Episode 20: Gnolaum
After Elli and the others who took flight had left-which those who stayed behind regarded as foolish-the passageway was sealed up.
And for several hours, those left sat.
One of them, whose name was Hanh, was sad that he hadn’t gone with Elli and the others. Hanh didn’t believe too strongly in his religion; he believed the doctrines and such, but he thought that the rules were too constraining. He wanted to be free. But he was too afraid. He was quite fond of a certain female we’ve already met casually: Delaileh. His family’s disapproval of her personal style of life was what made him think that Mormonism was too constrained. Love does that to a fellow.
Before we continue, it may be wise to redirect our attention momentarily, and discover the fate of Delaileh.
Delaileh was, as we have already established, quite beautiful. Through some multiversal finagling, that may or may not be explained in this record at some point, she was actually an alternate version of Sylvie. Likewise, Baline was an alternate version of Waldo. This is why the universe took the opportunity it was given by the rise of the zombies to quickly eliminate both Baline and Delaileh, and a number of other characters who we may or may not have met yet. These Alternate Versions have a tendency to muck up balances and make continuity very difficult to establish. Universes and Multiverses usually learn of these issues quickly, often leading to crises on infinite scales. The universe we are concerned with, however, was either too lazy or too subtle to do such a thing; it either waited for an easy moment, or set up, over a long period of time, a moment in which it could eliminate these odds and ends. The chroniclers are not sure of which is true.
They are, however, sure of Delaileh’s method of death.
It is, surprisingly, not directly zombie related.
By some freak accident involving a small dog named Tubby and the third interdimensional vortex she ever encountered, her skull’s density and shape was perfectly resonant with the final note sung by the mysterious people in the graveyards. Because they held it for so long, she did not just have a headache; her skull melted, causing her brain to slide down, becoming impaled on her spinal cord, and causing the skin on her head to droop down, making an effect much like a mushroom. Her teeth clattered to the ground as her collapsing head forced them out, and her eyes popped out with a squink. One landed on the ground, and the other fell through another interdimensional vortex. It has not been recorded since.
Fortunately for people’s stomachs, she was not near anyone when this occurred, being alone at home. In the chaos that ensued following, no one noticed her corpse or her horribly disfigured head for quite a long while.
Her house was only a few blocks from the edge of the Mormon community. That, itself, was only a few blocks from the home of Sylvie. That the two had never encountered each other and incidentally created a terrible dimensional rift was amazing; Now that Delaileh’s head was melted and unrecognizable, it was no longer a risk, and that was amazing in and of itself.
Another of them was sorry he hadn’t gone as well. His parents were a bit funny in the head, and so had named him Laban. That, in conjunction with the fact that he was quite short, set him up for a fair amount of ridicule. He was in high school now, though; all the ribbing he got for his height was good-natured. The other Mormon kids, though, continued to mock him fully for his name. They saw it as good-natured, but Laban didn’t take it quite that way. He genuinely thought that the others thought he was evil. On one level, this bothered him. He didn’t like other children to think that he was evil. But on a stronger level, he didn’t care. He, like Hanh, did not particularly like the restrictions that Mormons had on them. He did believe most of the stories from all three Testaments, but he thought that most of the rules were imposed by sages and the like who had edited the texts between their writing and then.
Laban was quite intelligent.
There is little sexier than a lovely eighteen year old girl with nice legs in a knee-skirt fighting off zombies with an umbrella.
Her name was Joan Riese. She had a knack for killing things. She had been raised as an assassin. For who, she wasn’t sure. Those who had raised her weren’t sure either. All they knew was that their employers wanted them to raise a girl to be a beautiful assassin.
Now, her "family" were all dead. And she was surrounded by zombies. The only weapon that she had in her room at the time was an umbrella. Her family hadn’t let her have real weapons in her room; they were afraid she would kill them.
Now, she was surrounded. She glanced around and took stock of just how surrounded she was.
There was a window off to her right that wasn’t blocked off.
She swung her umbrella, smashing in the head of a zombie, and then back flipped over her bed. She spun and charged at the window, umbrella first. It went through, beginning a shatter, which her body-head now covered by her arms-completed. She tucked and rolled out onto the ground.
When she got up and began running three seconds later, the only "injury" she had sustained was a grass stain on her left knee. She didn’t bother to open the umbrella against the rain; too much drag.
Ujer may have been the strangest named girl in the congregation. She was in ninth grade, and had the build of a twelve year old whose body fat is getting ready to slip away. Amongst the youth, she was one of the few who really adhered to her faith. Her largest transgression was an occasional cuss word. She didn’t feel any guilt for those, because she knew something that very few people of any religious affiliation, atheist, Wiccan, Christian, et cetera, know: A word is a word. That’s all it is.
Secretly, she idolized Hanh. She found him downright sexy. But he was so anti-Mormon, she was afraid of him. This led to an intense manifested hatred for him, which caused them to fight when they came into contact. He had no romantic feelings for her, which is lucky for both as any tryst between the two would’ve been both wrong and cliché. Besides, he was too old for her and she was too young to date.
She got along very well with Laban, because, despite his dis-Mormon ways, he was incredibly nice and understanding. He had a sympathy that everyone was immediately charmed by. Sometimes the charm didn’t last, but because it often did he had a large friend-base. Ujer was a member of that friend-base.
Joan Riese ran through the zombies in the open field between her house and the nearest neighborhood. She didn’t stop to kill any of them, because still, the only weapon she had was the umbrella.
She was across the field quickly. It was an impressive feat, because the night was pitch black at the time. Which was about one in the morning. She had no light by witch to cross the field. It had a number of small swampy and boggy areas, some long-standing, and some created by the rain; Joan managed to miss every single one.
At the end of the field was a large house. Usually it was unoccupied, and she knew this. Tonight, however, as she approached, she made out a number of figures on the roof.
"Hey! You down there!" One of them screamed out. "Can you get us some help?"
"Shit," she muttered as she slowed down at the edge of the property line.
She could see through the window that there were zombies milling about inside. It looked like there had been some sort of party.
Now, she had to find a weapon outside of the house. She had hoped to get in and go into the basement and steal one of the nice maces and such that there always were, and then move on. Now she’d probably be there for at least an hour.
The head of the congregation, Elder Smith VI, began doling out small rations around one A.M. It’s a well known fact that Mormons are always prepared for the apocalypse, and thus hoard food and water. They are often seen as alarmists, and when things like this happen, often wish to chuckle to themselves and say aloud "I told you so." However, being such good people, they rarely do, for they see no reason for cruelty to the less fortunate or enlightened.
His eyes were gentle. Very gentle. So he easily calmed the congregation when they began to panic about how much food was left. If they ate at a reasonable rate, he told them, they could last down there for a year. Suddenly, without apparent reason, he suggested Hanh, Laban, and Ujer help him unpack some rations. Ujer and Laban quickly complied, and Hanh was soon with them.
They went into the little compartment behind Elder Smith VI’s desk, and began to pull out boxes full of food and water. Ujer tried as hard as she could not to watch Hanh’s body flexing and glistening; Laban tried as hard as he could to get a conversation going between the three of them (Hanh and Ujer rarely made fun of his name, Hanh because he didn’t care and Ujer because she knew: A name is only a name); Hanh tried as hard as he could to focus on the task at hand.
Because of Hanh’s unwillingness to talk, Laban pushed him playfully and chidingly. Hanh was standing at an odd angle, trying to tug at a box, and so fell. He fell very hard into a wall.
And he didn’t stop falling at the wall. He fell backwards through it, just as he had through the wall that Elli and the others had left through.
"Dammit, why does that keep happening?" He screamed. He looked up just in time to be forcibly pulled to his knees (it was a compartment high enough only to kneel in) by Laban and Ujer. He yelped as they did so.
"What the hell is that?" Laban questioned in his low tones.
"Let’sfindout!" Ujer babbled. She spoke very quickly; most of those who knew her were used to it now and could understand what she said.
Hanh gave her a nasty and quizzical look, and then turned and peeked into the new hole.
"It’s really small," his voice squeaked. It had a tendency to do that when he wasn’t breathing at his usual rate, usually because a pretty girl was nearby. "Here’s something…" He stepped in a little further and began tugging, making little headway going back. "Woah, it’s pretty heavy."
"Need some help?" Laban asked.
"No, I got it," Hanh was unnecessarily sarcastic, as he often was. Many people, oddly, found this endearing. After about three minutes, he had the brown chest into the lightened corridor. Laban and Ujer angled themselves around to the back of it, and as they pushed, Hanh pulled, and they soon had it out of the compartment.
Without hesitating for word from Elder Smith VI, Hanh flipped out a pocket knife, cut the old, worn rope holding the chest closed. As soon as both ropes were cut, the lid swung open, and out shone an almost holy light.
"Woah," Laban muttered. His eyes conveyed deep shock.
"The hell?" Hanh stumbled back and looked at the contents horrified.
"Holy shit!" Ujer screamed.
"My god!" Elder Smith VI intoned dramatically upon seeing the contents.
A murmur rose throughout the shelter, due mostly to the light and the profanities. When the first of the others came to look, two women and three men fainted upon seeing the contents.
Inside was an old steel sword and a pile of golden looking plates.
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And for several hours, those left sat.
One of them, whose name was Hanh, was sad that he hadn’t gone with Elli and the others. Hanh didn’t believe too strongly in his religion; he believed the doctrines and such, but he thought that the rules were too constraining. He wanted to be free. But he was too afraid. He was quite fond of a certain female we’ve already met casually: Delaileh. His family’s disapproval of her personal style of life was what made him think that Mormonism was too constrained. Love does that to a fellow.
Before we continue, it may be wise to redirect our attention momentarily, and discover the fate of Delaileh.
Delaileh was, as we have already established, quite beautiful. Through some multiversal finagling, that may or may not be explained in this record at some point, she was actually an alternate version of Sylvie. Likewise, Baline was an alternate version of Waldo. This is why the universe took the opportunity it was given by the rise of the zombies to quickly eliminate both Baline and Delaileh, and a number of other characters who we may or may not have met yet. These Alternate Versions have a tendency to muck up balances and make continuity very difficult to establish. Universes and Multiverses usually learn of these issues quickly, often leading to crises on infinite scales. The universe we are concerned with, however, was either too lazy or too subtle to do such a thing; it either waited for an easy moment, or set up, over a long period of time, a moment in which it could eliminate these odds and ends. The chroniclers are not sure of which is true.
They are, however, sure of Delaileh’s method of death.
It is, surprisingly, not directly zombie related.
By some freak accident involving a small dog named Tubby and the third interdimensional vortex she ever encountered, her skull’s density and shape was perfectly resonant with the final note sung by the mysterious people in the graveyards. Because they held it for so long, she did not just have a headache; her skull melted, causing her brain to slide down, becoming impaled on her spinal cord, and causing the skin on her head to droop down, making an effect much like a mushroom. Her teeth clattered to the ground as her collapsing head forced them out, and her eyes popped out with a squink. One landed on the ground, and the other fell through another interdimensional vortex. It has not been recorded since.
Fortunately for people’s stomachs, she was not near anyone when this occurred, being alone at home. In the chaos that ensued following, no one noticed her corpse or her horribly disfigured head for quite a long while.
Her house was only a few blocks from the edge of the Mormon community. That, itself, was only a few blocks from the home of Sylvie. That the two had never encountered each other and incidentally created a terrible dimensional rift was amazing; Now that Delaileh’s head was melted and unrecognizable, it was no longer a risk, and that was amazing in and of itself.
Another of them was sorry he hadn’t gone as well. His parents were a bit funny in the head, and so had named him Laban. That, in conjunction with the fact that he was quite short, set him up for a fair amount of ridicule. He was in high school now, though; all the ribbing he got for his height was good-natured. The other Mormon kids, though, continued to mock him fully for his name. They saw it as good-natured, but Laban didn’t take it quite that way. He genuinely thought that the others thought he was evil. On one level, this bothered him. He didn’t like other children to think that he was evil. But on a stronger level, he didn’t care. He, like Hanh, did not particularly like the restrictions that Mormons had on them. He did believe most of the stories from all three Testaments, but he thought that most of the rules were imposed by sages and the like who had edited the texts between their writing and then.
Laban was quite intelligent.
There is little sexier than a lovely eighteen year old girl with nice legs in a knee-skirt fighting off zombies with an umbrella.
Her name was Joan Riese. She had a knack for killing things. She had been raised as an assassin. For who, she wasn’t sure. Those who had raised her weren’t sure either. All they knew was that their employers wanted them to raise a girl to be a beautiful assassin.
Now, her "family" were all dead. And she was surrounded by zombies. The only weapon that she had in her room at the time was an umbrella. Her family hadn’t let her have real weapons in her room; they were afraid she would kill them.
Now, she was surrounded. She glanced around and took stock of just how surrounded she was.
There was a window off to her right that wasn’t blocked off.
She swung her umbrella, smashing in the head of a zombie, and then back flipped over her bed. She spun and charged at the window, umbrella first. It went through, beginning a shatter, which her body-head now covered by her arms-completed. She tucked and rolled out onto the ground.
When she got up and began running three seconds later, the only "injury" she had sustained was a grass stain on her left knee. She didn’t bother to open the umbrella against the rain; too much drag.
Ujer may have been the strangest named girl in the congregation. She was in ninth grade, and had the build of a twelve year old whose body fat is getting ready to slip away. Amongst the youth, she was one of the few who really adhered to her faith. Her largest transgression was an occasional cuss word. She didn’t feel any guilt for those, because she knew something that very few people of any religious affiliation, atheist, Wiccan, Christian, et cetera, know: A word is a word. That’s all it is.
Secretly, she idolized Hanh. She found him downright sexy. But he was so anti-Mormon, she was afraid of him. This led to an intense manifested hatred for him, which caused them to fight when they came into contact. He had no romantic feelings for her, which is lucky for both as any tryst between the two would’ve been both wrong and cliché. Besides, he was too old for her and she was too young to date.
She got along very well with Laban, because, despite his dis-Mormon ways, he was incredibly nice and understanding. He had a sympathy that everyone was immediately charmed by. Sometimes the charm didn’t last, but because it often did he had a large friend-base. Ujer was a member of that friend-base.
Joan Riese ran through the zombies in the open field between her house and the nearest neighborhood. She didn’t stop to kill any of them, because still, the only weapon she had was the umbrella.
She was across the field quickly. It was an impressive feat, because the night was pitch black at the time. Which was about one in the morning. She had no light by witch to cross the field. It had a number of small swampy and boggy areas, some long-standing, and some created by the rain; Joan managed to miss every single one.
At the end of the field was a large house. Usually it was unoccupied, and she knew this. Tonight, however, as she approached, she made out a number of figures on the roof.
"Hey! You down there!" One of them screamed out. "Can you get us some help?"
"Shit," she muttered as she slowed down at the edge of the property line.
She could see through the window that there were zombies milling about inside. It looked like there had been some sort of party.
Now, she had to find a weapon outside of the house. She had hoped to get in and go into the basement and steal one of the nice maces and such that there always were, and then move on. Now she’d probably be there for at least an hour.
The head of the congregation, Elder Smith VI, began doling out small rations around one A.M. It’s a well known fact that Mormons are always prepared for the apocalypse, and thus hoard food and water. They are often seen as alarmists, and when things like this happen, often wish to chuckle to themselves and say aloud "I told you so." However, being such good people, they rarely do, for they see no reason for cruelty to the less fortunate or enlightened.
His eyes were gentle. Very gentle. So he easily calmed the congregation when they began to panic about how much food was left. If they ate at a reasonable rate, he told them, they could last down there for a year. Suddenly, without apparent reason, he suggested Hanh, Laban, and Ujer help him unpack some rations. Ujer and Laban quickly complied, and Hanh was soon with them.
They went into the little compartment behind Elder Smith VI’s desk, and began to pull out boxes full of food and water. Ujer tried as hard as she could not to watch Hanh’s body flexing and glistening; Laban tried as hard as he could to get a conversation going between the three of them (Hanh and Ujer rarely made fun of his name, Hanh because he didn’t care and Ujer because she knew: A name is only a name); Hanh tried as hard as he could to focus on the task at hand.
Because of Hanh’s unwillingness to talk, Laban pushed him playfully and chidingly. Hanh was standing at an odd angle, trying to tug at a box, and so fell. He fell very hard into a wall.
And he didn’t stop falling at the wall. He fell backwards through it, just as he had through the wall that Elli and the others had left through.
"Dammit, why does that keep happening?" He screamed. He looked up just in time to be forcibly pulled to his knees (it was a compartment high enough only to kneel in) by Laban and Ujer. He yelped as they did so.
"What the hell is that?" Laban questioned in his low tones.
"Let’sfindout!" Ujer babbled. She spoke very quickly; most of those who knew her were used to it now and could understand what she said.
Hanh gave her a nasty and quizzical look, and then turned and peeked into the new hole.
"It’s really small," his voice squeaked. It had a tendency to do that when he wasn’t breathing at his usual rate, usually because a pretty girl was nearby. "Here’s something…" He stepped in a little further and began tugging, making little headway going back. "Woah, it’s pretty heavy."
"Need some help?" Laban asked.
"No, I got it," Hanh was unnecessarily sarcastic, as he often was. Many people, oddly, found this endearing. After about three minutes, he had the brown chest into the lightened corridor. Laban and Ujer angled themselves around to the back of it, and as they pushed, Hanh pulled, and they soon had it out of the compartment.
Without hesitating for word from Elder Smith VI, Hanh flipped out a pocket knife, cut the old, worn rope holding the chest closed. As soon as both ropes were cut, the lid swung open, and out shone an almost holy light.
"Woah," Laban muttered. His eyes conveyed deep shock.
"The hell?" Hanh stumbled back and looked at the contents horrified.
"Holy shit!" Ujer screamed.
"My god!" Elder Smith VI intoned dramatically upon seeing the contents.
A murmur rose throughout the shelter, due mostly to the light and the profanities. When the first of the others came to look, two women and three men fainted upon seeing the contents.
Inside was an old steel sword and a pile of golden looking plates.
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posted by Pope Richard Corey at 9:00 PM
1 Comments:
ok Ujer? nice/funny and almost as orginal as Jerusha. is having the fat fall off a good thing? i didn't know people made fun of laban.i wouldn't say holy shit i'd say holy crap but its the same thing. and i am proud to babble...kinda. i found out that if u talk fast people just nod their head and walk away. teehee!
~JJ~
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