FORLORN Chapter 7, excerpt....

...barking, barking, barking.

"Squirrel," whispered the Ensign "squirrel and FED EX MAN. IT NEVER STOPS."

Cutting through the yelping and mewling like a buzz saw through cantelope came the distinct sound of the CMMDR, a voice with all the gravitas of cotton candy, a voice not unlike the high pitched squeals of a chorus boy going down on Tommy Tune, a voice that when caught, packaged and shipped to a third world country to feed the hungry would be returned to the local UNICEF Headquarters and spray-painted with the words "NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION--TOO UNCTUOUS". This limp, itching to please siren of a wail came from somewhere on the other side of the house, a house that wasn't so much a house as a Landfill, a transfer station that accepted clear plastics, green glass, cardboard, newspapers, beet cans, fudgcicle wrappers, potato cans, loose asbestos, and anything imprinted with the words "for the complete idiot", "trek", or "Fat Failure(Pete)". God, he loathed it. It was The International House of Crap. Bed, Bath and Crap. Barnes & Crap. Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Crap. Piles and piles of saved and useless Crap. Organized crap. Alphabetized and arranged by size Crap. Big crap. Little crap. Wee Willie Crappy crap crap. In a word: Crap.

But now, the crap disappeared and, arousing the freeloading debtor, was that voice. That dreadful tortured strangled pleading grating voice now edging ever closer, now piercing the kennel's din with what could be discerned as one syllable. One repeating whole note. Over and over. Somewhere above the treble clef this whole-note becoming a half. And Again. And Now a Quarter. And Now there is nothing else anywhere, the world is dropping away, entire continents melting into the sea, no barking, no squirrels, no sides, just an eighth tone rushing out of the human compactor's chancred throat with all the masculinity of a chiclet, imploring, begging, over and over, one horrid bleat:

"BOOTS?"


to be cont...