Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
The Zanzibar Vertebrate
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
It began simply enough, with a TV overheard out an open window on a summer’s evening in the mid-1980’s on the suburb fringes of St. Louis. Over the buzz of the lawn trimmer, I heard snatches of a Monty Python rerun and, as I wound up the extension cord and swatted early mosquitoes, I thought I heard an exchange that went as follows:
“Not?”
“Yes.”
“A Zanzibar invertebrate?”
“A Zanzibar invertebrate.”
“A Zanzibar invertebrate!”
“Indeed.”
If there was more, it was lost behind my brothers’ shrieks and howls of laughter. I looked in the window in time for a blurred glimpse of British comedians in pith helmets batting each other with taxidermied ostriches.
By the time I got inside, the show was over and something else was on.
For a couple days, I wondered what I’d missed. Then, I forgot about it.
A few years later, I went to college and lived down the hall from a clutch of python-philes. Hardly a conversation went by without some chance word being taken as an oblique cue, and off they’d go, launching into elaborate, multi-voiced recitations.
One night they compiled an alphabetical list of every python sketch.
“Hey,” I said, “You missed the whole Zanzibar invertebrate thing.”
I did my best to describe what I remembered, and we were up until three while they spun theories as to why they’d never seen it — which season it might have been an outtake of, which lost episodes or rehearsal tapes had been aired during PBS fund drives.
Two years later, in a different dorm’s dining room basement, I overheard a different group of enthusiasts. The words had shifted slightly, but there was no mistaking it: “A Zanzibar vertebrate?” “Indeed.” And much laughter.
I wound up behind one of them in the next day’s breakfast line. I asked for more details — did he know what the ostriches had to do with it? He didn’t. He hadn’t seen it any more than my old friends had.
It was years before I heard of it again, mentioned in passing on some documentary on British comedy. I checked the web, and found full scripts, annotated with analysis, sketches, links to fan reenactments. I searched Google, YouTube and Wikipedia with every term I could think of — no sign of the original footage. I think I know why: it never existed.
Whatever I misheard, the sketch didn’t exist until the fans began rehearsing and repeating it.
The Sorceress’s Tale
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
The acolyte knocked before going in. He didn’t hear a response, but he knew she’d heard him.
The air inside was thick with the reek of rotting fabric and rich with the sound of hundreds of crickets. The Grand Metropolitan Sorceress hadn’t left this small room in over a decade, but still she kept the peace throughout the city and the suburbs beyond.
“Mistress?” said the acolyte. “Your dinner?”
“Keep it,” said a husky voice from the darkness.
The acolyte hadn’t heard her speak more than a murmured “leave it on the table” or “less pepper next time, please” in months.
“I’m doing a great working tonight,” said the sorceress. “My last, if it works.”
“You need to keep up your strength madam.” The acolyte felt around until he found an empty chair, and set the tray on the seat. “When you skip meals, you always feel it the next day…”
“If this works,” said the sorceress. “Tomorrow won’t happen.”
The acolyte stumbled back into something that jingled like crystal.
“That was too dramatic,” said the voice from the darkness. “There will be a tomorrow; it just won’t happen for many years. I’m turning back time.”
“What? You can’t.”
“I have to.” The sorceress’s voice had dropped its usual commanding tone. “I can’t hold back the hungry realms more than another few weeks. We can’t win against them.”
The acolyte swallowed twice. “But everything might change. And we still won’t be able to stop them.”
“We would have been safe, if I’d never done the Spell of Cold Knife.” Her voice was right in front of him. “It’s my fault.”
“But,” said the acolyte, “without that spell, you couldn’t have stopped the apocalypse meme. Thousands would have died.”
“I’ll find another way.”
“My parents,” said the acolyte,” they met in one of the refuges, while the knife spell ran.”
“They might still meet,” said the sorceress.
The acolyte swung at the voice, felt his nails scratching her cheek.
“Mistress! I’m sorry…”
“Blood,” said the sorceress. “The final ingredient, and I couldn’t shed it myself.”
The acolyte tripped as he stumbled back. The darkness was going out.
“Thank you,” said the Grand Metropolitan Sorceress. “I hope we meet again.”
Then the room was gone and Eyve Ariel was a girl again, neither a sorceress nor grand, standing in a vacant lot with mud on her journeywoman’s gown, no one to see or hear her as she shivered in spite of the heat.