January 18, 2016

• Sleep? Whazzat?

  January 17, 2016, Prescott-

  It had been about four months, since the last sighting of the fishermen.  Nadia, a red head among Romanians who had mostly jet-black hair, could feel the energy of those African fishermen, as they stared at her, and at the two, equally-ginger toned wolf-men who alternately barked orders at her, sometimes literally, and led her, tethered at the neck by a leather-collar, which they had devised from the hide of a small eland they had captured, about five months earlier.  Rather ironic, her plight, Nadia thought- a woman being walked about by wolves.  It all reminded her of an old Korean film she had seen, “To The Rose Inn”, she recalled, in which a man leads his female captive around on a leash, she walking on all fours.  “At least, I am allowed to walk upright”, she mused.

  Narcolepsy was affecting the were-creatures, especially as they had discovered the local beer, which they were foolishly imbibing even in the the throes of a full moon.  They had stolen a goodly amount of the brew from some inebriated fisherfolk, whom they found snoozing in midday, about two weeks earlier.  It was this act which led to Nadia Donescu’s recovering her freedom.

  On the morning of a waning gibbous moon, Nadia awoke to find her captors snoring, and lying in a copse, about 40o meters away from their usual spot- which was practically right next to where she was tethered.  Across the glade, she heard strange noises:  It seemed someone was slashing brush with a machete, but she couldn’t be sure.  The noises got louder, waking the two brutes.  The vocalist became clear:  It was a bull elephant!   The wolf-men looked at one another, then at the pachyderm.  They chortled to one another,  in delight.  Not paying the slightest mind to Nadia, they each grabbed a roughly-hewn atlatl, which they had fashioned from local flint, and attempted to encircle the snorting beast.

  Nadia had her eyes on the elephant, too, but was more concerned with loosening the collar around her neck.  With the men otherwise engaged, and the bull warily eyeing them, she was able to extract herself from the shackle, and dart behind a baobab tree.  The bull elephant suddenly made for the man to his right and lifted the shrieking werebeast clear off the ground, throwing him into the cove.  A  Nile crocodile had an unusual lunch, that morning.

  His partner-in-crime readied his makeshift atlatl and aimed for the crazed bull.  The weapon grazed the animal on his left temple, further maddening him and directing his attention to the now-hapless werewolf.  The man could not outrun the elephant, but tried to shimmy up the baobab.  The mad bull wrapped his trunk around the man-wolf, threw him to the ground, and stomped him, in one fell swoop.

  Nadia wasted no time in clearing out of the disheveled camp, and ran towards the road she remembered from one of their infrequent forays into the fishing camps along the lake.  In short order, she happened upon a Chinese construction worker, and his two children, sitting by a koi pond they had devised, in which the children’s pet goldfish were happily at play.  The older child, a girl, took two of the goldfish, placed them in a plastic bowl with some lake water and covered it with wax paper, secured with an elastic band.  This, she proudly offered to the disheveled Nadia.  The father spoke some German, as did Nadia, and offered to take the newly freed woman to the nearest town.  Nadia was only too happy to accept.

  • 11:11 pm
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