The Beast
by Ray Cullis
Aarg, my name
for the Neanderthal stinker on my left, raised
his weapon as if it could harm the fearsome beast
thundering toward us.
I had expected
to get a rest between lifetimes of at least a few
years and then be reincarnated some years ahead
in time. But, no, that was not to be. You
can imagine my surprise and horror when the smart-ass
Lords of Karma informed me that I would preincarnate—be
born again in an earlier time. Not
only that, but I would be born again, not in the
roaring twenties, or in the devastating American
Civil War, or even in ancient Rome or Greece. Oh
no, they were sending me way back to the
Neolithic era, back to the stone age, back to the
time when getting stoned was not a harmless trip
but a threat to your very existence.
Now I am
feeling flies of butter within my gullet as I
make a motion to Aarg to run straight at the
beast, and at the last second, to veer off to the
left and run around it, while I perform the same
maneuver to the right. Aarg understands and
grunts, “Uga, Uga.”
We have done
this before but with two more men. Unfortunately,
we lost them when the beast we were hunting wasn’t
fooled by our supposedly deceptive maneuver, and
simply grabbed the two stinkers and chewed them
up, spitting out their stone axes and spearheads
in the process, while Aarg and I climbed up on
the back of the beast to beat the crap out of it
with our stone axe-mallets.
Just beating
the crap out of the beast wasn’t our goal of
course. We intended to kill the animal and drag
as much meat as we could hack off of it to our
cave before some monstrous flying scavenger
swooped down on us.
I turned my
attention back to the beast which was only two
spears throwing distance away, and lumbering
toward me and Aarg, growling, slobbering, and
snorting boogers as it came—a fierce sight,
and one that caused me to soil my saber tooth
garment and question whether dinosaur dinners are
really worth all the effort and humiliation.
I didn’t
get a chance to dine on dinosaur though, because—before
you could say stinky Neanderthal—the beast
was upon us and pounding us to smithereens under
its enormous webbed feet.
Dang, I though
as I released my last breath, just when I was
beginning to enjoy the adventure in stinky land,
the grim reaper has snatched me away to face the
Lords of Karma again. They would, no doubt, amuse
themselves again by shipping me off to
some infamous time where I would again
reincarnate as I don’t know who…or what.
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