The Burrito Thing - A Comprehensive Analysis
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About thirty minutes ago I opened the door to my microwave oven to discover it lying there on the glass plate rotater, still wrapped in wax paper - the burrito thing.
Logic insists that I must have put it there, but I simply have no recollection of how long it's been languishing in my microwave, or how it even got there in the first place. I suppose for the sake of thoroughness, and to set a good example for the children, that I should also have no recollection of whether or not a burrito thing is safe to eat. It's probably a moot point, but isn't that what microwaves are for? Nuking the little critters that lurk inside of burrito things? It might not be safe to eat right this minute, per se, but I'm not unduly worried. Anyway, back to the mystery!
Here I am in the present tense. I'm hungry, I'm tired, there's a burrito thing here, and the clock is ticking. In order to solve this mystery I should start by looking for clues. I'll need to be scientific and methodical, like Sherlock Holmes. I'll begin by breaking the process into manageable chunks or steps, as they say in the scientific community.
Step 1. Find the facts!
Fact number 1: I know that the ridiculous size of my tolerance for alcohol precludes blackouts nowadays, and that's a fact.
Fact number 2: Hell, I can't even remember the last time I was drunk, and...
Fact number 3: I disappear into my liver two big ass bottles of 190 proof Tomahawk distilled spirits every week!
Now that I'm armed with the facts, I'm able to deduce that I absolutely do not remember putting the burrito thing in my microwave, because it's impossible for me to get drunk enough to black out. The scientific method is already producing quantifiable results! I'm pretty sure those are all the facts.
Step 2. Retrace your steps, Ash!
Ok, let's see... I was at the microwave, puzzling over the newly discovered burrito thing. Before that I was lying in bed watching Frozen for the eleventy-zillion-and-a-halfth time and possibly getting hungry. Before that I'd gotten home from work and fixed myself a great big drink with lots of that 190 proof Tomahawk stuff I was talking about a minute ago. Before that I was at work. Before that I was at home watching Frozen for the eleventy-zillionth time. Before that I was asleep. Before that I was scrounging for food after work. Before that I made a great big drink... and on and on, ad nauseam.
Ok, this is obviously the wrong approach. If every day is just a repeat of the previous day, then there's no way I'll be able to locate this mystery burrito by retracing my steps through thousands of repeats. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack! Wow... that's brutal. Basically what this means is that every day of my life is just a rerun of a pilot episode that was so shitty that it never even had the dubious distinction of getting canceled after the first season. Hell, it never even got canceled, it just got thrown in the trash. Oh my God, how depressing. I need a drink.
Since the scientific method of searching for clues didn't pan out, it's time to consider a less rigid, more right brained approach. I'll start by framing the problem of the burrito thing as the pilot episode of a reality show that's centered around my life, which I like to call:
EMPTY SHELF
The Search for Food
Catchy, huh? Kind of like STAR TREK 3 - The Search for Spock. I think it adds just the right amount of drama that's needed in order to give it a false sense of appeal. I'm not suggesting that a reality show centered around my life wouldn't be appealing; it's just that most people have to be lied to before they'll believe anything. It's a hook, you know? Lie to them, get them to watch so that they can see how much you've lied to them, and BAM! They're hooked whenever they discover the truth! Moving on.
Usually whenever I conduct a search for food I start by digging through the trash at work for write-offs... and whadda you know. Upon closer inspection, I see now that this burrito thing is definitely a write-off from work! NOW I'm getting some results! Now all I have to figure out is this... how did a burrito thing get all the way from the trash dumpster at my workplace to the inside of my microwave oven? That's the mystery, and I'm too tired to solve it right now, and I was too tired to solve it when I went ahead and ate it ten minutes ago. Sorry.
Please enjoy instead a comprehensive review of the burrito thing that's probably a write-off that I don't remember digging out of the dumpster where we chuck the expired food that's gone bad at the 7-Eleven where I work.
'The Burrito Thing Experience'
All I originally wanted to do was warm up my 4-Loko Tomahawk boilermaker in the microwave so that the carbonation didn't hurt my throat when I chugged it. That's when I discovered the burrito thing. After some quality ruminating, I decided that a minute and a half would be enough time to nuke the poison to death, so I nuked it for a minute and a half and ate it.
My conclusion is that it wasn't very good. It was all breakfasty, and not enough like dinner when you're in the mood for dinner. Plus the ever-present thought of the possibility of dying with every bite helped to make it less enjoyable.
All in all I'd rate the burrito thing as adequate emergency sustenance for Russian peasants in the event of a nuclear attack.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Everything I Hate about My Favorite Movie, Frozen
You know that movie, Frozen, right? That goddamn animated Disney epic that came out a few years ago, based on some fairy tale that nobody outside of Russia has ever heard of? The one with the two most smokin' hot cartoon princesses ever made, hotter even than that little mermaid chick? Speaking of that mermaid chick... you totally get to see her bare naked ass, right after she grows legs and almost drowns as she's swimming up to the human world. It's kind of hard to see because you have to pause it JUST RIGHT, but man, it's frikin' awesome!
Anyway. You're probably gonna think I'm hating on that movie Frozen, but I'm really not. In fact, I'm pretty much hopelessly in love with Frozen. I've watched it exactly eleventy-seven-and-sixteen-fiftieths times, to help cure my aloneliness on my otherwise intolerable days off. Mostly I have it playing in the background while I'm on the pot. I really do love that movie, it's just that I have a bunch of nitpicks with it, the same as I do with everything I love.
Firstly, what's the story with that Christoph kid? I used to think that maybe he was an ice apprentice, but all he does is spend the entire day fucking up. Apparently he isn't learning anything about ice mining, so why is he even there? The ice miners sure don't give a crap about him... I mean, here's this little boy, scampering around among hardened ice miners who are constantly singing about what a dangerous job ice mining is, and nobody says anything about the little kid! Weird.
Speaking of little kids, way before Elsa grew up and became a neurotic bitch, she and her sister Anna used to have fun playing eternal winter inside the castle. Remember when Elsa was magickng those taller and taller piles of snow to catch Anna as she jumped from one to the other? You could just see it coming, that Elsa was only one or two catch me's away from screwing up royally (heh). So why didn't Elsa poof up some smaller snow mounds? Why did she keep making them BIGGER and BIGGER? That was just dumb, Elsa.
Then just as everything is going tits up, Elsa slips (on her own ice!) and hits Anna right between the eyes with an ice dart! King and queen anonymous freak out of course, and after thumbing through a book which shows an illustration of a positively evil looking troll waving it's claws over a royally garbed figure laid out on a stone slab like the Aztecs would put you on before ripping out your still beating heart, the King decides that these nightmare creatures are the only hope for his daughter, and he gathers up the entire fam and hauls ass to troll country.
What's the deal with those things anyway? They're definitely not carbon based life forms. Their organic chemistry is likely based on long chain silicon molecules, what with them basically being living rocks. Far out, huh? Well, if you've done as much research as I have into what makes those lovable little fuckers tick, then you'll know that silicon life would get along MUCH better in a permanent deep freeze. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Food for thought? Hey, I ain't pointing fingers!
Since it's pretty much established immediately that stone trolls are the 'good guys' for curing Anna, then why did that grampa troll go out of his way to scare the shit out of Elsa? Do you think he'd considered the possible consequences of showing a little girl a vision in the sky of her own blood red powers attacking from every direction and stabbing her into oblivion, pretty much guaranteeing that Elsa would be scared shitless of her own nature during her formative years? Why would grampa troll do that? Because he's an evil fucker? Kinda makes you wonder about those trolls, huh? Hey, just sayin'!
Ok, let's give those filthy trolls the benefit of the doubt for a second. Maybe that's how trolls raise their little troll kids, by scaring the shit out of them. Maybe rock trolls are just stupid, like a bag of rocks stupid, and they thought that Elsa was just another rock. But if rock trolls are just a pack of idiots with good intentions, then why did grampa troll throw in that memory wipe for Anna? The King seemed to agree that it was 'for the best', but what the hell does he know? To him, a satanic ritual is just as good as real live medicine!
The only thing that memory wipe accomplished was to confuse the hell out of a little girl, leaving her with no idea as to why her best buddy would suddenly just up and start hating her. The entire situation is completely fucked up! It's no wonder that one of those little girls grew up to be a paranoid, cast iron bitch, and the other one so desperate for love - any kind of love - that she'd understand it as simply a furtive glance in her direction. See what I'm saying about those dirty silicon based life forms?
Oh yeah. Don't forget about the troll woman who basically kidnaps Christoph when he's just a five year old kid. "I'm gonna keep you," says the troll woman to the little boy and his moose puppy as she wraps her cold, heavy arms of stone around their fragile little necks. What the fuck, man? I mean, discounting the horror of being embraced by a Golem, even if Christoph was an orphan, there's no way that troll woman could have known that. Creepy!
Ok, enough about the trolls. Here's a puzzlement. Why don't Elsa's gloves freeze when she's wearing them? Those manacles they clapped onto her hands when she was in prison sure froze though, didn't they? SO WHY DON'T HER GLOVES FREEZE? Could the reason be that the whole touchy-freezy thing is a neurotic condition, stemming from a traumatic childhood experience manipulated by those dirty, filthy silicon life forms? HUH? Ok, I'm done now with the trolls, really.
Let's move on to another thing that pisses me off, which is really the only completely unforgivable nitpick that I have. Why is it unforgivable? Because it's not a plot hole or a character flaw or anything like that... it's simply sloppy song writing that borders on the obscene.
Allow me to elucidate. Remember that part where Queen Elsa fucks off to the hills after her disastrous coming out party, and how she sings her way through magical puberty and finally embraces her womanhood by transforming from a stupid fraidy cat little girl into a sexy, sexy ice queen? And how she lyrically referred to a snowflake as a fractal? Remember how STUPID that was? Didn't you just want to slap the shit out of whoever it was who wrote those lyrics? I'm talking about the 'Let It Go' song.
You know...
'My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in FROZEN FRACTALS all around'
...that part!
I'm terribly, grievously sorry, but there's just no possible way without invoking a couple of generations of math wizards into the storyline that Queen Elsa would have been even remotely aware of the fractal nature of a snowflake. Hell, the basic concept of a fractal would have melted her primitive, medieval brain! It's simply unforgivably sloppy on the part of the song writer who came up with those stupid, stupid lyrics. Shame on you, whoever you are, you stupid, lazy song writer who made that fractal snowflake crap into impossible song lyrics!
Some more nitpicks. Why do so many Disney animal sidekicks act like dogs? I'm armed to the teeth with examples. Here goes...
Lilo and Stitch. Stitch is an alien. To Stitch, dogs are aliens. Stitch acts like a dog.
Hercules. Pegasus is two pretty awesome animals smooshed together into one even awesomer animal with no sign of dog anywhere. Pegasus acts like a dog.
Tangled. Maximus is a genetically perfect horse with exemplary morals and intelligence on par with a human. Maximus could act like a firedrake if he chose to. Maximus acts like a dog.
The Fox and the Hound - Copper is a hound dog that's been mercilessly brainwashed to murder his childhood friend. Copper should, by all rights, act like a sociopath. Copper acts like a dog!
Frozen - SVEN IS A MOOSE FOR CRISSAKE, A FULL GROWN MOOSE THAT ACTS LIKE A DOG!
Why, these things??
Now back to those filthy, dirty trolls. No, I ain't done with them yet.
Those stone trolls sure sing a good story about true love while simultaneously trying their damndest to force two strangers into getting married, don't they? One of them is even engaged already! But do those stone hearted bastards give a shit? Hell naw, they have their own agenda, and it ain't about true love. I mean, how can anyone really think that those petrified horse apples are even capable of giving a single flip about true love, based on what we know about them now? It's obvious that they only want to marry Christoph to a princess as quickly as possible for political leverage. They're outright bastards, through and through, those rock trolls. I'm not pointing fingers though, I'm just sayin'. Those fucking rock trolls are nothing but a pack of bona-fide evil manipulative bastards. I hate 'em!
Just one more thing and I'm done, I promise...
Some may find the following negative critique of the Wandering Oakens Trading Post to be unwarranted - after all, when Princess Anna's horse bolted and left her to freeze to death just south of the North Mountain, I must admit that if it weren't for the Wandering Oakens Trading Post, princess Anna would have surely perished.
Still, can we please expect store proprietors as a general rule NOT to be greedy assholes? Or if not generally, then at least according to special circumstances, such as eternal winters? That's a special circumstance, right? The eternal winter thing? You know who I'm talking about... that big fat Swedish meatball who runs the Wandering Oaken. Screw that guy.
Oh, he comes off all nice at first, but then after trying unsuccessfully to rob Christoph he throws him out into the storm to die! And why? Because Christoph called him a crook? Which he is, by the way. What, you can't handle the truth, you big smiling lunkhead?
What he does next is just nauseating - he tries to sweeten up to Anna with a free jar of fish heads! Why? Because Anna had just witnessed an attempted murder? What kind of sleazeball tries to bribe a murder witness with a jar of fish heads? Could it be the kind that keeps his family locked inside a sweat locker during the hottest part of the year, barring eternal winters? How many murders do you think his family has had to witness, imprisoned in that broiling torture chamber that he generously calls a sauna? Are those people even his real family? What a psychopath!
Him and his big summer blow out. I mean, yeah, it's summer and everything, but there's a big frikin' snowstorm going on in July! If there's a big frikin' snowstorm going on in July, you don't say, "Hello, yoo hoo, big summer blowout!" to everybody who walks into the store, even if it's summer, because nobody is going to want to buy whatever you had for sale for your big summer blowout if there's an eternal winter going on! What an asshole.
And what the heck is a wandering oaken supposed to be, anyway? That makes zero sense for the name of a trading post that's permanently attached to the side of a mountain.
Anyway. I sure do love that movie, Frozen!
Anyway. You're probably gonna think I'm hating on that movie Frozen, but I'm really not. In fact, I'm pretty much hopelessly in love with Frozen. I've watched it exactly eleventy-seven-and-sixteen-fiftieths times, to help cure my aloneliness on my otherwise intolerable days off. Mostly I have it playing in the background while I'm on the pot. I really do love that movie, it's just that I have a bunch of nitpicks with it, the same as I do with everything I love.
Firstly, what's the story with that Christoph kid? I used to think that maybe he was an ice apprentice, but all he does is spend the entire day fucking up. Apparently he isn't learning anything about ice mining, so why is he even there? The ice miners sure don't give a crap about him... I mean, here's this little boy, scampering around among hardened ice miners who are constantly singing about what a dangerous job ice mining is, and nobody says anything about the little kid! Weird.
Speaking of little kids, way before Elsa grew up and became a neurotic bitch, she and her sister Anna used to have fun playing eternal winter inside the castle. Remember when Elsa was magickng those taller and taller piles of snow to catch Anna as she jumped from one to the other? You could just see it coming, that Elsa was only one or two catch me's away from screwing up royally (heh). So why didn't Elsa poof up some smaller snow mounds? Why did she keep making them BIGGER and BIGGER? That was just dumb, Elsa.
Then just as everything is going tits up, Elsa slips (on her own ice!) and hits Anna right between the eyes with an ice dart! King and queen anonymous freak out of course, and after thumbing through a book which shows an illustration of a positively evil looking troll waving it's claws over a royally garbed figure laid out on a stone slab like the Aztecs would put you on before ripping out your still beating heart, the King decides that these nightmare creatures are the only hope for his daughter, and he gathers up the entire fam and hauls ass to troll country.
What's the deal with those things anyway? They're definitely not carbon based life forms. Their organic chemistry is likely based on long chain silicon molecules, what with them basically being living rocks. Far out, huh? Well, if you've done as much research as I have into what makes those lovable little fuckers tick, then you'll know that silicon life would get along MUCH better in a permanent deep freeze. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Food for thought? Hey, I ain't pointing fingers!
Since it's pretty much established immediately that stone trolls are the 'good guys' for curing Anna, then why did that grampa troll go out of his way to scare the shit out of Elsa? Do you think he'd considered the possible consequences of showing a little girl a vision in the sky of her own blood red powers attacking from every direction and stabbing her into oblivion, pretty much guaranteeing that Elsa would be scared shitless of her own nature during her formative years? Why would grampa troll do that? Because he's an evil fucker? Kinda makes you wonder about those trolls, huh? Hey, just sayin'!
Ok, let's give those filthy trolls the benefit of the doubt for a second. Maybe that's how trolls raise their little troll kids, by scaring the shit out of them. Maybe rock trolls are just stupid, like a bag of rocks stupid, and they thought that Elsa was just another rock. But if rock trolls are just a pack of idiots with good intentions, then why did grampa troll throw in that memory wipe for Anna? The King seemed to agree that it was 'for the best', but what the hell does he know? To him, a satanic ritual is just as good as real live medicine!
The only thing that memory wipe accomplished was to confuse the hell out of a little girl, leaving her with no idea as to why her best buddy would suddenly just up and start hating her. The entire situation is completely fucked up! It's no wonder that one of those little girls grew up to be a paranoid, cast iron bitch, and the other one so desperate for love - any kind of love - that she'd understand it as simply a furtive glance in her direction. See what I'm saying about those dirty silicon based life forms?
Oh yeah. Don't forget about the troll woman who basically kidnaps Christoph when he's just a five year old kid. "I'm gonna keep you," says the troll woman to the little boy and his moose puppy as she wraps her cold, heavy arms of stone around their fragile little necks. What the fuck, man? I mean, discounting the horror of being embraced by a Golem, even if Christoph was an orphan, there's no way that troll woman could have known that. Creepy!
Ok, enough about the trolls. Here's a puzzlement. Why don't Elsa's gloves freeze when she's wearing them? Those manacles they clapped onto her hands when she was in prison sure froze though, didn't they? SO WHY DON'T HER GLOVES FREEZE? Could the reason be that the whole touchy-freezy thing is a neurotic condition, stemming from a traumatic childhood experience manipulated by those dirty, filthy silicon life forms? HUH? Ok, I'm done now with the trolls, really.
Let's move on to another thing that pisses me off, which is really the only completely unforgivable nitpick that I have. Why is it unforgivable? Because it's not a plot hole or a character flaw or anything like that... it's simply sloppy song writing that borders on the obscene.
Allow me to elucidate. Remember that part where Queen Elsa fucks off to the hills after her disastrous coming out party, and how she sings her way through magical puberty and finally embraces her womanhood by transforming from a stupid fraidy cat little girl into a sexy, sexy ice queen? And how she lyrically referred to a snowflake as a fractal? Remember how STUPID that was? Didn't you just want to slap the shit out of whoever it was who wrote those lyrics? I'm talking about the 'Let It Go' song.
You know...
'My power flurries through the air into the ground
My soul is spiraling in FROZEN FRACTALS all around'
...that part!
I'm terribly, grievously sorry, but there's just no possible way without invoking a couple of generations of math wizards into the storyline that Queen Elsa would have been even remotely aware of the fractal nature of a snowflake. Hell, the basic concept of a fractal would have melted her primitive, medieval brain! It's simply unforgivably sloppy on the part of the song writer who came up with those stupid, stupid lyrics. Shame on you, whoever you are, you stupid, lazy song writer who made that fractal snowflake crap into impossible song lyrics!
Some more nitpicks. Why do so many Disney animal sidekicks act like dogs? I'm armed to the teeth with examples. Here goes...
Lilo and Stitch. Stitch is an alien. To Stitch, dogs are aliens. Stitch acts like a dog.
Hercules. Pegasus is two pretty awesome animals smooshed together into one even awesomer animal with no sign of dog anywhere. Pegasus acts like a dog.
Tangled. Maximus is a genetically perfect horse with exemplary morals and intelligence on par with a human. Maximus could act like a firedrake if he chose to. Maximus acts like a dog.
The Fox and the Hound - Copper is a hound dog that's been mercilessly brainwashed to murder his childhood friend. Copper should, by all rights, act like a sociopath. Copper acts like a dog!
Frozen - SVEN IS A MOOSE FOR CRISSAKE, A FULL GROWN MOOSE THAT ACTS LIKE A DOG!
Why, these things??
Now back to those filthy, dirty trolls. No, I ain't done with them yet.
Those stone trolls sure sing a good story about true love while simultaneously trying their damndest to force two strangers into getting married, don't they? One of them is even engaged already! But do those stone hearted bastards give a shit? Hell naw, they have their own agenda, and it ain't about true love. I mean, how can anyone really think that those petrified horse apples are even capable of giving a single flip about true love, based on what we know about them now? It's obvious that they only want to marry Christoph to a princess as quickly as possible for political leverage. They're outright bastards, through and through, those rock trolls. I'm not pointing fingers though, I'm just sayin'. Those fucking rock trolls are nothing but a pack of bona-fide evil manipulative bastards. I hate 'em!
Just one more thing and I'm done, I promise...
Some may find the following negative critique of the Wandering Oakens Trading Post to be unwarranted - after all, when Princess Anna's horse bolted and left her to freeze to death just south of the North Mountain, I must admit that if it weren't for the Wandering Oakens Trading Post, princess Anna would have surely perished.
Still, can we please expect store proprietors as a general rule NOT to be greedy assholes? Or if not generally, then at least according to special circumstances, such as eternal winters? That's a special circumstance, right? The eternal winter thing? You know who I'm talking about... that big fat Swedish meatball who runs the Wandering Oaken. Screw that guy.
Oh, he comes off all nice at first, but then after trying unsuccessfully to rob Christoph he throws him out into the storm to die! And why? Because Christoph called him a crook? Which he is, by the way. What, you can't handle the truth, you big smiling lunkhead?
What he does next is just nauseating - he tries to sweeten up to Anna with a free jar of fish heads! Why? Because Anna had just witnessed an attempted murder? What kind of sleazeball tries to bribe a murder witness with a jar of fish heads? Could it be the kind that keeps his family locked inside a sweat locker during the hottest part of the year, barring eternal winters? How many murders do you think his family has had to witness, imprisoned in that broiling torture chamber that he generously calls a sauna? Are those people even his real family? What a psychopath!
Him and his big summer blow out. I mean, yeah, it's summer and everything, but there's a big frikin' snowstorm going on in July! If there's a big frikin' snowstorm going on in July, you don't say, "Hello, yoo hoo, big summer blowout!" to everybody who walks into the store, even if it's summer, because nobody is going to want to buy whatever you had for sale for your big summer blowout if there's an eternal winter going on! What an asshole.
And what the heck is a wandering oaken supposed to be, anyway? That makes zero sense for the name of a trading post that's permanently attached to the side of a mountain.
Anyway. I sure do love that movie, Frozen!
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
A dream - running from the giant
A dream - running from the giant
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.
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I was underneath a rocky overhang, hiding from the giant. It was about as tall as a sodium vapor lamp, about sixty feet high. There was a young girl in my charge hiding with me. My best friend was nowhere to be found, and I'd lost my horse.
It was raining in torrents, and I couldn't tell the footsteps of the giant apart from the peals of thunder. I peeked out from beneath the overhang and saw the giant, about twenty meters away. It had a man in its hand, and I watched as the giant bit off the man's head and chewed it slowly, savoring the flavor, and then threw the rest of the man away.
After it finished chewing and had swallowed, the giant sniffed around, trying to locate me and the girl. It seemed to home in on us, although it couldn't see us. It began to cajole us, complimenting us with our success at eluding it, and promising not to bite off our heads if we revealed ourselves. Then it began to berate and belittle us with insults in an attempt to persuade us to emerge, resigned to our fate. Then it lost its mind in a rage and stamped about, furious and frustrated.
The girl whom I was protecting gasped out loud, and the giant made a step toward us. Frantically and silently, I tried to calm the girl, but she struggled and then let out a piercing whistle. I thought we were doomed, and then my horse came running underneath the legs of the giant and toward us. I picked up the girl and ran beside the horse and caught its bridle. I slung us both onto the horse's back and we rode away at full gallop.
The giant was enraged, and it roared deafeningly. I could feel its thunderous footsteps slamming into the earth as it chased us. I slapped my horse on the neck, urging it to run faster, faster, faster! I glanced down and saw the horse's hooves cycling in a blur, churning up the rain soaked mud like an overpowered machine for digging furrows. I glanced back once and was dismayed to see the giant about a hundred meters behind us, and gaining close to ten meters with each stride.
About a thousand meters ahead was a long ridge that spanned the horizon from South to North, and the setting sun was shining brightly underneath the trailing edge of the storm front. I leaned forward and buried my face in the horse's mane, urging it to please go faster, and I could feel the arms of the little girl in my charge squeezing tightly around my midsection. There was a secret redoubt on the other side of that ridge, with a hospital buried underground... but I knew that we weren't going to make it.
Then I heard a voice shouting from ahead of us, and I shielded my eyes with my hand and saw, atop the ridge, the gesticulating figure of a man. He started down the hill at an angle roughly perpendicular and to the right of my path, running wildly and yelling:
"I've gottim, I've gottim! Go thataway! I've gottim away from ya, go thataway! Thataway!"
It was my best friend. I'd thought he had deserted us, but there he was, running down the slope of the ridge, and drawing the giant torward himself and away from us. I clenched my teeth and squeezed shut my eyes to stop the tears, and yanked the reins to the left and away from my friend as he ran on a suicide mission to lure the giant away from me and the girl.
We made it to the top of the ridge, where I paused to get a look and to find my bearings. Down below on the other side I could see the exposed roofs of the redoubt stretching away to the left and to the right. I spotted a trail that would take us down to the nearest roof, and before descending I turned around to get a brief bead on the giant.
I cried out with a wordless sob when I saw that the giant had already finished with my friend and was sprinting all out, covering at least twenty meters with each stride, and was nearly to the base of the ridge. When it arrived it paused and raised its massive hand to its brow, then bellowed like Hells Bells as it spotted us at the top, silhouetted against the sun. The giant immediately began sprinting uphill.
I spurred my horse down the trail. Upon reaching the roofline, we followed it North until another path appeared, leading us to ground level. I dismounted quickly, the girl in my arms, and dashed to the nearest entrance and inside. With the girl perched upon my back, I raced down hallways and past many people, each of them with a growing expression of perplexity as we ran by.
I was searching hastily for a stairway to the underground hospital when I heard a mighty crash just a few tens of meters behind us. I stopped and turned to see a giant foot thrust through a jagged hole in the roof of the redoubt and planted in the middle of the hall, followed immediately by the thunderous cacophony of a giant fist as it made another hole in the roof, much closer to myself and the girl.
I ran with the girl on my back as sections of the ceiling cracked and fell around us. I passed a woman holding a broom in mid sweep, stuck to the spot, her face frozen in horror at a vision that I didn't turn around to see. There was a spiral stairway ahead that led down, and I leaped toward it with all of my strength and tumbled down to the next floor, just as the roof collapsed above us.
I picked up the girl and, holding her in my arms, I continued downward.
.
.
.
I was underneath a rocky overhang, hiding from the giant. It was about as tall as a sodium vapor lamp, about sixty feet high. There was a young girl in my charge hiding with me. My best friend was nowhere to be found, and I'd lost my horse.
It was raining in torrents, and I couldn't tell the footsteps of the giant apart from the peals of thunder. I peeked out from beneath the overhang and saw the giant, about twenty meters away. It had a man in its hand, and I watched as the giant bit off the man's head and chewed it slowly, savoring the flavor, and then threw the rest of the man away.
After it finished chewing and had swallowed, the giant sniffed around, trying to locate me and the girl. It seemed to home in on us, although it couldn't see us. It began to cajole us, complimenting us with our success at eluding it, and promising not to bite off our heads if we revealed ourselves. Then it began to berate and belittle us with insults in an attempt to persuade us to emerge, resigned to our fate. Then it lost its mind in a rage and stamped about, furious and frustrated.
The girl whom I was protecting gasped out loud, and the giant made a step toward us. Frantically and silently, I tried to calm the girl, but she struggled and then let out a piercing whistle. I thought we were doomed, and then my horse came running underneath the legs of the giant and toward us. I picked up the girl and ran beside the horse and caught its bridle. I slung us both onto the horse's back and we rode away at full gallop.
The giant was enraged, and it roared deafeningly. I could feel its thunderous footsteps slamming into the earth as it chased us. I slapped my horse on the neck, urging it to run faster, faster, faster! I glanced down and saw the horse's hooves cycling in a blur, churning up the rain soaked mud like an overpowered machine for digging furrows. I glanced back once and was dismayed to see the giant about a hundred meters behind us, and gaining close to ten meters with each stride.
About a thousand meters ahead was a long ridge that spanned the horizon from South to North, and the setting sun was shining brightly underneath the trailing edge of the storm front. I leaned forward and buried my face in the horse's mane, urging it to please go faster, and I could feel the arms of the little girl in my charge squeezing tightly around my midsection. There was a secret redoubt on the other side of that ridge, with a hospital buried underground... but I knew that we weren't going to make it.
Then I heard a voice shouting from ahead of us, and I shielded my eyes with my hand and saw, atop the ridge, the gesticulating figure of a man. He started down the hill at an angle roughly perpendicular and to the right of my path, running wildly and yelling:
"I've gottim, I've gottim! Go thataway! I've gottim away from ya, go thataway! Thataway!"
It was my best friend. I'd thought he had deserted us, but there he was, running down the slope of the ridge, and drawing the giant torward himself and away from us. I clenched my teeth and squeezed shut my eyes to stop the tears, and yanked the reins to the left and away from my friend as he ran on a suicide mission to lure the giant away from me and the girl.
We made it to the top of the ridge, where I paused to get a look and to find my bearings. Down below on the other side I could see the exposed roofs of the redoubt stretching away to the left and to the right. I spotted a trail that would take us down to the nearest roof, and before descending I turned around to get a brief bead on the giant.
I cried out with a wordless sob when I saw that the giant had already finished with my friend and was sprinting all out, covering at least twenty meters with each stride, and was nearly to the base of the ridge. When it arrived it paused and raised its massive hand to its brow, then bellowed like Hells Bells as it spotted us at the top, silhouetted against the sun. The giant immediately began sprinting uphill.
I spurred my horse down the trail. Upon reaching the roofline, we followed it North until another path appeared, leading us to ground level. I dismounted quickly, the girl in my arms, and dashed to the nearest entrance and inside. With the girl perched upon my back, I raced down hallways and past many people, each of them with a growing expression of perplexity as we ran by.
I was searching hastily for a stairway to the underground hospital when I heard a mighty crash just a few tens of meters behind us. I stopped and turned to see a giant foot thrust through a jagged hole in the roof of the redoubt and planted in the middle of the hall, followed immediately by the thunderous cacophony of a giant fist as it made another hole in the roof, much closer to myself and the girl.
I ran with the girl on my back as sections of the ceiling cracked and fell around us. I passed a woman holding a broom in mid sweep, stuck to the spot, her face frozen in horror at a vision that I didn't turn around to see. There was a spiral stairway ahead that led down, and I leaped toward it with all of my strength and tumbled down to the next floor, just as the roof collapsed above us.
I picked up the girl and, holding her in my arms, I continued downward.
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