Savage is the Dawn

SHE

Sila began to cough without end. Rook brought him some water, but he could not yet take it. His words had filled a silence broken only by the clipping of flesh and the spurt of punctured organs. We were down to the last two of Gurrerra's victims when Sila took a turn for the worse. Clearly, his story had taken a weighted toll upon his spirit. Every word was a new light upon his eye. This mix of music, melody and memories had taken his voice as his voice had taken us.

Even from the first story that I heard him speak, I knew Sila was not one of those creatures that are the playthings of time. Grief, passion, sorrow, elation mixed in his soul, in his whole soul I tell you! And not a day nor a year nor a lifetime, made any of his former sentiments the least bit evanescent! It was as if he were the oils of my long lost paints and should the golds of youth mix with the blues of sorrows, then he ran green and would never be un~green again... in the same way the reds of the blood, that he'd spilled, once added to that frightful mixture, turned him black and hollow and he could never be un~blackened again. The Sila's soul that lay wheezing before us, was as black as a streak of tar!

"That's quite the epic, Sila. I fear to know how you got back here." I whispered.

"For the sake of my nerves and the nerves I'm operating on, I can't handle anymore of these types of stories." Laurence let out a deep laborious sigh.

"Ok, ok... let's have some jokes after that. Cleanse the pallet, if you will." I heard the audible clasp of Kip's forceps on tiny loops of tissue. He paused and then added "Ok, I got one. There' this kid... about eighteen. Has his first girlfriend. She tells him, 'look, I like you. I want to take your virginity... but we have to do this right, you have to meet my parents first, come to dinner tonight, meet them and we'll go park a car afterwards."

Kip threw away another brown ball of cotton, he went on,

"Kid freaks out, he's all excited before he realizes he's got some work to do. So he goes to the pharmacy and asks the pharmacist for lube and some condoms. In their dialog, he breaks down about this being his first time. The pharmacist smiles, puts his hand on the kid's shoulder and bros-down with him for a solid hour, tells him how to do it right, how to do it safe.

Kid goes to dinner that night. Girl brings him in, sits him down at the dinner table and the father asks the kid to start praying. The boy prays for five minutes, then he goes on for ten minutes. After fifteen minutes the girl kicks him under the table and whispers, 'I had no idea you were so religious.' Kid whispers back, 'I had no idea your dad was a pharmacist.'"

"Ha! Got 'em!" Laurence was smiling under his mask. You can always tell by the lines next to the eyes.

"Alright, I've heard one..." I said, "A man moves to Canada, buys the big house. One day a bear climbs up on the roof and won't shew. Guy calls a guy, best in the business. Says, 'Hey, got a bear up on the roof, won't come down.' 'That's my speci-ality,' says the guy... Bear remover shows up the next day in an old beat-em-up pickup truck. In that truck, there's a big cage with a pitbull slobbering in the back, there's a ladder on the roof. Guy gets out of the truck with a baseball bat and a shotgun. 'What's the meaning of all this?' asks the homeowner eyeing the bear up on top of the roof. 'This ladder is so I can climb the roof, this baseball bat is so I can knock the bear off this roof, and this dog is specifically trained to grab whatever comes off that roof by the ball-sack and hold it steady till we can get it into the cage.' 'That's all fine and dandy, but what is that shotgun for?' Bear remover throws the homeowner the shotgun. 'That's for you, in case the bear knocks me off the roof, I need you to shoot this damn dog.'"

"Why did the plane crash?" Dr. Piercy smiled wide.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the pilot was a tomato."