Toritoise

Owen Heidenreich

Adams

English 11

6 November 2013

Turtle Soup

     Tortoise awoke in his ugly house that morning, he went to his mediocre job as usual, and strangely after work he met Hare's lovely children in the evening. Tortoise gave them some candy, probably nasty hard candy straight from his grimy, scaly, cheating fingers. As the sun went down, he strolled to his old house filled with mold, a house that could never be sold, it’s not like he would have tried to sell it anyhow. As if he tried to do anything in his life at all, all he did was roll in his bed and think of grassy knolls and hope that his kids shells would not be harvested as bowls.

     This is how it happened. He thought he was the big cheese after he marketed his "slow and steady wins the race" T-shirts. His motivational CD's, his 80 page book, and his fifteen minutes of fame as an athlete/motivational public speaker created his false identity. Only the true witnesses of that race knew that Hare wasn't even ready, especially not the day after an all-night party with me. The cobblestone pathway town, the moonlit river pushing a watermill town, the grassy, light crisp breeze town, the horse and blacksmith and common folk town was made preposterously ugly by his malady presence as he left his workplace in the evening. As soon as he innocently gave those girls candy my plans for this ear-dragging reptilian begun. During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless night in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had seen Tortoise passing alone to his dreary house and at length I noticed he had found himself within view of his Tortoise house. In any other town, this case would easily be dismissed due to the severe lack of evidence, but luckily enough Hare and I practically run this town so whatever we say will happen. Perfect. His family was asleep, Hare’s daughters are in place, and the phony guards are ready to escort Tortoise away. Commotion at 3 AM awoke the whole town, two guards held him guilty for kidnapping. Perfect. The town hates him already because his silly crime woke them up at 3 AM, now his family questions his entire moral being because there is two young rabbits sleeping in an old turtles room. Soon they think they realize what is happening and he is despised for secretly kidnapping two young rabbits. All these charges piled on Tortoise simultaneously while his  nervous little jaw chattered off his stupid face. Ha ha, how could that desperate old pervert worm his way out of this one? There is no way Tortoise could persuade them to find him innocent after the police found two missing young rabbits in his home at midnight. The look on the whole town’s face was incredible, including Tortoise. Hare and I loved the way he was pleading for us to scrutinize the fact that he was innocent. Innocent... no creature that is so old and so detrimental to life’s progression deserves to live. He thought he supported the town with his aimless life. I cannot believe he had deceived the town so well; they loved their honest Tortoise when they were giving him hugs and saying, "he isn't no bug, and he never shoves", nice guy at the pub prancing around sipping tea, that putrid puss bragging continuously about his hard earned victory. They loved their obsequious Tortoise, their willing-to-help-you-with-anything- useless friend. I will never forget when I observed through my eye and saw his feet and arms being dragged by the pretend, "serve-and-protect" Riverwood Village Guards. His legs carved furrows in the dirt, his head bounced and his limbs bumped over the cobblestone pathway all the way through the town and beyond the Riverwood gates. The distance between Him and I grew, and so did my beloved excitement for his unfortunate future.   Suddenly his green body blended with the trees as if he was swallowed by a ravenously drooling demon; and no longer could the town see him. I continued watching this free show that I had anticipated for years, I watched the details of how Tortoise’s head bobbed, the way his eye brows parted and his mouth opened into a frown. With each painful inch where he was dragged through the forest, the trees became denser. And denser. They dragged him until they came upon a wall of tightly planted trees. A door was cut from this strange wall and the Riverwood imposter guards threw him in this mysterious room and stopped there.

     This unnatural 12 feet wide yet infinitely long area of open space tricked his mind like looking at the reflection of another mirror. The walls of this long stretch consisted of bare trees planted together so densely that only bugs could fit through. The door separating him from the natural world shut and locked; the only direction to venture would be a treacherous north. My voice chattered into his head like toy story dentures.
     "Keep walking. Your family might burn, the family that loathed you before dawn and is now depending their life on you as the scorching sun rises."
Stringy twig tree arms emerged from the ground with a wood crackling and leave shuffling noise. Clumps of dirt and grass fell from my monster puppet hand as I flipped the Tortoise on his shell. Tortoise’s eyebrows contracted and he desperately swung his arms. My gigantic tree monster spun him like a spinning top and shoved him forward into the extended trek of trees. My monster retreated back into the ground with the same timber noise. Streaks of green and brown and black colors raced across Tortoise’s eyes as he spun deeper into Hare’s trap. As Tortoise’s velocity terminated, my tree monster surfaced again and aggressively flipped him back onto his dizzy feet. He stumbled with an artificial stupor.  The lines of color slowly danced around his eyes as they tried to work together to reform Tortoises vision. At least something wants to help him. Motivated to save his family, he continued hiking forward as his eyes tried and tried and tried to balance him. Tortoise eventually regained focus, and his body convulsed when he realized this stretch of repeating trees goes for infinity, he stared into this path of a repeating trees and it stretched his mind like a tunnel. Spiders and wasps climbed from the ground and hung from the branches and trickled down his sensitive neck and arms and he began squealing with a tiny weak voice. Poor, powerless waste of space. His face arched and contorted, his own thoughts became a desperate chase for the wind. His exhaustion reached a new level. I heard him cursing Hare in his mind so I felt that I needed to communicate to Tortoise. I controlled Hare's body so I could speak through the audio system.
     "Your family knows you want to give up on them, I cursed them so they can only hear your suffering thoughts, don't be tempted to think!"
His skin swelled and inflated, his heroic feet trudged forward like a scared young adult going to war. His stressed muscles winced as he felt the dispersed microscopic upon his skin. Dead wasps without stingers left a trail behind him and spiders crawled on him and irritated the bee stingers. My tree monster appeared again in a phantom form. Phantom vexed Tortoise’s senses with confusion and fear and dirt fell from its woody grim reaper physique. Phantom thrusted his tree hand at Tortoise and a violent wind caked his body in dirt. As the dust cleared from Tortoise’s vision, he was beckoned to a strange vial and was forced to drink. Tortoise felt the cool, wet liquid replenish his body but his eyes scattered once more and his minds infrastructure collapsed into a pool of colors. I telekinetically forced his feet to continue walking to the final destination while his mind shrieked and vomited hues that he could never grasp in a regular state of consciousness. The colors approached violently at him as fast as Hare, but they passed him so he was left alone with the darkness of his own mind. He gazed into this darkness because his tormented eyes were paralyzed yet his feet continued to gait, a sound like a birds panicking wings invaded his ears. He saw the sound’s color and then I forced him to gain consciousness again so he could see Hare extremely far away at the finish line standing next to what seemed to be a boiling pot of water that could possibly fit an entire family.

     His confused and slightly blind mind submerged into an emotional ocean as his feet walked forward and shuddered. The blurred image of Hare at the end of the infinite tree pathway taunted Tortoise. The thought of quitting, and the thought of abandoning his family’s needs tempted him. He then remembered that his current thoughts were being heard by all of his family and at that same instant he realized how unwise he was for thinking he could abandon his family even though the only direction is forward. His chaotic yet slow paced mind flooded with guilt because of his past cynicism, and doubts and fears and failed endeavors and bitterness crowded his mind like a dream where you're fighting someone and you punch as hard as possible but your punches feel soft and powerless. That was all he was. The harder he tried the slower he became, that's all Tortoise really was. A slow try-hard who couldn’t amount to anything. He remembered why he was there in the first place, and how unfair and confused he was. He remembered his family's and the town's hatred towards him. He remembered the way he was dragged through the city and beyond the gates into this demonic trap. He remembered the revolting way Hare used his own daughters to frame Tortoise for this fake crime of kidnapping. And finally he remembered his love for his family. He regained consciousness and he was instantly sober as he approached the finish line. He saw them looking back at him, and he saw them being forced to painfully watch their Dad struggle to the finish line. For what? Tortoise approached Hare's smiling face and Tortoise glanced at the pot. The realization of  the  sentimental connection to his family in the boiling pot haunted him. Three screaming Tortoises stared back at him as Tortoise dropped into his own puddle of sweat.

“Twenty four hours later and just in time for breakfast.” Hare said. “Fresh turtle soup.”