If you were wondering where the next episode of BRYAN THE TYGER is, it's right here. I just finished writing it. Boy it was fun. WHY was it fun? Because my alter-ego who is a Burning Tyger got to have a reunion at the convent with his pious ladyfriends.
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.
Leaving the ex-housecat Zephyros at my castle on the peninsula,
I sprint at top-speed all the way to the convent in Rome. It takes me a total of
ten hours and one minute to travel the entire 930 kilometers. I stop neither to
eat nor to rest. The reason I am in such a rush is that, ever since I abandoned
it four or five chapters ago, I’ve been yearning to revisit this lovely nunnery:
“I never should have left you,” I say aloud to the majestic building,
with its great stone archways, when it comes into view. “I’ve missed your old nuns
and their quaint ways.”
As I approach, I notice that they’ve replaced the watchdog that
I consumed on my earlier visit: there’s now a fresh, younger dog in his place. I
walk forth and stand directly facing him:
“You look like a standard West Highland White Terrier,” I say
to him, trying to gauge whether he’ll be friendly or mean. “I bet you’re more of
a watchdog than an attack dog, cuz you can bark obnoxiously when a distinguished
intruder addresses you, but you’re a small size and not given to assertive behavior
— that means you’re bad at fighting. I bet that any quadruped with a massive right
forepaw could simply crush you in one fell swoop. Yes, faced with the sight of a
Burning Tyger, you might find that you are so scared that you can’t even bark.”
The watchdog stands there gawking and trembling.
“Alright,” I say, “you’re picturesque, and I feel pity for you;
so I won’t eat you up the way that I ate your precursor.”
I step forward, wondering if this little tyke is going to spaz
out and cause a ruckus like his forerunner did. But he remains silently quivering
in fear. I take a few more steps — now I am past him and bodily occupying the interior
of the nunnery.
“That was easy,” I think to myself. “I was able to withstand
temptation even better than that wooden savior did. For, after sprinting here from
Austria without stopping to eat, despite being famished, I resisted the urge to
consume that canine. This is great; for now I shall be able to offer a conversational
icebreaker when I encounter that elderly nun whom I am in love with. I can say:
‘Note how sincere my repentance was: I did not eat your watchdog’.”
Then, as I begin to stride forth into the nunnery’s common area
to see if any sisters would like to chat, once I am about one Tyger-leap (7 meters)
away from the West Highland White Terrier, this tiny pup, who has hereto been so
quiet, starts rashly yipping:
“Yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!” his shrill, repetitive cry would make
the gentlest soul feel bloodlust, it’s so annoying.
From where I am poised at that moment, I leap straight up in
the air and land directly on the watchdog. His whole body fits so perfectly in my
mouth, it could be taken as proof that the Creator intentionally designed his kind
to be consumed by me.
“He tastes about average, like chicken tartare,” I think to myself.
“I should have brought my dipping sauces.”
Having solved the only problem with this establishment, I pace
leisurely into the convent’s study room. There I find my friends, the older nuns,
standing in a group and conversing.
“Pardon, Mesdemoiselles,” I address the wimpled damsels, “we
all met some time ago, when I came here and borrowed your Christ figurine. The reason
for this second coming is that I missed you. Plus I wanted to apologize for having
chewed on your idol: I’m sure that you noticed some tooth-marks on his body (beyond
the regular stabs to his hands and feet, and thru the side of his chest), plus some
cracks and fissures from my tossing him down the hill.”
The oldest nun is the most attractive because she’s so angry.
“Master your tempter,” I pat this elderly nun on her wimple —
my vast right forepaw is easily five times the size of her head — “I mean no harm;
as I said, I only desire to repent and be saved. Lo, previously I drank the blood
of your watchdog without provocation, but this time I made it straight past him
without him even barking. I almost got halfway to this room here before he began
begging to become part of me. Now, isn’t that progress?”
“Monseigneur Tyger,” the oldest nun, to whom I’ve taken a fancy,
addresses me sternly, with arms akimbo . . .
“Please, call me Bryan,” I say with a bow.
“Tyger Bryan,” sez the nun, “this is the last time I’m going
to tell you: Stop eating our guards!” (She has an accent so that last word
sounds like “gods.”)
“But he was a dog,” I argue, “totally unrelated to either
of our species.”
“Every thing that lives is holy,” my mistress now raps me on
the snout with her rolled-up newspaper, causing me to feel a tingly sensation in
all my cat parts.
After gathering my wits, I reply: “If you really believed that,
then you wouldn’t let your church keep abusing children.”
This remark leaves her thunderstruck. So, after a beat, I ask,
“Hey, what were you all talking about before I showed up?”
The sternest, eldest nun takes a long time to answer — it seems
that she is wrestling within herself, trying to decide whether it would be better
to cast me out of the convent this instant, or, on the off chance that it
might “civilize” me, to engage me in conversation. I thank my stars that she chooses
the latter path:
“Before you showed up and so rudely massacred Fluff-Ball, our
latest (no pun intended) watchdog, Sisters Maria and Sophia were joining me in
a discussion of morality.”
I roll my eyes, “O what a surprise: nuns parsing right and wrong.”
“Well what would you prefer that we discuss?” The eldest nun
gives me a stern but engaging look.
“I was hoping that the three of you would be volleying curious
remarks back and forth, wondering what it’s like to live in the outside world and
to partake in sensual pleasures,” I say, gesturing wildly with my forepaws as I
pontificate. “I was hoping that you nuns would be daydreaming together about how
stimulating it might be to meet a Tyger who would playfully pounce upon you, get
you down on the forest floor, remove your religious habit, and proceed to lick you
all over . . .”
“Wait!” sez the eldest nun, slightly panting; “does that sandpapery
texture of your Tyger tongue, when it touches the skin of a human female virgin,
produce a pleasant or an unpleasant effect?”
“That,” I reply, “depends on how you define the terms good and
evil.”
“I mean,” inquires my secret crush, the eldest nun in the convent,
“is the slightly rough texture of your tongue-bath intended to be undergone as a
spiritual discipline, à la the doctrine of the mortification of the flesh, OR is
it just a simple, kinky pleasure? – I’m asking for my sisters here.”
I put my large right paw beneath my massive jaw and make an expression
like I am wondering about this inquiry, even tho I already knew the answer before
I was born. Then I tell a fib, in hopes of winning her over:
“It’s the former. Definitely: I’m here to give you salvation,
not satisfaction.”
The part of the eldest nun’s face that can be seen thru her wimple
is flushed with emotion. I cannot tell whether she is elated or enraged; but, either
way, I myself am enraptured by her wise and caring eyes. (I’ve learned that it’s
extremely hard to seduce mature gentlewomen, they’re so perspicacious; and that’s
precisely what makes them irresistible.)
At my love-interest’s suggestion, the nuns step away from me
to have a private huddle. I can hear a flurry of intense whispering coming from
the trio, but I can’t make out a word that they are saying — and that’s not for
any lack of trying: lo, I move my Tyger-ears around like two radars searching for
a signal, but without any luck.
Finally the nuns break out of their huddle and approach me smiling
mildly.
“After much prayer and soul-searching,” sez Sister Sophia, “we
have reached a collective decision . . .”
“You may come and go from our convent whenever you like,” adds
Sister Maria, “and freely converse with all of us here at the nunnery; however . . .”
Now both Sisters Maria and Sophia voice this final condition
together:
“You must never attempt to beguile our Mother Lilith into receiving
a Tyger-tongue lashing, or whatever you call it,” the young nuns chant these words
as if they’ve been instructed to memorize this legalese verbatim and repeat it by
rote.
Mother Lilith blushes deeply and taps her fingers on her hips
as if she does not know what to do with herself.
I tilt my head and behold the three nuns standing there before
me. After waiting just long enough to make them start to worry that I’ll refuse
their offer, I lift myself up on all four legs and rise to my full height, there
in the convent library (my head almost reaches the ceiling); then slowly nod and
wink my enormous left eye while I voice my answer:
“Whether in heaven or hell, we will meet again.”
Sisters Maria and Sophia hop about with little celebratory jumps
and say “Yay!” while Mother Lilith places her hand on her heart and exhales sharply.
§
So the upshot of this adventure is that I gain the right to enter and leave the convent, whensoever I desire to moralize with high-toned vestals. – I tell you the truth, gentle reader: this is almost as good as if I got a free pass to visit you.
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