Flubber Ghast

The Flubber Ghast
1,274 Words

Later on during the sunset a quadrangle of shadow sat atop a giant urn. The shadow was angled westward toward the ocean, which lurked just beyond a single wall of trees, waiting at the end of the path like a giant monster of fortune. Looking out from the centered copse, the edge of trees looked like scattered blinds within a modest American home, dangling in their dance before a window of light, causing everything being struck by the rays to flicker after the wind, air, and other earthly vibrations. Beneath the angled amoeba of shadow, the urn sat wiggling slightly to one side and then another, being worked at from above, worked at by tools above the dark covering. From the bottom of the urn where through rough handling the metal edge wiggled most noticeably, the shadow’s form was beginning and was least noticeable.

The urn was made of a cheap metal, like aluminum, but was quite sturdy atop its hand-carved base. From below the cookpot where the wiggling commenced it was easy to see that the base was made of the densest hardwood of all the nearby forests. The forests had many varieties of trees and thus demonstrated how rich the other resources must be through and through the relative geographic location. A traveler might describe the place as a coastal paradise, or tropical wonderland. But to those that were of this place, nothing was too special, spectacular, bright, or colorful, even with the rainbowed light of the sunset bouncing off the ocean and prying its way into the grove, spattering each and every slice of the habitat with hallucinatory alteration.

Also it is to be noted that the malleable ground beneath the urn and beneath the structure below it did wonders to supplement this standing totality of art. The ground was a surface both hard and soft, both rough and easily punctured. It supplemented both the art and the vandals taking action from their vulturous perches above. These poetasters wore short boots of strong, hard leather. The boots looked like the inverted souls of dry, dead animals pinned to the walls of the afterlife. The boots were layered up and down with sand and dirt and muck and grit but had a very sadistic edge to them. The light brown shade served as a subtle reminder or light reminiscing of cattle, oxen, and perhaps the occasional boar whimpering about on a snuffish solo romp.

The slight but humanoid chirps could be heard sloshing around from above the art. These remarks could be traced slaying one another in and out of each breath of breeze. “Food really is quite necessary, no matter how you put it,” creaked one of the two vocalizations before a swift squish of saliva smacked from mouth to forest floor. A monotonous though echoing scrape along some corner of the urn escaped into the air in tow. This additional sound, just as sudden as the language being communicated immediately before, was more noisy and disturbed the air in many feet in all directions. It was the sound of hardwood on cheap metal.

The shadow at this point was more of murky pond or ambiguous bayou, pockets here and there extending with the quivering of the evening into the porous twilight. Something like a young girl’s voice appeared in the mess of sound waves blasting into one another above a pocket of the dark murk. The young girl’s voice quivered like a child in a pool of afterbirth. “Being American necessitates food.” It was let out in a long, subdued fashion, like a person jumping out of a ninth floor window about to finally hit the paved ground. The voice was not quite a squeak but could be considered similar to a baby mouse speaking to an additional, full-grown mouse in utter excitement. It was the first time this particular youthful vandal had said anything since the beginning of the evening, since the beginning of the urn, since the beginning of the monstrous ocean taking a nap down at the end of the trail just as the continued its own ways.

But the profound statement, its high-pitch essence wonderfully melodic, was absolutely snuffed out in unnatural haste, rubbed into the ambience by another chagrin of tapping and scraping noise. It was distinctly wood against metal. The urn ground deep into the structure by whatever force drove home, pounding like a phallus of meat into hole. This time the sound was a truck driving along a rocky shore, or the talons of hawks snapping onto the links of chain fences.

Into the ever-rising pool of black, which by now was gaining its own waves, as if from a tide, as if directed by an orchestrating moon, fell a wrist-watch with a plop that sounded like weight and frivolous spending. “I thought you might like to know that it is approximately four hours and one day after her E.T.D.”

“E.T.D.?” replied the companion, who was at this point definitely considered by everyone including the ocean a mere companion to the first, obviously dominant voice. The curdling growl of the ocean could be heard several thousand feet to the West, where at the same time ruby enchantresses danced so fast they only made streaks of illumined clouds through the sky.

“That’s right. E.T.D. Estimated time of death.”

“You mean we aren’t even sure?”

“Aren’t sure of what?”

“When she died—the exact time she moved on to the next place, I mean.”

“No. It’s just impossible to know. Hell, she might still be alive this very moment for all we know.” The voice stopped and after several beats of silence there was the sound of oars paddling through a swamp. The taste of gumbo filled the mouths of all the endless chasms of shadow gaping like hungry tents throughout the woods. “But don’t worry about it.” Crickets could be heard to the north, south, east, providing reassurance with their dirging symphonies. And after their mournful crinkles were to be left to memory, the west let loose a deafening explosion of splashes creating quite the effect of awe and acknowledgment.

“Well she certainly looks dead.” It was strange to hear a voice of such an acutely high pitch say such a thing after such a pronounced auditory event. The emotions evoked from such a statement were like those evoked after a baby’s ear-bending cry or a baby’s coddling laughter, both having been unleashed to an audience at the exact same time. The black bayou, as passive an audience as the trees ever manage to experience on a regular basis, had been slow to morph along its merry way, but in response to the words since spoken the preambling anti-creation of speed completed its cyclical change and found itself, startled like every other time it found itself in such a state, as an insidious sea filled with underground trees, rocks, stones, caves, bears, hawks, an urn, a wooden structure, some soft ground, and a couple of human beings with giant spoons in their hands. It was a new domain, a domain for life to slumber, a domain to symbolize the dead.

“What’s most important is that her soul definitely died a long time ago,” motioned the first voice with a hopeful, gurgling expulse of sound and bubble. “That we can be certain of. And that’s all that really matters.” The urn simmered. It had been simmering throughout the entire conversation of the forest. It simmered in such a way that signified a well-cooked meal.

“True, as long as we don’t have to eat her soul for dinner, I’ll be happy!”