Saint George slew a dragon and I dunged on the footpath outside my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, congratulating myself on the bravery of the feat. In keeping with my misbegotten understanding of the tradition, I set fire to the building ensuring both his incineration, and my future peace of mind. My satisfaction was both immediate and non-existent.
Miraculously, a bowling ball appeared in my right paw enabling me to bludgeon a passer-by and thereby acquire a cab fare home. Afterwards I lay on my bunk and considered the portrait of Pescennius Niger on my ceiling. Reclining with legs akimbo and hands interlaced behind my head, I observed with keen interest an army of toads as they strode in martial splendour across the vista of my mind’s eye. I marvelled at the knife edged creases of their blue uniform trousers, the gold braid on their epaulettes and cap peaks, the careful choreography of the drum beat with their goose-steps, and the majesty of their poise as they broke ranks and butchered the assembled throng of onlookers with perfectly executed sword thrusts.
Projected airborne by the anal sphincter of an unusually large camel, the tactical device followed a perfect parabola before lobbing into the midst of the toad army, all but vaporising it. Not content with gathering their scant and leathery remnants into his duffel bag, the idiot paused to light a cigar that ignited the methane from the camel’s bottom and set forth a chain reaction that engulfed the entire western hemisphere in in a vile and suffocating blanket of conflagrating fart. I shook my head in wonderment and resumed my journey…
Wandering through a cemetery armed with a chisel and mallet, I take samples from each headstone, and having acquired a sufficient quantity to fashion a crude pyramid, slash the throat of the revenant accompanying me. I bury him and carefully form a cairn over the grave. As though reluctant to sleep, the revenant snores loudly in the manner of a drunkard. Thin streams of smoke issue from the fissures of my construct. Without faith, I trust to physics, and soon the half-dead swine-babble subsides into nothingness. I lurch northward, guided neither by the fat moon nor anything else.
Having no idea of the length of my journey, I decide that I am tired and seek repose. Grey tendrils rise from the earth, unfasten my jeans, and masturbate me to the point of orgasm. As there can be no gratitude conveyed to ectoplasm without seeming an idiot, I stuff my dribbling tool back inside and proceed on my way. A stray mongrel falls in with me.
We are close now to the boundary of the bone yard, where I take the opportunity of defiling the first fresh and unsealed plot that we encounter. The dog seems thankful for the nose of the corpse that is still fresh and pink, and he obligingly refills the hole with vigorous kicks of his hind legs. I am gratified to be saved from a laborious task.
The lights of a small village beckon, and the mongrel is drawn there, bolting out of sight. I can track his course by the screams that accompany his murderous onslaughts on the slumbering townsfolk. Arriving at the village, I seek out the mongrel, stumbling occasionally over purple intestines scattered thither and nigh. I find him on the bed in the main chamber of a cottage, splattered in gore, carefully grooming his paws. I stroke his ears and kiss him gently. He gazes up at me with adoration.
There is a closet in the room. I open it. Within, folded neatly, is a coarse white linen garment. I strip and shroud myself. The garment feels abrasive on my skin, but comforting for all of that. The mongrel takes my right hand gently between his teeth, and leads me into the street. There is no noise: not the squawk of a parrot, nor the gibbering of a sloth, and the fact of my being dead arouses my curiosity…
I am dead. You are dead. She is dead. He is dead. They are dead. Merely, ‘tis yet to be…
writing as Mervyn Toogebba-Pysh