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Creepy Crawlers from the Crevices
Heyes finished reading the diaries to the sound of the Kid’s snickering, and dropped thelimp book on the ground. Seeing the looks of perplexed disdain on the faces of the twoformer outlaws, O’Gursey suggested, “Ah well, perhaps it would be best if we returned tothe tale of your lives.”“Personally, my opinion is it would be best if you returned us to our real lives,”commented Heyes dryly.“But you have no real lives. I would think you two would be realizing that by now. Yousee it is like the book where it cannot be told whether it is the White King’s dream or thelittle lassie’s dream. Which is really to say that it is a dream either way, and should you be criticizing and complaining if I give you life? You see my point, do you nae?”“I feel real enough to me,” said the Kid. “Look if I wasn’t real I couldn’t feel, right? And,I do feel, so I must be real. So, I’m not a dream.”O’Gursey shook his head sadly and confided loudly to Heyes, “your friend is nae so thesharpest ax in the shed, is he now?”“He’s smart enough,” responded Heyes testily, “and he’s made a good point. How long isthis tale of yours anyway? I think we’d like to pin down how much more we have tolisten to, and when we go back. Also, when did no become nae?”“If you’re real how is it you can see what I am speaking?” queried the little man sharply.Curry and Heyes exchanged a glance.“Now I thought we had an agreement on this already. I was to tell the tale, and when it isdone I send you back. If you are lucky, another picks up a thread of your life and youcontinue, and if not, well, that is the fate of fictional characters, is it nae? Now, don’t youworry none, the two of you are fortunate in that you have no shortage of feminineadmirers more than willing to spin yarns that keep you going, even after you have died insome of the stories. And that is where you two laddies really have the luck of an O’Reilly.With all you have been through, you should by rights be dead as proverbial doornails. AhI see the look on your faces, admit it now, you have been hurt and injured well beyondrepair, driven to madness, driven to near madness, driven to desperation, and driven toextremities beyond all. Yet you survive. Ah, I should have your luck; I’ll be gone whenmy tales are over…”“So that’s why you’re stringing these stupid stories on,” yelped Curry. “You don’t controlwhether we live or die or go back…”“The same person who controls that also controls your fate,” finished Heyes.1
 
O’Gursey’s eyes moistened with tears. “I’ve said too much. Now the two of you wouldn’t be denying me my wee life, now would ye?” He looked at the two men pleadingly.The two glanced again at each other and shrugged their shoulders.“Oh go on already, O’Gursey. We’ll listen until you’re done. Looks like we’ve got nochoice anyway.”“Now you are talking,” said O’Gursey smiling at Heyes. “Oh and let me tell you,” he saidleaning close to Heyes and Curry, and whispering, “it’s no one lassie controls our fates.Like I said before, feminine admirers,” and he winked at the men. “they mean well, butthey don’t always have a good grasp of what a real outlaw’s life would be like, which iswhy you lead such um, exceptional and unusual existence’s. And, I can tell you withfrankness, this one who is telling my tales is one of the worst offenders. Take this story,for example.”He leaned back and began his next tale."It began as an ordinary Kansas day, although you are probably aware by now that whereyou two are involved, there were to be no ordinary days in Kansas before the Civil War,or even after." He paused, flicked the ashes out of his pipe and continued, with no further interruptions, with the rest as follows: John Heyes was up and out of his mock-Tudor farmhouse at daybreak. Here, it must benoted, that O’Gursey had completely forgotten the names he had used in his previousstories, and was now ‘winging’ it. To continue, John Heyes walked out the front door, andentirely missed the evil grin on the face of the flat dark-brown insect scuttling on his porch. In fact, he missed seeing the insect entirely, which is not surprising as he wasscanning the morning horizon, which was far lovelier than the planks beneath his bootedfeet.However, there was an insect on the planks, and it did have an evil grin. It sneered asFarmer John passed, and looking back gave a signal to its compatriots to join it. Dark- brown heads popped up from various hiding spots. The creatures waved their antennaeand began forward, backwards and generally in all directions on their path of destruction.Mary Heyes was at her wood stove as she was every morning at this time. It had to be lit,and breakfast prepared before her husband returned from his morning chores. In addition,she had children to feed including a baby. Since grocery stores weren’t handy at this time,and Gerber’s was yet a gleam in the eye of the wonderful unborn man who invented pre-mushed baby food, she had to cook separate food for her youngest, and mortar and pestleit into an unrecognizable yet easily digestible paste.The cows had to be milked, and the chickens and the pigs fed. Her eldest children, stilltoo young for these chores were sent out to do what plains children did best; go in search2
 
of buffalo chips to replace the supply she would use to light the stove for the day. Ah,imagine the lovely odor of a prairie stove, and in addition, the wonderful heat that itwould produce. Mind you, it was summer and perhaps a little hot to begin with. SoonMary was wiping her brow with the sleeve of the only dress she owned.What a day she had to look forward to! After breakfast, she would clean the dishes, that isafter pumping water at the well, and it was sewing day. Her spinning wheel called to her.What she called back to it, we cannot print. She would spin, then she had thread to dye,clothes to mend, and as the children were growing, new clothes to sew. Fortunately therewere some empty flour sacks she could make sturdy pants for the boys from, and who inKansas was bothered if the rear-ends had Mile’s Flour printed on them. After all, all themen were wearing pants of a similar fashion this year on the plains.She was thinking over how she would artistically place the lettering, when she felt atickle sensation travel up her leg. She raised her dress to see what the cause was and letout a shriek.“A cockroach! How disgusting.” She shook off the unwanted insect and stepped on it.The cockroach, undaunted, raised itself up as if to say, ‘I am a cockroach, and you cannotsnuff out my life so easily.’Mary raised her foot to re-squash the too-sturdy insect, and halted mid-air. The cockroachwas not alone. It had companions, hundreds, no, thousands of crawling companions.They were marching into the kitchen at a quick march rate, covering the floor so rapidlythat it soon became a wriggling black mass.The frightened woman hastened to her toddler, I mean her baby, on the high chair andgrabbed the babe in the nick of time. The black crawlers were nearly upon the nowscreaming child. She then ran out of the house only to meet a terrible sight. Cockroacheswere everywhere, on the trees, on the ground, in the garden snacking and partying on her vegetables, on the sides of the house gamboling towards the roof, dropping off andlaughing as they fell.The noise was as bad as the view. Now you may not think that cockroaches make muchsound unlike their distant cousins the cicadas, but here you would be wrong. Millions of cockroaches invading and throwing a gigantic fete make considerable noise. They munchloudly, not having learned good table manners, as they chew with their mouths open.They giggle and laugh. Imagine the horrific sounds of millions of snickering insects. Inaddition, when they laugh they roll on their backs causing their exoskeletons to creak.Mary was overwhelmed. Where was her husband Jim? What could she, a frail andhelpless member of the weaker sex, do on her own? Belatedly she remembered her other child Hannibal. She even worried about his well-being. He was still a small boy of four,or was it five? She was not certain, but she speculated that this many cockroaches couldsmother such a small child if they chose to gang up and do so. She pondered on this3
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