The
days following his arrival could be counted on one hand. He
was something new, a virgin to the foreign customs and understandings
of this decidedly different place. He spoke of dreams to the people.
They were dreams of fish that spoke in song. He told them
of his home world where the water fell upward and children were
born from the Faushisa, the vast cocoon womb they recognized as
the chief miracle of interplanetary breeding. This cyclops
had breathed new life into a breathless collective, leaving them
breathless still with his breathtaking presence, but renewed with
unyielding, selfish life. Still, he furnished his fruits for
those people who had given themselves unto him.
The cyclops laid with the girls of the establishment, birthing for
each of them flowers the color of fire and water, some bearing petals
for both. He bore for them umbrella-shaped flowers, flowers
that talked, flowers that swam and flowers that barked like dogs
and some that purred like kittens. There were flowers that chirped
like birds and flowers that roared like bears to send them back
into his arms again. All this he gave to them.
The day came when this cyclops was asked of a name. He didn’t
understand the question, as he seldom spoke outside of dream talk.
He simply granted them his unpenetrable slit of a mouth's choice
of a smile, and said, "Whoo?"
And so the people did call him Whoo, and came bearing instruments
with uneven sets of strings and honey lotion for his jangled nerves.
He played on the carp harp and whistled on the scintillaphone and
sent his passions through the barebacked log drums. At one
point, he was approached about his bleeding hands, and he serenaded
the approacher with a spur-of-the-moment rondo that dealt with the
changing hands of fate. The people did enjoy this cyclops'
passionate compositions, but soon their expectations became more
vehement, and, to a fine point, deprecative.
They asked him to remove his garments often. He complied,
for his love for them was strong. The citizens placed him
in intentionally compromising positions and situations. He
was approached by a fat and balding ranger, dressed as a pixilated
virgin girl, ready for the taking. Whoo was not comfortable
with such things, but humored those people who had found him on
their shores and taken him in.
Sentries brought up arrest charges on him often, just to see his
body exposed to vulnerability, sets of branding stocks locked around
his arms and legs. Sometimes, they would kick his backside
and laugh. Immediately afterwards they would ask of his well
being, as if it were all a well intentioned game. They watched
as Whoo used their bathrooms, and watched as he bathed, and threw
slop on him to see him bathe once more.
The cyclops Whoo, who once had been Giver of the Light, had now
been reduced to nothing more than a sideshow act. The people
indulged in every new depravity they could think up. They
would tie his neck in a noose and kick the stool from under him,
to see who would reach him in time. And it became something
of a song; A tragedy of opulent majesty corrupted by the swilling
of dank liquor and the squelching of foamy lacquer. The people
would brainstorm for hours on end, neglecting their duties and leaving
the town open to illnesses of all kinds. They would speak
to Whoo of their own dreams, each one more salacious than the next.
Relief and rescue soon came to Whoo. He rested on a thick
rug, embedded with amethysts and opals. He was somewhat royalty,
but no more was he a king than the fox with a triplet of tails that
jumped through hoops. He felt a momentary distraction and
he found he was frustrated, for the love the people had once begged
for was very seldom required of him now. Whoo heard a rapping
upon his door, and his singular eye came open, sweat beading snake-like
down his sandy face. The door was answered in time.
He was shivering with fright. He no longer aimed to please
these insane people. But this was not one of the beached humans.
It was a female. Of this Whoo was absolutely sure. She
seemed familiar to him, like an infallible warmth in the midst of
an Arctic storm. "I'm coming to take you home",
she said. They came into the light of the moon, and Whoo looked
upon her face, beholding a winsome and all too unattainable beauty.
He glimpsed one lone eye in the center of her complexion.
Hers bent toward the right, while his own curved to the left. In
that moment, Whoo felt completion, and a sense of peace. All
too soon, their mutual glances were interrupted by cries of "He's
getting away" and "Who is she?" The female
cyclops took his hand in hers. The wrinkles in her palm were
few, and she seemed of a more indomitable will than Whoo.
The two made beelines around those who tried to encircle the cyclopean
pair. They darted up the hill, avoiding soil and sand when possible.
They would leave no foot steps and no traces, for they were
not grounded in the bodies, like these vain and cruel beings.
They would fly free, whatever the cost.
Whoo and his female companion reached the end of a winding structure
which overlooked the ocean. Yes. The ocean. That
dark dream of swirling dragon spray was their only option now.
Each eye met the other, and they understood. They leaped from
the tower that supported them. They leaped from the bodies
that restricted them. Into the abyss.
That same ocean that had spat them up at conveniently separate times
had now swallowed them once more. The journey would ask much
of them. And as they glided over and through that ancient
aquatic fabric, they knew that soon they would be divulged and released
onto a much distant shore. And that shore would be friendlier,
they knew. Much friendlier.
