The Brief Awakening of Dawn and Death 4

You may be wondering how we will manage to continue this story. Morphinus Creekenstein IV has spontaneously imploded. No man can be rejuvenated after such a severe death.

But, of course, dear Morphinus never was a man. She was a woman (the kind of extremely odd woman who gives birth to father-less bears), and then a toucan.

I can confirm for you now that Morphinus will be alive and well, all in good time. But, in order to continue the story, we must enter the mind of another, seeing as Morphinus’ is inactive.

So, for the time being, we will enter the mind of Morphinus’ beloved hippo, Loofentyle, who, if you remember, we left crashed into that rock that Morphinus made him charge into because she was under the deluded impression that he was her long lost brother.

***

I had been lying here for hours.

I was playing dead, as I’ve heard many other members of the animal kingdom tend to, in order to avoid that mental bird. What the hell was it doing?! It had got stuck in the ground (please don’t ask me how), and when I pulled it out, it just leapt on me and charged me right into a freaking rock! What in the name of Hippopotameniumolarythe (the hippo God) was it thinking?! Stranger than that, the guy who came and got me was made out of chocolate milk! He seemed a nice chap, though. He was one of those rare human beings (and other than the chocolate milk, I think he was humanoid enough to be considered one) who understood that they were not the higher or superior beings just because they had technology and skyscrapers and all kinds of rubbish.

Anyway, the general big-headedness of humans isn’t important. What’s important is the story.

So, I had playing dead for hours, and had finally decided it was safe. I stood up and yawned.
God, it was miles away back to my muddy hole...
I began trekking, only to be interrupted by a huge swarm of extremely angry pixies.

“Hey, hippopotamus, have you seen a toucan around here?” one yelled at me. Oh, Christ, not more about this stupid bird...
“Yes, it was right with its head shoved into the ground, but then it went off.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, I was playing dead at the time.”
“Why? You’re a hippo!”
“Don’t worry about it...”
“Oh well. Gang, we’re splitting up!”

He then proceeded to put them into groups and send them off into different directions. They all flew off in a graceful formation, and I turned back to my trekking. When I turned around, I was met by the oddly torturous gaze of a remaining pixie. I would have asked what he was doing, but for such a small creature he was strangely petrifying, and I could not speak. His lips slowly pulled up at the corners of his mouth, and gradually into a huge, wicked grin. The next thing I saw was darkness. Cold, black nothingness.

I opened my eyes. The sight I saw almost made me cry. It was all too much. What happened to the days when I did nothing but wallow all day? Who knows, but they were gone now. And I had a horrible, stabbing feeling that it was for good.
I was in a strange, underground cavern. The place was jam-packed with sheep, and in front of me was a vast stage, with two other sheep on it. They were all looking at me like I shouldn’t be there, and, believe me, I agreed.
“Erm...” I said, struggling for words. What did you say in a situation like this? “Hi...?”
The sheep just looked at each other like they didn’t understand a word I said. The two on stage shrugged at each other, and then nodded at a sheep in the corner on a piano, who I hadn’t noticed before.

Dun dun de dun!

“I say, I say, I say, why do ducklings walk softly?”

“’Cause they can’t walk hardly!”

“Ha ha ha ha!”

Dun dun!

Oh, God, what the bloody hell was that supposed to be? This was too weird, and it had pushed me over the edge. I burst into tears at the stress of it all. A nearby sheep patted me comfortingly on shoulder, but I shrugged him off.

“Look, I don’t know where I am, what I’m doing here, or how I got here,” I said, desperately. “But showing me a terrible joke masquerading as a play really isn’t going to help, so, please, just tell me where I am and direct me to the exit.”

They said nothing for a very, very long time. They just stared and watched me weep.

This went on for about ten minutes, until someone in the back yelled “I just met your sister!” which made me cry harder. I didn’t even have a sister.

Another five minutes passed. Then, a light of ominous green lit up the room. Each and every one of the sheep raised their arms straight up in the air, and cried a high-pitched, holy-sounding “Ah!” noise in unison. They took slow, mysterious steps towards each other, and formed a perfectly shaped circle together. Their circle turned around me, and every step they took was heavier than the last.

“Ah!” they chorused once more, louder than the last time.

“Ah!” the sheep chimed again. They began a rhythm.

“Ah!”

“Ah!”

Their pace began to pick up.

“Ah!”

“Ah!”

I heard machinery above me begin to whirr, then the ceiling opened up, and a bright light came down from outside the hideout and lit up the centre of the room. A shiny, silver, mechanical chair was lowered through the hole and placed in the middle of the sheep’s circle. Whatever it was that was sitting in the chair spun around to face me. He was wearing a cloak. Not the typical black kind you’d expect, but one made of plasterceine. He wore a wooden motorcycle helmet (which seemed a little pointless as wood wouldn’t do much good in a crash, but there you go) over his head, covering all his features, and neon purple leather boots. You couldn’t tell anything else about him because of the plasterceine cloak and motorcycle helmet. He sat facing me for a long time, and even though his face was covered, I knew he was glaring at me. I don’t know how, he just seemed the type. He leaned towards me very slowly, until his face was almost touching mine.

“What’s been troubling you, friend?” he asked in a low whisper. It took me a while to form a reply, not because he looked in any way frightening, but because he was so strange he had me frozen in total bemused disorientation.

“U-um...” I murmured weekly, too bewildered to form a reply just yet.
“Well?” he prompted.

Eventually, the story of the chocolate milk man, the toucan, and the grinning pixie had been told. The creepy dude found it interesting. I found it disturbing, and that’s saying something ‘cause it’s my story.
“I see,” the helmeted one said wisely. “Now, this toucan you speak of... she has visited our lair as well as you. She was sitting in the very same chair that you are sitting in now.”
I waited for him to continue. “Cool,” I replied, eventually. I wasn’t really sure what point he was trying to make by telling me that.
“She imploded, though,” he continued. “It was quite a shock, really.”
“How did that happen?” I asked him, completely out of courtesy and not curiosity. I didn’t care in the slightest what happened to that bird, especially since I wasn’t sure this was a true story.
“We don’t know,” he sighed, sadness in his tone. “We showed her our performance, then she stared at us in awe for a moment or two, then got a computer out of nowhere somehow, and then, a minute later, just like that, she imploded.”
Having decided that there was no way this was a true story, I decided to change the topic. “I’m sorry, but who are you?” I asked.
“Ah, I am Sir Grinkledorf, and these are my Bulgarian minions.”
“What, the sheep?”
“Indeed, young friend, indeed.”
“Okay...” I muttered, having heard enough from this creep. “Could you tell me how to get out of here, please?”
“Have patience, friend, you will be able to leave in good time,” he said, as if this was a helpful thing to be saying. “But, for now, we are in dire need of your help.”
My help? What could they possibly need my help with? They didn’t even know I existed five minutes ago. I just stared back at him, without the strength to actually say anything.
“The imploded toucan we mentioned,” he began to explain. “We need her back.”
That almost made the tears start pouring again. “Why?” I whined miserably.
“She’s taken our children hostage, you see,” he elaborated. “She said so herself. She said she’d release them if we performed Pygmalion for her, but we didn’t know that play, so we showed her our duckling thing, and, as you already know, she imploded. We now have no way of rescuing the beloved fruit of our slightly less beloved loins.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?”
“Wish for her to come back,” he replied. “We believe that hippos have a magical wish power that no other creature possesses.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, mate, but you’re wrong,” I told him. “There’s no way I can revive an imploded toucan with wistfulness and hope.”
“Just try. How much of your time will it take up?” he pointed out. “Besides, after that, you can go.”
With a deep sigh, I closed my eyes and wished the toucan would un-implode and reappear on Earth. When I opened my eyes, there she was, looking as healthy as when she leapt on me. She cawed triumphantly, then made her way over to me and pecked me hard. It was a peck of affection, for sure, but it still hurt. It would have annoyed me, but I was still amazed by the revelation that I could revive the dead by wishing that they would revive themselves.

“Morphinus Creekenstein IV,” cried Sir Grinkledorf, opening his arms in a welcoming gesture. “Will you release our children now? Or was our play unsatisfactory?”
She gave a guilty look that said that she didn’t really have their children.
“Ah, Morphinus,” he said, bursting with laughter. “You always were quite the prankster!”
The whole room filled with laughter.

“Ha ha ha...” I laughed, not really finding it funny. “Can I go now?”

The End