So you’re out for a countryside stroll, basking in the warm sun and fresh air. You stop to pick a few flowers for the new vase in the kitchen. You spot a small daisy, perfectly shaped and white as cream, which you know would look lovely tucked behind your wife’s ear. And as you bend down to pluck it from the earth, a two-foot-tall, 40-pound rat leaps from the nearby bushes and chews a large hole in your face.
You chase the thing away and spend the next month shuttling between the hospital and the plastic surgeon, who tells you matter-of-factly that a nose isn’t really necessary anyway. Still haunted by the attack, you acquire a fearsome companion — a young fire-breathing dragon — and, on doctor’s orders, head to the coast to convalesce. You string up a fishing pole and park your chair on the dock, cold beverage in hand and little dragon at your side. The rising sun only sweetens your bliss, until something terribly strong takes your bait and yanks the pole from your hands. You see something streak through the water toward you, and then you’re in the water, debris all around, the dock shattered and gone, a monstrous serpent towering 20 feet above. You pass out, to wake hours later on the shore, beside the half-eaten and fly-covered carcass of your fiery little pal. For once you’re thankful you no longer have a nose.
Six years later. You’ve barricaded yourself and your family in an underground lab, where you work to create the ultimate fighting monster. With such a creature under your control, you’ll never be afraid or threatened again. Inspired by The Fly, you merge flesh with machine and create tortured beasts which even Dr. Moreau would have called twisted. Predictably, they turn on you, and you flee, leaving your wife and children to their gruesome fates.
You return to your old home, in your old town. It’s where you were happiest. The house is empty now, full of dust and dead dreams. The vase still sits barren on the kitchen table. In it you leave a small white daisy, and then you walk deep into the countryside to a welcome death.
“Yo, you remember that vegan protestor from last week?”
“Oh yeah, sure. She looked kind of hungry, so I took a taco salad out to her. She gave me this appalled look at first and was gonna slap me with her ANIMALS DON’T EAT US, NOT VERY OFTEN ANYWAY sign, but when I told her almost all our stuff is ‘clean,’ she understood. She screams at people outside KFC now.”
“What if she’s right? About being a vegan or vegetarian, I mean.”
“Dude, man has been eating animals for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s totally natural. What’s so wrong about that?”
“But what if some aliens came to Earth—”
“It’s possible to do that eardrum-popping palm slap thing to yourself, right? We’ll find out shortly, in any case.”
“No, listen, really. What if some aliens came to Earth and started harvesting us? Like, if our species became a new intergalactic delicacy that these super-advanced alien races couldn’t get enough of. And so their ships set up in the atmosphere and drop down these, like, vacuum cleaner things. Suck up thousands of people an hour. It’s like Deadliest Catch, but we’re the crabs.”
“At least you’d survive. They throw back the scrawny unappetizing ones, right?”
“Hardy-har-har. I’m being serious here. How is that different from us eating animals? We catch them and eat them, whether they’re happy about it or not. Maybe cows are saying, ‘Please don’t eat me, I really rather like living, kind sir, so just put down the cleaver and we’ll discuss this quarrel of yours like civilized folk, really I mean it, no, don’t, please, oh heavens, THINK OF MY CHILDREN!’ when they moo. How do we know?”
“You’re reaching, man. They’re just animals, there for the taking. Dumb and practically mindless, all of them. They eat and poop and squeeze out babies once in a while. There’s nothing special about ‘em.”
“But, like, it’s all relative. A super-advanced alien race could say the same about us. To galaxy-touring aliens, we’re closer to amoebas than to them.”
“Look, there’s a cutoff, though. Once you reach a certain level of intelligence, it’d just be wrong to harvest a species like that. You’d hope the aliens would have super-advanced morals, too.”
“And humans are conveniently above the threshold, while other animals are not.”
“Well, sure. Pigs didn’t build the frickin’ iPad, yo, that thing is so slick.”
“But is it, like, fair to judge an animal by human standards?”
“…”
“Does your head hurt too?”
“Couldn’t these aliens just clone us or grow our tissue on a stick or something?”
“My guess is that the alien corporate bigwigs got it banned, to keep supply scarce and prices real high. It is a delicacy, after all. Plus the yuppies that buy the stuff would never tolerate anything less than all-natural, free-range, totally-happy human.”
“Why do you even care about all this? You’re not a vegan.”
“I tried to give it up, but meat just tastes so good, you know?”
“I’ll try to remember that while the aliens eat me. A point of pride, even. ‘Can’t blame you,’ I’ll say while one nibbles on my leg. ‘If I’d known I was this delicious, I’d have eaten me, too.’ Hey, you think there’s ever been a suicide by cannibalism?”
“That’s sort of what death by starvation is, when you think about it. Happens all the time.”
“…”
“…”
“Yeah, well, just be thankful and eat the rest of that chalupa before I do.”
I heard him, just barely, calling from amid a pile of the dead. His legs were gone, his arms in tatters, and he had not even the strength to open his eyes.
Clutching the trembling remains of a hand, I leaned in close. There was nothing to be done but provide a little comfort and carry on the final words of this dying warrior.
They came slowly, the words, raspy and desiccated between woeful moans.
“We have dealt a terrible blow, but … there is …” — whispers now — “another … crystal shard.”
And then death took him, and it would soon claim our world as well, unless someone among us could find the shard and restore THE DARK CRYSTAL.
My head’s full of lots of really goofy ideas, little scraps of whimsy and wild hypothetical that pop into my head throughout the day and, most commonly, as I drift off to sleep. I always keep a pen and notebook near me to capture them, no matter how dumb. (See: some recent tweets.)
So I decided to do something with those scraps. Every weekday (most, anyway) since April I’ve set aside 30 minutes to write something silly. Most of my daily tales aren’t great, but sometimes I write something clever. And it’s a fun writing exercise, if nothing else. Rather than let the good ones collect figurative dust on my hard drive, I’m going to start posting them here, maybe weekly.
Expect the first peek into my Daily Tale project tomorrow.