Allegory of the Chicken

By Castor Bellator

A Kentucky chicken farmer's life is hijacked by a telepathic sasquatch with a mission, to save society from the secret societies. First of a three book series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312090897

Book preview

Allegory of the Chicken

Prologue

My name is Castor Nox Bellator, and I am a Sasquatch, though we refer to ourselves, privately, as Praetorian.  People have many names for our shape, it's kind of funny... really.  We are telepathic, I feel I should get that out front. Other than that, we have the senses of ordinary superior wild creatures... and a touch of what you would call magic, but only because you are ignorant... It isn't all your fault. I have been doing things that people would not appreciate or understand, but that doesn't bother me.  There are more important things to be bothered by. I am risking my safety by doing this, writing it down... but I'm going to do it anyhow.

The trouble is that it’s hard to find the beginning of this.  The older I get the more it seems that something ties it all together.  My actions though, seemingly, freely decided could have been influenced by something… the same way that I influence things; in fact it’s pretty likely.   I’ll give you from what I can tentatively call a beginning... when I met Jobadiah. Once you know more, you can decide for yourself where it all started.   Maybe in telling you I'll figure it out myself. I rather doubt it though. The universe is an incomprehensible place.

Illegitimi Non Carborundum

(don’t let the bastards grind you down)

Chapter 1

On the day Jobadiah Jenkins got struck by lightning, he woke up figuring that it was going to be a pretty regular Tuesday.  Jobadiah is a hill-billy chicken rancher who had always wanted to be an actor.  He sucks at lying, so I don’t know what made him think he’d be a good actor.  True enough, it is a learned skill even though humans are born with an instinct for it… lying, that is… well come to think of it acting too.  In spite of your ugliness, you are a very dramatic species.  Jobadiah is kind of ugly even by the loose human standards of the very drunk.  Things being what they are he has it pretty good compared to some. On the other hand, compared to some others, he’s sucking canal water.

Good is such a relative term anyhow. Your good might look like a piece of shit next to mine, (I was a pirate when I was human, the cussing has kind of stuck with me) then again, mine could look like crap to some…  Jobadiah made decent money for the area, but it seemed to him that the more he made, the more worthless expensive plastic shit he needed. It was a rat-race run on a circular plastic track; fast was an illusion because in the end you weren’t going to get anywhere anyhow. Jobadiah doesn’t mind circles; he has no aspirations.  I am sure it is one of the reasons he was chosen.  It would seem a common trend, but it isn’t, most people in his place would be bitter, not at all willing to keep their station till death. 

Jobadiah isn’t bitter but he is in a nice comfy rut.  Since he follows ruts, I will make him a new one and then derail his path into it.   He won’t like this procedure at all, which gives me a perverse sense of satisfaction.  It isn’t his fault; people, in general, irritate me. In my human life people thought I was a misogynist but they were only half right, I am a misanthrope.

Right now Jobadiah is standing on his porch thinking about the condition of his life; how much he likes standing on his porch. It isn’t a very good porch – doesn’t have a wet bar or a hot tub; the rickety boards wouldn’t support the weight.  Jobadiah liked it in spite of the rot, the creakiness, the down home comfort that would have the highbrows hitching up their pant legs. It matched his house, a structure most highbrows would not deign to enter.  Highbrows tend to stay far away from farm smells, it ruins the nose for wine. 

The grumpy mountain over-squinting the entire area stimulated a gag reflex in people with culture. It isn’t a very memorable mountain, unless you’re the type to remember dismal looking things.  It squats beneath the Kentucky sky apologetically or defiantly, depending on the lighting; its attitude suggests it could remember standing…before time had emasculated it.  A mountain like that is the sort of thing that rubs off on the surrounding countryside – the very air holds a silent grudge for the people that don’t just pass on through … you can feel it, if you’re sensitive to such things.

The air wrapped around Jobadiah’s six foot four inch body gently suggesting that he should go somewhere else.  He is numb to its whispers – instead, he regards the impotent mountain.  It reminds him of an earlier conversation with the blood-sucking leech in charge of his mortgage, or third mortgage to be exact.  Jobadiah inherited the ranch, and all of the credit it had soaked up over the years of non-profitability.  Jobadiah had told the leech about how the mailbox started on fire with the check in it. This is sort of the truth; the mailbox had started on fire. The check was not in it at the time, but it had started on fire.

He could have told the entire truth, but something about telling the truth to a bill collector just smacked of wrongness.  They don’t care about truth… only money; that is their truth. (that was me in his head) the truth was it was a lightning strike, which is not at all uncommon to the area.  It had struck his mailbox, as opposed to something higher; that was unusual.   The odd part was that his hand was on the mailbox when the lightning hit it.  This seemed to laugh in the face of probability.

The check was in his other hand when it lit on fire. Under normal circumstances it might have been neat. The strike was our introduction to one another. I did not choose the method, nor did I choose its product, I just accepted the outcome unconditionally.  It is the only way a universe takes requests. To me it seems like gambling; I won a chicken rancher.  At the outside, it would just seem unlucky. When you got down to crunching the numbers it was about as probable as a weasel farting out a unicorn egg, which made it the right choice. It seems backwards, but that’s just how the universe works; if it shouldn’t have happened you have to look more closely at why it did; people never seem to get that. Your scientists call it cognitive dissonance.

I have been working the body of a cultured spirit for more than thirty years now.  It has no idea who it is.  It really isn’t even a ‘who’… it’s a what.  The body in which it resides is a ‘who’ named Jack. I needed to find a vehicle to release the potential I have built into my subject.  I asked the universe to provide my vehicle, and then I waited.  There occurred this storm; I saw it forming in my mind… I went into it.  It is a trick that the bosses in the valley don’t know about.  They think I have to go into a mind.  I found when I stop short of entry that I am left in the environment.  I don’t know how it is possible. I do know that I don’t know a great many things.

When the ground around Jobadiah achieved the proper electrical potential it formed an arc that I followed to ground, Jobadiah’s mailbox, and was left in the air around him.  I do not know what caused the ground around him to change potential, it should not have, and that is how I knew the universe was answering.  The finger of the universe had pointed at Jobadiah Jenkins; his body was smoking; all his hair had melted off.  I’m sure it was extremely uncomfortable.  He was frozen like a statue, check clamped between his fingers.   It burned all the way down before he noticed and dropped it.  I could tell immediately that I was in the right place.  Don’t get me wrong.  I wasn’t happy about it and neither was Jobadiah.  No one likes being pointed at by the universe.

I asked for a vehicle, and I got this chicken farmer.  He isn’t a respectable front bumper of a vehicle.  The Scottish have a word for what I was… fooked.  I suppose the universe thought it was being funny, but at the time it really really really made me angry.   I remembered some things I’ve learned about anger and truth, then I gritted my fangs and got to work.  This is what I do, it is my job, though I have not been authorized for this particular expenditure of effort; tradesmen call it a side job. My doing it is not, specifically breaking the code; it is, without question, sneering at it disrespectfully behind its back.  I don’t have a problem with that. 

You would feel me as an inner thought, an intuition that says go this way as opposed to some other way; surely if you’ve had a thought and don’t know why you can empathize.  I can make you step in a pile of dog poop or find a hundred dollar bill I made someone else loose… all with gentle nudges. 

I started there, right in the smoke, immediately I got in his memories, looking at his life.  From his memories – thirty-nine years worth, I found other lives who’s memories would fill out the picture more.  It has taken me six days to gather the information about his life, talk about boring.  My subjects are usually more colorful.  I’ve been planting thoughts; Job is still getting used to my voice in his head. He has to think it’s his voice or he’ll feel invaded.  I do it slowly – a few at a time at first, until I can make suggestions without having them seem outside coming in. 

Are you gonna stand out there all night Jobadiah? He jumped at the sound of her voice coming through the window.  He saw her misshapen face mashed up against the screen door as if she couldn’t talk through it otherwise.

Leanne was a lovely woman in some other life; now she looks like a Sasquatch that lost most of its pelt to mange. Sasquatch hate mange worse than fleas or butt worms.  I shudder whenever I see her.  The furriness had so much body to cover that it wasn’t the first thing to strike you.  She is huge, by the puny standards of people, and not in a nice or useful way.  Little piggy eyes squinted at Jobadiah while he refused to answer out of alcoholic petulance.  They have known each other since childhood but became romantically entwined, through a strange twist of alcohol, only eight years ago. Their brief courtship had been interrupted, at Leanne’s insistence, when she decided that they should be married.  She did the proposing, it was more like a business venture offered by some enormous paisano.  It cannot be said Jobadiah has no spine; Leanne just has more, and some extra ass at the bottom of it.

Leanne is attractive to Job because she fills a need, like foot powder for fungus. She is the hard-ass that handles the ugly realities a guy like Jobadiah isn’t mean enough to be efficient with. She handled the money, and he handled the chickens; it worked. On the downside, she has no patience for dreamers, drinkers, creativity, or godlessness. She is a realist, a capitalist, and a republican AND she is no porn star in the bedroom.

She was once the barmaid at the local watering hole, a perfect place for her to despise people. A husky person at the time, but since then blossomed, you might say, who was/is very efficient and took/takes no crap from no-body. Leanne was notoriously single, as opposed to plain-ol-single; people were a little scared of her.   Jobadiah spent a lot of time at this bar with Ernest, his longtime friend from childhood.  Jobadiah was numb to her, but Ernest hated Leanne in a way that can only happen from getting beaten up by her as a child… and then growing up in a community that remembers such stuff as if it had happened only yesterday.  Truth be told, Leanne could probably still beat Ernest up. Leanne is eyeball to eyeball with Jobadiah, and she could have put her chin on Ernest’s head, were they to ever get close enough together.  Even though Jobadiah was eye-to-eye with Leanne, he was skinny as a rat’s tail, and would be utterly mashed in a fight; still, she failed to intimidate him; it was like mongoose confidence. I call it confi-dense.

Jobadiah could not remember the night that changed his single status, and so neither could I, from the first person.  I got the story from visiting a number of different minds… He had been shooting pool with Ernest, gotten completely wasted, and fallen asleep in the corner.  The two other patrons at the bar that night were betting on how long the string of spit dangling from the corner of his mouth would get. Ernest had gotten tired of trying to move him and walked home leaving Leanne stuck with him.  It was more to irritate Leanne that Ernest had left, an irony that bothered him in the dark corners of his hillbilly head to this day. She gave Jobadiah a ride to the ranch at closing time, stayed the night, and never left.

A few months later, as the wedding plans blossomed, Ernest reminded Job of the many jokes he remembered about Kentucky dating. It was a joke, to him, that Kentuckians only went on two dates and that the second date usually involved a moving truck, or a pickup truck serving as a moving truck. He mourned the loss of part of a friend and would have probably have been nasty with anyone Job took up with on principle… except Leanne had beaten him up, and he really did hate her.

Jobadiah was too kindhearted to put up any opposition to Leanne and, truth be told, didn’t really want to. She was physically repellant, but that didn’t bother him much. He was never a ladies’ man, he had 333 hairs in his beard, and they never grew past half an inch.  Some fall out, some start growing, always 333; he isn’t aware of this, I’m just more observant than he is. By Kentucky standards his beard is really sparse, all the proper hillbillies laugh and point. With a long face, like a half starved Welch pony, he is a dead ringer for a man not known for physical beauty.  I see him and think Abe Lincoln gone deliverance hillbilly but with a really thin Italian-woman-beard, and rather kindly in spite how he could be bitter about it.  Kindness and gentleness seem to share a proportionally inverse relationship to sexual appeal, especially when combined with gangly. Historical evidence clearly shows that men with kind hearts and long shanks do not get laid with any sort of regularity.  Alas, I digress…

Jobadiah did have a gruesome first person memory of waking up next to her.  It was the morning after she brought him home; she was sleeping on his arm and it had fallen asleep. He tried moving it without waking her and got an elbow straight in the kisser.  The fat covered elbow hit him like a coffee-can sized dead blow hammer straight to the face.  It knocked him clean off the bed pulling his nerve dead arm conveniently along.  He cowered up against the wall like a confused groundhog upon waking up in someone’s garage rather than its own comfy burrow; he wished, fervently, that he could climb out the window and go home.

With the sun’s first rays sneaking guiltily past the shade Jobadiah noticed a womanly little mustache that was darker than the fuzz on the rest of her face, it was precisely one third as thick as his, even the length was a third shorter, strange; I marveled at the improbability. Jobadiah recalled thinking how much more attractive she was in the semidarkness of the tavern.

Good morning, sweetie, she rasped with a voice cultured by years of heavy smoking. She failed to be surprised at Jobadiah’s crouched-by-the-wall response to finding her; that would have alarmed a somewhat more clever person.

You were wonderful last night. She waited a second for a response, getting none, she coughed up what sounded like a quart of phlegm, swallowed it delicately with one meaty hand held to her multiple chins, and continued.

I have to go home for a few things, but I’ll be back to make you a nice breakfast. She spoke over her chubby shoulder as she put on panties the size of a small pup-tent.  He heard Ernest’s jeep pulling in as her car left – she flipped him off on the way by. Jobadiah met him on the porch.

What was the slothsquatch doing here? Did she come this morning, or stay the night?

Job’s expression answered him, a look of disgust crept over Ernest’s features. It was as if he had let a drunken friend fall into a septic tank.

Tell me nothing happened, he begged, in God’s name please tell me nothing happened.   He hated to think he bore responsibility through negligence.

I don’t know for certain, Ern, replied Jobadiah cautiously, one hand on his head, the other covering his eyes. I can’t remember nothin’ after I fell off the stool.

I tried to wake you up, but I was too drunk to carry you out, offered Ernest by way of an excuse.  Ernest lived a short walk from the bar, he could have come back and got him, he could have not left without him.

I went home and figured when you could walk, you’d come over. I fell asleep on the porch waiting for you. I can-NOT believe you! Job! What the hell were you thinking? Did you invite her in? Have you even looked at her? Besides being ugly, she’s an asshole!

Uh, she said she was coming back to make breakfast. Would you like to stay? a pleading look on his face sort of begged, it didn’t work.   Ernest shot him his best no-fuckin-way-did-you-just-ask-me-that face. 

Did you do her? demanded Ernest.  It did occur that it really wasn’t any of his business.  He secretly hoped Jobadiah wouldn’t answer on those grounds.  Job thought about it. She had told him that he was wonderful but, truthfully, he couldn’t remember. He related this information.

You would think that you would remember having sex; it isn’t like it happens every year, Ernest surmised, sarcasm practically burning the T-shirt off of Jobadiah.

I suppose I did her, we were both naked this morning admitted Job.

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth, holding two fingers against his lips, and then

swallowing gingerly. Job could not tell if he was faking or not, but he got the point.

They spent the next moments watching the dust left by her car twist away in the morning breeze. Jobadiah, standing there in his BVDs, felt queasy and a little green.  This was not how Sunday morning was supposed to start was what Jobadiah thought.  Ernest stood there looking at him with disgust.  It was a disgust that was similar to the disgust you would have after stepping in a pile of fresh dog poop with bare feet while considering whether you should scrape it from between your toes with your bare hands, or leave it there long enough to find a stick; not exactly the same, but close.  He shivered in his flannel shirt.

We should leave; we have to leave.  We can always find another bar to drink at, begged Ernest.

I got the chickens to tend to, replied Job, I can’t just leave them.

Good Lord, moaned Ernest, why is she coming back; did she say why?

Yup, to make me breakfast… I was wondering how she got here in the first place when she said it, so I couldn’t say no replied Job rubbing his puffy upper lip.

What happened to your mouth?

Must have busted it falling off the chair last night, Jobadiah lied, not wanting to go into too many details.

That was that; Job’s single life was over. Leanne and Ernest never even tried, for his sake, to get along. Anytime they ran into one another, there was a bit of a cockfight she was bigger, but Ernest was faster, so they were evenly matched. Neither could understand why Jobadiah put up with the other. Leanne thought that Ernest was a foulmouthed swine with a dog’s laziness.  Ernest thought Leanne was a butt-ugly cow who was big enough for two normal-sized women.

Jobadiah had always gotten along with her… had never pictured marrying her, even in his most disturbing dreams. Ernest had boycotted the wedding and had never been what a person would call fond of having her around after it. Job adjusted his lifestyle to fit compatibly with Leanne. He didn’t consider it much of a sacrifice. Her relationship with Ernest was her business, in his mind. It was nice to have someone else in the house.  That was Jobadiah’s feeling on the matter.  

A violent gotta-pee-shiver woke him from the reverie I had him in.  Leanne was waiting for an answer to her question…

I’m almost finished with-muh-beer, I’ll be in when I’m good and ready! he barked, with drunken resolute, wobbling assertively.  Jobadiah was a bit potted; it was how he liked to go to bed. A custom, if you will… his bent for customs will make him a useable subject.

When do you think the new mailbox will come? I hope you didn’t get another metal one, called Job through the screen door leading to the kitchen.  The metal ridges of the old one were burned on to his hand; he looks at them with detached curiosity.

Should be here any day now, I ordered it the same day you wrecked the old one.

It is her opinion that God was ‘fixin’ to strike Jobadiah, and it was a mere coincidence that he was touching the mailbox when it happened.  She believes that God makes everything happen for a reason.  She might not understand that reason, but she -by God- accepted it.   Jobadiah believed in God as sort of a fire escape from hell.  He isn’t an intellectual and hasn’t the ability for free ranging non-conformity.  He does have a deeper curiosity than some, but that isn’t saying much where he’s from.  He is a cog in society, as important as any other cog.  There has to be a good mix of cogs.  No genius would be satisfied farming chickens, but if humans want eggs, someone has to ranch the chickens.  Neither of them are right about god, there isn’t one, the universe runs things, and it’s an asshole.

It’s hotter than the chickens like it, I whisper in Jobadiah’s mind. The sun is down and it is cool-ish, Jobadiah felt warm, or thought he did. Damn glad I don’t have feathers tonight. It was my voice in his head.  He thought he was having a thought.  "The chickens-er overheatin in the barn shore as hell." 

I have to try and speak in his hillbilly dialect; you have to do it in my line of work. Some accents take longer than others, and this one is ticklish.  I can see that I can’t represent it properly in writing.  I’ll leave his speech impediment to your imagination.  I can’t help but relay his thinking in my dialect of English and with my vocabulary; his is pretty threadbare and doesn’t convey the nuances.  I was a pirate in another life, Captain no beard the angry they called me... That was a long time ago.  Pirates get a lot of reading time… it’s why we are so deadly good at turning phrases. It does not explain the cussing, however.

Suddenly Jobadiah felt that egg production would surely suffer if he didn’t run his misters to cool down the barns.  He needs to go out to the barn; I have something for him.  He shuffled off of the porch trying his damndest not to lose too much skin to the sandpaper.   He walks like he has his front pockets full of sharp nails – he thought he heard laughter in the night air; it was all in his head.  His stride really was something to behold.

At the end of the chicken barn, there is a manure pile; on his way past the pile, I made sure one of his boots landed squarely on a fresh cow pie – there’s a cow on the ranch, a diary cow, but it is only for personal use.   Cloyd, brother of Clem, (funny naming rituals in this area) one of the barn hands, had been cleaning the cow barn and neglected to hose off and then lime the cement apron of the manure pile.  He would have usually done this, but I stopped him.  I was in his head to get the lay of the ranch when I saw something I could use.

The sloped surface of the apron is very slippery, especially if you are walking like Jobadiah is.  On a good day, if it was light, he hadn’t been drinking, and if he was not walking like he had sandpaper in his shorts, Jobadiah may not have fallen. It was not a good day or my efforts would have been for naught.  Jobadiah’s boot heel landed squarely where I put it, and then shot straight off as soon as it was given the responsibility of weight.  This left Jobadiah’s structure defying the laws of inertia and gravity to which he succumbed.

After that, he tumbled down the slope toward the pile, coating himself fairly well with the fresh crap, and rolled to a gentle stop at the bottom. Right in front of him, about three feet away, nestled against the brick side he ‘noticed’ a large group of mushrooms; they were particularly succulent looking. He drew out his pocketknife and clipped the whole bunch.

Jobadiah is kind of a nature buff and enjoyed the mushrooms his wife collected on walks. She had a mushroom book; he never read it. A mushroom is a mushroom; these looked just like the ones she picked and served fried in butter. Yummy. After sorting himself out, he went to the barn; I made him think he turned on the misters. He returned to the house, cleaned up and went to bed.  Mission accomplished.  I had nested in a tree for the day. I’ve been moving my body toward the chicken ranch.  We are somewhat nomadic sasquatches.  It cuts down on the sightings.  With the arrival of darkness, it is time to get moving.  It is a new night, this adventure is starting to become exciting; I believe I am going to have someone’s cat for breakfast.

Chapter 2

Thankfully, where there are people, there are cats.  I don’t know what it is, but I just love them.  It’s sort of like bacon for praetorian.   There is nothing like a nice fat cat to get me in the mood for telling stories, I figure this part needs telling early on, breakfast dealt with, I might as well get on with it.

For you to understand how things are we need to go back into the time before time.  It isn’t time before memory because I can remember it.  My body wasn’t there, but my soul was, and unlike you, my soul remembers its past bodies; that is mainly how we differ, other than our magnificent pelts and superior musculature. If you could remember all of the wisdom you once had you would be capable of the things that I am, well, minus the mind control thing.  Unfortunately, and also fortunately, it is nearly impossible for such a person to be born under normal circumstances.  In order to make such a person, genetic considerations beyond the scope of normal science must be taken into account.  Because it isn’t polite to openly discuss the breeding of humans this project remains secret. My domestication makes it difficult to speak of even now.

You would think keeping such a secret would be difficult, but that is because you don’t understand how the facts that you know come to be facts that you know.  Take, for example, time; you know what year it is right now.  You also know that to begin counting you must start at a given point.  That point is usually zero.  You know that, but you don’t know what you don’t know, and that is a problem.  Not my problem,  it’s actually my solution… The reason you have arrived at the year you are in is because at some point someone decided to start counting them.  Think about that, how did all these people who can’t even agree to not kill one another somehow agree when year one occurred.  I know the answer.   The question is: Will you believe it… or the given one?  They say they began counting years with the birth of Rome, and the entire world accepted it.  My favorite question is why, and the answer to this one is because we made them.  It’s a long story that sounds like a conspiracy theory; it only sounds like a conspiracy theory because of a conspiracy to make the truth sound conspiratorial…

Besides messing with time itself, dates are messed with.  We do this to keep people from putting together a chain of events.  History doesn’t always make sense because we have changed its dates.  History itself, if accurately recorded is very complex, and humans are not…  This has kept the men in the valley safe from detection.  The results of their decisions would be traceable were this not so.  If I dropped a brick that hit a person from a high place, say a bridge or building on Monday and the Tuesday newspaper reported that I dropped the brick without mentioning that it happened the day before, most would assume it had happened on Tuesday.  If it was then reported on Friday that the victim of an apparent mugging earlier in the week died on Wednesday it would be noteworthy if you figured he died from the brick I dropped on Monday…  for example.

Spread the days into years or centuries and figure in short life spans to erase details from social memory then divide by the human proclivity for simple transcription errors multiplied by praetorian meddling and it isn’t that hard to change history.  I’ll talk more about that later, maybe.

We, the praetorian of ancient times, left you the answers to life-in-general in a very good book put together by the Druids; Odin in particular who got his information from the free ranging spirits by hanging himself in a tree, upside down.  I once asked him, when in another body, why he did this.

Perspective dear boy for I was a boy at that when, years before I was a sasquatch.

It is all about perspective. Hanging by one foot is the only way to get a clear view of the world, and without that the spirits won’t talk to you.

I always thought the man was an idiot, but he always came up with the best shit.  He wrote in the sand with a stick, hanging from a tree by the ankle of one foot... in obvious discomfort.  An attending druid scribe would write it down in an enormous leather book, eventually there came to be three, and then wipe the sand clean.  These leather books were compiled, after the proper deciphering, into one and then seven copies were made.  Each of the copies had carved wooden covers so large that two men had to move them.  The covers were embellished with gold inlay and pearl, many rare things of the time.  This book laid everything out for you, how to behave, how to prosper properly, how to live as part of your environment.  The problem is that the book we left you longer exists in the original form.  All of the originals, save one held by a man you have not yet met have been destroyed. 

In their place is a raked over counterfeit.  What remains is known as the bible, and it is a metaphor.  It starts with the creation of your planet.  It disagrees with itself on logical grounds straight away.  They could have at least made it logical.  They made plants before light, for one example.  The metaphor shows you the pure world, what it had at the beginning.  All animals were equal until a new one was created by this magnificently powerful being.  What actually happened is a mutation was born by inbreeding primates (unlike god, the universe has no moral problems with inbreeding)  It was hairless and had no tail.  Its senses were more dull, but it could plan ahead, it was not instinctive it was deductive.  This animal did not come to be in a flash of creation; it was a flash relative to the time involved here.  That is what became people. The first mutation that occurred in the sasquatch line was in the amphibian species as a result of water that was contaminated with dragon urine.  Yes, there were dragons, but they were about the size of an eagle.  They had an alliance with the faerie, who rode them, which they broke.  The faery used magic to alter the dragon DNA in such a way that they became chickens.  We, still have their magic, the psychic ability... but they and the faery are gone. Where do you think you get the stories?

I like the term magic because it is a perfect example of what a dense species you are; it refers to a power that exists but cannot be explained due to inferior equipment.  For a long while fire was magic, electricity, and radio waves too.  What exists and cannot be seen is magic, the more stupid you are, the more powerful magic is.  God is an easy concept to absorb for people who can’t do math.

The magic these little creatures have exists as it did and it still could not be explained by the science you now have.  You couldn’t even find such a creature to study.  You can’t even find a bigfoot, and we’re huge.  Granted, our fur is a color that the human eye doesn’t see, but we never take baths, and our fur always has a luxuriant coating of dirt and algae.  You could see us, there’s no way you could see them.  It doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.  Humans are mostly blind, relative to the waves that actually exist.  You see a narrow band of color, and you don’t even really see the color, you see the color that reflects the light you actually register through your eye.  Beyond that, you can only see things that reflect light, a very narrow band of light at that.  On top of all that, you can’t see something going fast unless it is the size of a barn.  As animals go, humans are like really big chickens, very reactionary in many ways on many levels, and yet they beat out the tiny magical creatures as fittest. Clearly there was some dicking about, and I suspect the universe.

What happened should not have which means it was planned. The little creatures should have been able to control human population rather than the other way around which is why it had to be an experiment.  How else is one to learn other than by conducting experiments? I have deduced that much; that this planet is an experiment.  Beyond that, I cannot say.  I was bred to survive, just like you. We both evolved from something. We will speak of what we know, not what we postulate. I try to like you, I have to work with humans... It's my job to understand them.  Out of all the animals, Sasquatches are most fond of humans. All the other animals flat out hate you, generally speaking... can you blame them? But we... we try to understand, and are just bad at it... We deserve some slack...  Alas, I have digressed.

Modern humans came into being in a relative pop through a series of mutations and natural preference.  Same as the magical types. There were lots of them in the beginning,  and there are a number of mutations left from this period, they remain tucked far away from established society.  Large bands of normal people tend to kill individual freaks of power. People evolve through preference, which drives mating; freaks are not successful at mating, which is why they don’t take over the planet.  Superior abilities don’t count for much if they don’t allow you to have a strong following or jackrabbit breeding habits.  Praetorian are bred selectively; we don’t have to be good at it.  Our mates are provided… there needs to be a few non praetorian sasquatch to keep the genetics of our bondage fresh.  Non praetorian sasquatch must abide by the same code we do, but they like people less than we, they don’t speak a known human language, and tend to stay far away from them.  They aren’t afraid, it’s just that by rule 42 of the code, we aren’t allowed to eat people anymore.[1]  It really is kind of tempting, especially if you find a wounded one that is going to die anyhow, you can’t help yourself but to lick them a little.   

See, by our own code, which we follow with greater respect than other less respectable codes, we must eat what we kill.  If we kill a human, by our code, we must eat them.  The people in charge made it illegal to eat people therby making it illegal to kill them. It stands to reason, the people who made that code are people, it’s a case of naked self-interest.  Back in a day they used to feed us the naughty people, our bodies are well designed for dispatching things quickly.  The feeding spectacle made us far more terrifying, and also gave rise to one of our other names, werewolf… sorry, I’m getting off track.  That was a long time ago anyhow… I never ate a person with this sasquatch.

Normal human males are responsible for providing beauty by being attracted to beauty.  They have an idea of the shape that they like without having a clue as to why.  If they had a clue, they would be hounding after some hot little sasquatch rather than the flimsy bald human woman. Human men go for the women that attract them most thereby insuring that the offspring is attractive to humans. 

The female provides strength by choosing the best mate she can manage with her hairlessness.  The more beauty she has, the stronger a mate she attracts because she is a commodity, genetically speaking; strength is far more common than beauty.  Mind you, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  People are dead ugly compared to a well-groomed sasquatch.  You don’t have the glossy pelt, or big shiny teeth.  Nevertheless you do consider yourselves beautiful, to each their own I guess…

This instinct ensures that the race you are a part of continues to get more fit within it’s environment.  The reason you are you is because at some point in the past it was more beneficial to have no pelt, no tail, and to be better at thinking than reacting.  When that is no longer an evolutionary advantage, your species will be taken over by a species that is more fit.  If you don’t start paying attention, it will be the cockroach.

The reason for giving you the book was so that you could know the earth’s gig so that you could fit into its cycles with your deductive brain.  It would have worked out perfectly, but ancient capitalists and politicians snookered you folks; they gave you the bible- it is a clever bit of work- I’ll admit that… the best selling book in the world.  You have to give them some credit.

The metaphor in the bible has you leaving the animal kingdom behind through your expulsion from the garden. (A metaphor for the blissful ignorance animals enjoy.)  You are thrust into a world where you must make a shelter and gather food; you have no pelt to protect you from the elements, your feet lack leathery pads or hooves, they are bare, tender and all but useless for walking.  The next metaphor, Cain and Able, separates the hunter-gatherers from the agriculturalists.  The crucifixion, or cruci-fiction, is man’s subordination of the individual for the good of the whole.  This theme has carried on for quite some time. At this juncture humans have recognized the humans that survive best are the ones that clink together under the leadership of a superior thinker, relative to the thinking of the standard majority, and who subordinate the good of the individual for the good of the whole.

Under the superior skills of this thinker you are able to thrive. In other environments similar groups are gathering under similar thinkers; it is natural for you to do so, genetically, this is how humans come to believe that they control the planet.  There comes a point, when the protection of the male is no longer so vital, usually when cities with protected walls come about.  This is when the size of the group of people is such that other groups of people do not try to gather the resources near them.  Permanent structures and walls mark territories. These improvements intimidate predators and reduce the usefulness of the strong male.

At this stage the women begin to consider other aspects of strength.  Physical strength is only better if it is required for survival.  Intellectual strength can be considered in times of no fighting, and finally, as the group becomes even more secure women begin considering physical beauty as well.  When a group gets to a point where its citizens can breed for beauty the infants become so well formed that they appear godlike in comparison to humans in their living memory.  These beautiful new infants began springing up everywhere.  With the confidence of beauty they became very charismatic.  It was a natural thing to do.

These well formed people with superior mental skills, physical beauty, and much more magnetic charisma attracted larger groups of people.  Suddenly neighboring groups felt attracted to the leaders of other groups.  This caused division in the neighboring groups as they gravitated to the new charismatic figureheads.  This might represent a thousand years of time.  You can’t really pin an exact point down, this is before people counted time, and hence could not relate it in their mind.  If they can’t think of a year, I can’t see it in their head, and neither could my predecessors.  Time was created backwards, first it was invented, then imposed on the past and future rather than being part of the past and future and then being discovered.  It is a modest distinction, but it changes the whole flavor of things.  It is why I cannot know dates from actual memories…  At the time the memory occurred, the dating system had not yet been established.

I’m trying to not give you too much history at one time because it is the back-story.  I want you to hear the story of the chicken farmer while realizing that his story was caused by the back-story.  Once you understand the back-story it will be immediately obvious why the chicken farmer must be the fore story.  We praetorian are part of the back-story… hidden, like a profoundly gifted stepchild who is a ginger midget.  

If any of this makes you angry it is because it is true.  It is said that the truth shall set you free but it never does.  The only thing people learn from history is that people don’t learn from history. If you were capable of learning from history you would know that the truth is far more likely to piss you off than set you free.  It follows, logically, that lies are what set you free.  When you know this, the phrase Land of the Free is suddenly far more accurate. 

It’s almost daylight again, I’ve been walking and writing… I’ll tell you how at some point, but for now, I need to make my day nest.  Jobadiah is probably awake already, and I have work to do that can only be accomplished by sleeping.

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[1]Our code is arranged by priority rather than the order in which the rules came to be.  Not to eat people was an early rule, before not being seen by people, yet not being seen is rule one, and not eating people is rule 42.

Chapter 3

The morning after I rolled Jobadiah in poop started much the same as Jobadiah thought it would. They all did; it is part of the custom; the ambiance of the rut. Leanne got a phone call early, which is not customary. It seemed that they were holding the mailbox in town sixty miles away; they could not find the house. As the numbers were on the box, and it is torched,