by T K Foster
Consider this....
You are pressed against the naked body of a rather large Hump, cradled under his moist, gaping armpit, and flapping loosely in your face is the oily end of a pink handkerchief protruding from a fold in his thick, sweaty skin.
How do you feel...?
Billy, who had certainly been in some sticky predicaments before, came to the sudden and rather unsavoury conclusion that the only thing remotely comparable to this particular situation was that of a piglet suckling its mother; or so he imagined.
The small band of Humps had traversed the plain with their human cargo for about 1440 hands, which for Billy felt like around two hours. He had neglected to notice, or even take any interest in for that matter, the terrain as it bounced by uninterrupted; and although these creatures were not the fastest he had ever encountered, they certainly exhibited the greatest stamina. For they had padded along unabated, barefooted, and to the beat of A Grunt for Every Step Taken, a marching song arguably believed to be originally entitled My Feet Don’t Hurt But They Sure Are Numb from All This Marching.
Having ceased his useless struggles for freedom from the arm of Hump1 many hands ago, Billy now reserved his energy for what was to come. So what was to come? Who knew, but he imagined himself as a spit-roast dinner for one. As absurd as that may have sounded, the very idea felt compounded when they all came to an abrupt halt in a clearing amongst the trees where one of the smaller Humps reaped out a large root ball of what appeared to be potatoes from the ground, while at the same time loudly proclaiming the salivary sound of “Shweises”, before setting off again to where ever they had set off to in the first place.
It was a strong breeze which pushed them toward that place, a breeze that blew up from behind to dry the sweat from the big Hump’s body, a breeze that held the distinct scent of a forest in bloom; it was cool and it was fresh, but it was not comforting.
Billy’s bottom lip dropped and quivered, and the same feeling of repulsion he had felt so many times before during these last moments of his life returned once again; it made him feel sick to the stomach. Indeed, with all the jostling around and dried sweat and smells, Billy’s gut churned, it twisted and turned, it jumped up and down and then spun around, and suddenly, after it had done all that, it blew its acid content back toward the opening it had entered by where it convulsively exited in a liquid rush.
Yes.... Billy threw up!
Certainly not his finest moment, or his worst for that matter, and who would ever know but for the three Humps who simply dismissed the deluge with a grunt and a hop to avoid the splatter.
Unfortunately for Billy the taste would linger for some time yet, for still many hands were to pass before they would reach their destination. From the forest they emerged, once carried by the wind and now propelled by nothing but the march, they pushed through golden savannah and meadows of blue, across plains of grass with scattered trees, and a corn field, with corn oddly shaped like ears, before finally, and unnervingly, descending into darkness.
Billy was aware of little but the shadows and the laboured breathing of his captors, and every so often he glimpsed pale light from around a bend he did not turn toward. This blackness he had suddenly entered managed to deepen the fear that was already within him, it somehow felt more violent, more menacing and unknown; Billy’s threshold of dread had been surpassed, fear had become fear within itself; so at the end of his descent, when the Humps stopped all of a sudden and dropped him, that fear manifested....
And Billy fainted.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE