Short Story / Whiskers on the Moon (Analysis)
Robin heard the marching of Union soldiers outside his window. The rustling of bayonets resting against blue uniforms poured from every drop of blood. The marching band blew grey tones from behind the charcoal clouds. The tuba’s dualistic nature enabled it to serve as a fog horn alerting the passing ships swirling beneath the thunderstorms over the ocean two blocks down on Perry Street. A sudden surge of electricity overcame Robin as Rachel Pierson’s cold hand reached underneath his cotton underwear. Rachel squeezed hard enough to release 6 CCs of adolescent radioactivity. As Robin awoke he watched the rain pour down like tiny sheets of frozen radiator fluid. He decided to check on his pet bunny rabbit, Mikey.
After he took his final steps down the spiral staircase and into the game room, he found Mikey soaking wet and shivering in his cage. This was a confusing discovery since his parents hadn’t been home since Mardi Gras six months ago. Robin glanced at Mikey’s cotton face. Something was missing. Mikey’s eyes darted back and forth in formation like a meth-addicted SS Officer. His tail had a strange green glow. Nothing too obvious, but just enough to show up on a satellite feed. Robin reached in to touch the bunny, and Mikey responded by biting a piece of flesh out of his finger.
Robin quivered but felt nothing as blood began flowing out of him like a fork in the Red River. It splattered all over the linoleum tiles. Mikey growled like a rabid tiger and helplessly raced around his cage looking for a place to escape. Eventually, as Robin felt the blood leaving his brain, he fell to the floor and passed out.
Several hours later Robin awoke shivering while the sun shone directly in his eyes in a strange node-like formation. The rays bounced off the statue of St. Francis and back into his eyes. The heavy downpour from the previous night had turned the ground into a thick sheet of ice. It was 27 degrees outside… and it was the middle of August. Meanwhile, according to the cable news station, India launched a nuclear attack on Pakistan the previous night, destroying nine cities. This was good for the United States because the few remaining American Indians would be able to branch out their casino resorts into the desert oasis that was now Pakistan. None of this phased Robin, nor did the previous night’s events (he figured the maid could clean up the blood even though she hadn’t been around in six months).
He walked to the kitchen to fix some of the delicious hot chocolate his parents left him before they went to Mardi Gras six months ago. As he scooped the coca into the coffee mug, Robin noticed the rabbit on the hot chocolate box had no whiskers. He couldn’t remember if the whiskers existed before so he ignored it.
Later, it dawned on Robin that it was the first day of school and he should probably go. He couldn’t afford to have a truancy officer wandering around the house wondering where his parents were.
He put on his winter clothes and walked to school without paying much attention to the fact that the entire town was empty except for the giant sheet of ice. The school was empty, too, and locked. Robin decided he better wait for the janitor to unlock the door and let him in. He waited and waited in the shivering August cold until he heard the electronically timed bells ringing from the Episcopal church across the street. It was Sunday. There was no school today. As Robin walked home, snow began to fall and the sky grew dark. It was only 5:30 pm.
When he got home he fixed some more hot chocolate and failed to notice that the rabbit on the box no longer had a tail. Meanwhile, Pakistan had retaliated by dropping paratroopers onto the roofs of various hamburger franchises and hookah lounges, and suicide bombing them.
Mikey was in his cage resting with one paw missing. Robin left him outside to roam free. Off in the distance he heard ambient Theremin noises. Mikey raced toward them. Robin tried to trail behind, but the bunny was much too fast. Fortunately, Mikey left tracks in the asphalt for Robin to follow. He tracked them down Lavender Street, over the canal bridge, through Myerson Park, and down into the sewers. After about a half-mile walk the sewers began turning into a rocky pathway and Robin could see a flickering light in the distance. It came from a cave that was lit up by ancient torches. Inside the cave was an abacus, several arrowheads, and a guillotine. Fatigue and muscle soreness swept over Robin’s body and he dropped like an igneous rock.
He awoke the next morning in his bed. Mikey was resting in his cage with both ears missing. They were hanging from the television antenna. According to the cable news station, Germany spread mustard gas all throughout Pakistan, some of which spread into Turkey. Turkey retaliated by forcibly marching 10,000 Gypsies across rugged terrain for 200 miles. Food was withheld from the Gypsies and by the time they reached their destination in Anatolia, only 78 remained. Those 78 people were blindfolded and shot in the back of the head. Exactly thirty-seven minutes later an Earthquake registering 7.2 on the Richter scale erupted and killed every Turkish soldier in sight and destroyed several nearby villages.
Robin turned on the Weather Channel to discover that it was ninety-seven degrees outside. The heat had melted all the ice, which left the streets completely flooded. Flooded enough for eels to escape the canals and swim into Robin’s front yard. Meanwhile, a truancy officer dressed as a member of the Italian Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism banged on the front door. Robin hid under his bed with the only weapon he could find – a 5 lb box of Black Cat bottle rockets. The menacing thud on the door eventually stopped after fifteen minutes. When Robin walked outside to make certain the coast was clear, he found a note that read:
Report for conformity training at 927 Halberdash Street at 8:35 am tomorrow morning or prepare to face the municipal court magistrate of Arlington, TX. You will be afforded no jury or attorney.
He crumpled up the note and threw it to the trash filled floor then fixed some chocolate milk, but not before noticing the bunny’s head on the box missing. He stepped outside and felt gusts of 50 mph wind circling him in opposite directions from the southwest and northeast. Robin looked at the moon. It had a black circle and two black lines that he had never noticed until today. Perhaps the moon had collided with an asteroid, which caused craters.
Then a pink light shone directly from the moon and into Robin’s heart, which sent him into seizures. He foamed at the mouth, raced in circles, and excreted tiny small pellets of fecal matter. The next morning, at 7:35, he awoke to the cold, moist nudge of Mikey’s nose against his cheek. The rabbit had no eyes remaining.
Robin got dressed and walked to 927 Halberdash Street to report for conformity training. When he arrived he found a massive cage with an entry room filled with mp3 players, cellular phones with small video screens, and laptop computers, which gave updated accounts of news, weather, and sports reports every thirty milliseconds.
Korea had seized every Mongolian barbecue restaurant in China and slit the throats of every manager, server, and busboy. Robin scanned the weather reports. A heat wave had struck Moscow leaving millions to die from heat exhaustion as they waited in lines for bread. Blizzards had swept across the Middle East killing thousands of camels. Hurricanes were ravaging Liverpool, England as giant beetles rained from the sky.
Sports scores came in from all over the world. Zimbabwe had just defeated Germany 17-3 at the World Cup final in Lexington, KY. In pre-season football, the Miami Dolphins were victorious over the Arizona Cardinals 121-116. And at the Little League World Series, a team from Kabul, Afghanistan beat a team from Brisbane, Australia 35-28.
A radioactive energy began buzzing throughout the room and could be felt permeating each of Robin’s arteries and veins. There was a strange rhythm to the madness. In the far away distance, Robin could see two faint, red lights.
He walked deeper into the cave and time moved backwards. Television schedules for the years 1956 to 1973 lined the walls. The footprints of Nakita Kruschev, Fidel Castro, and Salvador Allende were etched in the cement floor. Old news footage displayed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Franz Ferdinand, and black and white newsreels of air raid sirens over London. Deeper and deeper Robin went as the cage turned into a cavern. Oil paintings of Napoleon, Sitting Bull, and a burning slave ship hung from the walls. To the right was an ancient printing press; to the left an entrance to a coalmine. In the distance the red lights became brighter, along with two adjacent white lights. Soft whisperings of the wind that seemed to be telling Robin something were felt all round him.
Further and further Robin went. He passed paintings of various European Royal families, merchants, and a cotton gin appeared and reappeared. Snow began to fall and the cave gradually began turning into a little ice age. The rumbling of trains could be heard in the distance. Centuries continued to disappear before Robin’s eyes. Shakespearian plays, giant clipper ships, and the ruins of indigenous lands all appeared on the engravings on the walls. The whisper of the wind became clearer. “Tuh ood” was all Robin could make out. The lights in the distance became stronger, but there was an additional faint pink light in the center and several protruding wires. Screams of Black Death and Inquisition-stricken anguish could be heard while the Hundred Years War unfurled in front of his eyes. Papyrus scrolls lined the bookshelves, which included editions of Dante’s Inferno, Beowulf, and The Epic of Gilgamesh. Deeper in the cave he came upon statues of Mohammed, Brahma, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and the sword of Excalibur. The cave, now lit by only ancient torches and the looming lights in the distance, became darker and darker. Robin could feel his humanity dissipate as the whispers of the wind turned into gusts. “Touch wood,” it said.
He looked around for wood and finally found some directly beneath him. He reached down to touch it and the entire floor came out from under him. He dropped directly into the center of the Earth and fell softly on the lush grasslands below. Inside the hollow earth it was seventy degrees and filled with apple trees, picas and hares. Directly in front of Robin laid a seventeen foot high statue of a rabbit.
It stared back at him stone faced like one of the remaining Buddhist statues in the Sahara desert that hadn’t been blown to bits by a tribe of Zoroasters in Auckland, New Zealand. As Robin approached the rabbit he felt his back slug to the ground and lost the ability to stand upright. He watched in perfect numbness as his arms and legs transformed into simian- like features. His vision became greater as his ears began picking up strange, reptilian noises from under the soil. Robin’s body began shrinking more and more until it had finally regressed to the size of a prairie dog.
He burrowed underneath the earth’s surface and found himself alone on a monorail ascending among the stars. He looked down and saw the shapes of Texas, Florida, and Alaska spinning on the earth’s axis like a basketball. Eventually, the entire planet collapsed, fell into a black hole, and disintegrated into millions of tiny pieces.
The monorail took Robin to the moon which, with no longer an earth to revolve around, assumed a new role as a satellite of Venus. He landed on a garden spot filled with fruits, vegetables, and cheese as far as the eye could see. Giant rabbits the size of dinosaurs roamed the terrain like Roman gods. Mikey appeared right before his eyes standing seventeen feet tall.
He carried Robin the prairie dog to a cave filled with Abjab-styled engravings on the walls, and told him to rest near a fire. When he awoke sixteen hours later he was greeted by a polar bear who appeared to be some kind of sacred priest.
“Do not be afraid,” he said. “You have been selected among many human candidates to be our new systems analyst as our mother moon assumes its new role in the universe following the destruction of planet earth. It is the highest honor one can receive without being a rabbit. Here is the network system you will be in charge of.”
It consisted of several scrolls of papyrus, abacuses, and telephones made of cups and string.
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I heeded your words of caution in the preceding notes. I’m glad you put them there or otherwise I might not have given this piece a fair chance. Yes, it was wierd at the beginning—For about 2.5 seconds.
discovery since / discovery because—Loses the repetition of “since”.
”...to Mardi Gras six months ago.” You’ve already said this once. How about injecting some absurdity into something about their trip to NOLA?
Hahaha! This was unusual, surreal, and pretty funny. What I like about it is you take the first rule of writing, “Show, Don’t Tell” and break it into tiny pieces which you use to fuel your creative fire. This story is ALL telling, but you managed to pull it off style-wise. Not an easy feat. There’s also a veritable cornucopia of images and creative wordplay to go along. Anyone who calls this stream-of-consciousness is a schmuck. It’s much too calculated.
Also to be noted are the relevant issues which are instilled within the piece—war, terrorism, global warming, environmentalism, religion, yuppie culture, and many more.
It was a good read. I have a hunch that the people at Dog Vs. Sandwich would love to take a peek at this. The link’s at the bottom. Thanks for sharing.
-Curt
http://dogvsandwich.wordpress.com/
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