A Snowy Cap

Chapter One: Viscous, or The Rules, or A Better Chapter Name

            It was a snowy cap.  That much was clear, if nothing else.  Edgerds was chiving through the blist’ry dunnage of yet another blizzard, through an endlessly whipping, pilgrimy road, up a hill to some unknown building or whatever.  He noted the cliffs and ditches, winter wild, all gawdy slutty rolling lady-lump paramours, teasing him with their trimmed sloppy cracks and crevices, batting eyelashes, feigning modesty with their fresh white robes, waiting for him to drive by, perchance to melt their crunchy covers and reconvene the orgy, to which he was never bid join.
            Dirty, lusty, sinful nature, pondered Edgords, salivating sidelong, distracted from the curvy path by the equally curvy but much more enticing earthen bosoms, futilely brake-slamming as he approached a handful of stray sheep.  Viscous, the single sheep of the clump who did not get the winter memo, blackened by procrastin’ry feats of apathetic anticamo forces, denying the predat’ry covers for chance to stand out from his peers, yea the black sheep among them indeed, was, in all irons of ironies sake, also the single sheep of the clump to be at that moment roadkill’t, beaten by grill and all-season tire alike, killingly murdered by Edwords’ beholden 2003 Ford Focus LTE chariot or whatever.
            Edworg’s grief was inconsolably annoying.  His best friend of all creatures to not have met: pinned pieces under his mediocre ride.  He thought of Chaplin, the holy tramp, equating the struggle of a single working class hero with that of Viscous’ plight.  He pictured Viscous, mustachioed, caned, hatted, and ghetto-pantsed, imprisoned in place of the common sheep, Robin-Hooding food stamps, unionizing sheep-shearerees, picketing every successful business with red insignia, refusing to bleat names in the presence of Joseph BahCarthy, finishing his days in French pastures, the last desperate bleat of the desperate poor.  Oh hero of the black sheep of modern times! Could this be our fate? Smeary abstracts on a canvas of frosty milky blobs?  (Poetry was hard to articulate in times of remorse.)
            Elworg’s rearview mirror answered his innermost prayers as out popped Viscous, often only viewable in mirrors, the black sheep hero of all marginalized curry-destin’d creatures great and small, trotting away intact, unscathed, and chill as ever.  Just before disappearing down the path, Viscous turned back and contacted Alworg’s eyes for a moment in his rearingest of mirrors, then mouthed four words Alwork would henceforth carry to the urn:

            We make the rules.

            That was the last he saw of his resurrected roadkill’t hero, destined for desperate climbs as he fought the grain of defensive sensibility in his coat of many ignorant colours, all of which were black.  This was no chance encounter.  Anwork knew this instinctively.  He had been preparing for this smarmy encounter his entire life.  How long a life? Who was he? Where had he come from? Why was he pilgrimming a progress up a nasty serpentine cleave? What was at the top of the hill or whatever? The questions alone bored Antwork, and reflecting on the past was a doublethink he was ill prepared to peruse at this particular juncture.  Still, he could not bring himself to flick his embarrassing chariot back into drive, and thought back to the brief moment when Viscous was between worlds, pinned in pieces undercarriage, tomb stone-locked and sheets undisturbed, awaiting hero status.  There was something about that moment that was awaiting enlightened recourse.  A lost connection to a paradise in primal intimacy, a participation mystique long lost in the lady-lump paramours.

            As Milton spake of woes in Tartarus
            For wont of crimson Swingline staplers past

            No, this was no ordinary journey.  If by my omnipotent power I wrought vengeance upon Antwerk for his sidelong horny distracted nature, focusing on the perceived lusty hills instead of the road, martyring poor innocent Viscous, forsaking all sensible hero theory structures of yore, this tale would reach untold heights and take on new forms, creating a mythology suited to a new and unprepared world.  This all assumes Viscous’ innocence, which was now in question as he was certainly bound to purple all the ground with verdant flowers, as had been the custom, or to parade with the Wolf of Wolves, whose bark by chance or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay (or both for all we know or whatever).
            No, the only suitable punishment had already been performed as Antwerp was suddenly thrust into his destination, having not even flicked to drive as trust of his attentive nature waned as a pilot capable of flights beyond simulation.  As he looked up, he beheld the building of buildings of his anticipation, anxiously awaiting his arrival.  This is where all would be decided.  This is where he would finally discover his calling.

*

If there were but one thing to know of Antwerp
It would be always pointing to his hair
Which frightened women, children both alike
In hiding trees and bushes flights provok’d
In times where morning strolls were view’d by public
Whose eyes were ill-prepar’d for freak displays.
His hair had conquered nations, vowed revenge,
Sought reparations, slayed the Wolf of Wolves,
So then, when time had come in rain-blown skies
Was ready he for pilots of the souls.