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Metallic Genealogy

The Fanzer Stip Trilogy

Metallic Genealogy:

A Faint Glimmer of Metal

by Stuart Bedlam

Chapter 12: Bilford Clarigone

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Lost passages from
"
Arsis and the Enchanted but Tattered Gromboid"

Darkness engulfed the femulin void
All of Vernus expelled the brabe...
Silence from the splatter-nobs, then
the earthen crustivorbs be-neggit all.
"To those, I say nay. Nay, for our
treasure lay beyond the nurf. May we
find riches there!"

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12: Bilford Clarigone


Bilford stumbled into the galley and found that all of the cooks and serving-hands had been murdered in the same fashion as the prisoners: brutally and without mercy. The smell of blood and internal organs filled the air with a heady thickness that was almost indescribable, and it was all he could do to keep himself from vomiting. As he stepped over their bodies, he tried to convince his mind they didn’t exist. However, slipping on their blood, which was everywhere, made that task difficult.

A segment of the epic poem his grandmother used to read to him before bed, 'Arsis and the Enchanted but Tattered Gromboid', began to march around in his head..


So much blood!

From the crewmen!

The brutality inhuman….


“Inhuman,” Bilford thought. “That’s what this is.”

Whether it was the carnage or the memory of the rhyme, Bilford’s stomach suddenly attempted to find its way out of his body through his esophagus, driving the man to the ground by sheer force. Luckily his knees somehow found purchase on a non-bloodied surface.

“Who could have done this?” he asked the room.

Happily, there was no response.

The man compelled himself to his feet, swallowed his stomach, and straightened his shirt. Having procured seven small containers from a kitchen cupboard, each roughly the size of a shoe box, Bilford returned to the cell block. He couldn't in good conscience leave his friend, or for that matter any of those men -- no matter how vile they might have been in life -- harden into crusty, indeterminate masses of matter on some rusting hulk. It was disrespectful and the thought of it was more than a little depressing.

He scooped up Jardick first, and felt a tear stream down his cheek.

“No man deserves this fate,” he told his friend. "No matter how stupid and insensitive."

“I completely agree,” came Jardick’s reply, which truth be told, because the man’s body resembled more of a horrific melted pile of cheese than a man, made Bilford nearly drop the container.

“Jardick?” Bilford spun around the room. No one could be found. He lifted the container of flesh to his ear, and repeated the man’s name. When no response came, Bilford shook the box.

“I completely agree,” came the voice again.

Bilford smiled annoyedly, and began to poke through the mess with his finger. Finally, he felt a small chain which, when pulled, revealed a tiny Brimppo figurine. It was a novelty Bilford acquired as a child (a tiny statue of a fantastic creature, something like a Hippopotamus and a rabbit fused into some horrible chimera). It allowed one to record a message and play it back at the press of a button. Bilford hadn’t seen or thought of it in years. Jardick had apparently stolen and changed the message.

He cleaned off the necklace as best he could and placed it in his pocket. He then sealed his friend up for the last time, neatly labeling Jardick’s name on the side of the container. He then did the same for the rest of the prisoners, and after each scoop and seal, he placed his hand over his heart and mumbled the common spacer's death pledge:


"May Burnt Toast neither inhibit your travels, nor inhabit your borsnap."


This gruesome undertaking now complete, Bilford found the closest lavatory and washed his hands for a full five minutes before setting upon the task of finding a way off of this ship. He only hoped conditions were survivablre, at least for the amount of time necessary to bury his dead friend and the rest.

From the galley he procured some pots for his feet, a knife for protection and large spoon for digging. From storage some blankets to wrap himself for warmth. Thus became his uniform for the new world.

His plan was not normally what he'd consider a great idea, however given the circumstances he had but few options.

“Well, Brimppo,” he said to the figurine he had just removed from his pocket. He placed the thing around his neck. “This might actually be the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“I completely agree,” Brimppo said, at the prompt.

“We’re going to make a great team, you and me.”

With some difficulty, Bilford opened the cargo door of the great ship, and stood staring out into the foreboding landscape. Though mostly dry, his view was occasionally instantly whitewashed by sudden winds carrying flurries of dry snow. Once clear, stalagmites of sharp pointy icicles, jutting up from the ground as if from some underground cavern were revealed on the otherwise barren topography.

Bilford took a deep breath as if he warm himself internally before beginning his trek across the sharp, icy, obstacle-laden ground. He covered his face almost fully with the blanket and then wrapped the rest of himself tightly as a mother would a newborn, before taking his first step out onto the wasteland. As a reward for this act, pointy shards of ice, like shrapnel, flung up at his face as they were crushed against the pots on his feet.

"When...I...get...my...hands...on...that....!"

The frozen temperatures, which instantly covered his face in a fine, crusty pallor, slowed the tempo of his monologue significantly. So great was this impediment that he didn't have time to finish his sentence before he was attacked, and almost immediately swept up by a large black indistinguishable mass. However, he soon realized this mass was in fact a pack of some kind of frenzied goat creature. The beasts were apparently rabid, as thick, white streams of spittle went streaming from their mouths just below red, swirling eyes. In his mind, perhaps stemming from sudden onset of madness brought about by the cold, he could only think that perhaps the creatures had strayed from the hills, imagining everything in sight was a tempting tin can.

Bilford, unbalanced by the attack, fell backwards and screamed as a stalagmite-like icicle dug into his spine. He then screamed again, even louder, as an insane goat jumped on top of him and tried to rip his label off to get at his yummy glue.

"I...am...not...a...can...."

The voice of his smarter brother, Gramlong, chastised him for this thinking. “Goats don’t eat cans you dunce-a-tron -- that’s something Miss Nomer would say.” It was a wild thought, but in the madness of the attack the myth of goats eating cans was not one that he could immediately shake. It was just as well that he was about to be consumed, as it was now quite clear that digging graves was not going to be possible in this environment.

“Leave...me…”

The plea went unfinished as a group of alien hunters, appearing like ghosts from the swelling flurry, descended and slaughtered the goats, spraying blood, guts and rabietic spittle this way and that.

Bilford managed to get onto one knee and wave his hands about for the hunters to see, in the hopes of proving to them that he was not, in fact, a fuzzy, insane can-eater from the hills.

"No...goat...I'm...not...."

Whatever not he was, however, was tangled up in the threads of time, for the hunters, clearly not up for a chat, tied him up, beat him senseless and dragged him off to wherever compassionless aliens kept themselves in the middle of winter.