Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse

by Christian Winter

  “Of course you have, it’s evening,” I said.

  “Has my goddess Wit visited you? I request a speech at once!”

  “After you, of course.”

  A mercurial glimmer flashed across the seducer’s eyes and with an impish grin he sang his little song:

  “A cocktail, a cock and a tail

  With cocks telling tales to tails

  To get cocks in tails,

  And tails telling cocks to cock their cocks for their tails

  A tell-tell sign of a tail telling a cocktale.

  All tell tales at cocktails.”

  Meredith snickered and looked up to me with a beaming smile. Fulham was also simpering and bowed so low that I thought he was trying to peek under her dress.

  I began my discourse in reply, a little jilted initially since I was recovering from all the other speeches I had been forced to deliver this evening. “For the comic is only concerned with this world and that is his fallacy, that he is really only concerned with the phallus, indeed the entire history of comedy is an ode to the phallus and fallacy, and this is why he attacks the philosopher: because what the philosopher says doesn’t make sense, for the philosopher abounds in wonder and paradoxes and rainbows—none of these can the comic grasp, and because he cannot grasp it, he cannot stand it and that is always how comics have delivered their jokes, by standing erect; and if he cannot stand erect, this is an offense to his god, the phallus. And if he cannot grasp it, how is he to put it in his mouth? For fallacies are always coming into the comics mouth and he is always spitting them back out, on his audience nonetheless, who love to see the comic spit, and no one can blame him, for it must be terrible to always have fallacies in one’s mouth, and always having to spit them out less one drown in a sea of fallacies Everything must make sense for the comic and that is why his explanations, which he calls jests or jokes, are often absurd and funny: because nothing truly makes sense, and to make everything make sense is funny and can only be done through absurdity. And because he is so concerned with this world, he is concerned with the body, and the body demands that things make sense, and the most sensible part of the body is not the mind, as many fools believe, but the phallus; and this phallus of the comic, which he loves, is his fallacy, for he can only think in fallacies and is only concerned with fallacies and phalluses and where philosophy is described as the love of wisdom, comedy is known as the love of the phallus, and how it loves to point out the fallacies of men!”

  “Dialectical sorcery at its finest,” he said as he bowed again and dipped away into the crowd.

  “Let’s go play a game,” Meredith said after a moment.

  “As long as I can kill someone I’m game,” I muttered.

  She shot back a disapproving glance because the pun wasn’t very funny. “Take a drink and we will play Guillotine,” she said handing me a glass.

  “Play my game first. I have no idea what Guillotine is, unless we really are going to start murdering, in which case I suggest we start outside with our distinguished guests. Or my mother.” I almost forgot.

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “It’s simple. You say cutting remarks and take a drink. Only the sharpest minds can do it throughout the banquet. When everyone gets low, someone makes a speech which forces everyone to finish their drink.”

  “So there is no point at which I actually get to use a guillotine?”

  “The next morning everyone wishes their head had been cut off by a guillotine. Hence the name.”

  I smiled. “I’ll be sure to be up early then.”

  She sighed and grabbed my hand. We glided through the warm, illuminated hall like weightless mirthful wisps in some soft dream until Meredith pulled me into a group of obviously affluent elves.

  “Hail to thee, blythe spirit,” they all said in sweet, warm tones full of elven light and the serenity of a breeze that blows between the pine needles in the evening. I knew instantly it was a sacred greeting from one member of their race to another, but I couldn’t tell if it was for Scammander especially.

  “At the edge of an old star cycle, we are all earnestly yearning for the sweetness of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, but what does this night find you dreaming of Scammander? Some hot apocalypse, perhaps?”

  I declined to answer, and turned away from the circle. Then I saw a grinning courtesan winding his way through the crowd towards me with a blushing, giggling girl running behind him, holding his hand. The two revelers would run and twist by standing guests, their slender arms stretching apart and then re-wreathing. He would stop every now and then when her hand fell from his, and when she caught up, both would laugh a little and continue running. But not before her hand was interwoven with his once more, and not before he had gazed into her eyes.

  He gave me a playful poke on the shoulder. “Hey Scammander, good to see you again,” he said, still smiling in his trim fitting shirt and pants, both a very pleasing light powder-blue.

  “Oh, you too,” I said, with an embarrassing pause.

  “Leyland!” he shouted and took a sip from the clear glass he was holding.

  “Of course!” I said with feigned surprise. “It’s been so long, I’ve missed you Leyland—we should talk sometime.” The slender girl with long blonde tresses and bare, pale shoulders was looking at the ground, still grinning and stifling thousands of mirthful giggles.

  What goes better with a holiday than love?

  “I’d like that, Scammander,” he said warmly. “There is so much I would like to tell you,” Leyland dipped his head slightly, then wrapped his arm around the girl as they strode off into the merry gathering.

  “He seems happy,” I said, looking at Meredith.

  “He usually is. He has written some of the most wonderful sonnets any court has ever heard.”

  When I turned back to the circle I noticed a professor had joined along with two students and his wife.

  “Yes, they are not precise, but very delicate, very sentimental. I would aver that he will be discussed in the Academy’s most prestigious literature courses one day, right along with Hammett,” said the professor.

  “Very learned, Professor Proseworthy, very learned,” said one of the students as he raised his glass. “Herringbone Parenthesis Paragraph, I’m sure you concur with the scholar’s sentiments as well?”

  “My colleague is rightly named Corduroy Quiteright, for quite right he is in esteem as well as learned estimation. But how should we make note of ourselves by introduction,” H. P. Paragraph pondered.

  “The lot of you are not of note, but of not. Your lot is to be duly noted by feet and trampled below,” I snapped. “And if the question be to be or not to be, you are to be dully noted, which is not to be in the main. Yes, you have letters to your name, but they are of small font, for your own source is mute and museless ink and though the sources you drink are clearly mountainous, your influence is small and yet you claim to be well-read. But none read you nor visit your well, which is well run dry.”

  “Well, this is why we are dry wits,” H. P. Paragraph replied scholastically.

  “Well the best introduction to the esteemed Professor Proseworthy is to take his class on the Historical Introduction to Literature’s Consciousness, of course,” his wife quipped.

  “If only every introduction was as pleasing and thorough,” sighed Corduroy as he looked up to the ceiling.

  “I wish I could have taken it every term,” sighed H. P. Paragraph. “For every term he writes is suffused with wondrous shades of meaning, and it takes at least a term to understand so many terms.”

  “It is a shame there are so many terms in his books, but only three terms in an Academic year,” sighed Professor Proseworthy’s espousing spouse.

  “Note well, this is my wife Marginalia, Scholar of Post-Genre Discourse and Women’s Technology.”

  “Her writings are most astute,” said H. P. Paragraph. “I recommended her book to my entire class, Prolegomenon to the Future Tense of Ecological Writing in th
e 15th century.”

  “She writes illuminatingly on dark subjects at the edge of many disciplines,” Paragraph’s fellow student quickly added.

  “Tell me, who writes the most superb novels?” Meredith said to the professor, commencing another round of the game.

  “Here is someone who, with great effort, is going to say something very stupid,” I said, before he could even begin.

  Professor Proseworthy harrumphed, then commenced: “I have always been fond of the realist works of Petit Faits, or as his contemporaries fondly called him, ‘Petty.’ He is quite ambitious in his writing. His novels are written in a crisp, taut style, are built on metaphysical granite, and follow an impressive teleological organization, where there is judicious use of counterpoint, and even the most discrete detail contributes to the whole. This charming causality promotes a sense of smoothness, where one event leads to another, where everything fits together seamlessly, where nothing is left over, and all is utilized, accounted for.” He swirled his glass and gazed deeply into the drink before speaking again. “And his titles are only one or two words, and not poetic at all, and indeed he seems to fit all of our contemporary life in each book.”

  “If he fits all of life in a book, why does he write more than one?” Meredith asked, and took a sip of her drink.

  “Because there is really nothing novel about these novels at all. They are all written by wheezy, narrow-chested eunuchs,” a second elf quipped.

  “It sounds like his readers least of all need books, for they simply want to be put to sleep. Why read a book if you want to sleep when you can simply close your eyes?”

  “I for one have no problem of putting readers to sleep, for it will make them easier to kill,” I said with a malicious smile.

  “Give me a mirror and I will best your ‘ambitious’ modern novelists. Effortlessly,” an elf next to me said.

  When she had finished speaking, we all titled our heads back at once and finished our drinks. My glass faded from my hand, and as the other glasses faded away around the circle, little golden stars in the ceiling floated down in front of each of us, and slowly turned into a tall gleaming glass of the bubbly holiday punch.

  Marginalia began the game once more. “Earlier, Professor Proseworthy was just telling us about his thesis on Progress, and that the triumphant march forward will—”

  “Lead you all over a cliff,” I said. There was something to hope for after all.

  “Oh that’s awful,” chuckled Meredith.

  “No that would be if it led to a democracy,” I quipped.

  “Oh that is indeed worse! Stop this talk of democracy, it’s the Holdiays! But I must ask, if you don’t believe in Progress, how will we ever get out of Modernity?”

  “That’s a puzzle we will never know, unless the Academy ever decides to release Scammander’s dissertation,” Corduroy Quiteright sniveled.

  “I was there, in my third year, when they locked his writings away and rusticated him! They summoned all of us to the Star Chamber, flown on the sinewy backs of gryphons, to hear his punishment declaimed. A council of ten professors each read the judgment, one at a time. Ten times we heard the judgment!” Professor Proseworthly blurted out.

  A look of genuine terror spread among the circle of interlocutors before the professor spoke again.

  “Oh, it’s well known among academics.” Professor Proseworthy cleared his throat, and looked right into my eyes as he recited the charge. “Scammander’s thesis is a deplorable monument of the extent to which intelligence and erudition can be abused, full of baneful paradoxes, indiscreet researches, audacious criticism, malignity and indecency, contagious poison, and is above all temerarious, impious, scandalous, and destructive of revelation.”

  “Well—”

  “Your dissertation is forbidden to be discussed in any tongue.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What tongues do you know Scammander?”

  “Only female ones,” sneered Professor Proseworthy, followed by a quick sip of his drink.

  “It is impossible to know any tongue, even one’s own, as Professor Proseworthy has demonstrated. For if Professor Proseworthy knew his own tongue, he would not have spoken, since it was yearning for sweet libations, festive sips of this golden, effervescent holiday spirit, and not the spiritless suppositions of hunchbacks and dowdy dissertations.”

  “He doubts knowledge in draughts,” quipped Corduory Quiteright, lookin at me before taking a draught of his spirit.

  Meredith turned to me. “Well, what do you believe in Scammander?”

  “Strong coffee.”

  There was some snickering around the circle, then the questions followed rapidly one after the other.

  “What is the worst thing one can have?”

  “Mercy.”

  “What is the task of a philosopher, Scammander?”

  “To turn poor lovers into poets, rich ones into kings, and young ones into philosophers.”

  “And what then is the worst thing that could happen to a bad thinker?”

  “That he becomes a professor of poetry.”

  “You’ve spared me Scammander, how flattering,” mumbled the wounded Professor Proseworthy as he placed his hand over his heart.

  “You confuse me with your students. Perhaps the worst fate of all is to be a bad philosophy journalist in the academy, surrounded by panting undergraduates.”

  “Is there no end to your wit?”

  “Oh you should know by now that there is Professor, for you keep getting pierced with it.”

  It was my turn to take a sip of drink.

  “My Scammander, you really are the guillotine,” a young female elf said with thirsty eyes. “The envy of whips, razors, and scorpions.”

  “Scammander never dulls,” said Corduroy Quiteright. “Just like the awful scissors of Fate.”

  As the game concluded, it was my turn to make a final speech, set by the person next to me, which was Meredith.

  “What is Modernity, Scammander?”

  “The great harvest. The great harvest of all that was left over! Three cheers for mediocrity! Three cheers for mediocrity, it exclaims with no exclamation points! Three cheers for crumbs and leftovers, for scholarship whose motto is to venture nothing, to gain nothing, but to keep a job! Three cheers for the routine! The cheers for the routine and the desk, which keeps thought away! Three cheers for that which keeps me away from myself, for in myself is nothing, especially not an excuse for my life! But the system has saved me! Three cheers for the system, for the system has saved me! Three cheers for the harvest of the system, the world-historical harvest of gravel!”

  As I concluded a look of terror slowly spread around the circle of interlocutors.

  “Scammander, when I saw you last, you gave a poetic speech, much like this one, and left me with thoughts that wound from behind. But this speech, indeed all the things you have said tonight, these are thoughts that assail from all about!”

  Just as she finished speaking, a giant with the body of a man and head of a great stag crashed through the large window wall of the ballroom.

  “NED BEDLAM!!” He roared as glass shards scattered across the great hall. He howled again and shook his huge antlers, tossing more glass shards from his thick green fur and scraping the ceiling’s ancient painting. Bits of the ceiling fell around him in thick flakes like pastel tree leaves in autumn. “Verily I have followed the trail of two perpetrators to your great hall this night—”

  Before he could name us and our crimes a proud company of ornately armored elves, humans, and dwarves charged through the large broken glass wall, firing a volley of sparkling arrows at Ned Bedlam, creating a shower of blue and pink comets that crashed into the back of his deep green head and golden antlers. He winced, stumbled forward, and shook his head with each blow.

  One caught my eye immediately. Her face was ageless and serene and her hair was pulled back in a long white pony tail. Her armor was made of folded pale primordial rose pe
tals and she carried a giant white longbow.

  “Who is she?” I asked pointing to the stunning female, immediately regretting it.

  “Selwyn,” Meredith replied. “The bow she carries is called ‘Elskov,’ the bow which shatters everything.” She began pointing and reciting their names. “Soren Goodwynd, the elf minstrel, Lysander, the noble elf duelist, the human knight Trevor Valla, and his best friend, the fierce myrmidon Brooke. Then there is Valentino the young and nimble archer, the dwarf—”

  I grimaced. “I don’t want to know their names.”

  Meredith looked confused and scared.

  “Do they take them with them to the land of the dead?” I shot back at her. I needed a sword.

  “Scammander they’re The Circle of Friends, The Bonheuroes, the Happy Few!” she said watching as another volley of radiant arrows assailed Ned. The harassment seemed to work. Ned was confused as to who to kill, the newcomers or those who had profaned his sacred woods. “The council assembled by your mother and the oldest families from all the remaining races bound them together with a single task. They are distinguished by lineage and education, the fine sons and daughter of the oldest families of our world, armored by the Hall of Relics.” She put her hand on my wrist and looked into my eyes: “Scammander, don’t you know? They are here to kill you.” And with that she shrank back, a glimmer of grim fascination in her eyes.

  I closed my eyes and let a deep sigh rush across my lips as I prepared for the heart-tossing labor of battle. When I opened them once more Meredith was still looking at me. She leaned in close, like she was about to kiss me, but halted and began speaking in a frightened whisper. “They’re looking for a wizard Scammander,” she said as her breathing quickened and her eyes darted back and forth. “They respect the laws of the Academe for the moment…but a wizard will come forth eventually, either publicly or in secret. And the purpose of that wizard will be to kill you. They are going to use magic against you. They are going to use magic in all the old and forbidden ways. They are going to use magic to kill you.”

  I snorted then snapped my wrist, trying to summon Momentum, but nothing happened.