Your usual host has been temporarily indisposed. We apologize for the inconvenience. Now, let’s return to our regularly scheduled broadcast. Today, our story—an advanced fairytale for hopeful historians and intermediate language-learners—begins in the hut of Nervous Vep. What is a hut? A small, humble home. It might imply the dweller constructed it themselves using only natural materials; they may live a simple life detached from industry and the bustlings of well-connected people who live in the highest places of high cities, running in high circles of high society. High on themselves, these highly resourceful, highfalutin people; the hut dweller possesses an altogether different, endemic ingenuity. Stay tuned to find out more! Disclaimer: All names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual or unconfirmed persons (especially those outside the story, including the traveller, Faravain, or previously hostile hosts of this very broadcast, which may or may not be transmitting from hardware city, its inhabitants, or infiltrators), places, buildings, huts, yurts, skyscrapers, sculptures, products, creatures (of myth, legend, fairytale, or folklore), anything imagined or not yet imagined, real or unreal, and avatars is intended or should be inferred. All stories and broadcasts are protected under the copyright laws of (redacted) and other planets near and far, past, present, and future. Any unauthorized exhibition, distribution, copying, or pilfering (whether effectuated in action or imagined in thought: primarily in body, mind, or spirit or secondarily via avatar or third party, enlisted or unenlisted) of this broadcast and its entirely fictional stories may result in civil, criminal, local, universal, domestic, foreign, alien, mental, divine, supreme, physical, and metaphysical prosecution of any relevant jurisdictional caprice pursuant any and all punishments up to, and never excluding, death by rapture or displeasure.
There once was a pitiful fareep1 everyone called Nervous Vep, since even the slightest noise, inquiry, or guest turned her into an anxious mess. One day, sitting in her simple chair at her simple table in her simple hut, she suddenly recalled a letter she had received five days ago which had informed her five days later, today, was the day the demilox2 would come knocking. So, when she heard footsteps outside her door, she had already been anticipating the demilox’s arrival, spending the morning hours adjusting the way her shirt sat oddly on her shoulders in a small mirror atop a dresser adjacent the entryway. The knock came; it was a subtle thump as peaceful as drifting to sleep in slippers and robes on a cozy winter night nestled by the fire. To Vep, however, the noise reverberated catastrophic throughout every nerve in her body. Her heart beat at a pace so rapid she could feel the pulsations in her feet with currents powerful enough to lift her nearly an inch off the ground when foot met floor. She walked in a bobbing motion to greet her guest.
“No, thank you,” she said abruptly, cracking the door from its frame at a width that narrowly allowed her right eye to peek and widen with feigned surprise, pretending the guest was some unannounced solicitor whose arrival hadn’t been forewarned.
“Oh, pardon me,” replied the demilox who was stout and half the size of most things. He was covered in a coat of black fur which ballooned when he took a deep breath and shook off the dust motes and snowflakes, creating an aura of dirty mist around his person. His hat levitated off his head, revealing a yellowed pair of deep-set eyes glowing through corrugated hair at Vep, who stifled a screech. The demilox was sweating beads which traveled from the skin underneath his coat to their final drip off the strands of his hair. He was already wet with a calm, gentlemanly presentability before he took a quick sip from his flask which wetted him again. An ahem cleared the air from lips unseen and he continued, “if you would be so kind and considerate and generous to excuse this awful, inexcusable intrusion, which I might add, was meant to have been announced five days ago, then I would like to declare that I am here to, of course, take you where you might be wanted, and dare I say, needed—you dear, abandoned and hopeless planatree3 fareep. Please follow me and leave this calm, tranquil village in favor of terrain more suited your disposition.”
Vep admitted with penitence that the demilox’s arrival had indeed been announced, that she had indeed received advance notice five days ago, that her feigned surprise was more habitual defense than genuine expression, that she knew continuing to feign surprise would surely lead to the letter’s sender receiving a reprimand for which she did not want to bear responsibility—all these sympathies and regrets she admitted non-verbally with a slight, solemn nod of her head bowed in unison with a slow blink of her one visible eye.
The screech she had stifled was building bubbles in her chest, giving her the hiccups. Through squeaks and digressions and yips and yups, she managed to convey that she was content to stay; wherever her residence, her residence is where she would reside. “You see, I can entertain myself” she said opening the door wider, pointing towards her mirror situated center an elaborate entertainment center, while patting and batting her clothes to remove the accumulated dust and fur—all that pattering and battering produced a new cloud which crawled and collided with the existing aura emanating off the demilox and, when clouds’ paths merged into one, it created a third billow of dirty mist, erecting the vertical illusion of a flowing wall of debris between her and the demilox. She continued in a gurgle, “The normal, everyday sounds, (hiccup) of conversation or commotion necessary for social function do not pass softly (eye twitch) through my ears; each registers alarm with an abhorrent force (muscle spasm; hiccup) and, when combined, as they inevitably do when more than one thing congregates, they create complete chaos (unverifiable expulsion) for me. I am much like an ill-functioning automaton descending into disrepair spitting its oils and nuts and screws and bolts—all necessary for its operation, mind you—every which way (the most contorted facial expression ever seen) at any blameless person who would then, through no fault of their own, be rendered victim by my mere presence.”
“Then, to the Village of Constantly-Falling-Into-Disrepair we’ll go,” chirped the demilox, pricking up his ears, which had been hiding underneath his fur. What a luminous pink-peach color they were! What chameleon transition the demilox’s eyes had made too; the glowing yellow retreated and rolled back; new pair-peepers, matching the citrus-lush hues of his blossoming ears, had taken their place.
Nervous Vep thought, “the demilox must have two sets of eyes for two sets of occasions. Were there more than two? What other sensory organs might the demilox conceal under his murky fur coat?” Struck by the transformation, she found herself confused, walking or perhaps gliding, side-by-side, hand-in-hand the hairy hephaglorb.4 They moved through untrodden prairies and meadows saturated with incandescent pastels reflecting the natural light of the setting sun so near and so warm it made her dizzy, then asthmatic, then overburdened as if she was there and not there at the same time. Bewildered and faint, she asked, “When did we leave?”
“Why just the other day, of course, forgetful fantastical voolony5, after you pointed to your mirror” said the demilox, with the buoyancy of an everlasting dandelion clock’s fluffy seeds tumbling in tact along a gentle wind through the open air effervescing above an open field. He began to whistle a song with such extravagant precision, Nervous Vep could see the carnivalesque mesh with the flowers and weeds and pollen and air; she could hear words perfectly articulated in his whistling, lyrics as clear as the warmth and closeness of the temperature making her sweat:
there once was a boy named Weakened Wynn,
who could barely lift a feather
he traveled the world carried by weather,
a crutch to serve as his gurney,
sought the sugarcane borer’s journey
–
the wind whispered secrets and the tales turned to mold
legends of travelers, their will uncontrolled,
their stories decayed to rot in his ears
the fungus of myth, grew sickness and fear
–
through mountains, valleys, and thickening spores
mildews fruiting his body, the yeasts of lore
psychotropic, parasitic, feasting on food
Wynn’s organs fermented and stewed
–
his mind split to places more than three
his destination, origin, sadness, and glee
festering unwanted, the cryptids at night
spoke to him as a brother, alone without sight
–
the wind laid him down in a deep sea of strange
where colonies of mycologists stole everything, even his name
they plundered his body and found inside a feather
so light and so heavy, it consumed their families with insatiable pleasure
They arrived at a small wooden door burrowed in the side of a small hill overrun with vines and green grass. The demilox had to extend his arms out his fur to clear a path. His arms were unlike any limb Nervous Vep had ever seen: blacks and greys swirled inside the ghostly-thin musculature—well-formed, semitransparent: a cloud of pollution from the forelimbs of lucrative industry. The hazy molecules inside them stared back, and Vep was transfixed. Her pupils began to swirl in equal motion with the shrouded haze and overgrowth. The demilox turned the door knob and, before Vep knew what was happening, she had poured through the entrance into the halls as a puddle fills a bowl.
Inside it was a dark, cramped hovel. The pair could barely fit and the demilox had to writhe and wiggle to dislodge his furry body from underfoot Vep, squirming his fluff to meet her face-to-face. When their eyes met, the tiny room expanded into a small, quiet village. A pin dropped in a neighboring town, audible. There was no wind and no weather and, if not for all things visible, light might have been absent. Nervous Vep morphed from a liquid state into a solid, asking, “Is this where I am to spend my time?”
“Here you’ll find placidity and flourish, Timid Thomasin,” said the demilox who had turned into a rooster. She chose to ignore the shapeshifting tomfoolery and said, “But, there’s nobody here and why do you call me by another’s name?” The rooster crowed and flew away, leaving behind a single feather, which Timid Thomasin picked up and placed in her jacket pocket.
In the original, simple hut, past the simple table and simple chair, adjacent the mirror, Nervous Vep was still holding the door open, listening to the demilox’s introductions when he suddenly said, “Well, Nervous Vep, as always, it was a pleasure to see you again and I bid you good health and delight and courage and I hope your mirror brings you all the peace and self-satisfaction of an abandoned village in an abandoned meadow unseen through a darkened door that isn’t there.”—and departed into the night, bobbing in and out of the tall grass while whistling a cheerful tune Nervous Vep knew, but couldn’t quite place. She considered calling out to him, “but, you’ve only just arrived,” before she realized any remark would lead to conversation, consequent agony, and all manner of physical spasms and unwanted excitations. She decided to leave it alone and return to her mirror.
When she looked in the glass, she did not see her face or the way her shirt lay on her shoulders. She saw an empty town overgrown with pale mushrooms and sickly mildews with a scent that left no definite trace amid a light thick as midnight, empty as a void, as clear as standing next to one. The only motion was a single feather suspended in the air, swinging back-and-forth from hut to hut, door to door. From here to there, she became so self-assured her fruitbody and puffball head burst into a cloud of dust and spores which simmered a blanket of black ink over her calm village in the toxic spirit of a budding germ.
Glossary:
- fareep, noun: a casual term of endearment often directed towards a young, doe-eyed adolescent approaching adulthood, spattered into the world on cold, humid nights, amid fogs and midnight blues via contraptions of obscure biological origins, said to always be damp, literally, and in manner.
example: There goes that ambitious and clever fareep, dripping on the concrete, marching confidently ahead. Let’s see if that fareep, come next year, succeeds or turns back home, maybe soon, maybe later in life, to marry (maybe me, daydreaming worry-wort, at peace at home).
↩︎ - demilox, noun: unknown supernatural entity; reportedly witnessed, usually polite, occasionally mischievous.
example: I saw something suspicious following my lifelong partner, Clever Clive, on his evening walk just last night; it was a demilox who was trying not to be seen, but the setting suns cast over the tall grass at an angle that exposed his furry head. He seemed polite enough, so I forgot all about it until my Clever Clive just today started behaving rather uncharacteristically and now I find myself wondering if that impish demilox had anything to do with it.
↩︎ - planatree, adjective: a conditional term modifying “fareep,” meaning a fareep whose traits are neglected through coincidence or bad luck by the circumstances of their habitat where they have been thrust incongruous their nature.
example: Our neighbor, that sad, skittish planatree fareep will never lead a fulfilling life here in the happiest village ever to grace known history. With a little cunning and a great deal of care, a demilox could frisk their maudlin attitude to the midnight blues of solemn towns where the gloomy glums flourish without incongruity.
↩︎ - hephaglorb, noun: slang, used mostly by children, to describe the particular, enduring cuteness of a small, fluffy creature of any type; must be sentient (unless, as in a doll or other toy, it’s imbued with sentience through the playful notions of childhood imagination).
example: Now I’m certain that demilox I saw trailing my Clever Clive was no hephaglorb because something dire has taken hold and no hephaglorb, cuddly little dears, would carry such ill-intent and would certainly never act as accomplice to criminal behavior of which now I suspect more solidly; if only I didn’t lack the evidence to prove it.
↩︎ - voolony, noun: an ambivalent, occasionally affectionate (depending on context) name for the second-person/second-ego who emerges from a singular source after that source, often a person, spends an extended period of time in a fog of deep distraction where all thought persists in a trance so irrelevant to immediate environment that they disassociate and split into two or more, but usually two and, if more, never an even number after two.
example: I am bound to my eternal partner, Clever Clive, not Lacking Lorne—that damned voolony to whom my dear Clever Clive succumbed on the thirteenth day of our fifth year together when he blamed himself for losing our most precious trinket on an evening stroll and, subsequently, overcome with shame, spent the entire day lamenting how trousers never fit his unusual body structure, which honestly, I never really thought was all that unusual in the first place. What a strange burden and, to think such trivial nonsense now is the sole cause of that damned voolony I now have to manage day in and day out, oh, the toil and drudgery—is this my fate or bad luck or that sly demilox? And now, look at this! A second and third voolony emerging from the primordial stew! What stupid names and stupid personalities will curse our once happy hut? Potshot and Blaspheme. Will finding our precious trinket dispel these errant birthings? Is that my only recourse? To embark the same path which tore my dear Clive into many? Or, is there no known cure as the countless doctors and soothsayers claim? The soothsayer from last night even—with those large and jagged teeth mocking me and my stately, ivory dentures; look how dry they remain even after I salivate. ↩︎