Is this all I can ever report on anymore: feasting with friends!?

Here's what I wrote today to pass as the next part of BRYAN THE TYGER. I hope that all the executives at the long table where I'm condemned to present this latest episode accept my offering.

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.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Yes, we enjoy the finest cookout ever. We invite all the gods who live in the neighboring villages to join us. For we discover a public area where there is a set of outdoor grills installed near a knoll among the rolling hills of the landscape, and there happen to be several villages surrounding this place; and it turns out that a lot of the classical deities of antiquity live in these places: Zeus, Mercury, Athena, and others join our feast, and Jehovah comes with them. (This is the same Jehovah from my improved retelling of Genesis.) All these gods happen to live in humble houses, in the quiet towns nearby.

What I do is bap the side of each grill with my forepaw, so that it ignites. And then I will the flames to flicker beautifully but to radiate very low heat. Then I take the mutton out of its clear plastic wrapping and slap the meat down upon the grate for one brief moment, but before it can become non-rare or get technically cooked, I remove it and toss it onto a porcelain plate, which I then serve to a god. The gods prefer their mutton bloody — we share this penchant. In other words, the whole grilling aspect of our feast is just for show: I’m never actually cooking anything.

“How have you guys been holding up, in all this strange weather?” I say, before sinking my fangs into a choice cutlet of lamb.

“Very good,” sez Jehovah, while sinking his fangs into a choice cutlet of lamb as well. “I don’t mind shoveling snow. I find that it helps me write better poetry.”

“And how about you all,” I roar to the assembly at Athena’s table.

“We’re very well, thank you,” sez Diana. (But I can tell that she and Aphrodite are doing one of those scenes where they’re secretly caressing each other under the table and hoping that I and the other attendees of the feast do not notice; thus their conversation is truncated and less interesting than usual, and they tend to gasp at awkward moments.)

Myala sez: “How’s the ram, Aphrodite?”

“Ooh,” Aphrodite closes her eyes and shudders with pleasure.

Myala turns to me and smiles: “We must have done a good job selecting the foodstuffs.”

Now a deer innocently wanders into the midground.

“Diana,” I whisper. “Diana . . . Diana . . .” At last the goddess attends to my address: “I’ll bet you a buck you can’t hit that buck.”

With partial attention, Diana draws an arrow from her quiver with her non-dominant hand (the other hand being preoccupied elsewhere) and half-committally lobs it deerward. The arrow pierces the heart of the beast, and the buck screams and collapses.

“Egad!” I pounce upon and devour the fresh kill. “Exquisite technique! You live up to your rep!”

Diana fails to suppress a moan.

“Here you go:” I place a caesar bill on the table; “fair’s fair.”

§

When the picnic concludes, we return to skulking over the hills.

“That was fun,” proclaims Myala.

“Yes, we should visit the gods more often,” I say.

We pace a little further, proceeding happily side-by-side. Then, suddenly Myala’s forepaw juts out and stops me in my tracks.

“What is it?” I whisper. “Do you sense an enemy presence?”

“No,” sez Myala. “Look yonder — what is that floaty thing: a jellyfish!?”

Sure enough, about seven meters before us, there is what seems to be a jellyfish undulating in place.

“So the brute is simply airborne?” I wonder. “It somehow learned to eat the oxygen of our upper atmosphere?”

Myala is wide-eyed. “That seems to be the case.”

We stand stock still for a few centuries staring at this miracle.

Our trance is then broken when we hear the sound of the engines of biplanes and fighter jets. Overhead now soars a multitude of aircraft:

First, three majestic ships begin to circle: a Hod-carrier 38-J Lightning, an Amerigo P-51 Mustang, and a Demos X-47-W Thunder-bang.

After this comes a Cannabis THC-420 Mohawk, followed by a D-3 Chickenhawk; then a Pole-vault 2-Hi Burgundy Pegasus-Corsica, a Gromit Wally-666 Heavenpuss, one West-wind Ode C‑33 Obsidian Widow, and finally a Punk Beer F‑U Buffalo.

After mailing out a thought-postcard to Bryan, the Main Wizard of this Fake Novel, the old man answers our prayer via instantaneous thought-waves and explains that, “according to a quick Internet-search,” these aircraft were “apparently used by UFO in WOW” (that is, they were employed by the United Fiefdoms of Orangutanland during their War of the Worlds).

When we mail back a return-questionnaire presenting our maker with the multiple-choice question: “Do you mean ‘World War Number Seven Times Seventy-Seven’, also known as ‘The Forever War’, or are you referring to something else?” he tix the box labeled “YES.”

Myala and I find this strange, because that particular war has long been over — so we are baffled about why these planes should be flying overhead at this magic moment, when she and I are trying to enjoy beholding a delicate airborne jellyfish. But we grin and bear it.

Then, all at once, the planes machinegun the jellyfish; and it gives up the ghost.

But here is the silver lining of this tragedy: both Myala the Black Panther and I Bryan the Tyger refrain from eating the corpse of the deceased. For we have learned, after reading aloud the collected volumes of all the Official Street-Rumors, that jellyfish are known to offer an electrical shock to anyone who kisses them. And, when you think about it, the act of eating a cadaver is a whole lot more intimate than the act of kissing one. So, instead, we opt to follow the being’s ghost and continue to skulk after it — in short, to trail it at a discrete distance. Maybe in the next chapter I’ll tell about the things that happened when we chased this sprite.