Tagged: zeppelin

While I Did Not Recognize the Person Shaking Me Awake

  • by jenwhen two famous people fight
  • nourishes from the inside
  • the extraordinary nature of his luggage
  • where the mercury often freezes in the thermometer
  • an extending spyglass

Tune in next time part 423      Click Here for Earlier Installments

While I did not recognize the person shaking me awake, her accent was Contrarian through and through. “Ah! You are awake!” she said. “But your eyes, they are bouncing all around. They are like when two famous people fight. Ha ha!”

That was far from the first time someone had said that about my eyes. I’d heard it a lot growing up. It’s the sort of warm childhood memory that nourishes from the inside. I smiled involuntarily.

As I gathered my senses, I realized that I was no longer in the laboratory atop the peak on Disco Island. The buzz of propellers and the view of clouds out the window told me I was once again aboard a zeppelin, but not my wife’s. This was a more rugged airship, lacking such fineries as grand pianos and wet bars.

I sat up, pleased to find that I was no longer bound. I wore my general uniform, complete with hat. Beside me was a heap of rucksacks and duffle bags made entirely of wolf pelts.

My interlocutor called over her shoulder toward the cockpit, “The general’s awake now and marveling at the extraordinary nature of his luggage.” Turning back to address me, she said, “We shall dock in the Paradoxica Mountains in five days, assuming an avalanche hasn’t taken out the fortress.”

The wolf pelts made more sense now. The Paradoxica region was the sort of place where the mercury often freezes in the thermometer. Not usually the sort of place I would choose to spend my time, but it might be nice to get a break from all the crazy machinations surrounding my family. The cold wouldn’t be too big of a deal for me. I was born at the North Pole after all.

A five-day zeppelin journey also sounded quite relaxing. At the very least there was a highly limited number of people on board who might be on a quest for the exotic compound allegedly found in my semen. I stood and stretched, then picked up an extending spyglass and went to a window.

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It Wasn’t Long

  • by Kentgone mad with a moderate amount of power
  • Put some lipstick on. I will, too.
  • all the feathers were in their correct positions
  • “I love you,” he said silently.
  • making me believe in heroes

Tune in next time part 398      Click Here for Earlier Installments

It wasn’t long before a dark, distant shape appeared in the sky. We were, it seemed, overtaking Jim’s zeppelin! I thanked the fisherman and urged him to keep it up.

“Why are you so intent on this airship?” he asked.

“My brother has gone mad with a moderate amount of power and stolen that craft. I have only guesses as to his scheme, but whatever it is he must be stopped.”

“How do I know you’re not the mad brother?”

I looked at him sidelong. I needed him to keep the boat moving swiftly. “You’re doing me a valuable favor, and I appreciate it. Tell me how to demonstrate my appreciation, and I’ll do it.”

“Put some lipstick on. I will, too.”

He handed me a small silver tube. The shade was a bit bright for my tastes, but it wasn’t like I had any of my own.

“And this,” he said, proffering a peacock vest in exchange for the lipstick. Once I’d donned it he inspected me to be sure all the feathers were in their correct positions. “I love you,” he said silently. I took that as a sign that the vest complimented my Contrarian general’s uniform. “Thank you,” he said out loud, “for making me believe in heroes. Now, let’s catch that airship!”

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The Zeppelin Docking Spire Atop the Prison

  • by jenballoon releases and candlelight vigils
  • If you’d asked me three years ago
  • took a bite of a donut
  • Black. Like a tattoo.
  • dark blue eyes and a beautiful belly

Tune in next time part 395      Click Here for Earlier Installments

The zeppelin docking spire atop the prison was the traditional spot for balloon releases and candlelight vigils on important Inimical holidays. There was a small yet ornate royal viewing box. I left Fleur and the babies there with a contingent of warrior monk nannies to await the arrival of the next zeppelin. If you’d asked me three years ago, or even one!, if I would ever worry about anyone’s safety as much as my own, I would have laughed while I took a bite of a donut. Now, the children meant everything to me. I had to stop Jim, and I couldn’t do that with my wife and six infants in tow.

I tried to explain my reasoning to Fleur and she gave me the darkest look. Black. Like a tattoo. “You had better not be running off to meet a lover with dark blue eyes and a beautiful belly to carry your children.”

That was awfully specific.

“I must stop Jim,” I said. I kissed my wife on the lips, and all six babies on the foreheads. Then I straightened my General cap and bounded down the stairs to make my way to the shoreline. The megaswans were on the move.

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“I Must Make Myself Beautiful for Harry”

  • by jenblocked nearly all the sunlight
  • very well-defined chin
  • annoyed at the tone taken by anthropologists
  • “Bingo.”
  • stirred his volcanic, untamed heart

Tune in next time part 353      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“I must make myself beautiful for Harry,” Isolde announced. “He is waiting at the docking spire.” She fluttered off to the bathroom on her toes like a ballerina.

Jim continued to steer the zeppelin, and I handed the infants to Fleur so that she could feed them before we made fast. Ten minutes later Isolde burst from the loo. With her hair freshly brushed she looked quite lovely, but what made her stunning was the fire in her eyes. She thrust a plastic pregnancy test at me and said, “It’s positive! Harry and I conceived our wedding night baby! The auguries are quite auspicious!”

“How long have we been on this zeppelin?” I asked in astonishment, but was roundly ignored.

“When I told Harry on Facetime just now,” Isolde continued, “it stirred his volcanic, untamed heart so much I thought he was having a coronary. His face got so red! But it was simply unbridled joy.” She unclasped the gold chain about her neck and fed it through a slot in the end of the plastic test strip, then hooked it again so that the thing hung between her breasts like a pendant. “Bingo.” She sighed happily. “Now everyone will know my good news!”

“Congratulations,” Fleur said with a glare at me. “It took my husband several years to get me pregnant. Your Harry must be much more ardent.”

You know how everyone gets annoyed at the tone taken by anthropologists at museums when they tell you to stay out of the caveman dioramas? Well Fleur’s tone was even more annoying than that. And where did she get off complaining? She only had the children because her father insisted it was her duty. And it was her idea to make me Harry’s proxy for Isolde’s wedding. And wedding night. This was all on her. I blew her a kiss.

“Hey big brother,” Jim drawled. “You need to take the controls for the landing. I need to put my Panda suit back on before we dock. Can’t have the general public knowing I’m here.”

The women watched unhappily as my brother hid his bare torso away inside the blue furry costume. They each gave a sad little cry when his very well-defined chin disappeared into the headpiece.

I had to turn off the signal jammer to talk to the control tower, but we docked without incident. Fleur strapped both children to Jim’s panda chest, and then the four of us paraded down the gangway and into the spire’s rotating restaurant.

Waiting there was the toad-like Harry, Isolde’s legal husband, and the legal father of her unborn child. His face was still alarmingly red, and to my eye it looked more like fury than joy. Isolde squealed and ran to slather him with kisses. I turned to walk the other way and ran right into an immense figure who blocked nearly all the sunlight. It was Heinrich Hunter.

Heinrich was larger than I’d ever seen him, and then I remembered that he made a habit of carrying Svetlana around under his clothes. And then I remembered that Svetlana was pregnant. With my child.

“We need to talk,” said Heinrich. “Now. In the bathroom.”

Wanting to avoid the irate Harry, I followed the Heinrich/Svetlana/baby turducken into the men’s room.

“I’m in labor!” Heinrich’s belly said in Svetlana’s voice.

“She think’s it’s twins,” Heinrich’s mouth said in Heinrich’s voice. He began to unbutton his shirt.

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Jim Increased Our Altitude

  • by Kentvanquished them
  • professor of extravehicular activities and space suit design
  • begged very hard
  • with their burning eyes and saliva-spun lips
  • looking forward to getting loaded at lunch

Tune in next time part 352      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Jim increased our altitude and resumed our heading for the Inimical Archipelago. I was relieved to be making speed toward our unknown reception in the islands, rather than hanging around to witness what became of the Pentagonistsas as the huge fish vanquished them.

The babies were crying again, no matter what Isolde tried to soothe them. Fleur picked up the radio mic and held it close to their wailing mouths. “My great-uncle Benjamin,” she said loudly over the babes’ noises, “who was a professor of extravehicular activities and space suit design, taught me many ways to jam radio communications. This is in his top five.”

“Did he know any quieter methods?” I asked.

“Please take them!” Isolde begged, begged very hard, but the infants must have learned their disregard for her wishes from their mother because Fleur seemed not to even hear. She gazed with detached fascination at her own offspring, writhing and shrieking in their aunt’s arms, with their burning eyes and saliva-spun lips. She stayed that way for a full ear-splitting minute, so I went to the radio controls and found a way to record a message and replay it on a loop.

“Here,” I said, collecting my twins from Isolde. Their cries faded into a decrescendo of delicate hiccups as I swayed and shusshed.

“I see the islands,” Jim announced. “We should arrive at the docking spire shortly.”

Fleur said, “The top of the spire is said to have the finest restaurant in the islands. I just adore Inimical cuisine.”

“You’re buying, then,” I said, looking forward to getting loaded at lunch.

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Below Me in the Churning Water

  • by jentending to her quarrelsome husband
  • transmissions will resume
  • accused of murdering his roommate
  • circuit breakers?
  • hands moving upwards

Tune in next time part 351      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Below me in the churning water, the crew of the Pentagonal Party’s airship clung desperately to the gondola, barely afloat, and tried to fend off the voracious fish. They were doomed, the lot of them, unless Fleur decided to intervene. I knew she would not.

The chances that her half-brother William was actually aboard the vessel were slim, which meant that we needed to be cautious. If he had managed to gain a foothold on the islands we were quickly approaching, we were floating straight into trouble.

“Fleur! Fleur!” I heard Isolde cry from the galley above me. “Where the hell can she be?”

“No doubt tending to her quarrelsome husband,” came Jim’s drawling reply. I wished he would stay at the zeppelin’s controls. We were still flying low across the waves. Too low, in my opinion.

I climbed the ladder out of my harpoonery seat and reached the galley just as Fleur descended from her upper perch.

“Who knows when those traitor’s transmissions will resume,” she said. “We need  to retake the archipelago before they have time to call for reinforcements.”

My brother Jim had been accused of murdering his roommates in both 9th and 11th grades at the Academy, and again later in culinary school. Someone that ruthless and slippery would be an asset in a situation like this, if I thought I could trust him.

Isolde bounced my children in her arms, looking puzzled. “But how can they radio anyone?” she asked. “Wouldn’t those things get all wet? What are they called, the electric thingies — circuit breakers?”

“We can’t take any chances,” Fleur snapped. “Jim, get back to flying this thing.”

She followed him out of the galley and kept an eagle eye on him until he was once again seated in the copilot’s seat, hands moving upwards to grasp the controls.

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In The Past, You Know

  • by Kent“In the past, you know,
  • arrived at the unwelcome conclusion
  • She’s a lyin’-ass bitch.
  • might well have been considered winged sharks
  • couldn’t believe anyone would want to

Tune in next time part 350      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“In the past, you know, aerial combat was among the courtly arts taught in Contrarian finishing schools.” Fleur’s voice carried to me as she ascended to her gunner’s seat and I clambered down to mine. When I reached my perch I also arrived at the unwelcome conclusion that the harpoon gun I was about to employ hadn’t been maintained properly.

“Isolde assured me, before we departed from the carrier, that the zeppelin’s weaponry was in top condition.”

I didn’t bother shouting a reply to Fleur, but if I had it would have been, “She’s a lyin’-ass bitch.” The sights were crooked, the trigger felt like someone had used it as a place to hold chewing gum, and the gun wasn’t loaded. The harpoon rolled around in the gunnery compartment, flung this way and that by Jim’s desperate flight path.

Jim was buying us time, but it seemed to be at the expense of altitude. I hoped the topside gun was in better condition, because our adversary wasn’t likely to present itself to me down here. We were skimming the whitecaps.

Grabbing the harpoon before it impaled me, I worked on getting it loaded. Suddenly we veered so hard to starboard that the force of the turn tipped our vessel sideways. Thus my seat became the perfect vantage to observe as a school of ferocious looking flying fish — they might well have been considered winged sharks, only bigger — burst forth from the ocean. They were the reason Jim heeled us over so drastically. The huge creatures arced over us and sank their serrated teeth into the not-so-armored envelope of the Pentagonal faction’s airship.

And then we yawed back to level flight, and I could see only spume. For those few seconds, that cramped keel-mounted gunner’s nest was the best place to obtain a view of such a singular spectacle, but having gone through it I couldn’t believe anyone would want to.

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“Evasive Maneuvers!”

  • by jenWilliam’s fifth wife
  • (or tethered goats — whatever you’re into)
  • beige comfort food at its best
  • delivery man for the morgue
  • performing a flourish

Tune in next time part 349      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Evasive maneuvers!” Fleur shouted.

“Yes ma’am,” came Jim’s reply. Fleur and I stumbled into the counters as our zeppelin suddenly lurched to starboard. We looked like we were on the bridge of the Enterprise as Jim quickly dodged to port and we stumbled again.

Picking up the mic once more, Fleur said calmly, “The traitorous acts of the Pentagonal Party will be punished most harshly.”

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pentagonal Party. Everyone has. But since things are so convoluted I’ll give a brief refresher. Fleur’s father, the Contrarian Warlord and Supreme Calligrapher William Penn XI has, per Contrarian tradition, eleven wives (one for each of the previous warlords who bore his name, and one for himself). Fleur is William’s firstborn child, born to his sixth wife, Agnes Rose, a full minute before her brother was delivered to William’s fifth wife (and Agnes Rose’s older sister) Rose Agnes. The other nine siblings from the first “brood,” as it is called, arrived over the next several hours. This is how it has always been done in Contraria, with the marriages all taking place at once and the pregnancies all conceived to run concurrently, and may the best man win. Fleur was the first time in recorded history that the firstborn was female. William, to his credit, was pleased to have his daughter as heir. Rose Agnes was not. To her, Fleur’s arrival a mere minute too early was an insult. Her sense of outrage was likely enhanced by long-simmering sibling rivalry between the sisters. Rose Agnes and her bodyguard/lover rebelled and formed the Pentagonal Party, and have spent the past several decades plotting to put William XII on the throne in Fleur’s place.

The warlord tried over the years to placate Rose Agnes. I’ve seen the letters he wrote in his impeccable script. “If you will only cease your hostilities and come home, I will be pleased to provide you with several ponies (or tethered goats — whatever you’re into). Our son will be a duke and will enjoy beige comfort food at its best, as prepared by the palace chefs.” It goes on and on in that vein, but Rose Agnes would not hear of reconciliation. In one of her replies she says that if her son can’t be warlord he might as well be a delivery man for the morgue. Her writings are very melodramatic.

Fleur turned to me and said, “I’m going to man the top harpoon.” Performing a flourishing gesture toward a trapdoor in the floor she added, “You take the one in the keel. We’ll blast those bastards out of the sky.”

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The Glowing Line On The GPS Map

  • by Kentyou should wash that spoon
  • and properly ventilated
  • What a soft voice!
  • with crablike precision
  • this burning desire to do whatever

Tune in next time part 346      Click Here for Earlier Installments

The glowing line on the GPS map led toward an empty region of the ocean. But I knew it was not as uninhabited as it appeared. Our destination coordinates reminded me of a dossier I’d once had a chance to skim, about a secret island chain under Contrarian rulership.

Did Jim know about the Inimical Archipelago?

I sulked off to the zeppelin’s galley to contemplate. By now my nosebleed seemed to be under control, but I found the duct tape very difficult to remove. A utensil in one of the long drawers provided me the necessary leverage, and Isolde entered the small galley just as I got my nostrils unstuck.

Laying it aside, I said, “You should wash that spoon.”

“Wash it yourself,” she snapped. “But later, somewhere better equipped and properly ventilated. Why are you hiding back here?”

“Just need a quiet spot to think.”

“What a soft voice!” Isolde exclaimed. I winced.

The galley door opened, and Fleur passed sideways through it, carrying the infant twins with crablike precision.

“I thought I might find you schemers here,” she said. “That’s always how it’s been with you, ever since Daddy made us marry. You’re forever lurking and plotting, driven by this burning desire to do whatever. But meanwhile, you haven’t the foggiest idea of what the game really means.”

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I Marveled at My Wife’s Sense of Entitlement

  • by jensense of entitlement and lack of shame
  • my nose was bleeding
  • without saying another word, walked slowly away
  • bizarre wedding photo
  • Two scoops.

Tune in next time part 345      Click Here for Earlier Installments

I marveled at my wife’s sense of entitlement and lack of shame over it. She was every inch the warlord’s daughter. Of course everyone would do her bidding.

I’m allergic to seagull feathers, and after being coated in them for a quarter hour, my nose was bleeding. I used the strip of duct tape to close up my nostrils and stem the flow.

Fleur tapped another button on the GPS, which brought up a flight plan. “Follow that,” she told Jim. She scooped the babies out of his arms and without saying another word, walked slowly away, swaying gently.

Jim watched her appreciatively for a minute before turning back to the controls.

Isolde bounded over and held out her phone to show me a bizarre wedding photo on the screen. It was from our wedding. Or rather hers and Harry’s. But since I was Harry’s proxy, the picture showed me standing there in my morning suit beside Isolde. She had applied a filter that overlaid an odd frog mouth to my head in an effort to make me somewhat resemble her toadlike non-proxy husband.

“Doesn’t Harry look handsome?” she crooned.

“So handsome.”

“I’m so glad I’m going to have his baby!”

I left her mooning over the photo and went to look at the flight plan. I wanted to know where the hell we were going, and how long it would take us to get there. If I was trapped on a zeppelin with these people for much longer I was going to need drugs. A lot of drugs. Two scoops. Of drugs.

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