Another reader wanted a story about a hedgehog named Lorna who suffers from narcolepsy.  Remember, you asked me for it.

Once upon a time, there was a hedgehog named Lorna.  Lorna came from a hedgehog family of narcoleptics, a disease in which one keels over randomly, dead asleep.  Lorna’s narcolepsy was an unfortunate yet unavoidable fact of life. Hedgehogs are primarily nocturnal and her night time naps often prevented her attendance at the best Hog Parties.  Yet narcolepsy did provide her with one welcome ability:  like Freddy Krueger, she could enter into the dreams of others.  Lorna, who came from a family of Spiritualist hedgehogs, was  intimidated by her ability until Old Aunt Genevieve counseled her one day, speaking words of wisdom through a mouthful of insect legs.  “Lorna,” croaked the old hedgehog, nose deep in a bowl of toasted grasshoppers, ”God gave you a gift, and that gift is to enter the dreams of others and prepare them for a spiritual, healthy existence.  You can shape their dreams and show them the light.”

Lorna contemplated this, then smiled broadly.  “Thank you, Aunt Genny!” she cried, racing back to her burrow before the next narcoleptic sleep began.  Her once-inconvenient stealth naps became the path to the greater good.  So many forest animals were prone to mere subsistence living: eating bugs, drinking water, sleeping dreamlessly and obsessively procreating.  She aimed to show them a better way of life.  To learn more about her abilities, she read a book on shamanism*.  The book claimed that when in a “lucid dream,” one could find “a portal” into another dreamer’s dream.  Lorna found that this was indeed true:  when in a narcoleptic dream, she had only to look around for her portal, a small peat bog.  It wasn’t as glamorous as the examples in the book, such as a rose or waterfall, but she didn’t let it deter her.  She would find the dreamer and radiate love and light from each quill, rolling herself into a ball so that she could be a miniature sun of joy and peace.

Yet inevitably, the dreaming forest animals would scream in terror.  She would pursue them, calling “Don’t you want to join the light?  Come to the light!” but their only response was continued screaming and and eventual disappearance into a poof of dust as they awoke.   Frustrated, she would then awake and contemplate her failure.  What was with these guys?  What was their problem with the light?  Was she unwittingly living in a forest devoted to evil or something?

Had Lorna bothered to read Appendix C of the shamanism book, she would have realized that “come to the light” was tantamount to saying “Time to die now, come peacefully.”  The appendix was full of stories of people who nearly died and saw dead relatives waiting at the end of a tunnel of joyous, radiant light.  But Lorna was the kind of hedgehog who only skimmed the main passages of a book, and she missed the subtle points of the preface, epilogue, and appendices.  In fact, she preferred Cliffs Notes whenever possible, and was disappointed to see that “Master of Destiny: Rainbow Shaman Turkey Healer Guide” did not have a handy abbreviated version.

As the months passed, the other animals began to avoid her.  No one could say why they felt such fear while in Lorna’s presence, though some vaguely recalled her appearance in a recent nightmare.  Lorna’s social life dwindled until she was left with just the odd Family Hog Party.  Sitting alone each evening, she sighed and pondered her unwelcome fate. Was she destined to be alone and unappreciated forever, stricken with an annoying and completely ineffective gift?

As she sat moping one day, she was dazzled by the very thing from her dreams:  The Light!  There it glowed before her like a radiant walnut spinning in her burrow.  Curiously, she didn’t feel the intense love and joy that she usually strove to manifest, but she attributed this to being startled and blinded.

“Laura,” it began in a booming voice.

“My name is Lorna,” she corrected it, dismayed.

“Lorna, whatever.  Listen, I am your Higher Self.”

She gazed suspiciously at the Light.  The book had mentioned something about the divine guidance of the Higher Self, but – “My Higher Self?  Then why aren’t you pronouncing my name correctly?”

The Light hesitated. “I, um, know your True Name!  And is it Laura.  Laura means ‘Glorious One Who Shall Reign Supreme Over the Forest.”

She blinked in surprise.  “That … that doesn’t sound like a very noble ambition for a peaceful creature like me.  Are you sure it isn’t Latin for ‘laurel’?  I took a year of Latin, and–”

The Light interrupted, a touch impatiently, Lorna thought.  “Would you like to know why the other animals run from you in your dreams?”

“Yes, please!”  She twisted on her bed of moss so that she could see it more clearly.  Could she finally be getting the answer to her awful predicament?

“Very well.  Although you’ve tried to use your powers for good, you are missing the Point of Life.”

This was it!  Here was the answer she longed for!  “Oh Light, tell me the Point of Life!”

“Suffering.”

“Ah … what?”

“Did not the Holy Buddha say in the Bible that Life is Suffering?”

“I … I thought the Buddha didn’t write the Bible.”

“Whatever. But he did say that Life is Suffering, didn’t he?”

She paused, considering.  “I do recall that from my Comparative Religion class, yes.”

“The animals want to suffer, Laura.  Suffering is their highest purposes in life, and you are denying it with your enforced visions of love and peace.  Peace is evil, Laura, do you not see this?”

She wrung her hands.  “Oh no!  I’ve been feeding evil!  Oh Light, tell me how I can correct my error and instead contribute to the highest purpose of all forest animals!”

“You need to change your destructive ways immediately, my child!” boomed the Light.  “You must create healthy, nourishing fear!”

Lorna bowed her head in relief as the Light faded.  Finally, she had clarity on the proper use of her ability.  As she succumbed to the uncontrollable onset of narcoleptic sleep, she vowed to start instilling fear in forest animals everywhere.

*******
Bleekul the Small Gray Alien leaned back in his chair, gazing down at the forest through the spaceship’s forcefield.  “I think she has accepted our words as truth, Space Companion.”

Ookzor the Large Mauve Alien glanced up from the blinking control panel.  “Do you know this to be affirmative, Bleekul?”

“I do.  The small Earth Mammal has entered the dream of an arachnid and is creating scenes of squishing.”

Ookzor clapped.  “Excellent, Bleekul!  I knew your aptitude for deceit would provide us with this most rare dessert of mammalian fear!”

“Yes, it will create a lovely sauce over the corpses of the miserable.  Your cleverness is most valuable, comrade!”

Everyone on the Planet Schmoogquok knew that the flesh of the miserable made for the tastiest meals.  It provided a type of seasoning that could not be obtained elsewhere.  The two aliens smiled contentedly at each other.  Life surveilling Earth was not nearly so unpleasant as their superiors had led them to believe.

“Ookzor, I have heard that the flesh of enlightened human beings tastes equally pleasant.”

Ookzor frowned.  “Truly, Space Companion?  Because those enlightened squirrels were sorely lacking in flavor.  They were not at all zesty. Was this not the reason for our patented fear sauce?”

“Enlightened earth mammals are bland, yes.  Enlightened humans, however, are contrasting with this muchly.  Let us attempt to procure some by bringing enlightenment to the human masses.  Let me practice my best New Age Guru impersonation.”  The Large Mauve Alien cleared her throat.  “Ahem … let us meditate upon compassion for all creatures.  The Love of Mother Earth surrounds us.  Breathe in … focus on the breath …now breathe out …”

Bleekul clapped his hands.  “Excellent!  Your demeanor is impeccably convincing!  My mouth salivates in anticipation of our most delectable supper!”

*******

I would like to tell you that Lorna eventually caught on to this cosmic deception, but I cannot.  Good does not always triumph over evil, and Lorna unwittingly provided the aliens with scores of breakfasts, brunches, suppers and snacks.  However, the aliens did meet a disgraceful end when they moved on to human beings and discovered the flesh of humanity to be poison to their alien digestive system.  Eventually, Bleekul and Ookzor’s superiors towed the spaceship away, burned the corpses inside, and placed a hunting restriction on Earth. So I guess good did triumph in a small, incomplete way.  Better than nothing.

*Where did a hedgehog obtain a book on shamanism?  Well if you were a shaman, you wouldn’t have to ask!  I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you Freddy-Krueger-style.

Tags: Alien Oddities, Bizarre Animal Stories, Super Powers Suck by splarks
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Abigail, Horseman of the Apocalypse

Once upon a time, there was an otter named Abigail. Abigail was a very special otter because she was the unwitting Seventh Horseman of the Apocalypse. Fortunately, she remained unaware of this until a fateful night in February. Prior to that, she’d been an ordinary otter, playing in rivers, tossing clamshells at herons, and sleeping more than necessary.

She was lounging in the river one evening, when she heard a deep voice call her name. Curious, Abigail swam towards the dark figure near the river bank. She gasped as he came into view; she had never seen anything like this hideous creature before. His face was missing the important parts, like eyes,ears, and skin. He was dressed in filthy, yet fashionably tattered black robes and carried a knobbly black stick with an ugly skull carving on top. She wondered if he was one of those “goths” she had heard about on Oprah. He stood beside two enormous horses and watched her intently with glowing red sockets.

“BEHOLD!” he bellowed. “I greet you in sorrow, fellow Horseman.”

“Um … hi,” said Abigail. Yes, this was definitely one of those gothic characters, probably coming to bum a cigarette or invite her to a poetry reading. She didn’t fancy a night of poems about deep despair and dead black roses, and she mentally prepared a litany of polite excuses.

“I have come to deliver your steed to you,” the creature said, and pointed to the brown horse on the left.

“Oh,” said Abigail in relief. It was merely a delivery mix-up. “I didn’t order one of those. The Schwann’s order came on Thursday.”

The Horseman opened his mouth in equal bafflement, and then cleared his throat. “You will ride it during the Apocalypse.”

“Did you try the Thompsons down the river?” she asked, hoping to resolve this misunderstanding quickly without unnecessary tragic conversation. “They sometimes have things delivered. Maybe they ordered an Apocalypse – “

“SILENCE!” roared the man. “You will take your steed and prepare for the Day of Doom!”

Abigail drew her lips back in distaste, but wasn’t about to contradict a dangerously unstable, death-obsessed man ten times her size. “Fine, fine. How am I supposed to feed it?”

“It is no earthly beast. The dark night and the fear of mortals will nourish it, as well as the tears of the dying and the bereaved.”

“Night … mortals …tears of the dying …” muttered Abigail under her breath. She wished she had a pencil and notebook, as she knew she’d forget this all by morning. “Look, I’m late for, um, whisker-cleaning night. Can you just hitch the horse to that tree? I’ll see if I can rustle up some tears of the bereaved for his breakfast.”

“No. You must hear your instructions for the day of terror.” Abigail was relieved to hear that his voice was calmer and less imperious. She looked pointedly down river towards her den. She was itching to get back to it; she’d recently nicked it from a beaver and the place was in sore need of re-decorating and washing, and it was also past-time for dinner. However, the ghastly man ignored her and continued. “Ok, you have the brown horse. I’ve got the black horse, the Unnamed Beast has the red horse, Larry has the pale horse, Our Lord has the white horse, and Megan has whatever the hell that mule-thing is. Here, I printed this table from Wikipedia; it’s a nice summary to help you get acquainted.”

She studied the table as best she could in the moonlight. “This doesn’t say anything about a mule or a brown horse.”

“Wikipedia doesn’t always have the most current information. We added the mule for diversity’s sake, and yours was an afterthought.” He caught sight of Abigail’s raised eyebrow and hastily added, “But that doesn’t mean it’s not important, of course.”

Abigail was getting tired of treading water for this maniac, but she was keenly aware of the big knobbly thing perched above her head. “Why do I get the brown horse? You might have noticed that I am also brown. I’ll blend right in, if I can even stay on it to begin with.”

“The brown horse is Annoyance.” The creature primly spread his robe and sat down on the river bank, leaning towards her in a conspiring fashion. “Oh, I know it doesn’t sound as glamorous as Death or Famine, but think about it. Annoyance is a creeping killer. It raises stress levels, taxes the heart, causes emotional disturbances,divorces, fights, and vengeful waitresses. Everything else is so in-your-face, so bleeding obvious. Annoyance is suave, insidious. And to bond with the horse, you have to experience some of its essence.”

Abigail gazed skeptically at him. “You sound like my mom when she gave all the clams to my brothers because she loves them more than me.”

The Horseman coughed, looked the other way, and spoke unnecessarily quickly. “I assure you that Our Lord loves you just as much as he loves us. It’s just … we think your level of experience is better suited for Annoyance. The rest of us are seasoned terrorists. We know what to do. We don’t want to scar your tender heart before it’s ready for the heavy stuff.”

Her belly rumbled. “So why choose me at all? I’m an otter.”

“It’s been decreed.”

“By whom?”

“That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“I can’t stay on that thing, you know.” She felt cross even thinking about the prospect.

“Sure you can,” said the Horseman, with what he probably thought was a kindly voice, although it was more nasal than anything, despite his lack of a proper nose. “You just need a little help and practice. That’s why I brought Clarence a little early. Here, let me help you up.” Before she could protest or squirm out of his hands, the Horseman had seized her and tossed her on top of the horse, who was unimpressed with this gesture and reared up. Abigail had no choice but to bite into his back to steady herself, but this caused Clarence to run.

“Shit!” she heard the Horseman shout. Through the bouncing blur of trees and stars, she thought she heard him chasing after them, but the sound quickly faded. Is this the Tribulation? she wondered. She knew little of Biblical prophecy but recalled the term “Tribulation” as referring to hard times. She was fairly certain that hanging onto a horse’s backside with her teeth as he tore across the countryside counted as “hard times.” Perhaps this qualified as “bonding” with the horse. But as her brain jarred in her skull, she wondered why on earth she was expected to participate in this bizarre human drama.

She was about to take her chances and open her jaws, when a voice thundered from the heavens. “CLARENCE, STOP.”

Clarence stumbled to a stop, and Abigail flopped from his back in a most undignified manner, dropping the Wikipedia table.

“IT IS I, SATAN.”

This seemed suspicious to Abigail. “Why is your voice coming from the heavens?”

There was a resounding silence, and then Satan said in a quieter voice, “I am a ventriloquist, actually. Anyway, I will answer your question.”

“What question?” Talking to a disembodied voice made her head ache.

“The one you thought of during your perilous journey just now. You must participate in the human apocalypse because you are part human.”

“Oh fabulous, of course,” she said, annoyed. Dinner was waiting at home, yet here she was, entertaining evil idiots. “Silly me, to look at my fur, whiskers, webbed feet and tail and not have realized.”

Satan must have detected the sarcasm in her voice, because he snapped, “You were abducted by aliens and your DNA was tampered with, foolish otter. You have inactive human DNA sequences waiting silently to be activated by the upcoming apocalypse.”

“I was not abducted by aliens!”

“You were, too. Don’t you remember last summer when you lost your den to another otter because you were away for 2 months?”

“I … I was traveling. In Spain.”

“Abigail, you are a river otter. They won’t let you on a plane.”

“I swam across the ocean!”

“You are not a sea otter. Your habitat is restricted to fresh water.”

“I’m an endangered species in Wisconsin!” Her voice shook with desperation. “I have special flight privileges!”

Satan packed an amazing amount of skepticism into his single, polite cough.

She hung her head and sighed, banishing the memories of pale gray creatures with large eyes and poky instruments. “Ok. Whatever, Satan. Will it be easier to ride this thing with alien DNA?” Clarence neighed indignantly at being referred to as “this thing,” and Abigail shrugged at him apologetically.

“Not really.”

“Why should I believe you, Satan? Isn’t the sole purpose of your existence to obfuscate the thought process of humans?”

The clouds gathered in the direction of his voice. “Yes, but you’re an otter so you don’t have to worry.”

However, Abigail had grown cranky with the delay of her supper, and she interpreted the darkening sky as proof of Satan’s insincerity. The wild journey, the unexpected personal revelations, and the presence of a diabolical being were too much for her recently-altered mind and body, and her growling stomach was the last straw that caused her alien DNA to suddenly became activated. She shot a laser beam from her mouth and incinerated Satan, who, despite his demonic power, was an earthly being and susceptible to alien technology (aliens don’t believe in Satan, despite all those devil-worshiping reptilian underlord theories you may have read on the Internet). It was all a bit confusing, as she could not see Satan’s incorporeal form, but her special alien DNA confirmed that his supernatural life signals had abruptly terminated.

“I just killed Satan,” she marveled. “I wonder what else this DNA can do?” She set off to find out, and Clarence followed. She had grand adventures doing so, but they are for another tale. Suffice it to say that having thus upset the plans for the Apocalypse, for there can be no Apocalypse without the Prince of Darkness to orchestrate it, she was disowned by the other Horseman, who mourned their lost purpose in life. God was not especially perturbed at her actions, being benevolent and all-accepting of mortal free will, and He ignored the pleas of the other Horsemen to annihilate her soul in a fiery pit of sewage. Abigail and Clarence eventually settled in a small Italian villa, because endangered species in Wisconsin really do have special privileges that include unrestricted flight travel. She resumed her life of clam-cracking, heron-scaring, and oversleeping, but this time she had a charming horse friend to share in her joy. Clarence was relieved to be rid of his Apocalyptic duties, as he was not a war enthusiast and preferred to spend his time pondering the mysteries of the cosmos.

At times, Abigail thought of the aliens and wondered if they had foreseen these events, or if she was merely a discarded lab-rat who had fallen into this earth-shaking destiny. Regardless, she really liked Italian clams, so she couldn’t complain. Clarence eschewed the tears of the dying and bereaved and subsisted mainly on The Night, although he occasionally indulged in mortal fear without mentioning it to Abigail. There they lived out their days, happily.

THE END

Tags: Bizarre Animal Stories, Religious Peril, Super Powers Suck by splarks
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(From the archives)

Once upon a time there was a marmot named Beatrice. Beatrice was a very special marmot because she had three eyes. You might think this was a handy trait to have, but it actually triplicated her vision and made everything so blurry she couldn’t hunt. She depended on her boyfriend Reginald for food, and Reginald was a lazy, good-for-nothing loser who usually just brought home roadkill and pretended he’d killed it himself. She was always a little suspicious about the stale and flattened quality of the meals, but she was usually too hungry to care. They lived in a hollowed out tree in the forest. They slept till late in the afternoon, since Reginald was in a marmot rock band and stayed out till all hours of the night. Beatrice didn’t really care for their sound–just a lot of hissing and screeching, accompanied by Bernard, the French import marmot (he thought he was so cool because of his radio collar), banging on a rabbit skull. However, she tried to be supportive in Reginald’s creative endeavors.

One day she was sitting in the tree feeling sorry for herself. She felt ugly and freakish because Reginald’s band members had been making fun of her third eye, and she was really hungry because last night’s dinner had been nothing but muddy, rotten frogs. She started to cry, when suddenly there was a poof of green light and a fairy appeared.

Beatrice had always distrusted fairies. She didn’t like the way they pranced around and sang those stupid songs about love and flowers, and their clothes were always ragged and rather suggestive, she thought. They *acted* like they were sweet and kind, but she’d heard vicious rumors (from other marmots she trusted) about them eating human babies and such. Not that she much cared for humans, but it was kind of revolting. But regardless, this fairy stood and hovered gleefully above her, sprinkling rose petals and glitter around in a very annoying manner. One petal actually got into Beatrice’s mouth and she choked, spending several minutes trying to cough it back up while the fairy waited patiently, as if she were used to this sort of thing.

“Oh Beatrice,” sighed the fairy in a wispy, sweet voice. “Don’t cry about your third eye, for in it lies more power than you could ever dream of.”

Beatrice said nothing and watched the fairy skeptically. The fairy looked as though she were waiting for Beatrice to do something more lively, and seemed disappointed in her cautious reaction. She flapped her silvery wings and flew over to Beatrice, touching her third eye.

In a flash, Beatrice could SEE. And it wasn’t just ordinary seeing, she could project some sort of silvery-green light through the third eye. She trained her light beam on the fairy and was about to utter words of gratitude, when suddenly she saw exactly how froofy the fairy was. Glitter and rose petals? Were those FLOWERS poking out of the tips of her antennae? Those little purple slippers with the curled-up toes were obnoxious, there was no way around that.

“Damn,” though Beatrice as she examined the fairy. “Get some real shoes already.” Suddenly the fairy plummeted to the ground, and Beatrice saw that the ghastly slippers had disappeared and now she was wearing steel-toed combat boots, whose weight her wings could not support. The fairy lay in a bloody heap on the ground.

Beatrice felt a moment of remorse, but it was soon overcome by an overwhelming sense of power. All she had to do was train her beam of light on something, and whatever she desired would happen!

A marmot had never felt so much power.

Beatrice smoothed her fur and left the dead tree for the last time. She marched down to Reginald’s band practice space. There they were, all five of them, making a racket and galloping about like they were God’s gift to marmots. To hell with that, she decided. She fixed her beam on Reginald’s face (quite ugly, now that she could really see it) and said, “This is for all the stinking, maggoty possums you brought me!” and suddenly Reginald was covered in insects squirming all over his body.

She turned to Bernard. “This is for making fun of people with deformities!” and suddenly Bernard had six arms, none of which worked.

Systematically, she exacted her revenge on each marmot, heedless of their shrieks of terror. When she was finished, she walked out of the forest, contemplating how she would take over the world with her new powers. She saw a car approaching on the nearby road. Boldly, she stepped into the road and stood on her hind legs with her mouth open, thinking, “Stop and give me your food!” To her delight, the humans rolled down their windows and squealed, “Oh how CUTE!” and dropped peanuts into her waiting mouth. She did this to several more cars until her belly was heavy with rich food.

This was unfortunate, because it deadened her senses and a drunk driver ran over her. Reginald later came along and dragged her body to the band members, where they ate her, consuming her flesh and eradicating the terrible spells she’d put on them. They used her bones for musical instruments, and lived out their pathetic, gory marmot lives in infamy.

Tags: Bizarre Animal Stories, Mythological Mishaps, Rampaging, Super Powers Suck by splarks
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