Time stands still when I’m with you. Time is everything and in this void.
A Sprattle Through the
Wormhole By Quin Asselin
Hello family and all of my friends who have no arms, If you were once my friend and had arms or, in my spell through this wormhole, (where time is without meaning) you’ve regained your arms through some happy fortune and arm-based fertilizer please stop reading. If you lost your arms in the time since I’ve last seen you, I’ve very sorry for that tragedy but please do read on. I am pretty dang upset. I stepped through this wormhole like… two days ago? But it could maybe have been more like somewhere around the ballpark of perhaps... two years. Time is strange here and it’s been a little bit of a rather large inconvenience. I mean, it’s not as though I’m alone. There are these people who look like the people who are human people, but THESE people are the people who are not like the same people as Earth people. For example, they have these ATMs, but I don’t exactly know what their money looks like. I watched this grimey man with no arms (like most of them) walk up to it and start looking at this POV video of what I’d have to guess was a bat (which means he’s making a deposit, probably). He then let out this little croon of a turtle fucking -if you’ve ever googled turtle fucking- so around forty bucks. I’ve recently made friends with one of these armless muchachos! At least, I think we’re friends… It’s hard for me to pick up on their language because they have weird mouths. They have some pretty conventional lips but inside they have these weird,... beaks in the shape of Greek philosopher’s beards exactly where you’d expect their tongues to be. Not to be weird, but I think they would be nice to rub my face against if it didn’t mean inserting my dome into the official top of the food chain’s pie-hole. Though, for all I know that could be a sign of respect to them, I’m still learning.
16
I’ve taken to calling this particular armless fellow Julian Assange. I figure that since he has been displaying some pretty apparent non-hostile body language that he must be somewhat amenable to that. Ol’ Jules has shown me a lot about this world during my non-deterministic haze of time in this spacehole. Like okay, here’s one: it’s pretty common to come across these guys without arms! Wild right? I’m talking like… seventy, maybe eighty percent of these suckers have little to no arm at all. Some of them have these kinda spindly little angel hair pasta arms and they try to move ‘em around the best they can… Anyway because they all have such spindly arms they needed someone in town to nail signs to people’s walls. Needless to say I am perfectly qualified with these two porkbeaters welded to my torso! I’ve ended up getting some pretty steady work in the last couple of weeks. I was hired by Julian’s… friend to work at a small store with dirt floors that only sells innumerable copies of the same exact ceramic doll. Most places have dirt floors here. I think it’s because these creatures like to dig their large, ashcolored, three-toed feet into the ground and wrench out chunks of the ground beneath their feet as an idle habit. All I have to do is rake the floor and try not to look the dolls directly in the eyes because they may be able to tear souls from their mortal forms. They pay me pretty well too! I get two turtle wheezes and a picture of a nice arrangement of fruit per measured-yet-stillnon-deterministic-amount-of-time, which is a lot better than minimum wage. The people also tip me. Though usually that’s with the undying gratitude that can only be expressed through a noise that sounds like a wet tortilla chip snapping in half. But it’s the thought that counts, ya know? I really am not sure how I’m getting home. I mean, when I went through that void tube I didn’t know what to expect. An astronaut, bravely going to crazy space land and I figured that I’d know how to get back or die almost immediately. But at this point I think it might be better to stay here. I dunno if I mentioned this earlier but I’m pretty sure I’m getting audited back on Earth and it’s even weirder because my cousin, Morton, works for the IRS. You’d think he’d be able to help me out wouldn’t you? No dice.
Here though, in this phantasmagoric land through that glorious cosmos-sausage, I have a greater purpose. I’m not just some crumby, two-bit astro-boy from Earth. I can be the guy with thumbs here. Have you ever been the only guy with thumbs in a room full of possibly bird-like, humanoids? There’s this one whose beard looks strikingly like Socrates’ just before he was murdered by the city of Athens. Socky Balboa, I call him that because I feel like he wants to fight the philosophic ideas of these people. He sits next to Julian a lot. They must be friends, or related... Or maybe dating? It’s honestly kinda nice here, compared to home I mean. I was pretty inconvenienced by this whole, “audit,” thing. A whole lot more than I’m inconvenienced by this whole, “You’ve plormped through a magic, SpaceJimmy and don’t know how to plormp on back,” thing. Also back at home I have this little sign above my front door that reads, “Welcome Hom.” My kid woodburned it in shop class. When I asked that little Chechnya barstool to add an “e” to the end of it, this bozo made it say, “Welcomee Hom.” Are you kidding me? That’s not a mistake the kid of a guy with thumbs would make. I’m somebody here. In this world where purple is a rare color and every time Julian sees it, they let out a single, little gurgle that sounds like the picture snapping sound in a Calvin Klein ad. With my thumbs, I can teach these little noodly Corleones a thing or two. Sure, I’m going to be pretty inconvenienced by never seeing all of my family and appendageless friends on Earth again. But I mean… it could be a lot worse. This place smells like a home sitting on top of four layers of some warm, syrupy breakfast tradition. Is it good? Yes, I think this is the place that I’m meant to be drinking my coffee: sipping it, every morning out of a flower that tastes like the last strand of breath that eeks out after someone has just stopped shouting in excitement. Every cycle from dusk to midday (and back to dusk again) feels exactly like the reality I desire to inhabit because it is the best option available, and the only one. That’s just fine for this ol’ space-farer So I suppose this is goodbye, for now at least. Until next time,
Bordrick Prempton