Existental Slop Episode 1
I had always liked spider guy.
He was a funny hero, the off-color hero. I had thought he was bald as a kid, because of his mask.
Like he was some sort of lanky urban Mr.Clean.
But I didn’t really consume spider guy media, as a kid or at any point in my life, I just saw art stills of him. Like some peasant that sees a saint only in stained glass windows. But never hears the story as dictated by the church.
So my head-cannon of spider-guy, the character I knew wasn’t quite spider-guy.
It became a running joke in the real world, and I still can’t shake exactly what happened here, I get the feeling even the old world was a dream that followed my own. However unlike this new one, there was no Queen, No castle, no walls, no servants. If the world served me there was no indication it did, there was no customer service, no lever I could pull. There was no direct line to a higher order.
And I rather liked the hotline, Angel or Devil the queen was a lifeform that I felt drawn to, or maybe it was just the body it possessed, the mirror of a woman already gone.
In this dream I was spider guy’s dachshund. I rode on his shoulder.
And of all the strange spider guy dreams I remembered, the one where Mary Jane wouldn’t stop eating salad, where I was spider-guy stuck on a glass tower getting attacked by birds and unable to lose my grip. The one where I was building my cylindrical web only to get blown out by a vacuum cleaner. This was the only one where spider guy was an anime character, and also not spider guy.
But the anime hero navigated the world as if spider-guy.
That is by supple video game grappling hooks. Grab and release. Near flight, funny in 2D because it didn’t quite make sense.
I was the hero’s dachshund.
The hot dog dog, wiener dog, slender and mean. Cruel and awkward looking. Deep in my heart I knew that long ago I was bred to murder stoats and rabbits and lemmings in their burrows.
I was cute, long hair, mostly proportional body.
I rode aboard the hero’s shoulder.
A dour and judgmental old lady had hoodwinked a few classes of children, hired them to do her bidding. Now I accompanied the hero as we had to free the children from themselves, from the old lady herself.
Action-comedy fantasy, for kids. Just enough grit to feel more mature than an eight year old imagines it should be.
We left the humble little home of the hero, onto the suburban roadway. The suburban roadway of the void, the one where, in the middle of the street, remained our house.
Other houses in the void were bigger, and the gates were unanimously kept.
For in each house, beyond each gate, another world. Infinite yet cataloged. Fearless the hero entered them all. My self conscious barks, or lack thereof the only indication of our emotion.
I don’t remember all the journeys I don’t remember all our allies, friends, escapades, crimes, victories and lessons. But I was there for almost all of them. I even had my own.
I was Snowy to Tintin, Odie to Garfield, Krillian to Goku, Enkidu to Gilgamesh. Or was a dachshund off color-enough to be Captain Haddock? Shadow the hedgehog?
I don’t know.
I only remember stealing the Old evil lady’s hat and this action being plot relevant. For if I had not her plan would not have been foiled and the hero would not have won the day.
For without me the hero would not have pacified her,
Convenient we had defeated her in the church ready for the ceremony of matrimony.
For without me also, the hero would not have asked for her hand in marriage.
The children were free now… half live action, half anime they attended and clapped at the wedding, though I suppose in hindsight maybe I didn’t check too closely their freedom.
We would not have closed the doors on the void and left them to live peacefully by themselves, we would not have retired to the hotel that spiraled up and out of Jupiter on a thin spindle of space elevator. If not for my antics, not that I was leading, I was just the stakeholder who had set us on this path.
The space elevator that swayed so much it gave me motion sickness and I barfed upon the honeymoon bed.
Why was I even still here?
Why was I stuck in this tacky black and white themed hell? Why was I stuck in a hotel trying to be gilded age New York watching the storms of Jupiter from atop a noodle in space?
Why was the noble and virile hero who by all accounts should have better options trying to make love and family with a women in her late fifties?
Sure she was a cool wine aunt, but can’t he see they are sterile? How cruel of me to have rendered this outcome. If not cruel to anyone else, cruel to myself, cruel to the hero, he should have a wife his age! I hadn’t been with him so long to watch him become a gold digger, a lightning rod for the devil...
Was I Garfeild to John Arbuckle? Lyman?
Yoshikage Kira to my spider guy stand? Now that was a proper villain… There must be a more effective path forward.
Do you ever consider the thoughts of a dog?
I consider not the thoughts of apes.
How long had it been, I was a dog, I didn’t know how long it had been.
I got old much faster than humans ever did. All my meanness and impatience existed for a reason. I only had ten years to live. Let alone fifty. To think humans die young… at forty five. I would be lucky to live to a third of that age.
I was going to smell my balls, I was worried they weren't there. That all the cute anime familiar frames that cameras had captured were for nothing, but the hotel door opened and an important businesslike dog, I left for I had better things to do. I ventured down the void road, and slinking through the bars of one of the gates, entered a dog door in one of the houses…
And I woke up.
The room was dark yet I was not tired, I couldn’t have slept long… A healthy athletic body needs beauty sleep.
Dreamers always chase but never get it.
Lucy was eighty seven, aboard her death bed.
And maybe this could be mine.
At the senior home where she had previously checked in…
Where does a death bed depart to? Who had purchased my ticket and why? When I said I was good for it did my mind or mouth lie?
It was too warm. But I didn’t want to move.
I was sweaty but it beat being cold
The breathing of my wife was silky smooth but I needed closure and something metal to fold.
Gears click every day with every motion. But there is no way any of them can ever cure commotion. I’m studying last names just to light the church on fire, like if I decode this cereal box I can finally retire.
A dark room I was in
My room,
My queen’s room,
The dove’s room,
The lion’s room.
Is it not a healthy fear that I probably grew up here?
Where was that chessboard I had left atop the mountain? What was this language that had followed me to settle scores?
Paralysis a poison a poison in the mind twenty years before language became a chore.
Who really knew the visions I could smell?
Who really knew the voice I could feel?
Who really knew the oder in my mouth?
Who really knew the touch in my ear?
Who really knew the taste in my eye?
Someone did because It wasn’t mine, Call me cruel but you don’t know the first thing of targeted intelligent designs.
Call it a myth because it doesn’t like to be observed. It switches registers if you look too close, It only ever speaks to tell you not to find the cure.
It’s a puzzle box to nothing, god damned pigs. I was going to run down pawns with a motorcycle.
The queen appeared before me, I blinked.
We will be cutting past the tendons and the muscle.
Staff in hand, she was a shadow at the door. My heart twitched.
Money on my magic. Money backed by magic.
I was on a white horse in the dark, I was in the stable. There was no old knight sleeping there. I didn’t remember coming here.
He was on B five having fun instead.