Ink Entomological (XIV/XVI)

Posted on October 16, 2006 by Jenna

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[The Island of the Centipede – Chapter Five]

The stickbug general could hide from death against a giant tree.

The ragged things would pass, looking for his wicked soul.

“He’s meant to die,” they’d say. “There’s a torment waiting.”

But they wouldn’t find him.

The ragged things wouldn’t find him. The angel of death wouldn’t find him. The God-Defying Lightbringing Yama King himself, rot his hide, wouldn’t find the stickbug general if he were hiding there against a giant tree.

He looks like a stick, you see.

He looks like a great big stick.

He loves that.

He loves that trick.

There are only three things that the stickbug general loves. One is stickbug sex. One is hiding against a giant tree. And the third is gorging himself on the flesh of children.

If there were a giant tree here, he could probably leave the girl be.

Or a female stickbug.

A known female stickbug, that is. Some of his soldiers are probably female. The larger ones, or the smaller ones, or something. It’s really hard to tell, since they all look like sticks, and he’s forgotten which of his soldiers are the best candidates.

If he knew which of his soldiers were female, why, then, he could probably leave the girl be.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t have a tree, and he can’t have sex, and he’s hungry.

There’s a girl on a road high above the ground, and she looks like food, and he’s hungry.

So he orders his soldiers to attack.

Undoubtedly dozens of his soldiers will die. Undoubtedly the girl will flail and the doctor behind her will flail and dozens or even hundreds of stickbugs will fall to their death.

He can live with that.

The fewer stickbugs survive, the fewer will share his feast.

Crack the earth.
Stir the sea.
From the west there comes an outpouring of good to make all things right.

Max sets out in his catamaran to bring this virtue to an end.
He’s owned his crime but he can’t make it right.
His crime is a poison.

It is the Latter Days of the Law.
The Buddha’s answer is fading.
It cannot stop the suffering of the world.

The knife of the legend of Mr. Kong
Reflects his answer:
“We must try to be good.”

But people always fight the things they love.

The Island of the Centipede

Everything is movement. The girl does not understand what has happened.

Why am I dangling from a road with anthropophagous stickbugs falling on me?

Sometimes in a fight things happen very fast and you can wind up in these positions without really understanding how they came to pass. Often it has a very simple explanation, like, “You rode a giant horror down to the bottom of the sea, where she cracked open the crust of the world and you fell through. Afterwards you decided to go back up through the crust of the world but got delayed by a wormy Minister, a rat with a sword and a doctor-King intent on human sacrifice. Then an orderly pulled a road out of his stomach and you jumped on to keep a crumbling ziggurat’s stone blocks from crushing you. Finally, giant stickbugs attacked you and you flailed and lost your balance, but managed to catch hold of the road with a hand and an elbow rather than fall all the way down and crack your head. So that’s why.” But that is a lot of data and the mind is very bad at organizing that much data while hanging from a sky-road with stickbugs falling on you. It is much cheaper in terms of cognitive resources not to understand—to ask the question, shrug, and just move on.

Why am I dangling from a road with anthropophagous stickbugs falling on me?

Answer: Because.

The rain of stickbugs slows.

June, Thursday 3, 2004 – Cronos: When the history begins Cronos is proud.

He should be.

He’s just cut off his father’s genitals and ascended to the throne of the world. And he’s righteous. Oh, how he’s righteous.

He’s got that smirk.

That “I am totally in the right here” smirk, like the one the monster wears.

But the smirk fades.

It fades, because the sky is so very big and the silence so very deep and the sin so hot, then cold, upon his hands.

The history begins.

Cronos stood naked beneath the stars.

“You are struggling,” says the general of the stickbugs.

He looks down on the girl.

“Why are you struggling, food?”

“I’m Ink Catherly,” says the girl.

“Consider,” says the general of the stickbugs. “The longer you struggle the more lives are lost.”

“I’m a destroyer,” says Ink.

“Why are the stickbugs ignoring me?” asks Dr. Sarous.

The general flicks an eye towards Dr. Sarous.

He shrugs.

“They’re terrible child-eating stickbugs of the deeps,” says Ink.

“Oh,” says Dr. Sarous.

“Why are you ignoring me?” she asks, quite properly, since she’s dangling.

“I’m a terrible child-ignoring doctor,” he says.

It is a sudden bursting insight in Ink’s mind. She suddenly understands. Dr. Sarous doesn’t like her very much.

“Is it even a crime,” he asks, “to eat a terrible God-defying imago, converting her into pious proteins, fats, and bones?”

“I’ll show you the cure for stepladder syndrome,” says the girl, and when he’s looking at her hand with involuntary attention she gives Dr. Sarous the finger.

Cronos stood naked beneath the stars.

There is so much fire, he thought. So much power.

The sky looked down.

“I am rendered impotent,” said the voice of his father. “Now there shall be nothing brought forth in all this world that does not know suffering, nor grow from the accursed ground; thistles and thorns and dust shall be your lot for all the generations of the world.”

It was not judging him.

Its words were flat and simple.

It was as if Uri were completing a syllogism; nothing more.

“You will rule this world,” said the sky. “But your son will take it from you.”

It was not even a curse.

“He will punish you for this deed, and you will bear the burden of that punishment until the end of time.”

Cronos licked his lips.

Defiantly, he said, “Is that the price, then, that even the least of us should know joy?”

The stars laughed at him.

It was the most withering of all experiences, Cronos thought, to have the entirety of Heaven laughing at one’s shame.

Ink struggles. She tries to pull herself up onto the road.

“Struggle is futile,” says the general of the stickbugs.

He is content to wait, just a bit longer. If the girl falls, some cavern-bottom creature might eat her first.

“I have a theory,” says Ink, gasping, “that I can manage something a little better than being stickbug food.”

“We waste energy opposing one another,” says the general. “It bleeds off into the environment as disorder. Dharma recedes; entropy prevails. Why cling to purpose in such a case as this?”

“We can certainly agree,” says Ink, dragging herself half onto the road and panting for ten seconds before the clause, “that it would much improve the world if, in a sudden burst of comity, all parties were to align themselves behind a single cause.”

“Debate is inconclusive; exhaustion will wear you to my preference,” the stickbug general decides.

He gestures; once again, the stickbugs leap.

“You accuse me of impropriety,” said the sky.

“They deserved better,” said Cronos. “The woglies; the siggorts; Ophion; they deserved better. To punish them so cruelly: that is the nature of your crime.”

“Beyond the boundaries of the world,” said Uri, who was the sky, “there is no ‘deserving’. Who may say whether the character of a man outside the world is good or bad? Who may say what should befall them for the deeds that they have done? There may be beauty there. There may be wonder, and hearts to give you joy, and creatures in whom I could find such virtues as your own. I do not know. I know only that there are horrors there beyond imagining, and insidious treason, and things that will corrupt this world; and you have given to them rein.”

“And they will know joy?”

“No,” the sky said, flatly.

“No?”

“A world with only the good may bring only the good to all within it. A world that is only perfection may bring perfection to all within it. But to permit the ungainly and the imperfect into paradise does not lift them up. It drags us down.”

Ink looks up.

She smiles.

It’s madness. But she smiles.

“Such marvelous mimesis,” she says.

She’s seen right through the stickbug general to his ability to hide against a giant tree. And he is almost, but not quite, tempted then to preen.

But there are two of them holding her now, and a third whose teeth close in: and rather than being eaten or captured for eating later, Ink shoves off against the road and falls.

  • Tune in on WEDNESDAY for the next exciting history of Minister Jof:

MINISTER JOF AND THE FAILURE OF OTHERS TO MEET HIS STANDARDS.
It’s a bone-chilling tale of terror!