Edraculatte Flexes Down An Avalanche

Submitted into Contest #129 in response to: Begin your story with a character crashing into something (or someone) while skiing.... view prompt

6 comments

Funny Happy Fiction

Crystals of ice form on the hairs in his nose, which is an incredibly peculiar sensation. He feels as though he has just done a line of Ice 9 up each nostril; a feeling which takes his attention away from the fact that he is skiing down the side of a large mountain and is about to collide with a large, hairy humanoid.

"What the fugk, bro?" the large, hairy humanoid manages to eek out before he is knocked ass akimbo by the thoughtless skier.

Neither of the bipeds are hurt, but the hairless one on skis takes a bit longer to recover. When he does he looks up to see the blurred face of some kind of...thing with a face?

The thing with a face asks again, "What the fugk, bro?"

By the look on the face, and it is definitely a face, because that is the sort of thing you generally have figured out by this point in a conversation, it is waiting for an apology.

"I'm just out for a nice little walk, minding my own business, and you pop up out of nowhere with your fancy foot sticks and knock the bejesus out of me," the face continues, enunciating the jesus in bejesus using the Spanish pronunciation.

"Sorry, man. I was getting in my head about my nose and wasn't paying attention," the human, whom is also sporting a face, says to the face. "Are you like, a bigfoot?"

"No man, that's ignorant. Don't ever call me that again." the face scoffs indignantly.

"Oh, okay, sorry. But I mean, like, what are you?"

"I'm Bentley. Bentley Fox. And what exactly are you?"

"You're not going to believe this, because I already don't, but I am also Bentley Fox."

"Get the fugk out of here," the big, hairy Bentley Fox retorts.

"Okay," the skier says, and gets up and begins walking away, as the not-Bigfoot stares at him expectedly.

"No, man, not literally get the fugk out of here. You can stay. Stay. Its just a pretty big coincidence, don't you think? Two guys named Bentley Fox colliding on a mountain like this? That's extraordinary."

"Two guys, huh? Is that what we are? What the hell is even happening here?" the skier sputters out in a sort of frantic, panicked voice. It is clear he is beginning to unravel under the enormity of overlapping oddities.

"Hey guy, I'm gonna need you to settle down."

At exactly that moment the big, hairy Bentley Fox is struck unexpectedly by an even bigger and hairier thing with a face on skis. After the perfunctory crash and recovery, the bigger one wakes up to find the two blurred faces of either Bentley Fox looking down at him.

"Let me guess, Bentley Fox?" the larger, hairy Bentley Fox half jokes.

Without ever intending to, the hairy Bentley Fox realizes he has become the defacto middle man in the conversation, because he is less unlike the other two than they are unlike to one another. His relatively medium size and hairiness dictate the responsibility of situational centrism is upon him, according to the social calculus required in this rapidly emerging event.

"I'm not a whatever-you-said fox. I'm not even a fox," the largest of the humanoids speaks from the ground.

"Are you a bigfoot?" the little hairless one asks? The medium sized, medium haired one immediately punches him in the shoulder.

"I told you to knock that shit off, it's offensive."

"Actually, I am a bigfoot," the biggest and hairiest one says as he stands up and shakes the snow off his rather magnificent fur. "But my name is Edraculatte, and who are you?"

The two Bentley Foxes reply in unison, "Bentley Fox."

Are the two of you just one of you?

"No," big Bentley answers, "We're just two guys named Bentley Fox who happened to have a collision right here on this very spot just minutes before you also ran into me."

"Actually we haven't really firmly established that whole 'guys' thing yet, have we?" the smallest of the three things with faces tries to clarify. "I think we are going to need to establish a glossary for this whole predicament before we can navigate it with any clarity whatsoever."

"Man, as much as I love me some glossary establishment, we need to get the hell out of here, and quick," Edraculatte says with an accent somewhere between west Nebraska and southern Kansas. "There is going to be an avalanche, that is why I was in such a hurry. Sorry about that, bee-tee-dubs"

"So there are talking bigfoots who can also ski, and some other talking face thing that is also large and hairy but does not appreciate being called a bigfoot, and I am just receiving all of this information at once, and now I have to run for my life?" the most hairless one asks manically. 

"You don't have to. It is a pretty good survival strategy at this point, but nobody is forcing you," the one with the most hair answers sarcastically.

"Well isn't there anything else we could do?" the Bentley Fox who has been crashed into twice in just a matter of minutes asks with a baffling abundance of cool composure.

"What, like magic?" Edraculatte asks.

"Or maybe something else that might possibly work?" the cool, composed Bentley Fox asks.

"Actually, magic might work," Edraculatte pauses. "Yeah, why didn't I think of that? Good old magic."

Suddenly there is a noise that sounds like creaking and groaning had a baby and plugged it into a wall of amplifiers powered by Satanism and PCP.

"Oh shit, guys, we're going to die aren't we?" the Bentley Fox who is mostly hairless and completely a buzzkill asks in a shrill fear of death type voice thing. He then begins to outright sob, "I didn't even want to go skiing, I wanted to go to the beach."

"Oh, so our mutual guyhood has been established now, has it guy?" snarks the bigger Bentley Fox to the smaller.

"I'm going to need both of you to take a deep breath of shut the fugk up so I can focus and get my magic on," Edraculatte demands. 

The two Bentley Foxes stare as Edraculatte raises his arm weakly into the air, and slowly forms a hard fist atop a strong, steady arm. Soon the fist is shaking and the Bentley Foxes stare at one another as if to say 'I don't know what the fugk is happening but this is probably the most interesting way to die there could be so lets just go with it'. Now the bigfoot is walking around, spinning his hand around his ear, as though some imaginary crowd is cheering him on, feeding him the energy needed to completely destroy his opponent in the ring. Finally the giant, furry facebeast faces off directly with the mountain above, where the thundering din of snow is coming from, and begins flexing at it. Beneath the fur you can see his tremendous muscle ripple, and as veins pop in his forehead and his guns reach peak flex the sound of the coming avalanche suddenly stops, and Edraculatte falls to the ground as though fatigued by his efforts.

"Wow, bigfoots can do actual magic?" the Bentley Foxes ask in unison.

Suddenly the massive creature is transformed into a beautiful fox right before their eyes, and as it scatters off into the woods it yells back to them, "No, but a fox can," and then goes into a fit of laughter.

And eventually the laughter just fades into silence as the two Bentley Foxes roll around in the snow kissing one another passionately as though fumbling at some kind of sanity in this crazy old world.

[authors note: The proper category for this piece would be Surrealism. I hope you would consider adding it as an option.]

January 20, 2022 18:49

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6 comments

Graham Kinross
08:10 Sep 12, 2022

Hopefully reedsy will add surrealism as a category. Great story, Joshua.

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Thank you Graham!. I still check out the prompts, but I don't really write here anymore. The aesthetic which is successful here is boring and cliche, imo. I just stick to my own blog nowadays. Best of luck with your writing!

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Graham Kinross
21:02 Sep 12, 2022

You should put a link to your blog on your profile here.

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Good idea.

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08:34 Jan 28, 2022

Hello Joshua. I commend you for being a courageous and continuous contributor to this site. Your story started out promising to be interesting. It however later seemed to me somewhat muddled up... Perhaps your attempts at making it surreal is responsible for that as I found it challenging understanding if you were writing about things, humans or humanoids. It would also have been more helpful if the consistency level was improved as skiing down a mountain and walking are actually not synonymous... Reducing repetitions (such as "fugk") th...

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Thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts. Surrealism is tricky. Unlike traditional storytelling, it is not entirely sensible. It should be a bit confusing and nonsensical to the reader. The point of surrealism is not to complete a rational plotline, but to introduce dissonance to the reader. It is not about giving answers so much as leaving questions.

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