Greegs & Ladders (4 page)

of Carnivals
and Things… but mostly of Things

Zook and
Naddy

He sat upright
in his cage as the sounds of jeering and screaming jarred him from
his sleep.

“Come on now,
these people paid good money to see you three get it on.”

Moments before
he was swimming in an ocean of schmold. He didn’t know it was
called schmold of course. Just knew it felt oh so good. Much better
than being poked at with a pointed stick. Which he was at the
moment. He farted and sneezed at the same time, sending globules of
greenish, yellowish goo cascading down his hairy face. Momentarily
sure that it must be schmold, he grabbed the snot and rubbed it all
over himself. He got some in his eye which stung and burned. He
decided to try and remedy this by jamming his fingers in his
eyeballs to stop the pain. It didn’t work. It only made him yelp
out with more pain. This woke up the other male in the cage. The
other male in the cage flew into a rage, furious at being awoken
from a fabulous dream. His dream involved having just decided what
combination of rotations, spins and poses he would employ after
running and jumping off of a 100 meter high dive springy board
right into his own, brand new schmold pool.

The other male
picked up a pile of Greeg feces and rubbed it all over the first
male’s face. To make things easier, we will henceforth call these
two males Zook and Naddy. There is absolutely no reason to suspect
these names have any significance, they are completely random.

Zook, the
first male, did not understand why his friend would share such nice
stinky feces all over his face like that.

“What a lucky
break!” Thought Zook.

Clearly, this
terrific new stench and nauseating outward, physical appearance
would guarantee that Zook would get to attempt first, third, and
probably eighth as well today. His inability to comprehend Naddy’s
reasoning infuriated Zook, leading him to grip Naddy by the back of
the head and clang clang clang his good friend's face into the bars
of the cage until it was all bloody. Just for good measure, Zook
pissed all over Naddy’s bloody face.

By this time
the female had seen about enough. She was completely and utterly
turned on. She revealed the sterility covers and the two males
rushed over to see which one was to be chosen first, third, and
most importantly, eighth.

11 minutes had
passed since Zook had first awoken from his nap.

This was why
Greegs were such a damned fine carnival attraction!

Specters and
Greeg-keepers

Viewing this
skeezy carnival show was a gathering of Algreenian fog-specters.
They were in dire need of some high quality entertainment, having
just finished a legendarily bad cruise of some of the more boring
outer dimensions, including a tour of the famous invisible
dimension. Life is much worse when everything is invisible, despite
what was boasted about on travel posters. Carnival Greegs are
highly recommended as a pick-me-up for anyone who has recently
visited the invisible dimension, and so here were these Algreenian
spectres drifting around waiting for the show.

An impatient
spectre tried to pick up a rock and throw it at Naddy but his
spectral, non-existant hand merely passed right through the solid
object. The spectre then asked the nearest living creature if they
would do him the favor of throwing a rock at the Greegs. The
creature obliged, throwing a rock at Naddy, further worsening his
mangled appearance. While this was going on, Zook thrashed his arms
about wildly. It was a ridiculously pointless thing to do.

“We paid for a
show!” yelled the rock-throwing instigator.

“Yeah! A show!
We want to see something!” chimed in the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t you
know we’ve just been through the invisible dimension?” screeched a
belligerent specter. “Not a whole lot to see there! In fact,
nothing at all.”

The
Greeg-keeper continued rapping on the cage bars with his
electro-club. Greegs usually became obedient once the electro-club
appeared. This particular Greeg-keeper was a tall goblin-like
creature. He had fangs and claws and red eyes. His name was Reg. He
was more frightening than his casually friendly name would suggest,
being a tall goblin-like creature with fangs and claws and red
eyes.

“These
specter-folk haven’t got all day,” growled Reg. “Or do they?” he
added, turning to face the specters. “Are you lot dead? What’s the
deal with all the floating and the translucence?”

“No, we’re not
dead,” replied one of the specters. “We are living creatures born
in a ghostly form. When we die we become bodies of flesh and
blood.”

“That’s
stupid. A bit backwards, don’t you think?” asked Reg.

“I say the
only thing that is backwards is the fact that we have paid you for
a non-existent show, when in fact you should be paying us for the
wasting of our time.”

“I’m not sure
you’ve even paid me,” said Reg. “All I’ve got is this invisible
money. Can’t even see it to know if it’s there.”

“We told you,
that money is perfectly transferable from within the invisible
dimension. Once you’re there you can trade the invisible money for
any sort of bejewelled holograph-coins or whatever other foolish
currency you’re trading in nowadays.”

“Right,” said
Reg. “I understand that part. Just not sure when I’ll ever bother
to go to the invisible dimension, that’s all. This money will
probably just end up sitting around taking up invisible space on my
visible dresser.”

“
Not go
to the invisible dimension? You
must
go to the invisible dimension,” said a specter in a manner
snooty enough to suggest that anyone who doesn’t go to the
invisible dimension is leading a wasted life.

“I don’t get
it, you’ve all been going off about how boring the invisible
dimension is,” said Reg.

“Yeah, but
we’re specters. We’re practically invisible ourselves. We prefer to
see solid objects to counterbalance our spectral state. The
invisible dimension might be a nice change-up for you though. I
hear one of flesh and blood feels thinner while there.”

Reg grew
annoyed. “Look, I’m never going to visit the invisible dimension.
The cost of travelling there is way more than what I’ll make
trading in the money. Plus I think it’s all a scam.”

Caught up in
their heated discussion, Reg and the specters failed to notice the
Greeg show starting in a tremendous way. There was a great battle
over who would make the coveted eighth attempt, with Zook
prevailing because of his aforementioned newly acquired stench. The
show was over by the time the specters focused their attention back
on the cage. Because they didn’t see anything Reg was forced to
refund their invisible money. Unbeknownst to Reg, specters are not
great liars. The pouch of invisible money was indeed real, and
would have fetched several islands worth of bejewelled
holograph-coins, granted Reg could handle the mind-shattering
experience of crossing the invisible dimension’s psychic threshold,
which of course he couldn’t, being an imbecilic goblin. After the
specters drifted away, Reg approached the cage.

“Those are
good customers we lost because of you!” he yelled at Zook and
Naddy.

Naddy tried to
explain how well the show had gone, and that it was the audience's
fault for missing out.

“Never mind,”
said Reg as he walked away from the cage. “Useless Greegs. Just go
back to dreaming about your green pools or whatever it is I hear
you muttering about in your sleep.”

Zook thrashed
his arms about wildly.

Dr. Rip T.
Brash Makes a Wager

Dr. Rip
T. Brash The Third was neither a doctor nor was he royalty. He
wasn’t the third of anything, he’d never been to school and he
wasn’t really so much of a ‘he’ either. It’s just weird calling him
an ‘it’ but he had no discernible sexual orientation. Not because
he lacked sexual organs. Rip had no discernible sexual orientation
precisely because he had so
many
sexual organs. He had an absolutely ridiculous assortment
of penises, vaginas, coil rods, flipper flaps, egg baskets, cram
rams, biddle twocks, horm guffles, abble taters, phrish kerrings,
wodder musks, mickle shoots, marrinvioles, and all sorts of other
exotic pieces of procreation and pleasure. At this point, Rip
couldn’t really remember which ones he was born with, and which
he’d had surgically implanted or removed. He was a hulky thing. A
clunky, yet carefully put together specimen. He had many eyes, some
of which were capable of site. He had a few brains, some of which
were capable of thought. He had four arms, three legs, nine
tentacles, eight nipples, three beards (but only one chin)… in
general he had a lot of extraneous parts. He was like a car with
too many accessories, many of which served no practical purpose.
Practicality was not what Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third was all
about.
Rip was brash
though, especially when wildly intoxicated at a carnival, which he
most certainly was. He was prone to making outrageous and
outlandish claims when drunk. Unfortunately for him, his friends
were prone to taking him up on these claims and bets then
collecting when he failed miserably to achieve them. This is likely
the explanation for most, if not all, of his sexual organs.
They weren’t really friends as
much as they were leeches. This was so true that it was common for
intergalactic debt counselors to suggest to cash strapped clients
“Perhaps you should try going drinking with Dr. Rip T. Brash The
Third at a carnival.” Nobody knew how he had so much money to lose
on outlandish bets. It’s true every once in awhile he would
actually succeed in the task laid out for himself in a loud
mouthed, drunken stupor the night before, but not nearly enough
times to be breaking even. On this day Rip was more drunk than
usual, and so his primary mouth was flapping more than usual.
Sensing a real chance to not only cover his debts, but perhaps wind
up owning a few thousand civilizations as well, Rip’s drinking
partner, Jim, wasn’t taking Rip up on any of his bets early on in
the night. He instead downplayed them as effeminate and pathetic in
the hopes that Rip would continue one-upping himself until the bet
was so outlandish and impossible to achieve that Jim could never
lose.

This is, of
course, exactly what Rip did. Beginning with a paltry claim that he
could stick his whole head up the anus of a Graffling Wocker Frit,
spin around three times, return to the bar and still go home with
the prettiest four headed being in the building, Rip eventually got
so drunk and ran his mouth to such a degree that he made the most
preposterous drunken wager ever made in the long and glorious
history of preposterous drunken wagers.

This was
it.

Dr. Rip T.
Brash The Third opened his drunken face and guzzled back his
eleventh Crammington Krish Fortini (about ten and a half more than
one should engulf in a lifetime). He slammed the Jardian glass
bottle on the top of the bar and shouted out “I got it!”

At this point
the entire bar had given up whatever false conversations they’d
been having and were all just focusing on Rip’s self imposed
escalating stakes, waiting to see what ridiculous final challenge
Jim would pull the trigger on.

Rip grabbed
Jim by the hairy tube dangling from the back of his neck and
dragged him to the Greeg cage. A crowd of about 200 visible beings,
the odd specter and several recording devices followed the pair out
to what had surely become the most interesting thing to happen at
the carnival in days. Rip, always a showman, clambered on to the
side of the Greeg cage, barely held on to the bars with one hand
and held up his twelfth CKF with the other.

“I, Dr. Rip T.
Brash The Third, do solemnly declare in the name of all
things…”

Several shouts
of ‘get on with it’ and other such encouragements were volleyed in
his general direction, along with several pounds of half eaten
food, severed limbs and hunks of hard granite.

“Fine, fine,
no sense of tact and ceremony but fine, here it is. I bet you,
Grahm…”

“Jim!”
Corrected the mob.

“Gerry, right,
I bet you my priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships, er, Jill,
that I, me, yes, can take a lowly, stupid, useless carnival Greeg,
and have them smarter than enough to pass as a decent, semi
intelligent creature, person, thing… in two years. Smarter than all
of you even!”

The mob went
silent. Then a laugh broke out from the back and collectively
rolled on up to the front. Jim, rolling around on the ground,
unable to believe his luck, screamed out “Yes, yes! Hahahaha
YES!”

a Wager with
Extraordinarily Off-Kilter Odds Elicits Enough Attention as to
Shatter the Planetary Record for Most Teleportations in a
Nanosecond

The
crowd buzzed over the absurd wager. While trying to imagine the
scenario of an intelligent Greeg, the circuit boards of many fine
robots were forever liquefied. Things got way out of control when a
random spectator phoned his debt counsellor to announce that
Dr. Rip just made his most
foolish bet ever. After that, word quickly spread that if you could
make it to the Greeg cage on the 5
^th
planet from Tralfar in the next half hour then you might
also be retiring in the next two years. Cash-strapped clients
swamped in debt (hoping to make a bet of their own) immediately
flew into a frenzy of action. Many sought out the nearest
teleportation booth. On particularly crime-ridden planets you could
see lineups extending miles into the horizon. The fugitives
patiently waited in line for days. It is not difficult to muster
such patience when you’re a guilty tax-evader scheduled for
dismemberment.