Clay Catastrophe: Metamorphic Earth Gone Wild

Pleakley Pow Pow,
Clay Alchemist

For my present means of living I make loads and loads of clay. Yee ha cowpeople. Some good ole elbow grease, a whole bunch of various sediments, a splash of water and you’re pretty much there. Throw in a big mixer and some ancient extruder machines from the Mesozoic Era and you’ve just about got the gist. I mix formulas together, toss hunks of clay down their respective shutes, and let the machines pump out logs of mud. High class mud mind you.

Was this awesome? Why yes, yes it was. Was there something, eh hem, someone, curtailing such awesomeness? Why YES, and they came in the form of The Brutey Boar. I didn’t know where my overseer hailed from but it couldn't be anywhere far from Tartarus. In short, she was the most duplicitous, sadistic, cold-blooded human of all homo-sapiens. Tip-topping it all, her resemblance to a hog of the wildest and mangiest variety was simply uncanny.

I’d thus far avoided being a royal fuck up and had evaded the worst of her fury. However, I learned from a previous employee who, prior to quitting and moving to New Hampshire, warned that the most microscopic misstep could render you helpless in some underground dungeon for an undefined detention. I think this dungeon-lair thing had some terribly hellish name but I made a point to distract myself out of dread when he was talking about it.

Thus, when pool noodles started squeezing out of the extruder I was simultaneously flabbergasted and petrified. Uhhhhhh what? If this was where the audience would see cranial gears turning and a heroic plan hammering together in a forge of superior intellect, well my sincerest apologies because I stood there blankly like an absolute numb nut. After a few seconds too long I jolted to the built in wire cutter and sliced through pink squeaky foam where I would normally cut a hunk of clay. I futilely fed it back through the extruder and squeezed my eyes closed with every part of my body tensed and desperately hoping this was a hallucination and that normal clay would resume its mundane extrusion. After a few seconds I let the wee corner of my right eyelid crack open and hummed out a panicky breath bordering on hysterical.

Oh frick. Oh shit. Aghhmmm. Oh no no no no no no no. FUCK. Not only was this real but there now appeared to be the largest pipe cleaners I’d ever seen churning out slowly and taunting me with their fuzzy, purple ease.

Ummmm. Okay. Okay. Maybe I could get this shit off the machine and floor real quick and shove it in a closet or something and then figure out how to get back to clay. I haphazardly grabbed at noodles and piper cleaners, raked everything possible into my embrace, shoved it all in the depths of a miniscule closet, and heaved a breath.

I quickly glanced behind me. Dear freaking Mary Mother of Merlin’s beard. Anyone order a penne entree?! I sure as hell hope so because I’d be damned if those weren’t some glossy ass noodles extruding forth in buttery glory. If only they were alla vodka.

Oh my god I was so dead. I was so so so dead. WHAT THE FLYING FUCK WAS SHE GONNA THINK HAPPENED IN HERE WHEN SHE CAME BACK. If I could have shrunk myself down to the teeniest-tiniest-smallest-most-mother-shitting-insignificant-blot-of-almost-nothingness-so-stupid-small-an-ameoba-might-trip-over-it-and-stub-its-dumb-ass-toe-on-me-speck and sink forever in a crevass of floor to be tred on for the rest of time I would have. Anything, and I MEAN ANYTHING, would’ve been a heavenly experience next to the rumored wrath of The Brutey Boar.

I swerved with such elite acuteness you’d think making left turns was my actual full-time job and absolutely sucker punched the main switch which was just a big red-lit button. It sputtered and flickered a few times threatening to rev back up so I then simply kicked the living hell out of it. Aaannnddddd still the machine didn't stop. Okay. Alright mysterious, metamorphic clay. Meet your literal goddamn maker. I clumsily hopscotched my way over palettes and penne to get to the back wall and yanked the python like plug for the extruder from it’s outlet. Aaannnddddd the extruder kept churning out what seemed like everything in the cursed universe expect clay. Where the actual cheese and crackers was all this evening coming from and why wasn’t it delightfully boring clay?

Loping my way back around to the front of the extruder I swiveled my torso around probably looking like some vulnerable, helpless jack without its box and looked down around me to assess the debris mounting at my ankles. I started to madly and witlessly rake my fingers through my hair to wrench it from its roots in sheer panic. There was so much hardened clay cementing the strands together from the batch I did earlier when my clay was just plain ole clay that my own dome thwarted my hands like it’d abruptly summoned a force field. If I lived to see the dark of this evening I would never in my right mind even look at a grain of sand again let alone come within six feet of anything remotely resembling clay.

Above me, the floorboards moaned. Terror flooded my system faster than if adrenaline was injected directly to my heart. The Brutey Boar was back in her office upstairs and would be mere moments from coming down here to assess my progress. Honestly, I thought I was either gonna poop myself or cry. Or both. … Definitely both.

For more articles by Pleakley Pow Pow, click here. To get in touch with this writer, email pleakley@surrealtimes.net.

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