Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  Mucho tiempo I spent at Humpty’s home for the practice of lines, or at least such was the (mayhaps unneeded) justification. He was my amicus after all.

  “What is it about these stories of mine?” said I, to him and my own self. “Why rise when others fall?”

  “Humpty is a woman who lacks the lacks of womanhood,” he said. “She hasn’t the common personality of anyone you’ll meet eternal.”

  “And yet those who gaze her with fervent peepers dub her ugly. Who would care for ugliness so mightily?”

  “And who would so mightily create such ugliness?”

  I preferred not to lie to him, so silence swallowed us.

  Finally, “Does it feels strange?” said I.

  “What?” he said.

  “Wearing pink for the tele.”

  He sipped tea with more-than-usual shaky feelers. “I don’t focus on my own self. Such an activity would beget too many unanswerable questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “What does it mean to be a man wearing pink? How can an unadorned man once called handsome be then made a treasured but horrid woman?”

  A dreambubble I knew this was not. The real Humpty hacked on such self-spawned question marks until answers vomited forth, no matter how bitter the bile.

  *

  The question of Humpty’s popularity did not release her stranglehold. There was mas to her attractive unattractiveness than simple rarity. I began to wonder—

  *

  “I know the end already,” Humpty the White said.

  “The end?” said I.

  “The answer to that question of questions.”

  “Release your thinker then, amicus.”

  Humpty stretched his legs out on the prison floor, as if preparing for a dash. “Humpty intrigues the thinker due to the questions she spawns. Not the questions she asks, but the questions of we. Why do I live in a cage and not in a tree? Why does Humpty feel laetitia with her parts intact? Why do you think she’s beautiful?”

  “True enough, you capture the end, and your words have shattered this story like a parsnip through a window. I can no longer tell it.”

  Humpty’s face tightened. “Forgive my insolence! A word and I’ll smash my head upon the wall to dislodge this parasite!”

  “Hold. That specific story was rather boring anyway, with all the self-analysis and hubbub. It’s better obliterated, so that we may continue to a mightier image.”

  *

  I helloed and entered Humpty’s quarters, to find him in his beddy bye, dressed in his pink tele-tunic. The desire to run twirled me, but my hello must have flicked his thinker, for I heard him stir.

  “Newton, I…” he said.

  My yapper exported nada.

  “I wear it sometimes,” he said. “It…aids in getting into character.”

  “Of course,” said I. “Shall we practice the lines anon?”

  “Hai.”

  We stood prox and spoke the words.

  I realized (or mayhaps could no longer deny to my own self) that neither of us acted a whittle whit. The acting took place outside of our tele life, when we read not the lines. His want was to wear a pink tunic. His want was to be a woman. He was Humpty, but had to pretend to be someone else. Because Flapjack demanded the lie. And on that day, I acquired my first real enemy.

  *

  Humpty the White stared at Wall #4 for mucho heartbeats. Then, “Wee-the-People have always venerated the Flapjack for its freedom. But who is the freer? At least my own people can be who we think we are.”

  I happy-faced. “Brainchildren grow up so fast, do they not?”

  “Verily so. And did you go to war against the Flapjack? Is this what brought you to me?”

  “Hai and hai. But I fear your thinker has been misled by my terminology. My battles involved no blood, no Red, no cutters.”

  “Good. I have no taste for such matters.”

  “You lie like a child, but I appreciate the intention. If only I could bestow upon you a mightier adventure than what occurred, but it was a tippy snoozy process of sitting at the comper, searching, searching, searching. Years I spent trying to understand my enemy. The mightiest shock burst from the fact that the answers were all out there, broken apart, as shame-sham shards. Piece them together was the only task, and not a difficult one. I own not an extraordinary thinker. Anyone could have learned what I learned. The vomity truth is that no one wished to see past the walls of their cage. The question now is: do you wish to see? Do you desire the truth of Flapjack?”

  “I…do. However, I would appreciate if you would speak not the truth to me direct. Place it in a dreambubble, if you could.”

  “I can.”

  *

  To understand the Flapjack, said I to Humpty, I required answers. And so I gathered ingredients from all over the Flapjack to summon a mighty wizard. At last the day came when I mixed everything together in a biggy black cauldron in the most mysterious section of Magic Green Forest, at the spot of Humpty’s nestplace.

  The cauldron erupted with fire, then the Wizard whooshed, adorned with a tunic of Red. “You shake me from a biggy slumber, smally boy,” he said. “This had better be tippy important.”

  “I wish to know about the Flapjack,” said I.

  His laughter boomed, and the leaves vibrated circum. “You summon me for a knowledge that will bring you only mightier gray-thoughts?”

  “My outcomings are not your concern.”

  “Verily so. What you wish, I will give you.”

  So we both sat on leafy mounds, though in truth he hovered a bugspace above.

  “Of the history of Flapjack, what do you grasp?” he said.

  “Not mucho,” said I. “My people lived once as groundlings, but crafted the Flapjack and rose above.”

  “And do you know the reason for this crafty crafting?”

  “The progression of technology, I assume.”

  He laughed loud, but not leaf-shaking. “Twas the progression of understanding which birthed the Flapjack. You see, smally one, mucho tiempo in the before, civilization grew to be mightily conscious of the causes of human behavior. Every action of every human spoke of their genetics, their environment, their past. Many humans expected a more enlightened society to be borne with such knowledge. Verily, humans were tippy capable of living lives of laetitia and balanced authority. But occurred, this did not. The civilization of old fought back like an angered trollbeast. Ideological strangleholds squeezed tighter with this war for and against modifications. The Flapjack was created by the Merican sect that fought the hardest against the Enlightenment of Understanding.”

  “Is Merica not a mythological place?”

  “Twas real. This Merican sect hugged an ideology which justified the taking of resources from all over the planet. But this sect realized that ideologies could not last eternal. So they replaced their ideology with an automated resource abductor. The Flapjack, this is. Your culture has meta-ed much over time, in texture, however one thing holds eternal. Your machines abduct resources from the humans on the surface, killing more than many. You use mas energy than all the groundlings in combination, and you are one percent of the population. That is your truth.”

  *

  “I will have to burst the dreambubble if I’m to continue,” said I.

  “Continue,” Humpty said.

  *

  The knowledge I had acquired bansheed to flee, and so for the next teleshow, spoke I not the lines Flapjack expected, but the lines of my real self.

  “Something blazes within, Humpty,” said I. “A force wishing to be freed.”

  “What?” Humpty said.

  I held her shoulders. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I love you.” I kissed her.

  Humpty’s jitters meta-ed to fleshquakes, and he stumbled back.

  Faced I to the tele-eye. “The things done and the things not done, this is our choice. We must meta the ways that pop the dreambubbles of our whispery hopes. We must meta that wh
ich spreads suffering to those below. We know our energy spawns from the ground, but do we ponder the how to the Flapjack’s forever-flap? We fire no weapons. We press no buttons. Direct, we do nada to the groundlings, but can disconnectedness illusionate as a comfy-warm void of responsibility? Iie. The mechanical feelers that ravage the lands below animate these lives of ours. Let these feelers serve as metal ghosts of murdered history, so that we may harken the need to fall to grace once more.”

  I turned to Humpty.

  But only a handsome man stared in reply.

  *

  “The worst part was not that a machine took me from my familia to this prison,” said I. “The worst was that my words meant nada to them, unquestionable.”

  “But Humpty harkened your words. Mayhaps he will—”

  “Mayhaps nothing. He was not the real Humpty. The words will not meta him.”

  “But they have meta-ed me!”

  I happy-faced. “Verily so, and I finally understand how and why. The Wizard could not explain to me why this prison exists, but you have enlightened me.”

  “How could I enlighten you before my own self?”

  “These things happen.” I pressed my feelers against Wall #4 and its imperfection. “This prison hangs below the Flapjack like a cancer. A great population lives in this prison, and are born in this prison, and expire in this prison. You and your people are here because your genetics dub you mas viable to destroy the Flapjack’s automated consumption. The ideological forces of this space force those tendencies to dormancy, and keep you all subdued. Viz, the Flapjack wins. Those who would fight are stuck here. There’s no hope. I fear that’s the end of the story.”

  “Iie!” He stood. “As I still live and breathe, your amicus eternal I will be. And together, we will smash this chumming place until the Flapjack falls to the forests, where we may live among the trees once more!”

  “Now that sounds like the real Humpty.”

  “Humpty, I am.”

  About the Author

  Jeremy C. Shipp is an author whose written creations inhabit various magazines, anthologies, and drawers. These include over 40 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, and The Bizarro Starter Kit (blue). While preparing for the forthcoming collapse of civilization, Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse with his wife, Lisa, and their legion of yard gnomes. He’s currently working on many stories and novels and is losing his hair, though not because of the ghosts. This is his first published collection, and his debut novel is called Vacation. Feel free to visit his online home at www.jeremycshipp.com, but beware the robotic parsnips and rabid coconut monkeys.

  2008 Wonderland Book Award finalist

  Vacation by Jeremy C. Shipp

  Available on Kindle and in hardcover and paperback editions

  It’s time for blueblood Bernard Johnson to leave his boring life behind and go on The Vacation, a yearlong corporate-sponsored odyssey. But instead of seeing the world Bernard is captured by terrorists, becomes a key figure in secret drug wars, and, worse, doesn’t once miss his secure American Dream.

  Here’s what they’re saying about Vacation:

  “This is an intriguing, challenging, literate, provocative novel I’m not sure I understand and suspect I’m not meant to… I recommend it to those who find reality boring; it may make them see it in new ways.”—Piers Anthony, author of the Xanth series

  “None of the usual accolades work for Jeremy Shipp’s Vacation. The reader is not amazed, astounded, or aggrieved—the reader is achingly curious, alarmingly moved, and at the end, astonished by the vision and darkness and redemption. No one writes like Shipp, and that’s a great thing.”—Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales

  “Shipp’s clear, insistent voice pulls you down into the rabbit hole and doesn’t let go.”—Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door

  “I’m convinced Jeremy Shipp is a little bit crazy, in the best possible way. Vacation is edgy, surreal, and original. This is one of those books that alters your brain in a way similar to Philip K. Dick. A very good first novel.”—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Shriek: An Afterword

  www.rawdogscreaming.com