Land Whale Colony, Delmarva Strand, Morbid Obesity Sub Prime: 30%
The beach was loaded a hundred yards deep as far as the eye could see from north and to south, with thousands of sunbathing Eaters. Behind him ran the line of terrible painted block hotels in sordid consumption in both directions, flying flags of nothing. Besides him, were some umbrella stands, trash cans, and lots of sand backed by grassy sand dunes.
The beach below now erupted in chaos even as he heard police and fire sirens behind him.
Beyond the two wonder struck children, holding the gifts of the luscious woman who called him pretty—something no woman or even a man had ever done, outspoken people generally commenting in the negative on how muscular and hairy he was—as they looked at her now waist deep in the surf. Her hair shone in the sun, her waist parting the waves as if beautifully sculpted butter were formed into a wave wrecking-knife. He thirsted after Her, re-tasted her kiss, licked her wetness from his lips, breathed in so deeply to drive her breath further within him that he felt his ribs ache.
Some part of him wanted to follow her. But the inner part of him knew that such a sad-sack act would disappoint Her.
‘She wished me well, knowing I’m screwed.’
The jeep, his great mechanical pet, rumbled idly under his hands and foot. Anger surged in him as he noted that the near lifeguard to the right, a tall black-haired man, near whom she had passed, was pointing at her progress into the sea and blowing his whistle in shrill warning and disapproval. He was waving a flag with the other hand and calling in the swimmers. So the alarm went up and down the beach, lifeguards in their 18 foot high ladders calling in swimmers with their whistles, waving them to shore with red flags.
‘What is the matter with these fools? They act like the most beautiful woman in the world is a shark!’
The keening of hell’s own bag pipes in his ears heightened, yet still he could hear the fire engine stopping down the street behind him and police sirens converging, a few it seemed.
The swimmers were struggling to shore and the beached land whales where standing and gawking out at Her, and up to the lifeguards in their tiny white impoverished towers of jealous judgment.
The jeep came to vibrant rage under his indignant guidance. Sirens of the exterior whirl clashed and mixed into a noise with his inner dial tones of discord—an orchestra of rage storming within as if the conductor had just turned a particularly ominous page. Four land whales, two bulls, two cows, looked up from where they sunbathed on their beach towels in wonderment and dismay, convinced somehow that he would turn, stop, back away, and permit His Lady to be insulted and harassed by the panic sowing meet-puppet whistling and waving beyond and above them.
They had been lying face down, feet towards the surf, and looked up and around, craning necks like elephant seals, more like beached manatees.
The meet-puppet jerking around on his matchstick tower turning to see him. Their eyes met, and the meet-puppet started in knowing belief, and then somehow recovered from his temporary fear that the man in the jeep was going to do what he was doing. When Brit smiled, the fellow, who had been making to jump off to the side, seemed put at ease and stood, frozen by some flash of good will, and then started again when he saw that two of the four heads that ate Brit’s front bumper flew off, one a blubbery mess of gore and curly hair and the other a bald head separated from its frump hat.
Brit’s ruinous progress over the tearing, crushing, gushing and churning bodies—one caught up in the front axle—seemed to hypnotize the life guard, whose mouth flashed “No,” as an arm flew right and something made a grinding blender sound and a red cascade of pinkish skin splashed up along the passenger side window.
The back left leg of the lifeguard tower snapped on his bumper, dented his hood, and the other two legs smashed in the hardtop around the door frames and the broken leg dragged along the roof as he surged forward in his devastating machine. A big fat Eater was bumped aside to a reclining semi-eating position, his leg twisted awkwardly behind him and his arm hanging limply.
Some old man miming at running in a flowered shirt and sunglasses, was smashed and swallowed by grill and bumper, the dead fellow eaten and dragged behind.
The herd screamed, the outer sirens of discord wailed like automatons hired for a funeral mourning—the awful harp in his head keened! Keened the louder, did the siren song of his harrowed soul.
‘I am Dread, the herder of the overfed, the lion at the watering hole.’
Police sirens were coming from three directions. So he did a doughnut to come about and asses the situation, his heart aching to a shred that he could no longer see her wading into the sea—and that limber lifeguard was alive, bouncing about, waving in cop cars coming from left and right, left being the closer.
“Traitor! Oath breaker!” he growled all a snarl.
His machine leapt into action, driving around the ruin of the four land whales and the fallen stick tower. The man ran, coursed like a hare, running on one bent foot that flopped comically as he looked over his shoulder in fear and forward in hope, running towards the closer, speeding police cruiser.
His back snapped like the one leg of that shit-bird tower and an “Oh” of dismay escaped his bursting chest as if the fool man had expected that Eternity would be his portion, rather than this. Off to cold Oblivion he went.
Inside, Brit was vexed that he got no relief from this killing. Smearing the land whales, he had expected no more joy than picking dog shit out of his boot treads. But, this creature had been somehow defiant. He had hoped to please Her with a fitting offer…
“Yes, yes...YES!” he roared as he noted that the police cruiser was coming on with two officers—men, men in vests, men with weapons, men who came as War’s test.
He put the peddle to the floor and snarled in grim satisfaction, “Yezzz!”
The keening in his mind picked up, pitch, pace and purpose, focusing his being on the one act in all of man-sullied Creation that mattered: to obey the song in his soul, to heed the trumpet of War that sounded within his screaming head…
The police SUV banked to a stop left, the driver apparently the lower ranking officer—a handsome red-headed fellow of good size. This permitted the older officer, a wiry looking blonde with scruff of beard, to aim his handgun out the open window, which he fired. The rounds dinged into the grill, turned the windshield into a spider web of glassy veins, one hitting the wheel, and something, bullet or glass, sizzled into his right eye:
The police cruiser must have been made of plastic, because it folded with a crunch and rolled over as the right left bumper smashed in the passenger side door and Brit’s trusty jeep Wrangler, the only friend he had ever really had—and bought at that—hissed and roared like an angry dragon and lurched over its mortally wounded foe, the lesser hands of Hate crushed within their own hope for the Grey Gatherer to take.
Numbly, half blind and strife hungry, Hate reigned over his momentary empire of madness, on a moving throne, far, far away from home.
