+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | The Wanderer | | | | by D!99y Dud3 | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ In a crass technocracy such as ours, where the general tendency of the audience is to play armchair critic, vivisecting a production even as they're consuming it, producing works in a real-time interactive medium is ultimately a futile endeavor. Case in point: for this continuation of the previous installment, again originally presented as a thread on a Web forum, I selected a YouTube video for the intermission that perfectly fit the overall tone of the presentation up until that point. And, judging from the forum administrator's reaction, it seemed to have worked as intended. However, as we all know, the World Wide Web is largely populated these days by drive-by non-readers who aren't interested in the theme or the tone of a work-in-progress, but merely want to chip in their two cents' worth about the first thing that catches their eye. In this case, one such poster thought he could somehow one-up me in my own literary pursuit by posting an alternate cover of the same song, which he deemed to be better than the one I had carefully selected for the production -- and had, in fact, tailored the end of the first act to neatly seque into -- by whatever criteria he chose to evaluate the relative merits of the two. Uuuuhhh... no. Not only was his alternate video a wretched musical performance in its own right, it was utterly discordant in the context of the thread. All of which only further validates my decision to confine my releases to text files from now on, and republish them on the Web only when they're finished. That said, here's the next chapter in the saga of the fictitious Trix Malone. I reformatted it for 80 columns this time because you guys are my real audience, not the mouth-breathing idiots on the Web. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On her twenty-first birthday, Trix Malone saddled her horse and rode west. The horse was a recent Triple Crown winner, raised and trained by Trix herself, and he was making record time. "Where's the fire?" she asked. "This is the West. You're supposed to mosey." "Meh, Kansas is flat and boring," he replied. "I want to see rolling green hills and what-not." Trix patted the horse's neck. "Soon," she said. "We get there when we do." As she spoke, something whistled past Trix's ear. An arrow! She leaped to the ground and instructed the horse to take cover. About forty Cherokee warriors lined the summit of a low ridge a few hundred yards away, bows drawn. Trix muttered an incantation, and the sky began to darken rapidly as heavy clouds rolled. She summoned lightning from the heavens and flung it at the advancing party. The bolts struck an Indian leading the charge with a loud crack, and he howled in agony. The panicked braves dispersed with due haste and disappeared over the ridge. The horse was awestruck at the spectacle. "Well, that was... different." "Said the talking horse," Trix replied. ----- News of the incident spread across the plains faster than an Oklahoma grass fire in July. The chiefs of all of the tribes in the territory gathered for a pow-wow. After days of intense discussion, they rode out to meet Trix. They caught up with her at a watering hole west of Witchita. The horse was gathering wood for a campfire. Trix was filling a percolator with water for coffee. They heard a twig snap and looked up. The were surrounded by a sea of war bonnets. Trix looked at the Indians, and they at her. Nobody moved or spoke for the longest time. Finally, Trix said, "Well? Are you gonna scalp me or what?" The eldest of the chiefs rode forward. "White woman's medicine make bravest warrior run like little schoolgirl," he said. "White woman become chief medicine woman of all the tribes." With that, he handed her an ornately beaded medicine bag. Trix and her horse looked at each other, speechless. The horse shrugged. She curtsied, and accepted the gift. "Come," said the chief. "Indians build new village for medicine woman to live in." ----- Trix sat on a pile of buffalo hides in her wigwam nursing an orphan whose parents had died a month earlier. She had gained considerable prestige among the natives by healing the sick and injured. Indians from far and wide came to shower her with gifts. She was lavishly bejeweled with seashell necklaces from the Gulf coast. Her medicine village boasted the finest collection of intricately carved totem poles from the Pacific Northwest. All of the nations prospered under her care. Her horse, with few duties to occupy his time, had opened a trading post. They were restless, however, and yearned once again for the wild frontier. Trix summoned the chiefs for a pow-wow. "The Great Spirit has summoned me on a vision quest," she told them. "Practice what I have taught you, and you will do well." The people held a farewell feast with much dancing, then she saddled up and departed. ----- I was drifting down the Red River one lazy summer day in 1853, trawling for catfish and puffing on a peace pipe given to me by a Muscogee chief whom I had rescued from a wild boar attack in western Arkansas some years prior. As I floated along, I saw a lone rider on the river bank. The rider was dressed as an Indian princess in a tight open-back buckskin dress that could've been a few inches longer, but I was rather appreciative of the fact that it wasn't. She was bedecked with feathers and seashell necklaces, and wore a crown of daisies. But this rider was no Indian squaw. It was a white woman. I was about to hail the rider when two rough-looking men emerged from the woods and slipped up on her from behind. One man seized her arms, the other her ankles. She tried to protest, but the varmint who had her by the arms muzzled her with his big, dirty palm. I hadn't a rifle, only a shotgun. If I shot at the men, I'd surely hit the woman too. If I fired a warning shot, the men would get the draw on me, and me and the woman would both be goners. The men hauled the struggling woman back into the woods. I had to think of something quick-like. ----- Intermission https://youtu.be/5HSaXptRexM ----- As a distant cousin of Louis XIV, Chatelaine du Lac, self-styled Queen of the Pontchartrain, carried the royal bloodline of the ancien regime, her present occupation of bordello operator notwithstanding. She was also a sorceress of considerable power. Mademoiselle du Lac was fond of her leather catsuits and high-heeled boots, and she sure looked good in them as she minced about her torture dungeon twenty feet below Bourbon Street. But I hadn't time to contemplate her rare beauty just then. "I'm busy. Call back later," she snapped, and hung up the picturephone. I rang her back. "Please, Mademoiselle du Lac! I have a grave matter to discuss with you." "What's eating you, kid?" she demanded. I told her the whole story. "Okay, I'll be there," she said, and hung up again. ----- To give credit where credit is due, Trix didn't come up with her fireball act on her own. She had learned that trick from Chatelaine du Lac. She was about to pick up a few choice tips on astral projection from the sorceress as well. The Lady of the Lake coalesced on the river bank from out of thin air, catching the brutes who had kidnapped Trix completely off guard. One of the ruffians drew his Colt revolver on Chatelaine. She lobbed a fireball at him, burning his filthy beard off. Terrified, the other man turned Trix loose, and the nefarious pair fled into the woods. "Thanks," Trix said to the raven-haired French woman. "I owe you one." "Oui," she replied. "Indeed you do." And then she evaporated. ----- We headed down river towards Shreve's Landing with Trix's horse paddling the canoe. Much to her annoyance, he told me all manner of tales about her peculiar doings as a child. "Will you hush about the mud pies already?" she said. The horse snickered. "Why? You've never been embarassed about it before." "Well, a stranger doesn't need to know every little detail of a lady's life, now does he?" I passed the peace pipe to the horse. He puffed on it thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "Nah, I guess you're right." I changed the subject. "How did you come to be wearing them Indian clothes, ma'am?" "My Versace gown is at the dry cleaners," she said. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If this phile gripped you more than a muddy old river or reclining Buddha, please re-upload it to as many BBSes as you can. Danke schoen! Oh, and tell them you stole it from one of these fine boreds: Agency BBS Borderline BBS Sysop: Avon Sysop: Balzabaar telnet://agency.bbs.nz telnet://borderlinebbs.dyndns.org:6400 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------