To be honest, there was a part of
me that did not think that the alarm clock was going to go off this morning,
that the paranoid might have been right and the Mayan apocalypse had somehow
come to fruition while I was sleeping.
The night proved rather uneventful though, which in hindsight made me
seem kind of foolish for going to bed so heavily armed. On the other hand, had I fallen asleep under
a lesser degree of preparedness I likely would not have found myself in a
position to appropriately respond to a clock radio blaring John Denver music
into an otherwise peaceful bedroom at 4:30 in the morning. There are undoubtedly some people that may
think that letting loose four rounds from a .357 magnum to force a premature
ending to “Rocky Mountain High” may be a bit of overkill, but as my surprised
wife, 5 terrified kids and two suddenly incontinent dogs discovered, I was not
one of those people.
Things got moving pretty quickly
after that. As my wife insisted on
trying to have a “heart-to-heart” regarding me going on some sort of
medication, I got through my shower and breakfast in record time so that I
could start talking with sane people at the office as opposed to having to
converse with hysterical spouses at home.
I tried to make her realize that problems were never solved through
conversation at 5am, and she should know that considering how many ill-fated
roadside discussions I have had with law enforcement authorities at that
ungodly hour, but despite the evidence she kept chattering away anyway until I
finally slipped out of the kitchen door and into the garage.
I hit the button on the wall to
raise the garage door and while it was climbing, poked my head into the
refrigerator to fish out a Mountain Dew for a solid caffeine fix to get myself
to work. When I emerged from the fridge, I was startled to find the garage door
opened and standing in front of it, a form standing at least 8 feet tall. It was a truly horrific creature, with a
torso shaped vaguely like an upside down triangle, whose head and body were
one, with no neck separating the two. It
had long, sinewy arms that hung off of the top corners of its body and
stretched all of the eight feet it took for them to reach the ground. Its legs were much shorter, but no thicker,
but quite bowlegged suggested that this beast must have ridden one fat horse on
its way to my driveway. This was a fur
bearing beast, bearing a deep red coat with yellow tiger stripes. It had three bright green reptilian eyes
lined up across the top of its forehead between its two shoulders, the nose of
a swine and a wide mouth from which two enormous fangs protruded out of its
lower jaw. I stared at it for a little
while, trying to figure out if this monster was yet another side effect of the
Chantix I used to quit smoking a few years before or the result of some other
substances I had ingested during my youthful forays into street
pharmaceuticals. Having been years since
I had to confront a hallucination of that caliber, I was not entirely sure what
to do, so I just gave him a nod and acknowledged it with a “ ‘sup.”
The creature nodded back to me,
grinned and returned the greeting, but with a bit more enthusiasm. “‘SUP!”
It then produced a blade shaped like a gigantic Gurkha knife and
charged, loosing a deafening roar as it lunged to take my head off.
Though by no means known for my
cat-like reflexes, particularly before six am, I ducked just in time for the
blade to miss the top of my crown and pass effortlessly through my refrigerator
as if it were a hot knife through a stick of butter. The appliance seemingly exploded into a foamy
mist of vaporized PBR and I found myself marveling at the power of what I had
believed to be a psychotropically inspired figment of my overactive
imagination. Back in my gloriously
misspent youth, when I was being attacked by one of my hallucinations, I would
drop my defenses and allow whatever apparition was bothering me to have its way
with me. Once my body saw that my
visions were harmless, they would generally go away. This time however, I just could not get my
body to play along. As the demon before
me swung, stabbed and parried his weapon, my body was involuntarily ducking,
weaving and leaping out of the way of the cutting edge.
At one point, the demon thrust
his blade at my chest, but I turned out of the way just in time for it to miss
me and get itself stuck into the wall of my garage. I then grabbed an axe off a nearby shelf and
buried it deep within the head of creature before me. The beast instantly split nearly in two and
fell backwards, unleashing a swarm of fluorescent colored centipedes that
rushed out of the demon’s deflating corpse, down my driveway, into the street
and down the nearest manhole cover into the sewers below. I was now convinced that someone had spiked
my drink last night with some sort of hallucinogenic substance and I made a
pact that by the end of the day I was going to find out what it was, mainly
because I REALLY wanted to score some more of that stuff before New Year’s Eve.
While on my way to my car in the
driveway, I took a quick look around the neighborhood and had to stop and
marvel at the chaos erupting around me.
The widowed Mrs. Henderson sped past my house screaming bloody murder,
her wheelchair being pulled chariot style down the street harnessed to a half
dozen half-man, half horse centaurs who were trotting along at an easy 60 miles
an hour. This made me smile as at least
three times a week I get caught behind that harpy in the Honda Civic she has
owned for 12 years without her ever managing to figure out where the
accelerator was located. There was a
small army of goblins tearing up the perfectly manicured lawn of the Roberts
house which also lifted my spirits as I would now have a good reason to
complain to the neighborhood association about THEIR landscaping for a
change. There were winged trolls
relieving themselves in the Mayfields’ swimming pool and I spotted a trio of
gargoyles trying to mate with Tomlinson’s Great Dane. Apparently, I was on some REAL good stuff.
For the most part, the monsters
ignored me until I pulled out of my driveway and started making my way down the
street. Then every twisted creature
within a two block radius came rushing at me.
I decided that for the most part, I would just drive right through
them. I seriously doubted that any of
those things were really there and if by some chance they were actually running
amok throughout the subdivision, I am sure that my neighbors would greatly
appreciate the fact that I was running them over.
The chaos did not end once I was
out of the neighborhood. Once onto the
main road, I spotted a fire-breathing dragon take out a convoy of tanker trucks
in a spectacular fireball that left me with a sudden craving for marshmallows,
chocolate and graham crackers. I then
passed a Satanic choir of lesser demons caroling classic Iron Maiden
tunes. I also spotted a fluorescent
orange python in a corn field the size of a passenger train, a flock of flying
piranhas tearing apart an escaped hippopotamus and a swarm of razor-toothed
tree frogs attacking stray dogs. Normal,
vehicular traffic was surprising light.
It was nearly ten minutes before I spotted a police car roaring at me
with lights and sirens ablaze. It cut in
front of me, forcing me to stop and then pulled up beside me while a frantic
police officer rolled down his window and leaned half of his body out of it to
scream at me.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!” the
officer bellowed. “ARE YOU
INSANE!?!?! YOU NEED TO GET OFF OF THE
ROAD AND GO…” He was cut off when a
passing pterodactyl swooped down and plucked him out of the vehicle to carry
him off for an early morning snack. This
proved too much for his partner in the passenger seat to bear, who proceeded to
melt down, throwing his hands to his cheeks while hysterically screaming,
“RUUUUUUNNNNN! FOR HEAVEN’S
SAKE!!! GET OUT OF HERE!! RU…”
He was silenced when an immense elephant-like leg came down upon the
patrol car, smashing it flat against the pavement. The beast that huge leg belonged to was so
gargantuan that I could not even begin to make out what it was as it stepped
over me. Once it passed though, I
noticed an ancient Native American shaman standing on the road’s opposite
shoulder, smiling warmly and waving at me.
I waved back. “You’re Mayan aren’t you?” I asked suddenly
doubting my hallucinogenic theory.
The Indian gave me a thumbs
up.
“And this is the end of the
world?”
The shaman answered me in an
ancient Mayan dialect, but through his magic, I was able to understand him
perfectly. “Yes, young one. This is the end of the world. Go back.
You know what you need to do.”
I did. I needed to race back home and get my
Facebook status updated before Beezlebub cut the power lines.
Happy Mayan Apocalypse Day
Everyone!
