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The Ordeal of a Cosmonaut by “Nick”

January 9, 2013 Leave a comment Go to comments

An ongoing series of vicious lies for trashy individuals.

The days on Freebis pass slowly. The weather has remained hot and dry with only an occasional dust storm to break the monotony. I have quit sniffing model glue and am now building models in a dark shed located during one of my expeditions. There are hundreds of boxes here– cars, airplanes, spaceships, moveable towel carts of every stripe and vintage. I have built and painted hundreds and, once completed, pile them senselessly on wood palettes.

Gustav has grown ill; it is a seemingly mysterious affliction and he takes various tonics and disappears for long periods into his bedroom. He eats no hard candy but, instead, crushes specific sweetmeats with a mortar and pestle and mixes the powder with water. He has lost weight.

My expeditions have yielded no sign of the spacecraft. Gustav, in one of his rare lucid moments, opined that the craft was dragged off by a Wandl.

“What’s a Wandl?” I asked.
“It’s a large, soft, pink creature, a sort of insect. It has numerous tentacles.”
I was shocked by this and expressed so.
“They are everywhere in the Barrens. But they do not come this far.”
“What do they want?” I asked. I realized quickly the foolishness of the question.
“Freebis belonged to them. We are visitors. But they stay away. There has not been an attack since 1995.”
I grew uncomfortable.
“You are welcome to read my account of the incident,” Gustav offered. Then he fell off his chair and I was forced to drag his limp body to bed.

Days later, Gustav submitted to me the account. It was written in a tiny, cramped hand with red ink and filled 40 pages of a marble notebook. There were blurry photographs, taken with an instant camera, and I examined these first.

They showed a distant aggregation of Wandls. Their bodies appeared pancake-flat but as large as a fireman’s net. The tentacles were as Gustav had described. They had sharp pincers. The photograph was labeled, “some Wandls from Area 16.”

I pushed the notebook aside, still trying to process the information. Out of habit, I began constructing a model of a spaceship. The box was labeled, “FAKE SPACESHIP: FOR IMAGINATIVE PURPOSES ONLY”. I cast it aside.

I am determined to begin the account this evening.

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