Don't miss this deluxe opportunity to stare at a number of words that fill up paragraphs in chapter 12-B of BRYAN THE TYGER, my latest fake novel.
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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Now when I finally arrive at my peninsula, before entering the
castle, I stop to look at the surrounding sea. I’m just wondering how my sharks
are doing. (You’ll recall that I purchased a whole shiver of sharks to infest these
waters, for security purposes.) They are thriving, I can tell. (Don’t ask me how
I can tell — I’m Bryan the Tyger: I understand living creatures.)
But as I stand there, pleased with
the sight of my healthy shark populace, I sense something fuzzy in my feline
intuition: This moves me to scan for aberrations, and, sure enough, I spot two enormous
USOs (Unidentified Swimming Objects) within my ocean.
Just now I notice that the castle’s front doors are open, and
my robo-butler Devlin is saluting me while little Zephyros, the kitty whom I freed
from housecat slavery, is prissy-prancing my way:
“Hi, Bryan! I didn’t expect you to return so late,” sez little
Zephyros, “but I’m still glad to see you.”
“What do you mean by saying that I returned ‘so late’?”
I ask. “Did I tell you that I will come again soon or something?”
“No, no,” sez little Zephyros, “I just assumed, after you lodged
me in your luxurious castle, that you would return eventually to prowl around
the premises, or at least to read some of the books that you keep on the shelves
here. (You have a nice collection, by the way.) Otherwise, I have the place entirely
to myself, and it’s almost as if I, Zephyros the Cat, am the true homeowner. Or
rather the castleowner. For, as they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“I’m happy that you like my literary collection,” I answer little
Zephyros, “but I wouldn’t need to return physically to this castle in order to enjoy
the contents of my library, for I already know by heart all the books that I own.
And if you want to think of this castle as your own property, then go ahead and
do so; I don’t care about legal mumbo-jumbo: as far as I’m concerned, what’s right
is right; and anyone who crosses me gets mauled to death, plain and simple.
“But,” I continue, “what I’m now wondering is: Why are there
vast new forms of life in the water outside our peninsula? – I felt a
disturbance in my Tyger-sense, which provoked me to look a little closer at our
aquatic fauna, and now I believe I’ve spotted a pair of sea-monsters that were hitherto
unknown to Science: they’re definitely not sharks; for our sharks are all bright
blue and rather playful, unless one provokes them; but these creatures are bigger
than mountains, and they’re gloomy-hued (not in a bad way, tho: I kinda like it;
it’s tantalizing); plus their appearance is diabolical, such that I cannot behold
them without experiencing ‘a tighter breathing’ and ‘zero at the bone’, as Emily
Dickinson sez of her ‘narrow fellow in the grass’.”
“Oh, those!” sez the ex-housecat
Zephyros; “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you: a shining being named Lucy came to visit
and asked if I’d like to procure additional talent for our ocean; and she showed
me an order form, which was a stone brochure with images graven from heaven and
earth, and it even showed likenesses from under the sea. So I looked at the pictures
and then I asked ‘What do you suggest?’ And she said ‘The Master was thinking that
you might be interested in a couple Leviathans that he recently inherited. One was
released from its captivity when Bryan the Tyger accomplished Mission Nineveh correctly,
therefore the beast needn’t be reserved to swallow him down and disgorge him in
a land that he would perhaps mislabel India, as was required for previous prophets
who were less capable of Amor Fati; and the other Leviathan was rescued from
its day-job of haunting Ness loch in the Scottish Highlands, when your Tyger friend’s
namesake Detective Bryan solved that age-old mystery.’ And I told her ‘Sure, we’ll take both treasures.’
So there they are.”
I gaze in admiration at our new
peninsula-mates, admiring their barbarousness and comely proportion. I note that
the doors of their face resemble mine: their fangs are terrible, round about. These
souls are basically like me myself if I were aquatic. I am in love with them. They
look so powerful.
“So Detective Bryan saved the monster
alive, when he solved the Loch Ness case?” I ask. “Cuz the rumors I’ve heard say
that he and his team made a banquet of the beast.”
“Well obviously they did not,” sez
Zephyros; “for there she is, in our sea. Plus, I’ve heard that Detective Bryan swam
all the way to the deepest part of the abyss and pulled the monster out singlehandedly
— much like when King Gilgamesh, in his own epic, tied heavy stones to his feet
and sank to the bottom of the ocean to find a secret plant named ‘How-the-Old-Man-Once-Again-Becomes-a-Young-Man’.
But, instead of a thorny weed that has magical virtues, Detective Bryan retrieved
this oceanic monstrosity, which he then donated to the moat of a nearby castle.”
“Wait,” I say, now becoming more
confusedly interested, “was that castle our castle?”
“It couldn’t be,” sez Zephyros; “because it was in his
book,
not ours. (Remember, our castle is inside the castle that’s inside the Vampyre
Bryan book.)
Plus, if it was our castle, then that would mean that the delivery man who dropped
off these Leviathans must have been Detective Bryan in the flesh. And that’s impossible,
cuz I know that he got canceled from physicality when he locked eyes with his double.
I think they met in a diner. I’ve heard that this happens in that other weird book:
the one about the Giant Squid — there’s a scene at the end . . .”
“You mean one of our Loch Ness monsters has its own novel?”
“No, no, it’s a totally different sea beast — I’ve just been
told that the Detective manifestation of Bryan somehow wound up in the next book
after his, which has a Giant Squid as one of its characters. And that’s where they
say that the Bryan of that second book met the Bryan from the first, which caused
them to . . .”
“Hold on, hold on,” I say, now exasperated. “What do you mean
by saying ‘I think’ and ‘I’ve heard’ — haven’t you ever read any of these myths
yourself?”
“No,” sez Zephyros; “have you?”
“No! I already told you: I refuse to read his book
until he reads mine.”
“Well at this rate, nothing will ever get known, in storyland.
Thus we’ll never be able to succeed in elevating ourselves to the status of a self-aware
fiction.”
After thinking about this for a moment, I conclude that although
Zephyros the Cat is not wise himself, he has just now stumbled upon a piece of genuine
wisdom. Therefore, I privately vow to sit down and read Detective Bryan’s stupid
gospel, whenever I suffer a break in my adventuring. And I guess I’ll need to tackle
that Squid book, too, and maybe some others in the series. (Ugh, how boring.)
“Well, can you at least search your memory and describe the appearance
of the individual who delivered the sea-beasts, after you ordered them,” I ask little
Zephyros. “For, if it truly wasn’t our sleuth, then that might mean there’s a third
wicked sauroid roaming this planet; and I’d like to solve this mystery so as
to keep my collection complete. Perhaps I could even make a name for myself as the
Tyger who started the world’s first Leviathan Sanctuary.
“Hmm . . .” the ex-housecat Zephyros now thinks hard, trying
to remember the details of the sea-monsters’ delivery person. “All I recall is that
he was wearing a trenchcoat and a deerstalker cap.”
Looking up sharply from my notepad, I roll my eyes. Then we go inside our castle and dine on kitty chow.
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