Write By The Park With Purple Mark: "Thought Eater"

 

Bernard was lost. His head spun into Ferris wheels of dizziness. The cavern was queerly lit. It was reminiscent of Soma Swamp outside Swingleville where a pale pink light emanated from the below surface of the water in October. Bernard entered into distress when he heard that now familiar skeletal-click ricochet around. It sounded like a loose ball bearing rolling in a Babbitt housing.

“What direction should I go? Right or left,” he muttered. “Where was that savage thing lurking? Ahead or behind?” His ears couldn’t gauge direction.

Bernard’s teary thoughts darted to Linda. She was like a wolf. Her last words before she slipped into a dark pool of unknowns were, “How many morons can dance on a pen head?” It was an odd thing for a cunning person, such as herself, to exhale out. Bernard wondered if he was the moron for jumping into the fray. Maybe he should have fled instead? It was stupid to engage that particular monster in open combat.

Bernard bolted through the left fork of the tunnel as a sticky cotton candy mist blobbed into the chamber. The gasoline in his lantern was nearing exhaustion. The Thought Eater was near.

Bernard's skin burned from searing blades of psionic electricity that licked off all five throttling skeletal appendages from this sickening grey enormous-headed platypus like entity. Bernard slumped to the ground from the smothering pressure of futility. The final thought that oozed out like puss from his ears was, “plus ten.”

---William James 10/29/2011

 
 

William James' Prompts:                                                                         

1. Random Word: Wolf
2. Random Question: How many morons can dance on a pen head?
3. “Thought Eater: Thought eaters are dwellers in the ether. Their senses, however, extend into the physical plane, and any psionic or psionic-related energy use in either area will attract their attention (range of ability or magic equals attraction range. The thought eater appears to be something like a sickly gray, skeletal-bodied, enormous headed platypus to those who are able to observe it. It’s only desire is to feed on the mental energy or prey…“ Gary Gygax. Monster Manual: An Illustrated Compendium of Monsters: Aerial Servant to Zombie. (TSR Games, Lake Geneva, WI, 1978). Page 94.
4. “When preparing journal bearings, for babbitting, two very important points should not be overlooked, viz: to see that they are clean and dry. All dirt and dust should be thoroughly cleaned from the cavities in the castings, after which the casting should be dried by being placed over a forge fire, or it too heavy to handled in this way, it may be dried by pouring a small quantity of gasoline into the spaces to be babbitted and then set on fire.” Calvin F Swingle, M.E. Swingle’s Practical Hand-Book for Millwrights. (Frederick J Drake & Company Publishers, Chicago, 1910). Page 164.
5. “’The Savage,’ wrote Bernard, ‘refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because the woman Linda, his m---, remains permanently.” Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. (Perennial Classics Harper & Row Publishers, Inc, New York, 1932) Page 108.

 
 
 

Also check out my new wordpress website. It's a literary journal I am building up called Randomly Accessed Poetics! Submissions are open for short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. I am featuring more polished literary works, explicit language pieces, and eventually a journal a relative wrote in the late 1800's detailing their journey to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. And when I gather enough submitted works from other people, I will cobble together an e-anthology called Randomly Accessed Poetics.