2nd half of an A-B episode (please C your way out of it)

I admit that my conclusion to yesterday's two-part TYGER BRYAN chapter is not good. If you know anyone else who shares fake stories on a blog site, I would recommend reading their writing today instead of mine. But on other days, I think that my writings will be better than theirs; so don't cancel my media empire yet, I beg you.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

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“Well,” I ask the guard, “what’s next on the agenda?”

The guard then leads me on a grand tour of the prison. We meet all the people who are incarcerated, and I exchange contact info with very many of them. Some of these souls will become my friends for life. They’re really nice folks.

“This place reminds me of the zoo,” I say to the guard.

He turns and looks at me with a surprised expression and sez: “You yourself have been locked in a cage and put on exhibit?”

“No, no — not me personally,” I clarify; “I’m not a sinner — I’ve just seen zoos in the movies.”

“Ah, OK,” sez the guard. “Which movies, by the way?”

“Um, I think it must have been Dumbo (1941),” I reply. Then I think for a moment and add: “I guess it was only that one flick. — Unless there’s a zoo scene in Bambi (1942) . . .”

“No, Bambi was filmed on location in a studio forest,” sez the guard, “if I remember correctly.”

“Ah, yes, you’re right,” I say. “Plus, now that I think of it, they don’t normally put deer in zoos, for some reason.”

“Maybe cuz of their propensity to commit arson?”

I give the guard a puzzled look: “You say this, I assume, because of the wildfire scene? Hm, I don’t buy it. I think it’s a flimsy theory, to blame the deer — behold, the forest is their home: why would they start the blaze? No, it was more likely the result of human error, or simply a natural occurrence: like, perhaps a Tyger named Bryan came skulking thru, leaving a trail of raging flames in his wake . . . because, think about it — there’s that one poem that goes:

Tyger Bryan, burning bright,
In the forests of the night . . .

“But,” I continue, “even if you’re correct about their culpability, you’d think the zoo would consider that this risk of keeping deer in some of their cages would be far outweighed by the multitudes of hunters they would attract — all paying customers, mind you. Plus, you could make a pretty penny by enforcing a surcharge on firearms.”

We’ve been walking along the corridor of the dungeon realm of the prison as we talk; and, after I make that last barrage of good points, the guard stops cold and turns totally silent. I assume that he’s deep in thought; but then, just as abruptly as he froze, he now gasps and gestures while slightly crouching:

“There’s the warden, straight ahead!” he whis­pers. “Oh no! Hide me; I’m not supposed to be in this area!”

“But I thought that you were the top prison guard in the pyramid — the Eye of Providence, or whatever you called yourself,” I whisper back to my friend, as the menacing warden continues to approach us briskly. “I remember your words exactly; you said, ‘All the other guards here are merely like the bricks of the prison complex, which is shaped like a pyramid; but I am the apex, floating above the entire structure, wholly spiritual — even divine: enclosed in a triangle that is surrounded by my own rays of glory.”

“All that is true, more or less,” whispers the guard, “but the warden who is hastening our way right now is even a higher rank than I am — if you can believe that!”

I and my guard-friend both crouch trembling in the corridor as our foe speeds nearer and nearer. These moments during which we are trying to decide what our next move should be are intensely frightening and charged with suspense.

Now, when the warden is about one meter away from our faces, he stops in his tracks. Both of his shoes are planted firmly on the stone floor before us. Then he shouts:

“Imperial Centurion Miguel! What are you doing in the hallway of the dungeon with this filthy jungle beast!?”

“Sir,” my friend the guard stands and addresses the warden respectfully, “I was escorting this slave to the circus.”

The warden’s eyes narrow, “But the circus isn’t till Tuesday.”

“Um, yes, sir,” the guard stammers; “However, I thought that it would be a good idea to let him practice his mauling technique on some of the prisoners — that way, he will be a master at it when the big day finally arrives. Plus I saw that there was a bucket of fish over there, at the far end of the corridor, and I thought that it would be best to let this wild Tyger here consume it, instead of feeding the fish to the prisoners, since it’s righteous to let our human enemies starve.”

The warden’s eyes narrow further, to the point where the lids are almost closed. “Do you mean to tell me that your excuse for being in the wrong section of the prison with an unregistered perfor­mance artist is that you were transferring this creature from cage to cage in the zoo?”

The guard is flummoxed. He stares at the warden, not knowing what to do; then he looks down at me, and I nod to him exaggeratedly, hinting how he should answer. So he sez:

“Yes, that’s exactly right.”

The warden relaxes now and sez: “Ah! OK then; carry on.”

But this seems to me like a stupid way to conclude, because it’s such an anticlimactic reaction, that I totally lose my patience: — As the warden is walking away, while the little heels of his shoes are clicking on the stone floor, I leap up and pounce down and maul him: I rip him to shreds, tear him in tatters, and utterly consume him.

“You even sucked the marrow out of his bones?” my friend the guard holds one of the slaughtered warden’s femurs up to his eye like it’s a telescope while observing it: He is impressed by the way that I let no part of a carcass go to waste.

“The marrow’s the tastiest part,” I say.

The guard lowers the hollow bone that he was gazing into; I’ve piqued his interest. “And what’s your second-favorite body organ to devour?” he asks.

“All the others,” I quip.

We both laugh. Then we race over to the prison cell that we were intending on visiting before the warden interrupted: it’s the one that has a folded parchment protruding from the barred window of its door . . . as we draw nearer, we see that it is a handwritten note containing the prayer: “Somebody help me!”

So I bash open the prison door with my mighty forepaw, and we see the biblical Prophet Daniel weeping in a dungeon pit. To save his life at the very last second, I, Bryan the Tyger, enter heroically and ravage the lions who were hired to haunt him: they all were just about ready to attack the Prophet Daniel if I hadn’t shown up — they were circling around him and closing in, but now I slay them in an instant. (I had to accomplish this mission alone; but this was not my friend the prison guard’s fault: Miguel was just too scared to go in, because of all the lions.)

Finally, a spaceship piloted by extraterrestrials comes to bring me to my next adventure.