ANIMUS

I peed in the woods, that’s true. In amongst the trees I peed before descending a steep, bladder-jostling hill, and I did so without hesitation. I thought of my pants, remembered fondly all the instances of us traversing this world in dry harmony, and thought it reasonable to eliminate any possibility of dampening that fruitful partnership.

But I did pee in the woods; that much is incontrovertible. I also fell down the hill, but that raised few eyebrows, if any at all, from the motley kangaroo court I was soon to be addressing. In fact, I “fell” the same way a dog paints: not without a whole lot of help.

The turtle pushed me, is what I’m saying. I caught a fleeting glimpse of it as I tumbled down through every single bramble and jagged rock on the hill, amazed not only at the naked rage written across that turtle’s tiny face, but also at the sheer power hidden within its football-sized frame. It was remarkable, and it was only after multiple meetings between the unforgiving hill and my head that the probable cause of the turtle’s anger occurred to me, and it was toothpicks.

More specifically, the toothpicks I had peed on; assumedly discarded toothpicks that were, in retrospect, too neatly arranged to have been the result of happenstance. But, even if I had inadvertently ruined the turtle’s decorative ambitions, surely this─me falling to pieces on that hill like an apple pie thrown down a fire escape─was a bit of an overreaction?

The consensus at the bottom of the hill was a resounding “no”, expressed not in words but in the bared teeth and baleful stares of the angry animal assemblage. The squirrel looked at me pityingly, which annoyed me to no end; it was equivalent to being condescended to by an ill-bred toddler, and far more irritating than the murderous look I got from the wolf, glaring as though I had spent the last month stepping on its feet. To be fair, though, the wolf was busy digging a massive hole in the ground─thus only intermittently homicidal─so perhaps it was the squirrel’s sedentary opinion that bothered me more than the pity itself. I would have shaken an angry fist at that squirrel had I the use of my arms, but instead contented myself with grimacing at the wolf in a foolhardy attempt to out alpha-male the alpha-maliest of alpha-males, an action that my pants and I instantly regretted.

I painfully craned my neck to catch sight of the turtle re-erecting its toothpicks up the hill and felt a tiny bit of sweaty worry slide down my cheek, like a barometer measuring the nearby pressure and indicating that, atmospherically, I was in a heap of trouble. That foreboding thought must have been loud, because the pitying squirrel immediately made a noise like a chisel across a trumpet and both-feet stomped my nutsack so hard I went swimming in my head, where things were bright and colourful and lovely: a gentle, pleasant hum of satisfaction filled my ears while soft, friendly shapes drifted peacefully across the sky before viciously popping like machine gun fire, forcing dread reality to pull at my eyelids and return me from my adventure.

I awoke to a grinning donkey showing off all the bark in its teeth, laughing splinters on to my chest when I recoiled in groggy horror. With a nod, the donkey indicated something to the wolf that appeared to be get a load of this guy, like it had only dropped by to roast me with a dose of that much-celebrated donkey-humour. Squirming in the loose dirt of the wolf’s pit I had been dumped in like so much wet garbage, I attempted to tell them off with a mouth full of mud─which, for the record, worked not at all─before throwing a tantrum like a flummoxed flamingo: all legs, no chill. The donkey, continuing its playful jawing with the wolf, easily climbed out of the pit, leaving behind a cheeky “farewell” in a series of astonishingly well-articulated farts.

Casting a shadow over the pit was a crossed pair of tree branches that I assumed were held together by, what, donkey magic? It was ridiculous, and I attempted to show my disdain of the whole affair by standing up, only to find that the pit had been dug at an angle so that my head rested at a lower point than my legs; suffice it to say, it was a position that made verticality but a dream for the unhealthy-armed. It was a shrewd move, but I wasn’t about to give the wolf the satisfaction of admitting such a thing, and so instead I gave the collected animals rimming my grave the finger, setting my head back against the loose soil smugly, awash in the dopamine of my own bravado.

It wasn’t long before I found myself awash in something entirely different.

Sigh.

If one should be unlucky enough to find oneself in a pit rapidly filling with the pee of a bevy of angry animals, one’s primary concern might go to the lack of buoyancy a human body possesses when said body’s seemingly endless concavities become filled with said pee, but rationality would dictate that not considering the outrageous smell of combined, multi-species urine as a very close secondary concern would be a grave mistake, as said smell can only be described by its absence: as a recommendation to savour every day that isn’t spent being pissed on by vengeful animals.

“Revolting” doesn’t come anywhere close to covering it, though that is indeed what my insides did once the saturation-level reached puddle-depth. And it was in this foul pond of my own hubris, mentally flagellating myself for my perhaps fatal lack of basic core strength, that I died.

Or fell asleep. Or whatever.

My eyes were closed, at any rate, and it was during this sightless period that I made contact with the Elder Committee of Forest Critters to lodge a complaint. Unreceptive at the best of times, said Committee sent me back the psychic-equivalent of a form letter─and a terse one at that─summarizing the necessity of keeping the channels of communication open by not muddying the waters with claims of the nonemergency variety. This was, as one might imagine, a bit of a kick in the pants; I struggled to envision the horrible circumstances that met the definition of “emergency” if mine did not qualify. Regardless, the lines were cut after that by-the-numbers missive, a growl of complete indifference echoing in its wake, and I was so angry I burped myself awake.

Do you know how angry you have to be to break a connection to the psychic world with a burp? Well, I was twice that angry, and the cloud of acidic anguish I shot into the air was a borderline criminal act, an exhalation so profound in its toxicity that guilt slapped me in the face like I had made inappropriate comments about its mother. It was as though I had befouled the last of the orphans’ porridge, or summarily executed all the world’s remaining bees, or shit down the neck of a six-year-old over a mathematically imprecise drawing of a fractal─that’s how vile that burp was.

Somewhere, as I fell back asleep or died or whatever, somewhere out there I watched my burp wander through a myriad of resonance patterns before landing on a frequency picked up by a pirate radio station somewhere in the ocean. “Mike the Pike”, an “outlaw” “broadcaster” apparently unaccustomed to conversing in the psychic realm, played “(Pissing Down) My Leg” by the Bottom Hill Boys and dedicated it to me, “the guy drowning in animal piss”. This was extraordinarily unhelpful, as one might gather, and not least because it was an objectively terrible song.

I again burped myself awake, this time with a “thanks, Mike” that I hoped retained its sarcasm through its journey, and sighed again, clearing my head and coming to terms with my predicament: my arms didn’t work but my hands did; unholy things were getting into my sinus cavity; and this was the most time I’d had to myself in, like, forever. I also knew I could vault my legs backward over my head at any time to push myself upright, but I was reluctant to condemn my just-dried pants to the same urinary fate that had befallen my shirt. Relaxation set in, curiously, though I soon learned it to be a coping mechanism that allowed me to shut off my smell receptors while allowing me to pretend that the agony blazing through my shattered limbs was for my own good. No pain, no gain, and that’s clearly and especially true of improperly-set fractures, because, in the end, who doesn’t want arms shaped like complex trigonometric equations?

I imagined the stylish air-quotes I hoped to unleash at future dinner parties, but I was forcibly ousted from my reverie by the Bottom Hill Boys, their relentless lyrics lodging in my brain like the shrapnel from a talentless explosion.

You think you and me are meant to be/

But I’m the chicken, you’re the egg/

One is pooped all the way free/

The other just runs down my leg

It was instinctive, scraping and pulling with my heels, dragging myself up and away from the fetid muck, using the momentum of that sonic whiplash of a song to yank my hamstring into a knot for the sake of freedom─anything to get away from that loathsome tune.

One thing, though, despite everything else: the chicken seemed impressed. When it had arrived I didn’t know, but it stopped pecking me long enough to shoot me what seemed like a nod of approval, which I have to admit was gratifying in a way that almost brought me to tears. It was that kind of chicken: wizened, with a gravitas that belied its schizophrenic movements; a friend when such luxuries were in short supply. It was wonderful, and I gave the chicken a little nod and wink in return as I forced myself to my knees, smiling beatifically into the wonder of interspecies camaraderie.

The chicken took the opportunity to rear back and slap my face hard enough to loosen a tooth─one of my favourites, too─and screeched ferociously before pointing a sharp feather at my eye as a warning. I looked up to find myself surrounded by animals of every stripe─the Elder Committee in the flesh─each leaning in over the pit lip to register their respective levels of animosity. Like, for some reason the otter was hella mad, but the moose just looked like it wanted to be somewhere else; and in that way it vacillated through the throng, a circle of judgmental assholes in various states of engagement. The chicken saw me judging them back and slapped me again, this time yanking out some of my beard hair and making a big show of stuffing it between its tail feathers, which, if I were to guess, was meant to be incredibly disrespectful. Not the chicken’s fault it didn’t land; I clearly wasn’t up on the latest in spiteful forest critter customs.

After many lengthy attempts at communication─as, apparently, words were only useful in the psychic realm─the Elder Committee eventually made it understood that I had maligned not only those present but, indeed, the entirety of their hard-won and dearly-held forest society with my thoughtless peeing, as I happened to do so on what I then learned was a memorial to the fallen heroes of Forest Critterdom. As such, my mal-pissage was kind of a big deal.

However, and this is a pretty big caveat, I was sentenced to goddamned death by drowning in piss for an accident labeled a crime by a consortium of forest critters lead by a fucking chicken, which just has to be the least forest-crittery critter I can imagine, and as the taste of ammonia reared its pissy head in the back of my throat once more, it could do nothing to quell my taste for justice.

A familiar song began playing in the distance, growing louder and louder until it was directly overhead, showering us with appalling lyrics carrying a sentiment that couldn’t be ignored:

We were never meant to last/

And that’s why you’re with Craig/

But you’ve still got me on blast/

And your complaints just run down my leg

The music stopped abruptly to allow Mike the Pike’s voice to power through the sweeping drone’s speakers, offering a hearty hey, piss-man! as it zipped past me and back up into the air, dodging the teeth and claws of the assembled mob as it went. Well, folks, looks like we got a live one today, he continued, the doppler effect of the shouting and laughing making me dizzy. Looks like piss-man’s in a bad bit of trouble, I’d say, he did indeed say, starting up with the music again briefly before the biggest lion I had ever seen flew across my field of vision to swallow the whole thing up like it was a steak.

A lion. And it didn’t even chew the thing, so Mike the Pike’s muffled voice continued broadcasting from the lion’s belly, though he was mostly repeating live from the belly of the beast and this is a very expensive drone in between bouts of nervous laughter─you know, keeping it light. This turn of events didn’t sit well with the congregation, a clutch of whom surrounded the lion with urgent indecision, arguing amongst themselves about the most efficient way to remove a drone from the tum-tum of a monstrous predator. The lion’s eyes clearly twinkled with anxiety, looking back and forth at the crowd while slowly backing away, but the voice inside him yelled do you even understand how money works, an exclamation that, surely with its tone more than its words, served as a call to arms, apparently, because a hippo broke free from the pack swinging a snake like a weapon, breaking the dam and causing the full mob to descend upon the lion like a tsunami. The poor lion ran, stumbling once or twice in panic before its muscle memory took hold and reminded it that it was a goddamned lion and that sudden return of its primeval aggression allowed it to build a substantial lead over its indecisive followers, as the whole group blasted off through the wide open plain like a tidal wave of animus.

As that chaos unfolded, a porcupine, apparently late to the party, ran across the lip closest to me and pulled up lame, looking me dead in the eye and pointing at his leg, a bad leg, apparently, because he followed up with a thumb’s down and a shrug. I shrugged as well as best I could and opened the hands at the bottom of my wrecked arms in a gesture of ah, what’re you gonna do? The porcupine nodded and looked away wistfully, looking back to nod again with full resolve.

It sat down on the edge, swinging its little porcupine feet like a toddler on a swing, and peeked over its shoulders, comfortable once it realized we were free from eavesdroppers. Jiggling a quill loose, it began squeaking at me in the rhythm of conversation, gesturing to get across the meaning while using its quill as a toothpick, pausing here and again to wiggle the thing between its teeth while giving some thought to what it would say next. As far as idiosyncrasies went, it was adorable.

After careful consideration─and acceptance that I wasn’t going to be able to properly decipher the entirety of it─I learned that the porcupine had both served with the critter army and had many friends and relatives buried up in the graveyard I had peed upon. The porcupine knew a mistake when it saw one, and suggested that I apologize to the kingdom at large, but more specifically the turtle, still up there on the hill trying to make things right. Also, that the porcupine had itself a robot spouse, and that it had always wanted to try one of those hamburgers whose wrappers littered the forest like cigarette butts. And that astronomy was something it just couldn’t wrap its head around─you can look backward in time? Crazy.

There was something about ninjas too, but the meat of the thing was me getting back up the hill to see about a turtle. But before I could even attempt such an arduous, armless journey, I had to find my way out of the pit. Also armless. Which would have been impossible were it not for the porcupine’s significant other, an actual porcupine-shaped robot that skittered up and out of nowhere to fall into the pit beside me, clicking and whirring and jostling my foot in an attempt at providing me leverage. This didn’t work at all, which lead to a litany of squeaks and clicks between it and the porcupine, ending all at once with an angry porcupine command that was met with some of the most irritated smoke I had ever seen blown from the exhaust of a robot. Cables shot out and coiled at the robot’s porcupine feet, fashioning themselves into a loose claw that lashed around me bodily and threw me up the length of the hill. I landed badly─all knees and shoulders and, somehow, nose─but managed to pry myself from the divot I had left and limped toward the turtle, who was watching me with wet eyes.

I began with an apology, explaining that as much as I hadn’t meant to do the thing, the thing had indeed been done, and that I regretted having done it. The thing, that is. The turtle was most gracious, accepting my apology and introducing itself as Boffo, Super Emperor King of the Labyrinthine House of Turtengomen and Foresworn Erector of Mongrellic Memorials, adding that he preferred to be called Ol’ Boffs and that I was welcome to do so. We got on famously after that: I’m staying at his place, currently, just couch-surfing for a bit as my arms heal into badly-drawn hieroglyphics. We’ll see. I mean, he’s an avid conversationalist, with an inarguable grasp of absurdist philosophy as it pertains to late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century Russian literature, and one helluva cook, while I, for my part, can reach things on the top shelf. It’s been a pretty good deal as far as combos go.

The Edler Committee of Forest Critters obligingly backed off at Ol’ Boffs’ request, dispersing with an agreement to continue policing the forest with collective vigilance, albeit while behind the furry curtain of bureaucracy. As they began, so too shall they continue.

Some nights, though─during those calm, crisp nights when the forest sleeps and the world goes quiet─some nights you can hear a penetrating roar tear across the glades and echo between the trees, the explosive rage of a frustrated lion, followed by the muted crackle of an eaten drone explaining the pros and cons of late-stage capitalism, a Mike the Pike-centric economic philosophy heavily slanted toward the loss of drones and resultant monetary penalties, as he hadn’t even come close to paying the thing off before it got stuck in a lion, and, come on; if it got in it should be able to get out, right?

God.