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The morning after the magnificent feast, the residents of Timbrook laid scattered about the center of town. Their sleeping bodies marked the exact spot where their brains — having taken enough abuse for one night ― finally shut down. A few of the townspeople began to stir, as the sun slowly rose over them, and they snorted, or wheezed, or yawned, while rubbing their bloated bellies and crusty lips. Empty barrels of all types of mind-warping elixirs were strewn around the village and would probably not be eaten for a day or so. A slight fog drifted across the town; while several nervous chickens loitered about, not realizing that they could rest easy for a few hours.
Mayor Gristlepuss suddenly lumbered out of his sad excuse for a door, and made his way to a large, tooth-marked oak that stood next to his mansion. He began to pull repeatedly on a rope connected to a large bell that had been strapped to one of the oak's branches.
After three or four rings, he had to stop because someone flung a shoe at his head.
He straightened himself up and began lifting each of his wooden-block-enhanced feet upon a moss-covered rock next to the oak. He began to search through a crumpled mass of papers he had pulled from his back pocket. Several minutes passed before he apparently found the right page, at which point, a smile crossed his face as he peered out over the accumulated sleeping lumps of his fellow townspeople. A few were beginning to wake up — he could tell this by the loud belching and farting sounds.
"Ah, the morning trumpets..." he giddily muttered.
He leaned forward, as if attempting to speak through a microphone, even though there wasn't one there. "Uh...attention, test, test...is this on? Can you hear me?" he said in a quivering, raspy voice.
He then praised the gods of creation for bestowing upon him a low-center of gravity, or else he would have never been able to dodge the several thrown articles of footwear, rocks, and empty flagons that whizzed by his globular skull.
"Shut up, ya' sod!" exclaimed a grizzly voice from behind the pub.
"Yes, yes, thank you," replied the mayor, still smiling like a garden gnome. "Yes, right, down to business...uh, let me see."
He started shuffling through the same pile of papers ― having already forgotten what he came to the platform to say. Several minutes passed, before a smile returned to his face.
After deftly avoiding a few more missiles, he began to speak again.
"Uh, be it as it were, and as it was, and as it might...could, possibly be, and being as it can, maybe, should be...it brings me great honor and aforethought, as it were, that I, your humble and loyal mayor, being of sound mind and bodily fluids...and just as lofty as any average person of my tallness might, conceivably be..."
A loud, sustained belch, followed by a lobbed clump of moss ― which just barely missed his smiling pumpkin ― momentarily interrupted his train of thought and speaking abilities.
After a quick glance around to see if anyone was reloading, he continued, "...Do hereby announce, pronounce, and solemnly swear, that I, being the Honorable Mayor Gristlepuss, Esquire, do declare this day...as an...unpaid holiday! Thank you. Thank you."
And with that, he quickly bowed, lightly clapped, smiled, and lumbered back to his mansion. The assembled crowd voiced their approval by loudly yawning and pawing at their private parts.
Inside the pub, Farley Apropos was just waking up. He had a vicious headache, which is what happens when a person starts to hit the wood varnish too early in the night. He felt his stomach gurgle, but this was a happy gurgle, for it was quite full. He smacked his lips a few times, and spotting the pub's owner, Joe Salver, lying on the floor with his arms wrapped around a large sleeping hog, decided to give him a swift kick.
"Aye, wake up, you ol' poison merchant."
"Wha...?" Joe slurred. His tongue was so numb and rancid that at first he thought a garden slug had crawled into his mouth during the night and died. "Huh...d'ya...what?"
"Get a pot goin' will ya? My brain feels like moldy cheese...and I think my right arm is paralyzed," Farley replied, while banging his unresponsive appendage repeatedly against the bar. "Floppy as me grandpa's jowls it is! Look at that!"
Joe raised his head slightly. "Huh?"
"Me arm...it don't feel nothing. Hey! What'd you put in that last jug we drank?"
"Same old stuff," Joe replied, "Weed killer, I think. Say, what time is it?"
"Time for morning tea," Farley snapped back, while poking his arm with a fork. He looked upward and sighed, "It appears my new nickname will be 'Lefty' from here on out."
Meanwhile, Joe was wiping a thick line of crust from his eyelids. He tried to raise himself up from the floor, but his arm was still stuck under the hog sleeping next to him. "Hey! My arm is paralyzed too!" he suddenly shouted, "I can't feel a thing!"
Farley laughed, "Have a good look there, radish-brain. Your arm is trapped beneath Fred Mealy's prize-winning hog. 'Willow,' me thinks its name is." With that, Farley gave the sow a quick kick to its hindquarters, which produced a loud, piggish squeal from the sleepy beast. "Go on, now, Willow. Get back to your normal pig sty, and leave this one to us miscreants."
With a good snort, the hog began to waddle to the door.
"Aye," Joe chirped, "thought that was me wife...cuddled up for a morning nap."
Farley grunted, "That's what happens when you marry a woman with a hairy back."
Joe slowly stood up, rubbing his arm and blinking his crunchy eyelids. "Ya. I should've known the difference though, my wife snores twice as loud as that pig."
The first ripples of sensation were returning to Farley's arm ― so, he put down the butcher-knife. Seeing a cup of mysterious greenish-yellow liquid sitting on the bar, he took a deep breath.
"Hair of the dog..." he murmured, and after removing the dead fly that was floating upon the surface, slurped the liquid down in one loud gulp. His eyes suddenly widened as his throat managed to squeak out a feeble wheeze. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor in a heap of spastic gyrations and strident hacking sounds. After coughing up a large fur ball, he slowly pulled himself back up against the bar.
"Whoa! That stuff kicks like a rabid mule," he hiccupped, and spat out a few stray hairs.
"Ya," Joe replied, "...and kills crabgrass, too."
The town priest suddenly walked through the door of the pub, with a loud: "Hullo, mutton heads!"
Joe turned from the kettle of tea he was beginning to brew, and replied with a nod. Farley just stood at the bar and began foaming at the mouth. "Bah-la-la," was the only response he could voice.
"That was some feast last night, huh?" the priest bellowed.
Joe's face wrinkled in agitation. He waved his hand to the vicar. "Down a notch, please, Honcho," he whispered, "...t'was a long night."
The priest bobbed his head knowingly and glanced over at Farley, who winked and smiled as best he could with a cloud of foam pouring off his lips.
"Right, right," the priest murmured. "Ah, yes...I remember my youth...many a night was spent imbibing life's little nectars and wart-removing agents. Many a night indeed. Once, at a ministerial gathering, several of us apprentices whipped up a batch of embalming fluid so potent that it damn-near cauterized our tongues to the tops of our mouths. I was hung-over for a week, and spent several days believing that I was 'Nefertiti: Queen of the Nile Crocodiles'. Ya, ya, those were the days..."
He smiled and turned to Farley, who shook his head in a happy motion, approving of the priest's story, and acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary, even though he was slowly growing a large beard of froth.
"Ablah-habla," he gleefully replied, each syllable forming even more bubbles.
"Yes, exactly," Honcho said. "So, Joe, I was wondering if you might have some paprika and a bay leaf or two?"
Joe looked in a cabinet above the stove. "Hmm...I have the paprika, but no bay leaf."
"Perfect!" Honcho exclaimed. After a quick glance around, he readjusted his vocal cords, and in a much softer voice, said, "I'm making horse liver stew for dinner tonight."
"Oh..." Joe responded, while pouring a couple of flagons of tea, which he then slid to the other end of the bar.
"Yep, I was lucky enough to swipe the precious organ before the rest of you omnivorous reprobates had a chance to consume it last night. Ha-ha," he loudly laughed, sounding like a parrot with a bad case of avian flu.
"Care for a cup, Honcho?" Joe asked.
The priest nodded yes. After a serving was presented, he and Joe sipped lightly on the hot liquid, while Farley just sat there and slowly poured it over his head. One of his eyes was nearly closed, while the other bulged outward ― apparently trying to make a break for it. He foamed on and smiled.
"It's been so long since I've had horse liver stew. It's a specialty of mine, y'know? I learned the recipe from a Mongol hag by the name of Googly Goo, who used to cook all of our meals at the monastery, well...that is...before the whole dachshund casserole incident."
He took another sip of the steaming tea and noticed a small, puffy pile of bubbles slowly creeping across the bar. "I only wish I had one of those new-fangled, slow-cooking crock pots with which to cook with. Oh! How scrumptious my stewy endeavors would truly be."
Joe silently nodded, but didn't have the faintest idea what Honcho el Grande was talking about.
Farley suddenly looked around as if hearing someone in the distance calling out his name. He gobbled a series of foam-drenched turkey calls in response.
"These new electric pots have a temperature control so precise, that one can slow-cook a two pound horse-butt in no time, and best of all, clean up is fast and easy due to its non-stick cooking surface." Honcho looked up to the ceiling. A heavenly peace covered his face.
Joe glanced up to see if maybe a bat was nesting in the joists. His mind was beginning to clear a little as the rising sun began to peek through the many holes in the tavern's ceiling and walls. "Honcho, what'cha think about that stranger? Think what he said was true?" he asked.
"Hmm..." The priest's forehead furrowed. "Don't know, maybe. These are dark days indeed, and a foul wind blows from out of the west."
Joe took another drink. "That's just Mealy's hog farm."
"No, my friend, there is a storm brewing as well. The lord of these lands, King Cornswallow, is testing his powers. There are battles beyond those swamps that we never hear about, battles to gain power over this region...absolute power."
"Hmmpf," Joe responded, beginning to wipe the pile of foam from the bar. "Cornswallow...never heard of him."
"He is our king now, whether or not you've heard of him. He defeated the Allegorian horde of Duke Heimlich at the battle of Septic Meadows."
Joe suddenly jumped up. "Duke Heimlich is dead?!"
"Ya...he was killed in battle by a man armed with a goat."
"And the Heimlich Dynasty is no more?!"
"Nope," Honcho replied matter-of-factly.
Joe threw the soaked towel at a trash bin near the stove. He took a large mouthful of the tea and swallowed hard. "Well, that would explain why they canceled my newspaper subscription."
Honcho nodded in agreement. Joe went to the stove to pour another cup, while Farley began to chase an invisible squirrel around the pub.
"I will say this, though," Honcho peeped, "He did say something that intrigued me. Now, don't get me wrong, the idea of filling my belly with a ton of horse flesh is always far more stimulating than what some dandy lion has to say about anything, but..."
Joe leaned upon the bar, listening closely. Farley, meanwhile, was under a pile of boxes trying to corner a delusion, and squawking like a Latvian swamp goose.
"When he said that he was from Allegoria, and had visited the one-legged trolls of Razzle-Bazzle, well, that was...quite surprising."
"Why so?"
Honcho leaned in just a smidgeon and lowered his voice. "Well, near Poutsland is a cave with three witches, their names are 'Tweedle-duh', 'Tweedle-doh', and 'Tweedle-deeeaw'. While pronouncing the witches' names, he made several strange faces ― closing one eye while opening the other wide, contorting his mouth, and producing several spasmodic gestures with his arms and hands. "Anyway, these witches are friends with the one-legged trolls of Razzle-Bazzle, and they can see into the future due to their close relationship with an old wizard on Mount Gagglehorn, who just so happens to have a very powerful stone that some say controls time itself."
"Right," Joe smirked, "and Farley there is the new pope."
"Just trying my best to foreshadow," Honcho replied, taking another drink. "I'm in with the big guy, y'see?" He lifted his thumb upward with a knowing look upon his blotchy bobber. "That's why I'm so acquainted with..." he then leaped to his feet and dramatically pointed to the door, "...the future!"
He stood there, still pointing, when he noticed that Farley was now outside and wearing a flour sack as a cloak, and a water bucket as a hat.
"What the hell is Farley doing?" he asked.
Joe approached the door, and quickly realized what had happened. "He must'a overheard me saying that he was the next pope."
"Oh..."
They peered through the doorway and saw Farley ― his chin, neck, and chest, completely covered in foam. He was staggering around each of the sleeping lumps in the street, and after haughtily waving a chicken leg over them, blessed each one by loudly chanting: "Bah-lah, bahba, bah-la, bah-ba, boo-lah-boo."
ns 15.158.61.54da2
