I haven't looked at the issue of my Nanowrimo loins in some time, but I've alluded to this particular episode for some time and after some distance it's not so bad as is. Of course, tomorrow it may horrify me. I do still wonder at the sudden violent turn I took; inspired by a jaw-less ventriloquist dummy, my muse turned on itself, or I on myself, in some vicious cycle. A freeing creative episode became something threatening.
Here is an extract from the 1673-word output for November 21st:
Morty, who could read Hannah’s inner monologue, tenatively raised his hand. “Before ya go about rebuildin’, Hannah, I gotta question for Crackers.”
“What is it darling?” Cooed Crackers, lovingly batting her eyes and twirling her ginger locks.
“You say you an’ her unholy sisters ain’t cannibals - you may be hooers, but ya don’t eat the flesh of yer own kind.”
“That’s right, sweetie-pie. What’s on yer mind?”
“Well, my beloved Crackers,” Morty continued,”if you were cannibals, you’d be eatin’ toothpicks or baseball bats and such, right? I mean, eating human flesh doesn’t make you cannibals at all, really, does it?”
Crackers, Cheese, and Butter stodd there silently, rolling their eyes to the left, then to the right.
“La la la la, say lookit what time it is!” announced a punctual Cheese.
“Well we ain’t exactly vegans if that’s whatcher gettin’ at!” an impatient Butter retorted.
“Hey, it’s no bark off my trunk if yinz slaughtered Tunbridge and ate his greasy, gamy flesh and ground it into habder, habber, habb, tailor-made burgers.”Morty began to smack his lips at the thought, looking at all the tasty human passengers who surrounded him on this bus, a regular captive audience. “So, say you slaughtered the man and had loin of Tunbridge steaks for a month--”
“We slaughtered the man and had loin of Tunbridge steaks fer a munt,” the sisters said in
unison.
Tex, not possessed of a spring-loaded double-take, performed an organic double-take of the flesh at this astounding revelation. Butter, whose rotating eyes were well-attuned to the sound of human double-takes in their native habitat, turned her head slowly in the direction of Tex and winked at him. There were no survivors named Tex.
“My question is, den,” Morty got to the question,”--did you marinade him in Worcesteshire sauce?”
“Well Morty lemme tell you about marinade,” declared Crackers.”Yes, we did soak his gamy flesh in Worcesteshire sauce, and me, I like to add a little brown sugar and vinegar to the marinade,--”
“I chop up lotsa garlic for my Tunbridge shanks, but the othah goils don’t go fer the garlic so much ya know,” suggested Butter.
“And Tunbridge was a little long in the toof, so he neede quite a bitta tenderizin!” helpfully added Cheese.
Hannah regarded this latest conversation with not a little dismay, as the remaining human passengers on the bus slowly backed away from their wooden interlocutors, despite outnumbering them by a ration [sic] of at least four-to-one. The remainder of this interrupted piece evolved into a collaborative effort among the spirits of Sam Peckinpah and Rankin-Bass,and the assembled crowd wished they had never heard of the spring-loaded double-take that was soon to tear their flesh from their bones.
Crackers, always true to her Morty, was not so true to those of human persuasion, and sank her jaws into the juicy hambone of Nipsey Russell, who kicked his shiny shoes into the air until subdued, a brutal end to a lifetime of laughter and entertainment for all Americans. Butter made short work of Tex, who being a lifelong afficionado of his home-state barbecue, was smoky and tangy even without marinade. “It’s hard to pick out the meat behind the jewelry, but my tummy tinks it’s woith it!” Cheese took a chunk out of Connie the coed, who would no longer need to study for mid-terms. “How tender and studious, even, “ ran Cheese’s review on the then-fledgling weekly food newsletter Yelp! I have been Eaten by a Ventriloquist Dummy, now under new editorship: Cheese! editorship: Cheese!
Morty had until that point had spent his life eating the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables, seafood in abundance, white meat on occasion, red meat in moderation, and alcoholic beverages on the average of three glasses of wine a week, and abstained from any food or clothing products derived from the human. Yet, drawn in by his people’s infectious massacree [a reference to Doris Day in Calamity Jane], he nibbled at Texas bones and co-ed collars and comic breasts. “Say, you know, this ain’t half bad!”
At this point, I had painted myself into a corner, plot-wise; Hannah woke up and realized that it was all a dream. Or was it?
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