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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Triage of Porks

You’ll indulge me for a jot of story telling, won’t you, just? Please do. Procure an enseatment of posteriorally pleasing ergonomy and appointment, perhaps splash or three of vintage Fonseca and allow me to wax in a manner folklorical.

Once—as you may have so rightly deduced—upon a time, there dwelled in a landscape of an equitable sylvan nature (though given on occasion to lupine molestation) a triumvirate of swine unified in the quest for domestic architecture, though of varied spirits of industry.

The most slothful of the trio—let’s call him Edmundt, unless you’ve some objection—deduced he needn’t apply excessive gray matter to the task at hand (or trotter, to be more spot-on) and, in an effort to preserve elbow grease (rationing was still on) he gathered round his person a lean-to of mere straw. He devised a pyramidal structure, all points centermost inclined, and reposed within. Meanst-a-while, his compatriots tisked and snorted in scorn.

“A shanty, and no mistake,” quothe the one I shall designate as Antoine.

“Edmundt lacks vim,” the other, Brimstead, agreed, “and will surely suffer for it.” The pair ambulated elseward in contempt as the wind piped floutish though the straw.

The sun slid down the sky, leaving behind it a grand and flammable slickment of colour (or, to give the British spelling, coulououour) like unto that trailing a blood orange snail. Thence, scenting the breeze and finding an even-toed ungulate within it, the Canid of Enormous Malevolence decided to sup of its source. “Growl, indeed!” spake he. “Veritable threat, via glottal auditory!”

“You shant!” Edmundt conveyed. “I am secure as the Cunard Line’s most fortable ship, here in my enstrawment, you hirsute cad.”

“Fear in deep tremblence, oh my o’er-confident Suidae! For I shall now, this very now, utilize my bronchia in a manner most Godzillan.” And so it was. The haystack was nothing like a match for the huffington puff of the large and evil former puppy. Down came the shack, like a drunken kangaroo on St. Vodka’s Day, and the wolf emulated himself and wolfed the pig in one sloof, finishing with the swiveled tail as if it were fusilli. Poor Edmundt. Requisate in pace, woebegone lazyboar.

This is, not to sharpen too exact a piercing about it, what happened to the second pig as well the next eventide, despite having laboured (British: laebour’d) upon an enstickment, rough-hewn and still leafed here and about. Sorry, Antoine. May you give rise to the finest daisies, should ever the wolf’s digestive tract returns you to Mother Earth.

Brimstead, a right corker of a porker, set about in masonry while his comrades lined the bowels of his enemy. “And who shall help me build my bricks?” he asked, but answers there came fewer than oysters, as Edtoine were dead already. Still and all, as solo efforts are concerned, he did. Before the sun slankt awee, his brickening gleamed complete.

“Somebody’s been sleeping in my house,” by which he meant himself, and did so.

Now, the real tension mounts! The wolf, fresh from his all-forest tour of lungtastic demolition, fair strutted about Chez Brimstead. “Chomp and circumstance!” he glisten-toothed. “I smell the brick of an English pig.” (British: pygge).

“Do your measured worst, I adjure you,” Brimstead called out throatily into the slightly imperiled night.

“Grand!” he yipped. And thus, he houghed and poughed and tried to blough the houghs in.

“Har, snort and derisive persiflage!” taunted the ham. “It’ll be unto less than no avail, for I have built a house made of the moral of the story!”

Not one to throw in the other cheek or sponge by the wayside, the wolf made a prodigious bound aimed with Robinhoodian accuracy to the very center, the smouldering omphalos, of the chimney. Alas, what the wolf possessed in decisiveness was not matched in strategy, or he’d have taken full notice of the smoke and deduced therefrom that a fire must blaze beneath; and so it did, painfully.

Brimstead, safe in a house that now smelt pleasingly of scorched dog pelt, lay his head smugly on a pillow of finest Hungarian sleeping feathers, and snorted off to slumbitude.

 


For more creative grumblings of Jason Henninger, check out the I Speak Fluent Giraffe Index page.

About the Author

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Jason Henninger

Author

I'm the assistant managing editor of Living Buddhism Magazine, fond of philosophical fiction, magical realism and good ol' farmboy-saves-the-world fantasy epics. I write short stories, poems and novels that my mother thnks are really great. Now, if I could just get my mom to work for a publisher, I'd be set. Oh and here's a really outdated clip of me contact juggling. It's a fun hobby and may some day win me the heart of Jennifer Connolly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFphHR8u01A

Jason Henninger is the assistant managing editor of Living Buddhism magazine. His short fiction has appeared in the anthology Hastur Pussycat, Kill! Kill! and various ill-fated and short-lived webzines. He marvels that he's not caused the demise of Tor.com.

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