The Library, Part Four
By: Turboencabulator
The hangover the next morning was mutually awful. Roland was up first, and after a brief
trip to the bathroom to vomit and brush his teeth, he was in the kitchen, preparing a
supposed cure in earnest, and very, very quietly.
Alice was not far behind him, groaning and swearing with a constant, low growl. They ate a
full English in silence, the coffee flowing freely, and the remains of a joint were shared
between them.
“Fuck we do?” Alice asked, fumbling out a dugout and carefully loading it, taking a
massive hit.
“Unno.” Roland groaned, wincing as the sunlight came in and started sparkling off the
glassware. He watched as Alice re-packed the end of the bat and offered it to him. A
moment’s hesitation and he had taken a drag, managing to keep it in without more than a
small cough. It did wipe out most of the hangover.
After several minutes of silent contemplation, except for the occasional groan, Alice sat
up a bit more, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“It’s like my mouth is a fucking ashtray. How can grease taste like ash?” She muttered,
getting up and stabilizing herself on the table, swaying as her equilibrium caught up with
the sudden movement.
Roland got up much more slowly, breathing deeply and with care. “I’m going to go have a
bath and many aspirin.”
“I hope you’re not expecting work after that.” Alice said, checking herself out in the
reflective door of the fridge. “Man I’m bloodshot. Probably going to be fucked over all
day.”
“With you on that.” He said, slowly making his way out. “But. First. Tub. Any.”
Roland never made it to a tub, instead finding himself in a small, roughly octagonal room
situated in the tower overlooking the property’s rolling, forested hills, and just angled
enough to see the lake and creek. The room was dark, a bit musty, and smelled of dry age
and old cardboard.
He wouldn’t have looked in here except for a dull, quiet scratching sound, constant and
slightly varying. Upon opening the room and fumbling in the dark for a light-switch, he
found himself face to face with a room of antique phonograph cylinders, and an
Edison-style machine, on and at the end of its playback of a cylinder.
Roland opened a window to air out the room and watched as Alice very, very slowly drove
back down the hill to the groundskeeper’s cabin, before turning back and examining the
room more closely.
The cylinders were accompanied by his grand-uncle’s notes on index cards, taped to the
outside of the antique cardboard storage tubes. None of them were of music, and each note
seemed to detail information like the place it was found, the rough content, and a code
that Roland could not identify. The cylinder on the machine was unlabeled, and after some
fiddling, Roland moved the stylus back to the beginning and set it in the groove before
sitting down to listen.
Clunk. Scrape. Glug. Clink.
“My name is Magnus Herefort Braun. I am a resident of Lebanon, New York, and am fifty-six
years of age. I am told that this device will let me preserve a few minutes of my words
for those that might follow after me, and so I feel I must, in order to ensure continuity
of my knowledge.”
“This new land of ours is growing ever larger. The federal government just set aside a
large slice of land for Indian territory. But even out in the world, mein Gott,
such inventions and discoveries. Ford and his horseless carriage. The comet in
January. And the art, the music! Picasso and Matisse have made my own canvas a blithe,
pale imitation of what art can become.”
“Yet I am deeply troubled, for this new, enlightened world is blinkering itself, obscuring
danger from its view through progress uncontrolled, un-moderated by caution. My works, my
art, it rots in its frame when I have looked upon it with an eye augmented by the aqua
vertias, like I had painted it to reflect such horrors, when I had not. I once tried
to swear off using the waters, but the truth must be known no matter how it impacts my
mind.”
“You who are listening to this, be warned and be vigilant. I am one who is of a time long
gone, and cannot understand or envision what your time has brought upon humanity, but it
is not the totality of what exists. You must find your own path to remove the filter that
we weak fools have brought upon our minds to hide the uncomfortable truth. I found my
method in the synthesis of aqua veritas, but this art is complex and fickle, and
may not be to your ability.”
“I am old, and with age I have realized that I am a fool and have only looked, but not
sought. Do not make my mistakes again.”
The machine fell silent, except for a quiet, varying scratching sound.
Bullet was out by the bank of the creek, zoned out and staring off into the woods as the
dew sparkled and twinkled in the golden morning sunlight. He watched with whichever eye he
felt like using at the time as dragonflies would alight upon the reeds and grasses poking
out of the water’s edge.
Gizmo trotted past him. “Mownin Buwwit.” He said, before wading into the water and using
all his fluffy strength to uproot a few cattails and, after chewing off the muddy root
stems and rinsing the mud out of his mouth, hauled them back up on the bank and started in
on one for breakfast.
Bullet watched this, and followed, sniffing the white, moist base of the plant before
having a nibble and finding it suited his appetite.
“Buwwet, yu vewwy han’som fwuffy, why yu mommy put u in hewe?” Gizmo asked, pensive, and
still half asleep.
“Blurbulaunno, hijibilgblewoufm’meh, gleibiggiblehgies!”
Gizmo paused, thinking. “Uh… wut”
“He saiwd dat he dunno, he hab biggest wuffs fow his mummeh, an dey always had big wawm
huggies.”
Misty plopped down with the reed pile and sighed. “Fankoo few nummies, Gizmo.”
Ruby joined shortly after, dour and half awake as well. “Whihh wun u dingus kep’ boofin me
in da fwank?”
Nobody fessed up, and they all went back to their breakfast.
“Yu dummeh hooman, yu gib smawty wand!” A vomit green unicorn screeched from inside a
cage.
Thad had his head in his hands. The fluffy was chipped, and fixed, but he had already
reached out and his family didn’t want the little shitheel back. His shelter was
over-crowded as it was but he couldn’t stand the idea of introducing another smarty to the
already belicose population.
“Havin a fun day, Thad?”
He looked up to see his neighbor leaning in the shelter door.
“NYU MUMMEH. GIB MIWKIES AN- SCREE”
Thad put down the cobbled-together fluffy prod. “I’m overfull and this asshole has already
tried to rape basically everything he could see.”
“Can’t just put them down?”
“I’m not licensed for that, Claire.”
Clarissa thought for a minute, before a big, nasty grin spread across her face. “I might
have an idea.”
Portnoy was a big, strong, and thoroughly dumb earthie. He didn’t understand why he and a
group of other fluffies had been turned out of the shelter, but he liked the forest around
him. He watched as a green uni gave bad special huggies to a three-legged mare. Too bad
she wasn’t making noises anymore, her face completely submerged in a puddle of mud.
The big stone wall behind him gave a cool shady strip for the fluffies to collect in as
they complained about not having a house anymore, and how they wanted kibble-nummies again
instead of the scrub and grass.
He listened as the big shelter van rolled off and the nice Clarissa lady laughed. He was
happy when humans were happy. Hopefully they’d be back so he could ask her what made her
laugh so hard. The herd were less interested in the laughter, which was sad to Portnoy,
but even he understood the sudden change in venue was unexpected.
“Dummy fwuffies, dis Smawty’s wand now!” A polka-dot dyed earthie proclaimed, and opened
his mouth to continue, but was interrupted by the green unicorn.
“DUMMY! DIS AM SMAWTY’S WAND, AN SMAWTY’S HEWD!” It screeched, before four more smarties
charged over from the herd and all proceeded to scream threats and proclamations of
near-divinity in each other’s faces. All this noise was hurting Portnoy’s head.
He didn’t notice as a drone picked up from a branch and flew away.
Roland was cleaning up the previous night’s excesses when he heard a motorcycle tearing up
the hill, swiftly followed by stomping and swearing as Alice stormed in with a tablet. She
shoved it in his face and hit play.
“What a… uh…” He said, watching the feed as a drone settled on a tree branch, the
camera panning and zooming to perfectly frame two people dumping dozens of fluffies over a
stone wall.
After a minute, the duo got back in the van and drove off, and the video ended.
Roland leaned against the sink, thinking, and sighed. “Please tell me you got the license
plate.”
“I got more than that.” Alice said, pulling up stills of the two perpetrator’s faces. “See
this bitch?” She asked, indicating the female of the pair.
“That’s Clarissa from the HOA.”
After a long, pensive moment, Roland looked at Alice and cracked his knuckles. “Well now
you realize, this means war.”
“And a lawsuit. Please.”
“Ok, both.”
“Wait how many did they dump?”
“Fifty-six.”
Ruby was crouched in the underbrush, watching as six fluffies duked it out like amateurs
for control of the large herd. This was bad. She knew that four fluffies, yeah, you could
hide four ferals in the woods. But a whole herd of loud, messy, stinking domestics would
be about as subtle as a… well as a herd of fluffies.
“Fwuffin fwitpigs.” She muttered before silently stalking off, taking her time to hide her
scent-trail in puddles and the edge of the creek, making her way back to the derelict
cabin.
It wasn’t before long she arrived, nosing open the planks in the side and slipping in,
being very careful to close them again.
“Fwuffs, we nee’ tawk.” She said, going to the middle of the room to where a beam of
sunlight struck the floor.
The others gathered, including Bullet, despite being heavily distracted by a moth
fluttering around the room.
“Wuby? Yu tay?” Misty asked, plopping down with a quiet cheek-squeaker.
“Dummie hoomans jus’ dumped a whowe big hewd of city-fwuffs over de waww.” Ruby said,
flatly. “Dewe fow an two o’ dem fitin’ to be de smawty, an dey awwwwww stink an yeww an
dunno how be no-see in da gwassies ow bushies.”
Gizmo nodded. “Fink dey be fwiends?”
“Some?” Ruby said, thinking over what she observed. “Bu’ de smawties gun twy stawt poopies
wit’ da hoomans an dat means dead fwuffies.”
The others winced. Ruby never used forever-sleepies as a term.
Misty huffed, puffing his cheeks out a little. “City-fwuffs nebbew fink befow dey do
fings. Awways wannin ‘sketties’ ow ‘pwaywooms’. Wemember Cwyde fwum befow wast
cowdie-time?”
The trio thought back. Clyde had been a spoiled brat, dumped at the truck stop by the rail
yard. He lasted all of one day before the smarty kicked him out for eating from the
food-stores far beyond his portion. He ran off to the rail-yard and demanded a daddy
before one of the yard-hands decided to have a little fun and duct-taped him to the front
of one of the locomotives.
“Cwyde was a dummie of dummies.” Gizmo said. “Wots of fwuffs dat showed up weawned how be
quiet an sneakies an not-dummies.”
Ruby glowered. “Dun make no diffwence if smawties gun fwuff it up fow evweyfwuff. Wuby
vote we stay 'way fwom hewd an twy to nu be seen. If hoomans find us, weast we can say we
nu hab meanies.”
Misty nodded. “Mebeh if hoomans deaw wit smawties den we find nicey fwuffs tu be fwiends?”
Gizmo was thinking. “Ow maybe hoomans otay wiff fwuffies? Wotsa wand.”
“Dey hab bangie-sticks. An used 'em on da enfie-fwuffs, wemembew?” Misty said.
“Wite. Maybe hoomans jus no notice us.” Gizmo conceded, sighing.
There was a clang and scrabble, and a loud raspberry. The trio looked around, only to find
that Bullet somehow had gotten stuck upside-down in the trash can, a moth delicately
alighting on his posterior.
Later in the day, a single neon green unicorn with a bloody horn and sticky crotch lead a
whining herd of idiot pseudoponies into a field, proclaiming it to be ‘new howem’ and that
it was very good because he found it so wasn’t he the best smartest then if he didn’t say
so himself.
The fluffies busied themselves under the direction of a few toughies who knew what they
were doing, digging shelters and gathering food. The wall was long behind them, a whole
fifty feet or so, which put it out of sight, and thus, out of mind. But far in the
distance one of the lookie-fluffs, who could make out details further away than the
average household wall, said there was a big housie far in the distance, on a hill.
Like a castle for a king.
And a neon green unicorn, looking dully into the distance, promised himself that it would
be his.