Green ManA Story by tinflea The Green Man walks into the machine.
The immortal trickster. The jester. Telling the kings of the world hard truths in every joke. He smiled and did a cartwheel. He smiled and did another one. Round his little room he cartwheeled. When cartwheeling bored him he stood on his head. Perfectly balanced. Smiling, always smiling. He was the happiest man alive. Happy as a clam. Standing on his head made him happy. Cartwheeling too. And the joke he was preparing. 'Ha ha' he thought. Just a few words and a look to the guard, and his joke would be free. From the guard to the world! His gift of laughter. A gift to rival that of his good friend the Dancing God. Oh, how vexed they were at his good friend! But knowing that only made him happier. "Ha ha."
---------------------------------------------------------------- How often did the swallows fly round the dead tree in the middle of the old garden? Fluttering about as the black cat sat and read the morning paper proclaiming the sorrows of a world caught in a time loop--zip!--and back we go again. Now the cat is in his living room one year prior with another paper, and news of an accident on the continent. Oh wells, he says to himself. Cat justice will surely be meted out to the ones who threw the monkey's wrench into the machine that makes everything possible. And who made that machine wondered that cheerful black cat, as he sipped his coffee and continued to read. Surely it was the work of the Great Green God of Goodness, who was neither great, green, a god nor good. He was actually a short, fat, bald, hairy, perpetually out of breath, retired insurance claims adjuster who daydreamed of changing the world with a machine he had no way of knowing how to build. He would draw on yellow pad paper crude pictures, with a childish understanding of mechanics, physics and science in general. The scale would continue to rise, gears, wheels, and electric circuits dotted its surfaces. A juvenile construction. Little did he know, all the while he sketched and planned, he was being minutely observed by a coven of witches, all with advanced degrees in theoretical physics. They would stand peering into their cauldrons, cackling with glee as he jotted down his ideas and drafted his plans. They would use him and his plans, just like they had used so many others before him, like the tired old librarian pottering about his library, opening and closing old, dusty books, dreaming of one day finding the note that She had left in one of the books. Every day he would wake at 6am and make his way over to his library. He would spend the entire day flipping through page after mouldy page(he didn't have a dehumidifier), hoping beyong all hope that the next book he picked up would reveal that one, precious note. Her final words to him. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The dancing plague had struck the village, one more victum to that virulent disease. The children all danced happily. Mothers and fathers, too. Even the animals joined in, for the most part. A few people who hadn't been affected simply stood round wondering what was happening and one old woman was hitting her son with a big wooden spoon. He just kept on dancing to the beat in his head. The Green Man stood in the shadows of a stone house. He smiled because he liked the dancing. He frowned because of his smiling. These poor people would dance until they dropped from exhaustion. If they recovered, up they would jump to keep on dancing until they dropped again. And again and again until they died. There was nothing the Green Man could do. He watched for a while longer then he made his way out of the village. He walked parallel to the road, keeping an eye out for trouble. He didn't belong here, but what could he do? The people of this country would be shocked to see his green skin. Maybe some would be angry and try to hurt him. He wore no clothes. That was against the customs here he thought. He saw no naked people. Everyone wore clothes, even when they slept. He had spied on the people of the village the night before. He was quiet, and stealthy, and careful. It was past noon and the sun was feeding him. He loved this big yellow sun. He felt strong. A train was passing by somewhere, he heard it and wondered what it was. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't think much of it at first. Everyone was going on and on about this amazing machine and when I finally got a look at it I was shocked at how underwhelming it was. It was just a big metal box with wires hanging all over it, swicthes connected to nothing, various whistles that made no sounds; basically it looked like a big mess a kid would have made if he poured glue on something and threw lots of random junk on it. It had two doors opposite of each other. John smiled knowingly when we finally were able to examine it, he thought it was a joke they cooked up to test us somehow. In he walked, and out the other door walked a 6ft rooster. That was unexpected. What the hell happened? Did the machine turn John into a rooster? Was John vaporized and replaced with a rooster? Nothing about the machine made any sense. It wasn't powered by anything. The lights that were scattered over its surface never lit up. We spent weeks examining it without learning anything at all. No one dares enter it. Of course, we've started to let our guard down a bit. Alice wanted to run some tests. It was decided we would shove the 6ft rooster into the machine and see if we'd have John returned to us. Very scientific. Now that rooster had every conceivable test done to it. All we learned was that it was indeed a rooster. A very big rooster. Luckily, the rooster was cooperative. It never made a fuss. It didn't even crow. Well, in the rooster went. The door was closed. A moment later the opposite one was opened. And then, Ta-Da! Nothing! Not even a feather. This was all very exciting and horrifying at the same time. More experiments were proposed. Both doors were left open. Alice, broomstick in hand, pushed Henry's fish bowl, with its one golden occupant, into the center of the machine. We all watched in great anticipation until nothing at all happened. We got bored pretty quickly. Nothing continued to happen for another 10 minutes before it was decided to close one of the doors. Another 10 minutes and the other door was closed. We waited a few moments before opening them again. Progress! The fish was gone, but the bowl remained. Curiouser and curiouser! Alice beamed with triumph. "Both doors must be closed!" Well, that was clear enough I thought, but where are John, the rooster and Henry's fish? ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Dancing God sat naked in a corner of his cell. His long, dark, oily hair hung down to the floor obscuring his face. He didn't smile anymore. He didn't sing. And he never danced. His cell was too small, and they kept his left foot locked in a lead boot. It had strange markings etched into it; he didn't know what they meant. Every day he wept. Mr.Coco would come to see him every now and then, but the Dancing God never spoke. He knew his friend was here somewhere, down below. They had a special room for his friend. He hoped he was well. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The man tilted his head slightly and looked at his colleague over the rims of his glasses. "Really? Did you look at this? 'Alucard'? That's what he wrote?" His colleague smiled and said nothing. "Five hundred years old and that's the best he could come up with? I mean, whats the point even." They sat in silence. The man looked at the file. "Well, we've got him now. Locked up nice and tight." His colleague smirked and said, "Too bad you can't say the same of the Green Man." "The Green Man, the Green Man, always the Green Man with you. So he got away, so he used the machine, so we have no idea where he went. Even if he made it to the past, we'll find him. It couldn't have been more than a hundred years. So what. Someone will find something somewhere about a green man and then we'll know. Anyways, the Green Man isn't even dangerous and shouldn't have been here in the first place. Did you ever talk to him?" "Just once," his colleague replied happily. "He certainly seemed pleasant enough." "Yes, well, he is very pleasant. They had no reason to bring him here. He never hurt anyone. He's just green, that's all. He has a family you know." "He'll have a family." "That's right." ---------------------------------------------------------------- "Look at them. They were so proud. They thought no one knew." The director stood in his office looking through the glass wall at the three witches below being put into their separate cells. "No one did know sir." The director thought for a moment. He pulled on his yellow velvet gloves, making them fit more tightly. "That's not important. Why are you always a stickler? Let me have my little bit of fun, alright?" Mr. Coco bowed his head slightly. "Of course sir. But let's not get carried away." "Yes, we didn't know, but the dice did. The dice gave us their coordinates. The dice hasn't been wrong yet. I told you the dice was a good investment. We didn't use too many resouces, did we? Always going on about resources. We're not strapped for cash you know. We can afford to splurge once in a while." The director was working himself up and beginning to look agitated. Mr. Coco soothingly reassured the director that it was indeed a good investment, and that it has already paid for itself twice over. Mr. Coco placed a file on the director's desk. The year was 2020. They made the decision when they built this facilty to keep it as low tech as possible. No computers -- only typewriters, pencils and pens. No smartphones. No tablets. Nothing that could be accessed from the outside. Mr. Coco appreciated the simpler things. He liked the smell of the paper. He liked working with the director, who, despite some of his flaws, he admired and respected. The dice did work, but they were a relic, and Mr. Coco didn't trust any of the relics they had stored away. Mr. Coco smiled and looked at the rust colored fur covering his body. He was a relic too, actually. Plucked from the past. All he remembered was the green light, pulsating across the plain. When he got too near--zap! He found himself far from home. He lived in strange woods for a while, until the director's men found him. No dice needed for that. He wasn't trying to hide. He remembered being called a 'curiousity'. He liked that. Of course, he had no idea what that meant at the time. But, a few injections and lots of study later, here he was: Mr. Coco! Assistant and friend of Director Thomas. Working side by side, aquiring unusual artifacts, researching this and that, and of course, capturing dangerous beings. The witches were a welcome addition to their collection, but the machine that came with them, that was the real prize. It was stored in it's own warehouse. Their researchers were no doubt salivating at the thought of opening it up and discovering it's secrets. Mr.Coco approached the glass window and looked down at the three of them. They each occupied a cell opposite the director's office. Director Thomas liked to watch his new guests. They were not too pleased about their situation. All three of them were banging on the glass walls of their cells. They looked a little ridiculous with their shaved heads and orange overalls the director had got in bulk from a prison which had shut down. He was always trying to save money on the small things. Mr.Coco would go and talk to them eventually, after a few weeks when they had settled down. He would go and sit and listen to whatever they had to say, then he would patiently write it all down. He listened to all the guests who cared to talk. He was curious about their lives, their motivations, their ambitions. He wondered about their families, their history, everything really. The director was always interested in reading Mr. Coco's files. He called them "insightful" and "marvelous". While staring out at the witches, Mr. Coco thought of his friend, the Green Man. © 2017 tinfleaReviews
|
Stats
302 Views
3 Reviews  Last Updated on August 25, 2017 Author
|
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing