Rood Der: 21: Lizards Galore

By Douglas Christian Larsen

Rood Der, Episode 21: Lizards Galore. A dream within a dream within a dream, but Rodney's not having much luck waking, and seems to be receiving some form of cosmic payback for when he forgot to feed his pet lizard. Now he has hungry ghosts, horny toads, Nagas and Nuwas, and a boy named Quinn. He thought his life had been strange before, and now? Completely cuckoo.

How deep are we, immersed in this world we call reality? How many turtles down do we go, in this discombobulated, mixed-metaphor, rabbit-hole world?

Their world might be based on Ayn Rand, her writings, philosophies, and her U.S. Presidency, but how dense are their numbers compressed, and for how long will their simulation even run? This little group has been provided an exit, but would anyone be rude enough to dare and leave their very own reality?

Take the Rude Dare, and Cross over, where data is data, through the Red Door. From the author of Vestigial Surreality comes the new serial novel, Rood Der.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781387482795

Book preview

Rood Der: 21: Lizards Galore

Rood Der: 21

Lizards Galore

The Sunday SciFi-Fantasy Serial

by Douglas Christian Larsen

ISBN: 978-1-387-48279-5

© Douglas Christian Larsen 2018

There were about fifty of them out in the middle of the makeshift gladiatorial ring, doing their flips and flicking, darting maneuvers, twirling spears and swords, all of them in syncopation, all garbed in leotards crafted from pink human skin, putting on a show for at least five hundred spectators up in the bleachers. This was a small turnout day, with no special festival in progress, no parades—in short, this was one of their boring, ho-hum days. And every one of the warriors and watching spectators was a stinking lizard. Damn them all, stinking lizards. Both spectators and gladiators, munching their version of popcorn (raw chunks of fat, dried and chewy). A very tall, thin lizard strolled about hawking his wares—fingers, sweet meats, and candy-coated teeth (apparently, the lizards didn’t mind swallowing bones).

Rodney watched the spectacle with the curious cattle, crowded up against the fence—the lizards had worked it out this way, of course, to impress the cattle, because this way, they knew, the cattle did, that there was absolutely no whisper of a chance at escape. And the even stronger impression? That there was no way to fight back. The cattle stood no chance against the oppressor, the master, the harvester—the lizard.

Lizards were superior to humans, that was the whole point. I mean come on, who could miss that point? Duh.

Rodney understood all this, because he was one of the cattle, and he had always been a good student, if not exactly a good cow, but he was beginning to wonder, more and more, if he had always been walking, talking, food—processed meat in the middle of the process. He always understood what people were trying to teach him. And he had learned that he did not relish the idea of these reptiles enjoying his meat, the very way he had always enjoyed the processed meats from all his fast-food havens and greasy-spoon diners, and delectable delicatessens; however, sooner or later, Rodney would be on the menu. That was the final, heavy, dreadful point.

Unless he might escape. He had been addressing the problem, how to escape, and he strolled about, every day, examining the security measures, the lizard routines, and there didn’t seem to be any way out of this nightmare, unless he might somehow...fly. These ruins extended for miles, and the pens for the captives encompassed several acres, all of it fenced, guarded, and patrolled.

He had ceased to think of this reality as some extended dream. The pain was just too vivid and overwhelming. If you experienced this kind of torture in a dream, you woke up. That is just the way thing worked. And he decidedly had been doing absolutely no waking up. This was his present reality, and as far as he might determine, there was no escape. The lizards were good teachers, better, in fact, teaching him than his own native capacity to learn from them. Oh yeah, he was fritzed, his mind blown. He was like the other walking dead, hardly able to think or even process simple logic.

A distant part of his mind, pushed way, way back, kept picturing his own sleeping figure at the base of an ornamental tree. He did not like