Shots

The land had suffered for its beauty, dissolving the heaviest of industry in the slowest of motion. When the day retreated, the precious metals returned. A pop of humidity supercharged the soil after dark, transmuting the tech-flecked glens into neon odeons. It was as if the land was jealous of the stars, and had plotted thousands of years for one night of luminous revenge. The towpath heaved with insects, spectators smooshing themselves. Antares festered over the river, septic red. Life showed up boasting its usual lunar spectacular: somewhere in the firmament, the moon tried its most.

 

Tippi was on the eastern towpath, facing south, the riverbank bristling with bugs.

On the western towpath, underneath the kibitz of moths and gnats, ten million eyes watched her, unblinking.

Ten million eyes kept their distance, but the worst didn’t: The Archangel skulked before her, wearing Big Rehoboth’s bucket and eyes of ash, joined by Father and consorts.

It took the royals five minutes to cut her off.

The Prince of Scum squirted over his sad claque, dusting them with aerosol dictates. In the anhedonia of excess, he gummed at a throne of spoiling shark flesh.

As Father gnawed at his fly-speckled dais, The Archangel pawed towards the teacup hypermini.

My sister was supposed to take care of you.

Tippi was too cornered to quip.

“Gerasa told me to kill you,” she said.

Like a duodenum regurgitated, the rat’s tongue rolled out.

SHE SAID WHAT?

“Look, you knew she hated all this.”

How dare you speak for my sister?

“I’m one mammal. Why’d you bring 5 million?”

The Archangel expectorated, unaccustomed to sass.

The cruelty! The gall!

“Tippi!” whispered Lina-2. “Why aren’t they advancing?”

“It probably has to do with the vapors I inhaled from Gerasa’s neck.”

“Who?”

“The big, dead rat.”

“I see. Let’s revisit this, on a less precarious occasion.”

“I would’ve mentioned it, but you were a condo.”

Archangel balking, Tippi spun to ten million eyes.

“Hello, rats!”

Tippi had no illusions concerning her public speaking aptitude, but she was about to die.

“So, my friend told me about a guy named Mike Christ. He’s dead, historians said he lived in a cabana. Now, I don’t know much about cabanas or übermenschen, but Mike was famous for saying stuff like, If you ignore the misery of the small, you get the misery of all, so shots are on me.”

Ten million eyes drilled into her, silent.

“My point is this: does anybody know what shots are? Because I, for one, do not.”

The Archangel’s jaw flopped.

What inane treacle is this?

Tippi tried again.

“Listen up, you rats! It’s come to my attention that none of you are thriving!”

As she wondered if she was made for stirring oratory. The Prince of Scum spritzed the broodmothers with effluvia.

“In fact, the only one who seems to be happy is him! Is he part yam? Could someone please tell me his deal?”

The Archangel roared.

What smarm has our sister foisted upon us?

She barreled towards Tippi.

Usurper! Charlatan!

Tippi shut her eyes.

Retreating to the dewy narrows of her own brainpan, she heard Xoz.

One frigate? That’s when I go in.

She felt the supernova merge with her body.

Go in.

Tippi opened her eyes.

Antares is yours.

ABSOLUTELY: NOT, she said.

With an unergonomic swerve, The Archangel’s neck wrenched up, spine arching sickly. The rat stood frozen on her hindquarters, front claws slicing air.

DOWN: YOU

The Archangel clattered backwards, hitting the ground with a glonk, and Tippi prowled towards her, winking wildly.

HERE: DRINK MY FEAR

The rat slapped at her brain, claws streaking bucket.

YOU ARE DROWNING: YOU ARE FALLING: YOU ARE A POOR ORCA.

Flinging slobber, The Archangel inched towards her tormentor.

shut up shut up shut up-

I’M GOING TO DIS: ASSEMBLE YOUR TATTY EMPIRE

The Archangel toddled off to the brush, in a puppet’s judder.

AND DON’T THINK YOU’RE SPECIAL: EMPIRE IS INHERENTLY TATTY

Tippi aimed her glare at Father and hangers-on.

“There’s a mulberry bush north of here,” she said. “Everyone goes, ‘cept him.“

Father’s entourage shot into the night, leaving their liege face-down, fuming and farting.

Looping around the brush, The Archangel beckoned Leviathan.

Look at our Father! Look how she debases him!

Tippi turned to the swarm.

“Hello!” she said. “Who actually wants to be here?”

Ignore her-

YOU ARE: TOO LOUD, said Tippi.

Yowling, The Archangel slid the bucket over her muzzle.

“As I was saying, who actually wants to do this?”

Ten million eyes blinked quizzical, until-

I don’t, squeaked someone.

Across the river, Tippi discerned the spectral outline of a young rat.

“Go on,” she said.

I don’t want to do this anymore.

“Why not?”

My mother went on the shark hunt this morning: she didn’t come back.

“I’m sorry.”

She might be lost, but she’s never been gone this long.

“What’s your name?”

I don’t have a name. Only sisters get names.

“That doesn’t seem right.”

None of us have names, not even my little brothers.

Tippi saw two far-off pups, woozy in a snuggle pile.

“Everyone deserves a name,” she said. “Would you like one?”

I suppose, said the rat. What’d you have in mind?

“How about ‘Peaches?’ It’s a stonefruit.”

I like the sound of that! said Peaches, freshly anointed.

“I’ve had three peaches in my life: don’t eat the seeds or pits.”

Could you name my brothers, too?

Tippi addressed the fuzzier.

“I saw an acorn for the first time yesterday. How’s Acorn?”

Someday I’ll wear an acorn on my head, just like you! promised Acorn.

“This isn’t an acorn!” explained Tippi. “This is a hat!”

Wow! said Acorn. A hat!

“Tippi!” buzzed Lina-2. “Why aren’t we dead?”

“I think I found a way out of this. I need you to trust me.”

“I am merely reminding you we’re in incalculable danger.”

“Noted. I just need to name another rat.”

“Huh?”

I already know my name, said the other brother.

“What is it?” asked Tippi.

I’m Gravel, because I’m tough and tiny.

“Gravel: a fine choice!”

Thank you, yawned Gravel.

For several impenetrable minutes, the megacolony watched Tippi and Gravel discuss a shared love for small rocks.

“That’s why a grain of sand makes for a poor pebble,” said Tippi.

Agreed! said Gravel.

“Tippi, what is happening?”

“Uh, diplomacy. Wrapping it up.”

Shuffling her hooves, Tippi looked to Leviathan.

“Well, I’m going to go do something else now, and I encourage you to do the same, and by ‘the same’ I mean ‘something totally different, elsewhere.’ So: go on and pursue your evenings while not stomping on your neighbor’s-“

I want a name! said a rat, from the back.

Me too! burped another.

Moments later, ten million eyes were demanding names.

I don’t know if I want to be called Dirty or Messy! said one.

“You could go with both?” tried Tippi.

Tippi! said Messy Dirty. You’re incredible!

Tippi didn’t have time to name everyone, so she cited an exemplar of the craft.

“You know, you could follow our friend Gravel here, and name yourselves?”

The swarm fluttered with consensus.

My name is Rat! .

I’m Rat too!

I’m Twig!

I’m Hair!

I’m also Rat!

Call me Cabana!

None of you can pick Peaches, announced Peaches.

Fair enough! everyone said.

Tippi watched in awe, as Leviathan hollered into the night. Four days ago, she had two friends: now, she had five million. Things were moving so fast, she didn’t notice Father sidewind out of the brush, and rear his crater face.

“Tippi!” shouted Lina-2.

She was the air.

Tippi! yelped Peaches.

She felt a bruise spiderweb across her ribs.

TIPPI! cried the megacolony.

She landed on a bad stretch of sand.

The Prince of Scum glowered down from the causeway, his eyes retracting in a gormley staccato.

archangel: gerasa: arkhangelsk: jerash

A rageful arrhythmia had overcome his sluggy muscles, his jawline a guillotine maze of keratin.

“His mouth!” shouted Lina-2. “I know what the big rats really are!”

The Prince of Scum slithered off with a noxious huff, leaving Tippi reeling by the reeds. She tried to follow him, but her chin hit the sand, notching another scrape.

“Rats,” she winced.

“They’re worse than that!”

Tippi was too screwed up to address everyone, so she zeroed in on Peaches.

“Grab your brothers and go. Tell those around you: go!”

Where? fretted Peaches.

“Run, as fast you can. Something bad is coming: I could be precognitive, but I could be confused.”

What about you?

“I’ll be fine. Word is, I’m living forever.”

Be safe, Tippi!

Peaches and her brothers vanished, and her warning fanned across Leviathan, scattering the Ratti.

“The big ones, they’re barely rats!” jabbered Lina-2. “I mean, yes, Rattus norvegicus minos is the substrate, but there’s so much more to it! When we first saw those larger specimens, I thought they looked familiar: their retractable eyes, their fluency with water, their teeth, the ritualistic pursuit of Carcharhinus leucas: they’re displaying an ahistorical melange of traits typical of late cetaceans!”

“Cetaceans?”

“Whales, Tippi: THOSE RATS ARE FILTHY WITH WHALE DNA!”

“But why would-”

As Tippi limped uphill, her thoughts evaporated.

She saw the bucket in the mud, and The Archangel holding The Prince of Scum.

Daughter held Father: off the ground, mouth to mouth, her whole head in his jaws.

Father! Don’t do this!

The Prince of Scum snorted a chastening haze.

pathetic: failure: pathetic

Like a gorging constrictor, Father clung to his daughter’s head. Her teeth held his lower jaw in place, drawing great torrents of blood. He opened his mouth wider, revealing a prehensile, barbed tongue.

“That lingua is made of gray matter,” said Lina-2.

“Did whales have those?” ached Tippi.

“No.”

As Father’s tongue unspooled, his daughter quivered a final plea.

I did everything you asked.

never: enough

This isn’t fair.

now we recite: the poetry of laceration

The Archangel closed her eyes.

I should have stayed Harmonious.

With a splash of cerebrospinal gravy, Father’s tongue entered her right socket.

His daughter’s head shot back, as his neural lingua wiggled through her brain, emerging from her left eye.

His tongue looped from right to left socket, winching itself to her skull.

With a ruddy gush, Father’s head broke from his body: hot organs spilling upon the grass, his naked brain wrapped around his daughter’s face. Absent its dermis and mandible, his skull swung from a sticky skein of viscera like a pendulum, the flesh rope anchored to his cerebrum.

The foul amalgam arose.

Pakicetus assessed its prey, eyes flopping by the nerves.

Pork, it said.

 

Outro: Danzig – “She Rides”