1.09 - Varmints

Hello listeners. It is midnight in Mercy Mountain once again and I, Julian Glass, am here to nourish your nocturnal souls.

[intro]

Tonight is a slow night, listeners. Not much is going on in town. Even the cars are all driving below the speed limit.

Nonetheless, let’s take a look around town. Elderly Juniper Solo goes for a late-night swim in the pond beside her house. She works on her sidestroke, having long ago perfected the front crawl and backstroke.

Geordi Norris, soybean farmer, is having trouble with varmints. The long-legged, large-toothed creatures are invading his soybean fields, ripping up the plants to lay their eggs in the earth. Geordi shoots tiny bells at them with his bell gun. The bells fly through the air, tinkling furiously and clattering heatedly as they strike either varmint, plant, or dirt.

Meteorologist Janet Gourse stands in her backyard flailing her hands in wrath and cursing the sky for not storming like she ordered it to during her evening broadcast.

[pause]

Do you know of the arch? The arch far out in the woods? The one that reeks of the filthy exhaust from semis? The one through which you can see your favorite movie on repeat? It has begun to chime [brief pause] and hover.

Oh, listeners. It seems as though the varmints are spreading beyond Geordi Norris’ soybean fields. They are encroaching on Mercy Mountain proper, and have torn up Elderly Juniper Solo’s garden. Stray cats are getting in raucous fights with the varmints and then turned into varmints themselves. Florist Nadine Dixon awoke to an alert on her phone telling her that the security alarm in her store has gone off. She sped to her store to find varmints fleeing at her interruption. Flowers all over the store are torn up by their roots and large reddish eggs laid in various planters and vases.

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[pause]

Back to the varmints. They are tearing up yards and gardens all over town, laying a seemingly endless supply of eggs wherever the ground is loosened enough. The varmints have begun taking flight to more quickly make their way across Mercy Mountain. Some have begun to crawl all over the River’s Bend apartment complex, drooling on the windows and clawing at the walls. Residents are huddling inside, clinging to their small pets, terrified.

Ah, I see one varmint has encountered a wandering raccoon. The two animals snap and growl at each other, the many heads of both weaving and bobbing and dripping with saliva. Finally the varmint swipes a claw at the raccoon, slicing open all three of its noses in one motion. The raccoon whimpers and runs away, long scaly tail between its legs.

More on that in a bit. Listeners, I need to give out a public service announcement.

You will soon find yourself back in community college. Hurricane-force winds will whip across campus. Hallways shall become wind tunnels. Scores of students, including you, will struggle against the wind in attempts to reach shelter.

You will force your way into the basement of a rarely used building alongside the centaur Chiron.

Chiron will solemnly inform you as to why the building is hardly entered: in order to leave via the helicopter pad on the roof, one must make their way through every floor, several of which are occupied by an embodiment of aversion to one’s younger self: a demonic child that is afraid of the light and therefore blocks off all sources of it throughout most of the building.

If you will want to stop the demonic children from capturing you, you must drive them away with light until you can make it across the floor to the opposite stairwell.

You will feel that most people should have at least a phone with a flashlight; you will have merely a watch, the face of which you will be able to light up for a few seconds at a time.

The first seven floors will be clear of demonic children. But in the stairwell outside the eighth floor, Chiron will tell you that this is a floor a child is known to occupy. You will gather yourself outside the doors, watch light flickering on.

Upon opening the doors, you will be able to see the child glowering at you from the shadows. The child’s pale skin will be tinged blue around the lips and gray around the eyes while dark hair hangs wet and lank around a hollow face, as if the child had just emerged from frigid water.

The child will retreat from the light but hover at the outskirts of the hallway, waiting for an opportunity to pounce. You will make it through that floor unscathed, as you will with the next four floors. It will be on the thirteenth floor, where for a fraction of a second, your light will fail.

The child will attack with a demonic screech. You will want to shriek, scramble to the other end of the hallway, to what you will think is freedom.

But for some reason, you will stand there and open your arms. You will embrace your attacker as it assails you. You will hold it tightly as it struggles. You will whisper what your younger self most needed to hear.

And the struggle will stop. Your aggressor will fall still. Your aggressor will pull away. Your aggressor will morph into someone recognizable: your younger self.

You will take your younger self by the hand with a gentle smile and lead that person out onto the roof.

The winds will have stopped by then, and the sun will be out and warm and soft. Things will be better than before even the winds started.

This has been a public service announcement.

[interlude]

The varmint situation is worsening. The creatures have taken over Town Hall. Town council has hidden in the basement of the building, and the councilpeople are all crying softly into their hands.

Crisis Response Services, the team that responds to mental health and similar crises Mercy Mountain residents face, has emerged from their cocoons and begun marching through town, starting at Geordi Norris’ soybean fields, and following the path of the varmints. The CRS team members approach each varmint with empathy and compassion, asking them what is causing their distress and what they need.

The varmints have told CRS that they need enrichment, and places to safely lay their eggs.

It appears as though CRS has come up with a solution: they have led all of the varmints to the Mercy Mountain Launch Pad, ushered them into the municipal rocket, and are launching them to the moon.

I…don’t know how the low gravity and nonexistent atmosphere will affect the varmints, but CRS seems to think the varmints will flourish there without interfering in our agricultural and horticultural activities. So I guess I’ll take their word for it.

Stay tuned next for me making random sounds directly into a blowing fan. Have a wonderful rest of your night, Mercy Mountain.