Adam and the Unnameable Place
August 24, 2012There are many kinds of sadness in this world. The scale of sadness that each sadness brings can only be determined by the one feeling the sadness at that time. We can only look on in pity as the victim of the sadness cries; or look on in horror as the victim of the sadness slowly falls apart and dissolves into depravity.
There's the indignant sadness as a child brought on by some immature injustice; there's the pathetic sadness when you break up with your first girlfriend; there's the sadness caused by fear when entering a fight and you know you're about to get the shit kicked out of you; there's the anguished sadness, the deep, unsettling feeling when someone close to you has died; there's the self-imposed sadness when you think that everyone is against you and the worlds problems are on your shoulders all because a girl you liked knocked you back, (honestly, get a fucking grip, eat a pot noodle and have a wank); then there's the other sadness, the sadness no man wants to admit is actually tearing them apart, the sadness that brings grown men to their knees and makes them cry, the sadness that all men mistake for anger, the sadness caused by treachery, betrayal, dishonesty, the sadness caused by the unforgivable and irrevocable act of adultery.
Adam, the hero, the one from the previous two exceptionally exceptional tales of Adam, is fading away into this particular sadness. He drowns his sorrows with the bitter taste of, well, bitter. He cries all day long and croons over his lost love, Dakota. After the crooning, comes the anger.
'I'm done crooning,' Adam would slur drunkenly. 'Here comes the anger!'
And angry he would get. Images would flash through his intoxicated brain; relentless images of Dakota smiling, Dakota dancing, Dakota sweating, Dakota screaming, Dakota giving birth, Dakota holding babies. Black babies. Not his babies. He screams in rage. He tries to smash things up, he tries to wreck his pitiful home, but Adam's meagre frame prohibits him from doing any kind of damage and he slumps to the floor, a broken, lonely and weak man.
Then there's the flashbacks. Images of atrocities past, of the treacherously treacherous horrors that Adam has faced in his short and very inadequate life. There are hordes of gay men with sweating torsos, a Minotaur smashing up his homeland, a sacred coin, a something which cannot be spoken of, Cow, Angus, Angus humping Cow, Cow exploding, the sadness, the milk, the Spar, the end of everything! The flashbacks are always accompanied by a slow and mournful song; usually something dreadful by, Coldplay.
After the fits of drunken anger and the flashes of flashbacks, Adam staggers to the fridge to fetch another beverage. But tonight, the night that we join our fallen hero in another one of his anti-climatic adventures, something is different.
'Hmmm, this is different,' Adam says, peering into the now peculiar fridge.
Where it used to house warm beers, half a tomato and a very suspicious looking jar of brown stuff, the fridge now seemed to be home to someone else's fur coats.
Adam, who thought he was seeing things, was surprised when he touched the coats and the fur felt all furry. Adam then screamed like a drunken girl as he sank forward into the sea of fur and fell into a blanket of snow.
He looked up and saw a flickering light. A lone street lamp stood in the middle of a snowy clearing surrounded by a thick forest. There was something very familiar about the whole scenario.
'There is something very familiar about this scenario,' Adam mumbled to himself.
Right on cue, which Adam was expecting due to his feeling of ominous familiarity with the strange land he'd just found himself in, a little creature came plodding out of the forest before him. The little creature had the torso of a man but the legs of a goat.
'Oh, hello,' the little creature said politely. 'Is it curfew time already?'
'Curfew, what are you talking about?' Adam asked.
'The curfew,' the creature repeated, 'set out by the King.'
'What King?'
'Well, King Angus, of course,' said the creature, a little bewildered.
Alarm bells sounded alarmingly in Adams head.
'Where am I?' He demanded.
'Ah, well now,' the creature said, 'that's difficult to say.'
'Why?'
'Well, we cannot call it anything, really,' the creature smiled.
'Why?' Adam said a second time.
'Because,' the creature said quietly, 'it's the Unnameable Place.'
'For the third and final time, why!?!?!' Adam asked for the third and final time.
The creature shrugged his shoulders. 'For legal reason I think. Something to do with copyright or something, I don't really know, I'm not a lawyer. My cousin Peter is though, I could give him a call for you.'
'That won't be necessary', said Adam. 'Tell me about your king.'
And the little creature did.
'He created this land,' he said. 'Built it up from the dark oblivion it had become after the destruction caused when somebody took the Unspeakable Something.'
Adam shifted uncomfortabely, after all, he was the one who had taken the Unspeakable Something.
The creature didn't notice and continued. He went on to describe things about the king that cannot be described as they would make one's ears curl, and since having one's ears curled is a very agonizing and painful thing to go through, and since the only doctors who were skilled and experienced enough to perform the procedure to rectify such a thing were destroyed when the land beyond the beyond dissappeared into an abyss within an abyss, then one's ears would never be the same again and so this ear curling piece of information shall not be divulged.
The creature gave Adam a peculiar look and gasped.
'What?' Adam asked.
'Your ears did not curl,' the creature whispered.
'So?' Adam shrugged.
'That was, by far, the most ear curling piece of information one could here,' the little creature said, 'but your ears remain uncurled.'
'So?' Adam repeated.
'You're the chosen one!' The creature said in awe. 'The one to vanquish the king and save our world from the bitter cold.'
Adam had had enough of adventures and sighed a sorrowful sigh.
'What must I do?' He moaned.
'Do what all chosen ones do,' the creature said, 'you must go on an epic journey, putting your life on the line for a cause you don't fully understand; battle countless enemies; get into high-speed pursuits; deliver witty one-liners; and, if you have the time, rescue a damzel in distress.'
'You make it sound glorious,' Adam said weakly.
'And glorious it shall be!' The creature said. 'Once you consult with the real king of this Unnameable Place, of course.'
'Let me guess,' Adam said, 'is this king a lion?'
The creature nodded vigorously.
'And he cannot be named?'
Again, he nodded.
'Copyright?' Adam asked.
'Copyright,' the creature agreed.
***
And so we join Adam now on his most epic journey to date, traversing an unknown and Unnameable Land, putting his life on the line for a cause he didn't quite understand. He fought countless enemies; he got into high-speed pursuits; he delivered witty one-liners; and he passed a damzel in distress but left her damzelling in distress as she reminded him painfully of his beloved Dakota. He found the lion that couldn't be named for copyright reasons. It was a distressing sight. The lion lay upon a broken stone table, his mane and his dignity ripped to shreds. He was dead.
'Well, that was fucking pointless,' Adam said.
And he continued along on his epic journey.
And he fought countless enemies.
And he got into high-speed pursuits.
And he delivered witty one-liners.
And he passed all the damzels that were in distress.
And he found himself, once again, facing his old enemy.
And his old enemy hadn't changed one bit.
Angus stood there, naked from head-to-toe, his flabby gut hanging down and covering his smaller than small reproductive organ.
'Adam,' he crooned, 'it's so nice to see you again. Do you like what I've created?'
'I thought you were dead,' Adam growled.
'So did I,' Angus smiled, 'until I discovered I wasn't. My son, however, perished. He did not die in vain. His creation showed me that I have a gift; a gift to create morbid creations. I have built this world very much the same way as I built my son-'
'By raping cows?' Adam cut in.
'Not quite,' laughed Angus, 'but close. No cows were violated in the making of this world, but many goats, chickens and horses certainly were.'
'You sicken me,' Adam spat.
And so it went, trading insults and talking far too much, which always seems to be the case when the hero finally comes face-to-face with the nemesis. There is always the pointless chat, delaying the inevitable bloodshed, until someone throws the first punch.
In this case, it was Angus.
The fight was epic. One of those fights that was so epic that it made epic things look not so epic. There was blood and there was broken bones. There were explosions and people thrown through windows. There was a pig which ran past. Then there was silence.
They both lay broken on the ground. Then there was a bright light, one of those Biblical lights that herald the end of everything. And Adam truly thought the end of everything had come and he was ready to welcome it with open arms.
But then Adam felt something tapping his cheek, and a distant cheery voice calling for him.
'Wake up,' it kept repeating.
Adam opened his eyes. The bright light issued from a street lamp in the middle of a clearing and the tapping was coming from the little weird creature with the goat legs.
'You?' Adam croaked.
'Yes, me!' The little creature beamed. 'You done it! You went on your epic journey and done all the things a chosen one does. Although, there are a few distressed damzels baying for your blood.'
'What about Angus?' Adam asked.
'Dead,' the creature smiled, 'although the details of his demise are a little hazy.'
And so Adam thanked the creature and limped across the snow covered clearing and into the sea of fur coats. He crawled on hand and bony knee and fell out of his tiny fridge and into his tiny flat.
He turned and the fur coats were gone and there was a bottle of beer, the one and only thing he'd wanted before he was dragged into another unwanted and pointless adventure.
He grabbed the beer; it was suprisingly cold.
He popped the cap. He licked his lips. And he dropped the beer.
It smashed gloriously all over the floor.
His shoulders slumped.
'This fucking sucks,' he said.
But he laughed.
The End
Posted by michael michael.