BOOK ONE, A RUINOUS FEUD
Justin Mathews – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
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It is in an old, roofless, dilapidated building, without windows or doors, more a few piles of rubble than a building, set in a devastated, once-urban wilderness, two hundred years hence, it is night-time, a handful of dirty, hungry people huddle together.
An Elder speaks: “Gather close, where the walls meet, against the cold, we last few people of the Tribe, we, the remnants of a once mighty people, throw more shitcake on the fire, set Watchmen against the coming of Others, and I will tell you the tale – as my Sire told me and his Sire told him and his Sire told him, back, way back, since the coming of Gordon’s Ruin. These, children and friends, are the legends and commentaries, the hymns and prayers of stanislav the Polish plumber; make unto each other the sign of Ruin and say, after me, the first commandment of stanislav the Pole: Up against the wall, motherfuckers………”
All: “Up against the wall, motherfuckers; up against the wall, motherfuckers, up against the wall, motherfuckers.”
“And Gordon the Ruiner was born, some say hatched, in what were called the BadJocklands o’ Fife, far distant, ten nights march, in a place of ever-warring tribes, of filth and disease, where men dressed and acted as women and women were thrashed like mad dogs and all were an abomination and it was a land of inebriate, cross-dressing, wife-beating, child-molesting Jock sonsafuckingbitches…”
“and it was a land of inebriate, cross-dressing, wife-beating, child-molesting Jock sonsafuckingbitches”
“And Gordon’s father was an Voodoo Witch Doctor of this Tribe and the Keeper of the Bones and Spells and Curses and lived in an fucking manse, which is an Ancients’ word for an knocking shop and an place of Devil worship and infamy and he did go among the tribe and rebuke them and take from them their tokens and goods – as such they had in the days of Plenty, before Ruin claimed all – and spend it upon women’s undergarments for himself. And he was called also an clergyperson, which was a word used by the Ancients to indicate an defiler of children, an filthy fucking bastard.
And Gordon’s birth brought Darkness at the break of Noon and he was seen as one afflicted, sour and ugly but the old tribes did not, as do we, set the mutant out for the dogs to kill and consume, but nourished him instead, for this was Before Ruination came at Gordon’s hand, and there was food and shelter and thanks to stanislav the plumber, water sprang from magic pipes beneath the earth – honest and not invent, pipes, filled with clean water grew everywhere and the Ancients, Before Ruin, knew not of drinking from puddles, or collecting rainwater, as is our custom, now, now that Gordon the Ruinous, skulking and plotting and lying and feuding, has forever laid waste all that the Ancients had made. And Before Ruin, shit was not hoarded and mixed with straw, by the children, for fuel, but washed away down magic pipes into the dead seas. Imagine, water for all, as much as they could drink, so abundant that they splashed it all over themselves, several times a day. Our chronicler saw to it, stanislav was his name and plumbing – or planting and growing the magic water pipes and cutting through all the shit – was his game, Up against the wall motherfuckers, his constant cry, as Ruin’s cold hand gripped the Place ”
“Up against the wall, motherfuckers.”
To be continued.
© stanislav the Polish plumber 2009
Ed. stanislav AKA Mr Ishmael sadly passed away Thursday evening. If you would like to send your condolences to Mrs Ishmael you can do so here: Call me Ishmael.
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
