I Barely Had Time to Get Back Into Uniform
a little tune about banana bread- Finding a skull, picking it up,
- heels of my new boots
- “A fox, it’s called.”
- but you have a job to do
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I barely had time to get back into uniform before the zeppelin docked at Enigma Fortress. Yolanda kept smiling at me in a most unprofessional but endearing manner, and the pilot continued to pretend he could neither see nor hear us, as he’d been doing for the entire journey.
As I strode out onto the gangway extending from the zeppelin’s gondola to the wall of the fortress, an honor guard raised ram horns to their lips and blew me a rather brown-sounding fanfare. Then the fortress’s resident Yodeler, a corporal by the name of Yancy, began the official welcoming ceremony by singing a little tune about banana bread. There was a dance to go with it, which I was expected to perform. I scrambled to remember all the steps. It is a dance that tells a story, a symbolic reenactment of the birth of the entire Contrarian Military-Industrial Complex. Finding a skull, picking it up, then grinding it to powder under the heels of my new boots. Contrarian defense contractors like to focus on dealing with foes who have already been flensed.
My dance moves earned me another inauspicious blast of the horns, and then Yancy led me to my quarters. I pushed open the door and spotted a red blur as something vanished under my bed.
I turned to Yancy for some insight.
“A fox, it’s called.”
I made the universal circular hand gesture for “go on…”
“They’re good luck. Also, if you make friends with it, warm and cuddly in long alpine nights. I’m sure if you’re persistent you and the fox will bond, but you have a job to do so you might not have that kind of free time.”
“Perhaps I have all the luck I need, and the fox can go.”
“All due respect, General, look where you are. I wouldn’t turn down any extra luck in your position.”
bonus points for using them in order