Bristles; The Conclusion
August 11, 2009
(Continued from Chapter 3: Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3)
A minute into the beating Danny switched to elbows to spare his battered hands; the bottled rage fueled blows hard enough to bust the floorboards under Pete’s head. Or what was left of it. Brawny paws pulled him off his abundantly conquered foe. Danny thrashed against the Panda’s iron hug.
“Jesus, Danny…the rest of your life is not on the other side of his head. You pound him all day…it’s still just one fight” said the Hedgehog.
Danny surveyed the carnage: the two douchey friends were still piled limply against the wall; Pete…well, Pete had seen better days and was unlikely to see worse. The Hedgehog had retrieved his rubber boot and was hopping about the splashy gore.
“We’re going to need to rent a wet-vac.”
Danny’s adrenaline shorted suddenly.
“Holy fuck…is he dead?”
The Hedgehog hopped beside the neck, looked once, and declined to take a pulse.
“I wouldn’t pencil him in for prom king.”
The Panda tippy- toed around the blood and deposited Danny in his favorite arm chair. Placing his blunt paw under Danny’s chin he tilted his head up to make better eye contact. Danny tried to look back at the entryway but the Panda kept his head locked in place. The Panda stepped away from Danny, nodded towards the pile of bodies, and then held up a huge paw in textbook high-five position. Danny numbly slapped the paw: shock or not, you don’t leave someone hanging. The Panda nodded solemnly then motioned for Danny to hit him on the flipside. Danny obliged. The Panda motioned for Danny to stay in place, removed the center cushion from the couch, and disappeared around the corner where the unconscious douchey friends lay. Danny let himself believe the Panda was making them more comfortable. He was debatably correct.
***
“Hey, Kid. Give me a hand with this.”
The Hedgehog was attempting to pull a large orange tarp from the hall closet. Danny carried it into the living room and laid it out on the floor. The Panda rolled the bodies into the center of the tarp. The Hedgehog retrieved a pencil from behind his ear and began roughing out some calculations on the coffee table. To Danny’s untrained eye the tarp looked about a corpse too small. The Hedgehogs math must have backed this up as he rounded on the Panda, snarling.
“If fatty there wasn’t such a Nancy this would be a fuck of lot easier”
The Panda peeled a leaf off the head of lettuce he was eating, pointedly looking away from the Hedgehog.
“You couldn’t eat one fucking body! Your whole race is a disgrace to Bears: you’re barely a Panda-Sloth”
The Panda angrily shook the head of lettuce in the Hedgehog’s face. Danny stepped between them: they didn’t have time for this.
“Look, just wrap up Pete and the little douche and we’ll put the other one in the front seat with me.”
Danny rolled the big douche off the tarp and muscled him onto his shoulder. The Hedgehog fished Pete’s car keys from his pocket and tossed them to Danny, who caught them. Danny levered back his busted front door and peered into the night: it was clear.
****
The first mile was the longest of Danny’s life. The way seemed entirely composed of left turns; the corpse’s clammy torso continually swayed against him; the lifeless Douche stunk intensely of voided bowels and smothering. The Hedgehog was perched on the dash giving directions. The Panda kept reaching up from the backseat to change the radio. Danny was shaking so hard with spent intensity the car drifted erratically from lane to lane.
“Hey fuckwit, you’re driving a little casually…you want me to fire a few shots at passing cars to draw us the proper attention? Maybe have Eustace throw a couple fridges out the back?”
Something had been building in Danny’s mind since they left the house. He accelerated.
“Why is this happening” asked Danny.
The Hedgehog grabbed the hula-girl affixed to dashboard to keep his footing.
“Jesus…kid, I’ve told you a dozen times: you wouldn’t understand it and don’t want to know.”
Danny pressed the accelerator to the floor and move into the lane designated for oncoming traffic.
“Make an effort”
The Hedgehog clawed at the vinyl dashboard for traction. Headlights appeared in the distance. The Panda made a chuffing noise from the backseat. The Hedgehog exchanged a long look with him.
“Are you sure?”
The Panda nodded, folded his paws comfortably over his chest, and awaited the imminent collision. Danny steeled himself for impact or disclosure.
“You ever read any Nietzsche, kid” said the Hedgehog.
Danny shook his head.
“Probably not”
The Hedgehog was unsurprised.
“I figured as much. Look, I’m just going lay it out and if we survive this any barista with bad dreads should be able to fill in the holes for you.”
Danny shrugged without optimism.
“Whatever. Just say it”
“Very basically: you’re like the Anti-Ubermench…lets call it the Every-Mench. You’re the thread to which every other thread is tied; the stock that the whole market follows.”
An SUV appeared over the rise, noting the oncoming car it swerved into the other lane. Danny followed. The Hedgehog gnawed desperately at Danny’s ten o’clock hand. Danny ignored him and kept course his course.
“I don’t understand a word you just said”
“Yeah, well…it’s hard to find an apt fucking analogy when you’re about to be an Escalade’s hood ornament.”
Danny considered: the Hedgehogs ramblings had rung true, if nonsensical. Danny moved onto the shoulder enough the SUV could get by on his left. High speed invective poured from the passing vehicle. Danny pulled back into the appropriate lane, but continued at speed.
“Explain it simpler”
The Hedgehog sighed.
“Yeah…like I was talking to complete idiot, got ya.”
Danny either didn’t notice or accepted the barb as warranted. The Hedgehog continued.
“All right…this is mostly wrong, but will make sense.
Lets pretend that every long while the (for lack of a better word) World sees to it that someone is born who is more connected than everyone else: a sort of representative for that species; someone who just by living their life sets the tone and direction of said species. Now, in general, the gestalt, or unconscious, or whatever will put forth a strong entry: an ideal creature that can bear that sort of burden.”
The Hedgehog stopped his story and indicated for Danny to slow and turn down a familiar dirt road. Danny struggled with the weight and immediacy of what he’d been told. The obvious question thumped around Danny’s skull.
“Why would it pick me then?” Danny asked.
The Panda covered its eyes, flinching sympathetically. The Hedgehog waited until the car slowed and stopped before answering.
“If I had to guess: you’re a white flag. A statement of surrender. Humanity calling for the check an…”
“OK, I get it. Enough all ready” Danny interjected.
The answer felt true but incomplete, although the Hedgehog had warned him of as much.
“Sorry” the Hedgehog said, seemingly sincere.
“Wow…this is kind of a worst case scenario. I just figured I was a wizard or something”
The Hedgehog snorted.
“Trust me kid…worse hands have been dealt.”
Danny unbuckled the Douche and opened both front doors. The Panda squeezed himself out of the back seat and helped Danny retrieve all three bodies from the car. Panting hard Danny turned back to the Hedgehog.
“So what are you then” asked Danny.
The Hedgehogs quills twitched wryly.
“I’m a differing opinion”.
***
Danny and the Panda chose the three deepest holes he’d dug in the woods, depositing a body in each of them, before filling them back in. The Hedgehog stood proudly on a mound of freshly packed earth. Danny looked around the woods at the half dozen unfilled holes.
“Won’t someone notice all the other holes around here?”
The Hedgehog puffed up further.
“Don’t worry about it, kid. This place is safe, and we might need the other ones down the road.”
Danny chilled at the thought. Then something occurred to him.
“So, we’re not surrendering then?”
The Hedgehog mouth split into a pointy grin.
“No, we are not. Now fix your Quills…this won’t be a popular decision.”
Danny was tired. It was, however, a condition of the moment: the hard won exhaustion of a day denied. The ache of a first step. He had begun inauspiciously; he hoped that he would end better. His story continued.
***
The End. For now.
(See :Chapter 2 PART 1 and PART 2 and PART 3 and PART 4 and PART 5 and PART 6 for the chapter before this one)
***
See chapter 1 for the beginning of the story: PART 1 and PART 2 and PART 3 and PART 4 and PART 5
August 11, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Charming, brutal, and a surprisingly apt subversion of the Overman mythos. Although, you nicely tied up many of the elements you introduced, but it doesn’t feel like a proper finish. There is a breath, but no finality.
Nicely ambitious, though. Good work.
August 11, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“Although, you nicely tied up many of the elements you introduced, but it doesn’t feel like a proper finish. There is a breath, but no finality.”
That is fair. One of the perils of writing serially online is a story doesn’t always take the form you set out for it. Initially I saw this as a tight 5 or 6 part fable about a flawed man and his damaged animal guide/totem/entity. I tried writing it with that length in mind, but it quickly became apparent that the absurd moments and dialogue exchanges couldn’t build properly at the pace that necessitated.
Once I slowed things down I realized the story was far more about the relationship between Bristles and Danny, than it was exploring the specific high concept, and that to satisfyingly develop that I was going to scale back the plot from Danny’s entire journey, to what amounted to an Origin story. To give it to proper beginning/middle/end beats I’d have to either blow it out to full on novella length, or compress things to the point it compromised the story in my head.
As it is I was kind of pushing it by expecting readers to follow a 15 part, 10 000 word story serialized over several months…on a website. So I cheated a little and wrote it like it was the first long arc of on ongoing Bristles comic, or the first season of a TV. show. Or, perhaps, the first part of novel.
I think I would like to revisit the characters in the future, so I was hesitant force an artificial resolution. A little self indulgent, perhaps…but that’s why it reads like it does.
And thank you for seeing it through to the end. I genuinely appreciated it.