In which we are introduced to Winnie-the-Goth and some bees (or something), and the stories, finally, begin....
Here is Edward Goth Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump,
bump, on the back of his fuzzy little black noggin, behind Christopher
Sexbat. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs
(with the possible exception of that time he quite accidentally
discovered how to become a bat and FLAP down, but then, that's another
story entirely. Besides, his arms still hurt from all that flapping).
Anyway, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you.
Winnie-the-Goth.
When I first heard his name, I said, just as you probably shall,
"But I thought he was a BOY goth?"
"So did I," said Christopher Sexbat.
"Then you can't very well call him 'Winnie,' can you? It makes
him sound like part of the Mandela crowd, and you know how the Boers and
Afrikaners can be..."
"Oh, I don't," Christopher Sexbat assured me.
"But--"
"He's Winnie-ther-Goth. Don't you know what THER means?"
"Umm...now I do, I suppose," I sputtered; and I hope YOU do too,
because it is all the explanation you are likely to get.
Sometimes Winnie-the-Goth likes a game of some kind when he comes
downstairs (spin the casket is at the top of the list these days), and
sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a
story. Poe is a personal favorite, and we share this in common with one
another. This evening--
"What about a story?" said Christopher Sexbat.
"What ABOUT a story?" I said.
"Could you very spookily tell Winnie-the-Goth one?"
"I suppose I could," I said. "And what sort of stories does he like?"
"About himself. Because he's THAT sort of goth."
"Oh."
"Please?"
"I'll try," I said.
And this is what I tried.
Once upon a time, many years ago when the earth was young and
foul beasts ruled the wastes, long, long ago, perhaps even as far back as
last Friday, Winnie-the-Goth lived in a dark, brooding forest all by
himself under the name of Usher.
("Under the name of Usher? What does that mean?" added
Christopher Sexbat.
"It means he inherited the house from Roderick Usher, who
resembled Vincent Price more than a little. The name was over the door,
and he lived under it. See?"
"Winnie-the-Goth wasn't quite sure," said Christopher Sexbat.
"Now I am," said a growly perkygoff voice.
"Right. Then I will go on," I said.)
Being a continuation of Chapter I
One day when he was out lurking, he came to an open place in the
middle of the dark, dark forest, and in the middle of this place was a
large, gnarled oak-tree, and, from the top of this tree, there came a
loud buzzing noise.
Winnie-the-Goth sat down at the foot of the tree, put his head
between his claws and began to think.
First of all he said to himself: "That buzzing noise means
something. Perhaps it's a flashback. You don't get a buzzing noise like
that, just buzzing and buzzing, without it meaning something. It must be
a flashback. If there's a buzzing noise, somebody's making a buzzing
noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing noise that I know of is
because you're a bee-demon."
Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason
for being a bee-demon is making blood-honey."
And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making
blood-honey is so that I can eat it.
Drooling a bit, Winnie-the-Goth stood up hungrily and began to
climb the tree.
He
climbed
and he
climbed
and he
climbed
and he
climbed,
and as he
climbed,
he began to
sing a little song
to himself.
It went like this:
Isn't it funny
How a goth likes blood-honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?
Then he climbed a little further...and little further...and then
just a little further. By that time he had thought of another song, by
the Sisters of Mercy, but he found that all this climbing was playing
mumbledy-peg with his fuzzy goth brain, and he couldn't for the life of
him remember how it went (except for that part about "fuck me and marry me
young," but that wouldn't work anyway).
So he came up with another song of his own:
It's a very funny thought that, if goths were demon-bees,
They'd build their nests at the bottom of eldritch trees,
And that being so (if the wicked bees were goths),
We shouldn't have to worry about grinning perkygoffs.
He was getting rather tired by this time, so that was why he sang
a complaining song. He was nearly there now, and if he just stood on that
branch...
CRACK!
"Oh, help!" said Winnie-the-Goth, as he plummeted ten feet onto
the withered branch below him.
"If only I hadn't--" he said, as he bounced twenty feet onto the
next branch.
"You see, what I meant to do," he explained, as he turned head
over heals, and crashed onto another branch thirty feet below, "what I
MEANT to do--"
"Of course, it WAS rather--" he admitted, as he slithered very
quickly through the next six branches.
"It all comes, I suppose," he decided, as he said goodbye to the
last branch, spun round three times, and flew gracefully into a gorse
bush, "it all comes of liking blood-honey so much. Oh, help!"
He crawled out of the gorse bush, brushed the prickers out of his
nose, and began to think again. And the first person he thought of was
Christopher Sexbat.
("Was that me?" said Christopher Sexbat in an awed voice, hardly
daring to believe it.
"That was you."
Christopher Sexbat said nothing, but his eyes got larger and
larger, his face got paler and paler, and his teeth got longer and longer.)
In which we continue the (rather lengthy) introduction...
*ahem*
So Winnie-the-Goth went round to his friend Christopher Sexbat,
who lived behind a great green door, in another, even darker and scarier,
part of the forest.
"Good evening, Christopher Sexbat," he growled.
"Good evening, Winnie-THER-Goth," said Christopher Sexbat, squinting
and scowling out at the sun, which had not yet fully set.
"I wonder if you've got such a thing as a balloon about you?"
"A balloon?"
"Yes, I just said to myself coming along: 'I wonder if
Christopher Sexbat has such a thing as a balloon about him?' I said it to
myself, thinking of balloons, and wondering."
"What do you want a balloon for, you silly old goth?" said
Christopher Sexbat.
Winnie-the-Goth looked round to see if any billious mundanes were
lurking about and might hear him, put his paw to his mouth, and said in a
deep, sonorous whisper: "Blood-honey!" He then winked slyly and turned
rapidly about three times in quick succession, so that his claws made
little scritchy-scratchy sounds on the forest floor.
"But you don't get blood-honey with balloons!"
"I do," said Winnie-the-Goth as a wicked little grin surfaced on
his otherwise very un-wicked face.
Well, it just so happened that Christopher Sexbat had been to a
funeral the day before in Piglet Darkswine's basement, and gaily-colored
(black) balloons were given to everyone attending the festivities (except
for one of Devilbunny's relations, who had left it behind seeing as how
he was too amorphous to really go to the funeral at all); and so
Christopher Sexbat had brought home TWO balloons with him.
"Which one would you like?" he asked Winnie-the-Goth.
He put his head between his claws and thought very carefully.
"It's like this," he said. "When you go after blood-honey with a
balloon, the great thing is to not let the demon-bees know you are
coming. Now, if you had a green balloon, they might think you are part of
the tree, and not notice you, and if you had a blue balloon, they might
think you were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question
is, would they notice you if you had a BLACK balloon?"
"Wouldn't they notice you underneath the balloon, anyway?" asked
Christopher Sexbat.
"They might or they might not," said Winnie-the-Goth. "You can
never tell with demon-bees." He thought for a moment and said: "I shall
try to look like a small black rain cloud. That will deceive them."
"Then a black balloon shall be perfect," said Christopher Sexbat,
and so it was decided.
So the two of them went out with the black balloon, taking an axe
with them, just in case, as they always did, and Winnie-the-Goth went to
a very muddy place that he knew of, and rolled and rolled until he was
black all over (which, because he was already a very dark goth, was
hardly necessary, but he was feeling especially perkygoff today, so he
did it just for sheer fun of it, grinning all the while, until all you
could really see of him were his long, ivory teeth).
Then, when the balloon was blown up as big as it could be,
Winnie-the-Goth grabbed ahold of the string and began to float upwards
into the dark blue sky, like a tiny thunderhead which meant no harm at
all to bee-demons and didn't really care for blood-honey all that much.
Up, up he rose, until he was level with the top of the tree and about
twenty feet away from it.
In which we continue with poor Winnie suspended miles above the hallowed earth whilst clutching a spotty black balloon, in his greedy search for sustenance...
"Hooray!" shouted Christopher Sexbat.
"Isn't this nifty?" shouted Winnie-the-Goth. "What do I look like?"
"Well, you look a bit like Peter Murphy circa Flat Field, but not
as much as you look like a goth holding on to a funereal balloon."
"I'm soooo high!" thought Winnie-the Goth to himself. To
Christopher Sexbat far below, he said, rather anxiously, "Not like a small
black cloud in a big blue sky?"
"Not very much, no."
"Ah, well, perhaps from up here it looks different. And, as I
say, you can never tell with bee-demons."
There was no wind to blow him nearer to the tree, so there he
stayed. He could see the blood-honey, he could smell the blood-honey, but
he couldn't quite reach the the blood-honey.
After a little while he called down to Christopher Sexbat.
"Christopher Sexbat!" he said in a loud whisper that sounded for
all the world like the murmurings of a thousand mellifluous serpents.
"Yeah? What?"
"I think the bee-demons suspect something!"
"What sort of thing?"
"I don't know, but something tells me they're SUSPICIOUS!"
"Perhaps they think you're after their blood-honey."
"It may be that. You never can tell with bee-demons."
There was anther little silence, and then he called down to
Christopher Sexbat again.
"Christopher Sexbat?"
"Yeah what?"
"Have you an black and typically gothic-looking bumbershoot, or
umbrella in your house?"
"I think so."
"I wish you would bring it out here, and walk up and down with
it, and look up at me every now and again, and say, 'Tut-tut, it looks
like rain.' I think, if you did that, it would help the deception we are
practising on these bee-demons."
Well, Christopher Sexbat laughed to himself (in a laugh that
sounded queerly sorrowful, like the sighing of a thousand dying virgins,
trapped in a lifetime of the mundane, the obvious), "Silly old goth!" He
didn't say it aloud, though, because even though Winnie-the-Goth
occasionally worked his nerves with his perkygoff impressions of David J.
and a goth version of Katrina from Katrina and the Waves, he was terribly
fond of him, and went home in search of the specified umbrella.
"Oh, there you are!" cried Winnie-the-Goth, as soon as
Christopher Sexbat got back to the tree. "I was beginning to get anxious.
I have discovered that he bee-demons are now definitely SUSPICIOUS."
"Shall I put my umbrella up?" said Christopher Sexbat.
"Yes, please, but wait a moment. We must be practical. Just
because we are goths hardly means we're incapable of being practical, if
only from time to time. *ahem* The important bee-demon to deceive is the
Queen Bee-Demon. Can you see which is the Queen Bee-Demon from down there?"
"No. I can see one that looks vaguely like Princess Diana, but I
don't think that's the one you want. She looks otherwise engaged, anyway."
"A pity. Well, now, if you walk up and down with your umbrella,
saying, 'Tut-tut, it looks like rain,' I shall do what I can by singing a
bit of Peter Murphy. Perhaps "The Line Between the Devil's Teeth? No,
perhaps I should sing a little gothic cloud song of my own invention. *ahem*
... Go!"
So, while Christopher Sexbat walked up and down and wondered if
it would rain, Winnie-the-Goth sang this song:
"How sweet to be a gothy cloud,
A-drifting in the blue,
Every little gothy cloud
Always sing a-gothy-loud.
How neat to be a gothy cloud
Floating in the blue!
It makes him very goofy-loud
To be a Bauhaus bas'ed cloud.
The bee-demons were still buzzing a suspiciouly as ever. Some of
them, indeed, left their crimson hive and flew all around the cloud as it
began the second verse of this song, and one wicked bee-demon sat right
down on the nose of the cloud for a moment, and then got up again.
"Christopher -- OW! -- Sexbat!" called out the cloud.
"What is it?"
"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important
decision. THESE ARE THE WRONG SORT OF BEE-DEMONS."
"Are they?"
"Quite the wrong sort. These are the kind of bee-demons that beat
up perkygoffs, drink Coors Light, listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd and think
Tonya Harding got the short end of the cudgel. They are, I fear, REDNECK
BEE-DEMONS! So I should think that they probably make quite the wrong
sort of blood-honey, shouldn't you?"
"Um, yes, sort of like Busch Lite, right?"
"Yes. So I think I shall come down."
"How?" asked Christopher Sexbat.
Winnie-the-Goth hadn't thought about this. If he let go of the
string, he would fall -- BUMP -- and he didn't like the idea of that. So
he thought for a long time, and then he said:
"Christopher Sexbat, you must shoot the balloon with your Tec-9.
Have you got your fully licensed and non-converted-for-presumably-naughty-
purposes gun with you?"
"Of course I have," said Christopher Sexbat, the corner of his
mouth twitching just a bit into an uncomfortably sardonic-looking grin.
"But if I do that, it will spoil the balloon," he said peevishly.
"But if you DON'T," said Winnie-the-Goth, "I shall have to let
go, and that would spoil ME!"
It was a cunning gothy logic that no mere mortal dare trifle
with. When you put it like this, you saw how it was, and so Christopher
Sexbat slipped of the safety, took very careful aim at the balloon, and
fired.
***BANG! zapinggggg...***
***"OW! OWOWOWOWOWO! my mascara.."***
"shit. missed."
***BANG!***
***"YEEOWCH! Watch it you goofy goth, you nicked my tufted bottom!"
"SORRY! My sights must be off!...(three's a charm...)"
***BANG!***
This one finally connected with the errant balloon, and the air
came slowly out, and Winnie-the-Goth floated down to the ground.
But his arms were so stiff from clinging to the string of the
balloon for so terribly long that they stayed up straight in the air for
more than a week and it was all he could do to light a clove, or switch
CDs, or even lace his pointy little goth boots without assistance. Bother.
"Is that the end of the story?" asked Christopher Sexbat.
"That's the end of that one. There's are always others."
"About Winnie-the-Goth and me?"
"And Piglet Darkswine and Evil FuzzyBunny and all the other
goths, goffs, and assorted creature of the woodland night. Don't you
remember?"
"I do remember, and then when I try to remember, I forget..."
"Ah, well, that's what it means to be a goth. All those cloves
and glistening red candles play havoc with the mind."
Christopher Sexbat nodded sagely.
"I do remember sometimes," he said, "only Winnie-the-Goth doesn't
very well, so that's why he like having them told to him again." Because
then it's a real story, and not just a remembering."
"That's just how I feel," I said.
Christopher Sexbat gave a deep, lachrymose sighing, picked
Winnie-the -Goth up by the leg, and walked off to the door, trailing
Winnie-the-Goth behind him. At the door, he turned and said, "Coming to
see me have my bath?" And now there was that little facial twitch again,
pulling the corners of his red, red lips into something unpleasantly
resembling a leer.
"I might," I said, dropping a sly wink in his direction. Bath-time
was getting more enjoyable every day.
"I didn't hurt him when I shot him, did I?"
"Hardly. Goths are very resilient, and even if you had, he'd just
come back the next full moon, scratching at your windowpane like some
hellish imp of the perverse, sick with a hunger, a need, that can never,
ever be sated."
"Good."
He nodded and went out, and in a moment, I heard Winnie-the-Goth
-- bump, bump, bump -- going up the stairs behind him.
In which Winnie-the-Goth goes visiting and gets into a tight, dark, gooshy place
*AHEM*
Edward de St. Gilles de Rais Voncebottom Lethargiacicach Finster-Goth,
the Second, know to his friends as Winnie-the-Goth, or just "Hey, You,"
for short was creeping through the dark forest one day, humming proudly
to himself. Since his CD player was in the pawn shop to secure funds for
more fishnets and mascara, he had made up a little hum that very
morning, as he was doing his toenails in front of the glass: "Tra-la-la,
tra-la-la, as he stretched up to get more black nail polish. "Tra-la-la,
tra-la-la -- OH, HELP!, as he smeared the polish down. After a
particularly satisfying breakfast of blood-honey and Kellogg's Toaster
Strudel ("NOW WITH MORE STICKY BITS THAT CLING"), he had said it over and
over to himself until he had learnt it all by heart, and now he was
humming it right through, properly. It went like this:
"Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Tra-la-la, tra-la-la,
Bugs and bones and spider-snakes,
That's what gooey gothies make.
Tra-la-la, Tra-la-la,
Tra-la-la, Tra-la-la,
Crimson wax and creepy-crawl,
Might you bonk one in the hall?
Oogey, boogey, oogey-oooooooh!"
Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and trudging along
without assistance, wondering what everybody else was doing, and what she
felt like, when suddenly he came to a large sandy bank, and in the bank
was large hole.
"Aha!" cried Winnie-the-Goth. (Oogey, boogey, oogey-ooooh!). "If
I know anything about anything, this hole means FuzzyDevilBunny," he
said, "and FuzzyDevilBunny means Company," he said, "and Company means
food and beer and Listening-to-Me-Humming and such like. (Oogey, boogey,
oogey-ooooh!)"
So he bent down, put his head into the hole, and called out:
"Is anybody at home?"
There was a sudden scuffling noise from inside the hole, like the evil
sursurrations of a thousand long-dead spiders, and then silence.
"What I said was, 'Is anybody home?'" called out Winnie-the-Goth
very loudly.
"NO!," said a voice, and then added, "You needn't shout so loud.
I heard you well enough the first time."
"Bother," said Winnie-the-Goth. "Isn't there anybody here at all?"
Again came the silent whisper of long-dead raven's wings:
"Nevermore....now beat it."
Winnie-the-Goth took his head out of the hole, and thought for a
little while, and he thought to himself, "There must be somebody there,
because somebody must've said 'Nobody!'" So he put his head back in the
hole and said:
"Hallo, FuzzyDevilBunny, isn't that you?"
"No," said FDB, in a different sort of voice that sounded,
uncomfortably, like Peter Lorre.
"But isn't that FuzzDevilBunny's voice?"
"I don't think so," said FDB. "It isn't meant to be."
"Oh!" said Winnie-the-Goth.
He took his head out of the hole and had another think, and then
he put it back and said:
"Well, do you think you could tell me very kindly where
FuzzyDevilBunny is?"
"He has gone to see his friend Winnie-the-Goth, who is a great
and perky friend of his. After that, I think he said he was going to buy
some ecstasy downtown by the big pink dumpster. I think."
"But this is ME!" said Winnie-the-Goth, very much surprised
"What sort of me?"
"Winnie-the-Goth."
"Are you sure you're not a giant bunny-eating succubus intent on
raping my mind and imprisoning my less-than-spotless soul in the fiery
depths of Lucifer's eternal kingdom o' lies, est. 1965 and Growing With
Pride?"
"Quite, quite sure," said Winnie-the-Goth.
"Oh, well, then, come on in."
So Winnie-the-Goth pushed and pushed and pushed his way into an
exceedingly narrow hole that was a tight fit even for the most gaunt and
pale of perkygoffs, and, at last, he got in.
"You were quite right," said FuzzyDevilBunny, picking a few stray
nightcrawlers from his fur. "It IS you. Glad to see you."
"Who did you think I was?"
"Well, I wasn't sure. You know how it is in the forest, what with
all the mundanes trekking through now that they've gone and moved the
expressway. One can't have just anybody coming into one's house. One has
to be CAREFUL. THEY lurk around every blighted stump, plotting,
conspiring, waiting for the time to be JUST RIGHT so THEY can burst in
here and take me away, far away, with THEIR glistening probes and
foul-smelling salves and things.
"Oh, say, you hungry?"
Winnie-the-goth always like a little something at eleven
o'clock at night (preferably a slug-covered newt with blood-honey lathered
atop it), and he was very glad to see FuzzyDevilBunny getting out the
knives and chalices; and when FDB said, "Blood-honey or condensed
pancreatic juices?" he was so excited that he said, "Both!' and then, so
as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about the liver,
please." And for a long time after that he said nothing...until, of
course, humming to himself in a rather sticky voice, he got up, shook
FuzzyDevilBunny by the paw, and said that he had to be going.
"Must you?" FDB said politely, allowing just the barest edge of
malice to steal into his tone.
"Well, I could stay a little longer if -- if you -- if you might
play that new Black Tape For A Blue Girl cd," he said, trying to look
very hard in the direction of the larder.
"As a matter of fact," said FuzzyDevilBunny, "I was just going
out myself."
"Oh, well, then, I'll be going on. Good-bye in your eye, guy."
FuzzyDevilBunny looked chagrined. "Well, good-bye, if you're sure
you won't have any more."
"IS there any more?" asked Winnie-the-Goth
"Well, no. Not really."
"I thought not," said Winnie-the-Goth, nodding sagely to himself.
"Well, goodbye. I must be going."
So he started to climb out of the hole (which, by the way,
smelled more than a little like an open grave he had once had the good
fortune to stumble into).....
Continuing part 5 (Ch. 2 - Pt 1 of html version), natch, where That Darn Goth was just leaving his good friend FuzzyDevilBunny after enjoying a lovely little snack of Triscuits ["Sandy Duncan Digs 'Em, You Should Too"] and blood honey.
*ahem*
*again*
*with phlegm*
*per diem*
-----------------
So Winnie-the-Goth started to climb out of FuzzyDevilBunny's
hole. He pulled with his front claws, caking them with grave-residue,
because it was obvious to all concerned that FuzzyDevilBunny had made his
hole, conveniently it seemed, in the midst the Hundred Acre Necrotorium.
Anyway, he pulled with his front claws, and pushed with his back
claws, and a little while, his slightly scraped snout was out in the open
again ... and then his ears ... and then his front claws ... and then his
slim, gothy shoulders ... and then----
"Oh, help!" said Winnie-the-Goth. "I'd better go back."
"Oh, bother!" said Winnie-the-Goth. "I shall have to go on."
"Shit! I can't do either!" he cried. "Oh HELP! and BOTHER! and
SHITfire and save matches!"
Now by this time FuzzyDevilBunny was aching to go for a walk too,
seeing as how his good friend Faith was in town and has brought along
George "Night of the Living FuzzyDevilBunnies" Romero and her evil,
quasi-perky pals Lisa and Laura from Pittsburgh. Regardless, the front
door was stuffed full of Perkygoff butt (which, while not in itself a bad
thing, was certainly a minor inconvenience of some due cause). Instead,
he went out by the back door, and came round to Winnie-the-Goth, and
looked at him.
"Hallo. Are we stuck?" he asked impatiently.
"N-no," said Winnie-the-Goth, carelessly. "Just resting. Even
perkygoffs need to rest once in while, and this seemed like such a likely
spot, seeing a how it's half in and half out of the ground, where a goth
like me should ideally be." He licked his lips and laughed nervously.
"Oh," said FuzzyDevilBunny, not quite convinced. "Here, give us a
claw."
Winnie-the-Goth stretched out a paw, careful to keep his claws
tucked in, and FuzzyDevilBunny pulled and pulled and pulled...
"OW!!" cried the lodged-Goth. "You're hurting, and on top of that
there's no hot, drippy red candle-wax on my tummy!"
"Forget the wax. The fact is, you're stuck, you silly perkygoff!"
"It all comes," said Winnie-the-Goth crossly, "of not having front
graves big enough."
"It all comes," said FuzzyDevilBunny sternly, "of eating too much
blood-honey and Triscuits and TOO MUCH MASCARA! I thought at the time," he
said, "only I thought it might be a bit too forward of me," he went on,
"that one of us was eating too much," he continued, to the point of annoyance,
"and I bloody well know it wasn't ME." He paused here to suckle lovingly at
the teat of the damned.
"Well, hell, well, I shall just go and fetch Christopher Sexbat,"
said FuzzyDevilBunny, whose tufted black tail was beginning (more and
more) to look like a tasty, meaty morsel to the well-ensconced
Goth-in-the-Hole.
Christopher Sexbat lived at the other end of the forest, and when
he came back with FuzzyDevilBunny (rather peeved, we might add here, that
he had been interrupted during his private, secret, dark and dirty
moment, which even his mother has only the vaguest sort of puzzling,
disapproving notions about.). When he saw the front half of
Winnie-the-Goth, he giggled knowingly to himself and whispered "Silly old
Goth," in such a loving voice that all parties concerned were suddenly
interested in the prospect of Winnie-the-Goth and Christopher Sexbat
appearing on the cover of the nest issue of OutGoth.
"I was just beginning to think," said Winnie-the-Goth, sniffing
slightly, "that FuzzyDevilBunny might never be able to use his front door
again. And I should HATE that," he said.
"Yah, well, think of me..." said FuzzyDevilBunny. "How will I get
the chicks with THIS?!"
Both Christopher Sexbat and Winnie-the-Goth noticed with alarm how
the glowering FuzzyDevilBunny was gnawing on his lower lip so much that a
thin trickle of blood had run down and began to fleck his bushy whiskers with
a crimson mist, matting down his otherwise lustrous sheen and caking to dark
russet around the edges.
"Use his front door again?!" Christopher Sexbat ejaculated, seethingly.
"Of course he'll use his front door again."
"Ummmmm..." said FuzzyDevilBunny, his eyes rolling back in his
FuzzyDevilHead, copious amounts of BunnyDrool running from his nibblers.
"If we can't pull you out, Winnie, perhaps we can push you back?"
FuzzyDevilBunny scratched his whiskers with his little bitty
talons thoughtfully (drawing blood again), and pointed out that, when
once Winnie-the-Goth was pushed back, and of course nobody was more glad
to see this wayward perkygoff more than HE was, still, there it was, some
lived in trees and some lived in graves, and ----
"You mean I'd NEVER get out?" said the Goth.
"I mean," said FuzzyDevilBunny, "that you'd be stuck listening to
Tones on Tail, the Jazz Butcher, and assorter Bauhaus solo projects for
the next decade, as that's all I have.
"What? No Children On Stun?"
"No."
"No Black Tape for a Blue Girl?"
"Nope."
"Not even...any Siouxsie/Morrisey duets?"
"Hardly."
"You mean I'd NEVER get out?" cried Winnie-the-Goth, squirming
like a furry black nightcrawler, which, in a way, like all goths, he was.
"I MEAN," said FuzzyDevilBunny, "that having got SO far, it seems a
pity to waste it."
Christopher Sexbat nodded, winked, and did a little spin,
grinning with his teeth (white and pointy) but not his eyes (black, just
black).
"Then there's only one thing to be done," said FuzzyDevilBunny. We
shall have to wait for you to get thin again."
"How long does getting thin take?" asked Winnie-the-Goth anxiously,
knowing damn well he was a goth and probably quite very skinny to begin with.
"About as long as it takes for Carl McCoy to get off his duff and
release the Nefilim cd, I should think. Maybe sooner.....probably sooner.
About a week, I should think."
"But I can't stay here for a WEEK!" cried Winnie-the-Goth,
knowing full well he'd miss the next X-Files, old Twilight Zone reruns,
and probably a Gulf War, or two.
"You CAN too stay here, you silly old Goth," said Christopher
Sexbat. "It's getting you out which is so difficult."
"We'll read to you," said FuzzyDevilBunny, cheerfully. "And I
hope it won't snow," he added, maliciously, sniffing at the air and
trying to predict if, indeed, it would. "And I say, my perky, pesky Orson
Welles-esque friend, you're taking up a good deal of room in my house --
DO you mind if I use your back legs as some sort of unique bondage
accessories? Because, I mean, THERE THEY ARE, just sort of sticking out
there, and I could so use them to affix manacles and the likes from ...
um, couldn't I?"
"A WEEK?!" screamed Winnie-the-Goth in a dainty little roar,
that, despite the small-perkygoff-in-makeshift-B&D-gear-look, sounded more
than anything else like a little boy denied his favored pudding, or
maybe a spoonful of gristle before bedtime.
"What about MEALS?!!" hissed Winnie-the-Goth, in a very impolite,
but understandable manner.
"I'm afraid no meals," said Christopher Sexbat, "because of
getting thinner quicker. But we WILL read to you."
Winnie-the-Goth sighed (and yes, once more it sounded like, oh, I
don't know, how about, say, 'a billion black beetles biting big black bits
o' bloodied bomb debris?') Fine. Be satisfied with that one.
Famished and (apparently) fat (!), and feeling fairly funky,
a lone crimson tear ran down the goth's cheek, as he said: "Then would you
need a SUSTAINING BOOK, such as would help and comfort a wedged
Goth-in-Great-Tightness?"
"How about "Thinner?" You know, Stephen King?" someone offered....
So for a week Christopher Sexbat read just that one sort of book
(pausing, occasionally, to surrepticiously slip in some Anais Nin and see
if the Silly Old Goth realized it was "Nin," and not "NIN") at the
North End of Winnie-the-Goth, and FuzzyDevilBunny hung his freshly-ironed
garters and recently-dry cleaned angoras on the south end ... and in between
Winnie-the-Goth felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer, gothier and
gothier.
And at the end of the week Christopher Sexbat cried out, incantorially,
"Damn the heavens and damn the seas, damn Nic Gibson and his knobby
knees, Damn and darn Q. Tarrantino, that J. Travolta plays great mean-o!
NOW!"
So he took hold of the Goth's front claws, and FuzzyDevilBunny
took hold of Christopher Sexbat, and all of FuzzyDevilBunny's horrid,
chittering relations took hold of FuzzyDevilBunny, and they all pulled
together ...
(and by this time it was already too late to call that guy from Coil to
Satanize the poor goth out) ....
And for a long time, Winnie-the-Goth only said, "OW!" ...
and, oh, "OW!" ...
and, ow, "OH!" ...
and, whoa, "SHIT!" ...
And then, all of a sudden, with a giant gout of arterial blood,
he said "WHEEEEEEE!" just as if he'd suddenly lost all major bladder control
(which, it surely need not be said, he DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO [because things
like that are best left in the bedroom, or, at least, the privacy of the bath].
Winnie-the-Goth positively FLEW through the air, and Christopher
Sexbat and FuzzyDevilBunny and all the assorted friends, relations,
hanger's on, and papparazzi went head-over-heels backwards ... and on top
of them came Winnie-The-Goth ---FREE!
So, with a nod of thanks to his friends, he went on with his walk
through the forest, humming proudly to himself that old Tones on Tail
tune, "GO!", which he found very appropos, all things considered.
But Christopher Sexbat, cunning devil that he was, looked after
him with an errant, perky grin, and said to himself, "Silly old Goth."
In which Winnie-the-Goth and Piglet Darkswine go hunting and nearly catch a woozle...
The Piglet Darkswine lived in a terrifically grand house in the
middle of very large Venus Fly-Trap, and the Fly-Trap was in the middle
-- in the very darkest part, mind you -- of the forest, and Piglet (Pig,
for short) lived in the middle of the house, in an eternally unbroken
penatangle marked on four sides by little gooey bits of GodKnozWhat and
old Halloween candy-corn wrappers.
Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had
"PISS OFF" on it. When Christopher Sexbat asked the Pig what it meant, he
said it was his grandfather's name and had been in the family for a long
time. Christopher Sexbat wanted to say that you COULDN'T be called Piss
Off, and Piglet Darkswine said, yes, you could, because it was short for
"Pissy, Officious & Frankly Fuk'ed," which was more or less how everyoned
had referred to his grandfather, whether he was around to hear or not.
"I've got two names," said Christopher Sexbat carelessly.
"Well, there you are, that proves it," said Piglet Darkswine.
One fine winter's day, when Pig was brushing away the snow from
in front of his house, he happened to look up, and there was the devil.
"No, I'm mistaken, it's just Winnie-the-Goth standing there," he
muttered, wiping the sleep from his beady little red eyes that glowed
unpleasantly every time someone mentioned the work "asparagus."
Winnie-the-Goth was walking round and round in a circle, thinking
of something else, and when Pig called to him, he just went on walking.
"Hallo!" said Piglet Darkswine. "What are you DOING?"
"Hunting," said Winnie-the-Goth.
"Hunting what?"
"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Goth, very mysteriously, as
was his habit.
"Tracking what?" queried Pig, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself, WHAT?"
"What do you think you'll answer?"
"I shall have to wait until I catch up with it," said
Winnie-the-Goth. "Now, look here," he said, and pointed to the
snow-covered ground in front of him. "What do you see here?"
"Tracks," said Piglet Darkswine. "Paw-marks." He gave a little
squeak of excitement that could've passed for the sound a Tulip might make
when you plucked it from the ground. "Oh, Winnie-the-Goth, do you think
it's a, a WOOZLE?!"
"It may be," said the goth. "Sometimes it is, and sometimes it
isn't. You never can tell with paw-marks."
"Never?" asked Piglet Darkswine inquisitively.
"Well, almost," replied Winnie-the-Goth. "If there's blood and
crushed bits of Pez candy in the hollows, you can tell a net.goth's been
by of late."
Piglet Darkswine almost hiccuped himself six-feet-under at this
startling revelation.
*hic*
"But, Winnie--" he said, but couldn't continue, because a
rapid-fire barrage of hiccups overwhelmed him and make it sound like he
was speaking in Flemmish.
With a blush on his piggy little cheeks he kept quiet and
followed Winnie-the-Goth, who had come to a sudden stop, and was bending
over the tracks in a puzzled sort of way.
"What's the matter?" asked Piglet Darkswine.
"It's a very funny thing," said Winnie-the -Goth, "but there seem
to be TWO animals now. This--whatever-it-was--has been joined by another
-- whatever-it-is -- and the two of them are now proceeding in company..."
"*hic* Do you think it's Paul and Al from 1000 Acre Ministry?
*hic*" asked Piglet Darkswine.
"I don't know," said Winnie-The-Goth, "but would you mind coming
with me in case they turn out to be Hostile Animals, or, worse, evil
Maytag Repairmen with a burning desire to fix our spin-cycles?"
Piglet Darkswine scratched his ear in a nice sort of way, and
said that he had nothing to do until Friday (but after that, he was
roadying for the Bad Seeds, and was all booked up 'til March seeing as
how Blixa had trouble fastening his leathers these days), and would be
delighted to come, in case it really was a Woozle, or a Revenooer with
his eyes on Winnie-the-Goth's secret stash of Neat Gothey Stuff.
"You mean, in case it really is two Woozles," said
Winnie-the-Goth, and Piglet Darkswine reiterated that he had nothing to
to do until Friday. So off they went together.