Cheap Gothic Soap Opera, Part 73

He stretched and he was Toni, waking up from a deep sleep. He looked and there was black and white, and there was a car. The car was black and white, and he looked more, and the whole street was black and white, and he turned and he looked more, and the whole world was black and white and gray. They walked past him. The humans moved around on the streets and they moved and they looked at Toni and their faces were confused. Toni looked and he saw a hand. It was his hand, and it was in color, not black and white. He turned and looked, and his whole body was in color, and he looked, and the whole world was gray.

It pulled and it booked. The skin-book was in his hands booking. Though the humaning and pedestrianing shapes startled Toni saw a green fern ferning. Then he looked, and the wall was posting a sign, and it was signing a picture. And it pictured a big fern, and it said "ALL HAIL SYJEO, MASTER OF FERNS AND MANKIND NOW!"

And they were yelling "All humans report to the human section of the city before curfew." The sky smelled like trees; and ferns. It was known, and Toni knew, and the knowing was bad. "The ferns control the world," he was thinking. "I have to stop them," he was thinking.

He was thinking, and the ferns ferned and came. The ferns closened and threatened. Toni was running, and it dropped and booked, and it hit. The book was on the ground and it opened a page. He read and spoke the words, "Azathgora eidonaidon ziggurai lobomoptom aristei esteiset."

And the fire fired and the flames were red. The ferns ferned and they went away, and the people went away, and the world went away.


Toni got up from the grassy knoll on which he had fainted earlier and looked at the book with a dazed, stupefied confusion. "That was like reading The Sound and the Fury, he thought. He wondered if it could really be, if the future would really be one of ferns, and if he and this book were the only things standing in the way of a producor dystopia. He also remembered that it was the book's incantation that had saved him from most certain doom. Opening the book, he found that page, and saw that it was covered with bits of ash and speckles of blood. In horror, he felt his face, and there were small cuts...presumably from the ineffectual micro-bullets fired by the future fern-guns (which had yet to be truly adapted for human use, although they were highest effective against lobstors and oystors, which would actually rebel in 2056, causing a massive world war that would eventually be won by the genius of the ferns.)

(OP: Ben, January 26 2008)