and leapt out after him. He got hold of an ankle and the two collapsed in waist-deep river water. “Give her back!”
“You don’t deserve it!” howled Stevie, kicking.
“I earned her from Ptah himself!” The Justin hauled himself up and yanked at his end of the guitar, the neck–which, to his shock, slid out of the body with a steely rasp.
“Prove it,” Stevie grinned. He snapped off a length of cattail reed and assumed kamae.
When the Justin divested himself of material goods, he donated most to the worthy cause of the Teen Choice Awards; but some he had buried. Thus he had a gondola in the next world, and a pole.
He had been pushing down the after-Nile for days, looking for Ptah, when a stringy-haired hermit with a Strat called to him. “Coins for the ferryman,” he cried. “Silver dollars from my blind eyes, for passage across.”
“Wrong river,” said the Justin, “but I’ll take you for free.” He poled in through reeds.
“Bless you!”
“What’s your name?”
“Stevie,” the hermit said.