Chapter 12: Familiar Flamethrowers

Crusadina had not paid attention to the slaughter outside. Enclosed in her room, she meditated, surrounded by her pink bed with covers depicting siege weapons, her girly mirror with a border carved like a trebuchet, her books about bringing down the walls of castles to bring down the walls of the heart of handsome princes—In a quite literal way: do you know what happens to a chest when it gets hit with a boulder that travelled several dozen meters through the air?—and her catapult plushy with, you wouldn’t believe this, a real stone.

She felt the dense web of Eku (about which one does not joke about in presence of a prodigy such as Crusadina. (But it’s still the vital energy)) pulsing inside her body, irrigating her every cell with the gifts of heaven. She could see every wall in existence, and was convinced that they needed to be brought down. She didn’t want to unite the nations; she didn’t want to change the nature of man. Her Road just had engendered a sort of pathological hatred for walls and that was it. Like, my dog hates squeaky toys, and Crusadina hated walls with the same passion.

She showed her teeth. They were necessary to hold roofs and protect people from the elements, they were an evil that could never be eliminated without changing the rules of physics. But it was the same laws that commanded the winds and held walls up that powered her weapons.

Crusadina opened her eyes, her battering-ram shaped pupils reduced to thin lines due to the brightness that intruded through the window. Sour tears welled in her eyes. “Why are walls a thing?” she cried.

Her spirit catapult appeared upon her shoulder, boring a hole in the roof because it was full sized. The siege weapon moved its arm as it “spoke”. It really just made creaky hinge sounds, but Crusadina had learnt to listen.

“Crusy, dear, what bothers you now?” the catapult creaky-hinged in a motherly tone.

“The walls are inside me. In my abdominal cavity, in my anus, in my vagina. The walls are me, I am the walls,” She repeated, clawing her scalp with the catapult-free arm. “I am the walls, Katie!”

“is it only human to be bound to walls, dear Crusadina, but you must push through. You are about to reach the Inner Parliamentary Ballista Monarchy cultivation stage. You cannot let the insecurities about your own body get in the way to mastering the Road of Siege.”

“Then I shall transcend my humanity, put down my walls, Katie. Do you think stuffing my cavities with ignited petards would help?”

“I think your flesh is past the point of being able to be damaged by mere firecrackers, dear.”

“Even the Grandma’sHeartRender 3000? She asked, sniffing as the hope to blow her cursed innards up died slowly.

“As a siege weapon, I cannot talk ill of the Grandma’sHeartRender 3000, for it should be considered a brother in disarms.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Crusadina raised an eyebrow. “You mean in arms?”

“I know what I said.”

“Oh.” She said, and then came the realization of what it meant. “Ahhh, you cheeky little overgrown slingshot.”

“I hate that sentence more than I hate mortar bricks.”

“How can I get rid of my walls, though? Am I condemned to have them forever inside me, where no ram can batter them?”

“If it makes you feel better, dear, plants have walls on every cell of their bodies.”

Crusadina’s face became a rictus of horror. “I eat walls daily…” She said, looking at her hands as if they were stained in blood. Then, she dropped to her knees and coughed blood, her innards damaged by the sheer revulsion the idea of consuming the w-words caused on her.

“Use that hatred, Crusy dear, use that hatred for walls, direct it against the sinful plant kingdom!”

She stood with difficulty, accidentally/fortuitously demolishing a wall of her room after hitting it with one of Katie’s wheels. “You are right. I must atone for eating walls… by burning them all down.”

She cleared her throat and called like the lady she was. “Ma, can your princess borrow the Family Flamethrower to cultivate?”

Her mother’s galenite-smelling voice shot from the kitchen. “Yes dear, but you will pay the fuel out of your allowance.”

“Thanks mom!” And then, she urged Katie to go back out inside of her mind so she could fit through the door, and rushed to get her delicate hands on the precious Family Flamethrower.

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Big Jay had dragged Kalon the Bootleg Mummy back to his abode, mainly so the carrion eaters (a motley group comprised of vultures, crows, seventeen local ravens that held some esoteric beliefs and only reproduced when one of the group died, Lulua the cannibal, Brunhilda, and the newest member, Jagger.) would peck or pluck out one of his eyes. And Kalon had a use for his eyes, as they allowed him to discriminate things that were good to hit with Jagger from things that weren’t. It was in the best interest of the community to not let Kalon go blind.

Brunhilda, upside down because the amount of human remains eaten caused her stomach to twist and she had to correct that mishap somehow to avoid a little contretemps with existence, squirmed along the floor, contorting her spine from side to side to advance with viper movements.

Jagger breathed heavily. He lay on his side, eyes ajar, whistling sounds coming from his mouth. Like Brunhilda, he had consumed too much brain matter. Unlike Brunhilda, his life wasn’t at risk. Maybe his colonic integrity would be later, though, but that was a problem for future Jagger.

“Tell the Grim Reaper that since they nationalized his service he doesn’t come soon enough.” Jagger began falling into delirium and soon snapped out of it. “No, wait, people still die properly, so death is just a poorly regulated private enterprise with a monopoly result of extensive lobbying. When zombies walk the earth, then we will know death is state-owned.”

“You sure talk a lot for a puppy in pain. Do you want painkillers, Jagger?” Big Jay offered.

“ No, I must learn from this punishment.”

Then a fart charged forth, out of Jagger’s ass, and filled the place with the delectable perfume of a neglected cemetery.

Brunhilda closed her eyes, tears rolling down her black forehead and into the floor. This was it. This was how she was going to die. Upside down, trying to fix a twisted stomach, asphyxiated by Jagger’s biochemical warfare. She kicked a bit into the air, just to make sure she still had control of her limbs despite inhaling the Sulfur-rich atmosphere.

Kalon kicked in his sleep, throwing Jagger out of the mattress, making him fall to the floor, with the resulting hit causing the heavy puppy release all the gasses built up inside his intestines. Big Jay pulled his strongest tobacco but, before igniting the pipe, considered that, maybe, that would cause them all to die in a fiery, and rather unamicable, explosion. It would be a long day until Kalon woke up.