The Adventures of Stagger Li

Chapter One

The encounter of Stagger Li and shrivel-i-zation is well known, replicated, duplicated, and
triplicated for the shrivelized masses in their evening hypnotic state sponsored by the same soul-
sucking money-loving machine for which they did daytime work. Placated, resting in their butt-
sprung chairs and sofas and dreaming dreams of rebellious adventure that never came.

Stagger Li was born of Brooding Menace and Awesome Power. The coupling of those two and
their wild thrashing round the landscape as each tried to become and overcome the other
produced the wallow known as the Everglades. Their simultaneous orgasmic scream can still be
heard in the swamp panther’s cry. Stagger Li fell out of that mutual shuddering embrace into the
world full-blown, parental scream still echoing in the deepest realms of his soul. Alert, aware,
ready for all encounter, born with vorpal blade unsheathed, he moved through the newly created
swamps to the nearest Pic and Run.

As Stagger Li followed a spiraling path through the swamp, the winding helical shape of his
staggering journey no doubt due to the cyclonic nature of his parents' mating, he made the
acquaintance of all its creatures. They each knew immediately the depth and nature of Stagger
Li's soul and adopted him into their clan.

With the humans, the two-leggeds busily absorbed in planetary destruction, eating the planet
alive, it was a different matter. N50518906.docxot able to see souls at all, when Stagger Li's
circumvolutions eventually led him to human domains, the two-leggeds reviled and rejected him
with fear and force and passion.

Of course their reaction may also have had something to do with the reports by the Planetary
Taming Bureau’s Transportation Section that destruction of a mysterious nature was happening
with their heavy equipment in the swamp dedicated to building a six-lane freeway for the trucks
needed for transporting the endless supply of pet food, toilet paper, pre-made burgers from
yearling cows slaughtered by birth order, eggs from chickens who never knew the light of day or
the happy chasing of insects or instinctive alarm at the shadow of a hawk, nuclear wastes,
cosmetics, toupees, prostheses, dental floss, chewing gum, and icons of a weeping Virgin Mary
holding the already crucified Baby Jesus in her loving arms.

The vorpal blade was tuned to slice any felt resistance with incisive ease. Stagger Li became
aware of the earth movers, graders, rollers, scrapers, asphalters, and concrete layers first by the
smell. The funk odor of badgers, pole cats, bears emerging from hibernation, and the breath of
buzzards was nowhere near as offensive as these nose-infesting emanations of age-old ooze from
rotting corpses of dinosaurs and wooly mammoths. He sneezed and sneezed again, his body
hoping to eject the offensive smell. And then he saw the first one, sitting there in all its reeking
yellow glory. Slice! went the vorpal blade, halving the monstrosity, then proceeding to take the
others of its ilk into inoperable oblivion.

Stagger Li staggered on for his first encounter with a human, a Pic and Run convenience store
employee named Zelda.