Leaving Sheol and visiting a water park and a nursing home

Here's the next chapter of my fake novel BRYAN THE TYGER, where we leave Sheol and visit a water park and a nursing home.

[I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]

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 Forty-One

So, after sorbing the sea jelly, we recline for a season inside the den where the creature had planned to spend the rest of its death. It is a cozy little place, and there are three frescoes hanging: one upon each wall. These are interesting to look at. The first, on the east side, is a painting of a bird; the second, on the north (facing south), is a man in the act of fly fishing; and the third painting, on the west side, is the deer from Wrong Cops (2013).

I want to stress that there is absolutely no symbolism or extra meaning to these artworks, beyond what any individual reader wishes to give them; I’m simply relaying the décor of the jelly-shade’s long-home, exactly as I encountered it.

There is also the marble statue of Moses, by Michelangelo, in the center of the den.

We therefore have plenty of fine art to contem­plate. That’s why we stay so long after eating the spirit. Also the entryway opens out on a view of the Styx, beyond which is the familiar superhighway; and we often lie there for hours just watching the traffic of souls navigate to the neighboring dens, all of which were vacant when we first arrived. It’s like beholding the Divine Tragedy of Dante as if it were a comic book. (This is on account of the afterlife’s atmosphere and physics being lifted from the video game Frogger, as I explained in the previous chapter.)

Due to all this intellectual stimulation, it takes Myala and me much more than three days to return from the bourn of that undiscovered country. As I mentioned, before we finally leave Sheol, a whole season has passed.

“I wonder how Jesus managed to quit this place so rapidly,” I remark to Myala, “when there’s so much neat stuff to look at.”

“Well, he was quick to give up the ghost, and quick to retrieve it,” she sez. “The same goes for his best friend Lazarus.”

“Yeah, but Lazarus I can understand,” I say; “for he was dragged out, against his will.”

“True,” sez Myala.

§

The first place we visit after returning to the Land of the Living is a giant water-park. This zone is situated next to the library in our old hometown. There are swirly plastic waterslides and various water-based entertainments. I approach the ticket booth and address the clerk:

“Are you open?”

“Yes we are,” sez the clerk, a stately, plump man whose name-tag reads “Buck.”

“Then why is nobody here?” I ask.

“Well, it’s a little chilly for swimming,” Buck explains. “You’ll see more people show up when the temperature rises.”

“Ah, I see,” my Tyger-head slowly nods. Then, after a pause, I ask: “Hey, tell me the truth – Do you like this job?”

Buck looks confused momentarily; then he composes himself: “I mean, it pays the bills.”

I sigh and say: “If you could ‘pay the bills’ without having to do this, would you still work here?”

Buck hesitates and then sez: “No, I guess not.”

“Listen, Buck,” I say, “how much money would you need in order to ‘pay the bills’ for, say, the rest of your life?”

Buck whispers to himself while touching his fingers together rhythmically. Then he replies: “I’d say, about nine hundred caesars.”

“Nine hundred?” I open the drawstring on my cat purse and pull out some caesar banknotes. “Here’s an even million,” I slam the stack on the counter of the booth.

Buck’s eyes grow wide.

“It’s yours,” I say. “Now go in peace.”

Buck stares at the banknotes in wonderment.

Now, as Myala and I begin to enter the water park, I turn back and shout: “Hey, Buck, before you leave, will you do me a favor?”

Buck looks up from the cash with his mouth agape.

“Will you shut off all the water and open the drains,” I say, “so that this place dries out? — I just don’t like being wet. The last time we were wet was when we fell to earth and landed in the sea outside our castle on the peninsula in the Alps.”

Buck stares without moving.

“Do you know how to do that?” I ask. “Or could you direct me to the place where all the valves are located, so that I can shut off the water and open the drains?”

Buck snaps out of his stupor and begins to nod: “Oh, no, I’ll go do it — sorry, I was just surprised about the amount of money that you placed here . . .” Buck gathers the stack of banknotes, splits it in twain, and shoves each half into his front pockets; then he exits the ticket booth thru the back door and heads over to the facility that serves as some sort of pumphouse. He uses the key on his belt to open the door. Once inside, he turns a few of the giant wheels all the way to the left; then several of the wheels he turns all the way to the right; finally, he pulls a couple of levers all the way down and then presses a big blinking button on the wall.

At this point, a “powering down” noise dominates the soundtrack, and all the water drains from the park. Now, everywhere we look, the slides and pools are bone-dry.

“Thanks a mill, Buck!” I roar while waving my mighty forepaw.

The clerk salutes and waves back; then he hastens to his car and screeches away. (His was the only vehicle in the parking lot.)

I turn to Myala; she is smiling. “You wanna go first?”

“No, you do the honors.”

“How about I’ll count to three and we’ll start at the same time?” I say, and she nods. Then I shout: “One, two, three!”

We charge at the plastic slides and bash them down. Then we knock apart all of the swimming areas, starting with the kiddie pools, which we pounce into and crack their foundation and set them on fire. Then we switchblade our claws out and tear up the splash pads, and we annihilate the water playground as well as all the areas for floating and bathing. We then demolish the barefoot sector.

The only area that we do not destroy is the artificial surfing environment, with its wave pool and flowrider: Using brute force, we physically detach this zone from the park and offer it as a gift to the first pedestrian that we meet. For, as soon as we are finished at the water park, we go for a walk in the nearby suburbs; and we see this little girl playing on the curbside in front of a bungalow. She says that her name is Rebekah; and I ask: “Is this your house?” The girl nods shyly; so I lob the whole surfing environment into the air like a softball and it thuds down in the front yard and partly cracks the concrete driveway. Then I hook up the water supply and turn it on to check for leaks. Finally, before Myala and I sprint away to further adventures, I quip to little Rebekah:

“If you’re not into surfing, you can use this to water someone’s camels.” Then Myala and I dash off.

(The girl probably does not understand that my remark was an inside joke about the story that is told in chapter 24 of Genesis, where the patriarch Abraham sends his servant on a journey to fetch a wife for his beloved son Isaac, and after setting out on this adventure this servant prays to his master’s deity, saying: “O Jehovah God of Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master: Let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, ‘Have mercy on me, and let me dip the tip of my finger in this water that you have fetched, so as to cool my tongue; for I am tormented of this thirst’; and she shall answer, ‘Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also’: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.” And the woman who ends up reacting in this fashion is named Rebekah.)

§

Next, we travel back to the place where the jellyfish was slain by the fighter jets. I find the flesh corpse and eat it up. It has a sour taste, like bad wine. But it gives me a buzz, so I can’t complain.

§

Then we skulk across the street to a nursing home, where they keep old folks. There is an escaped curmudgeon wandering outside, using a walking stick to gather leeches from the fountain near the entryway’s paved drop-off area. Myala greets this man in a kind voice:

“How are you, sir?”

The old man scowls: “I wish I were dead.”

Myala flinches. I wave my paw, as if to say: “Let’s leave the man alone and enter the building.”

Once inside, we find the place where the old folks are gathered. A member of the nursing home’s staff is addressing the group, although nobody is listening.

We walk among the audience of infirm elders and let them pet us. One old man pulls my tail and laughs, so I maul him; but the rest of the inmates are considerate.

Then, after exchanging contact info with a few of the more alert individuals among the elderly, we head to the steakhouse that everybody keeps talking about. It’s just a few blocks away. This restaurant is recommended by several of the nursing home’s inmates while they are stroking our fur: each one utters his or her own version of “That steakhouse down the block, it’s the best place to eat — I used to go there all the time, when I was free.” (Even a couple of the nurses who overhear our conversation voice their agreement.)

So we skulk up to the place (I won’t tell you its name because its owners were mean and ended up chasing us out, although the Chef Jim Johnson was very kind to us). We slink around to the back door that sez “Employees Only”. It has no exterior handle, so we must wait for one of the staffers to come bursting out with a tub full of rubbish to toss into the dumpster, which is positioned near this exitway. After about an hour and a half, Jim the Chef bursts out and props the door open with a triangular wedge. He dumps the dump in the dumpster and then notices us jungle beasts waiting there, crackling and glowing. He breathes in sharply, but then he recognizes us:

“Ah! what’s up?” he sez. (He most likely remembers us from when we charioted all earthlings to and from Jupiter, during the Earth’s lava stage.)

“We were waiting for someone to come out of that back door, so that we could go inside and look around the kitchen. We were hoping that we might find a full bovine carcass that we could devour. But not one that’s hanging in a meat locker, because that would be too cold: It’s hard to bite thru frozen beef.”

“Didn’t you read the sign tho?” the friendly Chef Jim Johnson sighs: “only employees of the steakhouse are allowed inside the food-prep domain.”

Now Myala the Black Panther breathes deeply while making a facial expression that indicates that she’s weighing the wisdom of what she’s about to say. Then she sez:

“Will you let us in anyway?”

Jim stares for a moment and then smiles: “Yeah, come on in.”

So we sneak into the steakhouse thru the employees-only door and find the place where the carcasses are hanging (NOT in the freezer), and Myala and I each eat an entire beef carcass.