Mortimer the Porcupine and the Unapologetic Quill-Weilding

Many Splarks stories exhibit extreme optimism and uplifting stories about plucky, weird animals overcoming the odds and achieving their dreams. Well, here’s one for you pessimists out there who are tired of goodness and determination. Revel in some doom and gloom! No slogging through optimism for you today!

Mortimer the Porcupine was a very bad-tempered porcupine. Although the world had never done anything reprehensible to him, he often used his quills to jab random animals and people passing by. His favorite pastime was pursuing strangers and mercilessly poking them.

He was kind of a dick, really.

Are you hoping for a story in which Mortimer discovers that being a dick can’t rival the joy of love and compassion, stumbling upon this truth in some capricious way? Yes, that would be satisfying, wouldn’t it? Very Splarks. But that would merely be conjecture based on your desperate need for an orderly, mammalian-centered universe. Animals like Mortimer preferred to face their truth: we live in a cold, harsh universe that cares as much about you as it does your local landfill. Perhaps the universe cherishes you and the dump equally, taking satisfaction in the marvelous plans it has for you both.

[Marvelous plan for you: enter life as an exceptionally gifted and oft-misunderstood child, meet your soulmate, marry in an extravagant wedding paid for by your hefty salary, produce gifted children, become CEO of a prestigious company, retire in the Caribbean, die surrounded by loved ones, and re-emerge as an esteemed disincarnate being in a mystical realm.]

[Marvelous plan for the dump: lives on virgin land with excellent decomposition prospects, is tended by enthusiastic sanitation workers, smells of roses and sandalwood, births a magical carpet of daisies above the refuse, and hosts a prairie dog colony that frolics in the aforementioned daisies.]

But creatures like Mortimer believe the universe just doesn’t give a crap, and in fact has no consciousness to even be aware of its apathy and lack of marvelous plans.

Do you now understand why Mortimer was constantly out of sorts? Admit it: if you had quills and were mired in Mortimer’s Swamp of the Uncaring Universe, you’d be stabbing people within a 50-mile radius of your house. But since assault is illegal in the human world, you’d choke down your sorrows and brightly quip, “The world is fundamentally good!” You’d wake up in the morning pretending you didn’t cry yourself to sleep as you pondered your insignificance. You’d be alone with cherished dreams that were nothing but random neurons firing. Love would be merely a chemical process to compel you to breed children that are likely as exceptional as your average cabbage moth. The universe did not even see fit to give you quills.

Nevertheless, you might one day strip naked, roll in a vat of paste and then carefully apply handmade quills to your body, perhaps straws you swiped from a fast food restaurant and carefully cut to pointy ends. (Tip: grab some boba straws, which are already pointy) You might then burst into the conference room of your workplace, screech incoherent profanities, and chase your boss and co-workers out into the busy street while hurling quill-like things at them such as twigs, ballpoint pens, and straightened paper clips. But be careful in all your glorious quill-hurling rage–running around in an existential rage is dangerous! Inevitably, you would be struck by a senior citizen transport van and you’d gasp your last breath while gazing into the eyes of an unimpressed octogenarian who long ago began whapping whippersnappers with canes, exploiting everyone who was ever admonished to “respect your elders.”

You see what you did there? If you’d have just waited it out your miserable life, you wouldn’t have had to go to the effort of creating make-believe quills. You could have had your own cane. You could have had multiple canes, one for each hand, and whapped all the whippersnappers you could ever dream of whapping. But you, in your impetuousness, had to shake up the natural order of things and reach blindly, madly for quill-hood. Now the cane whaps you in your last moments.

Perhaps you will be reincarnated as a porcupine like Mortimer. If so, rest assured that the universe does not give one flying fuck about how this transformation will affect your personal development. It is merely coincidence that reincarnated-you has quills, not a consolation prize. So get cracking, Porky. There are some prairie dogs over there that need some dickiness in their lives, and Mortimer can’t do it all.

(Image from Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” central panel)