Greegs & Ladders by Zack Mitchell, Danny Mendlow (13 ebook reader .TXT) 📖

“Right away!”

“Good. There is only two years after all. But that’s still enough time.”

“I suddenly believe in you,” said Reg, feeling the stoned-like effects of Rip’s powerful methods of deception. “You seem like a creature of great intellect.”

Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third was indeed a creature of great intellect, however this assumption would not have been made if Reg were a creature capable of the sense of smell, as ordinarily no creature of great intellect would have on their breath the scent of 12 Crammington Krish Fortinis.

Reg led Dr. Brash to the Greeg cage.

“You can have that one,” he said, pointing at Zook. “I have suspected he is slightly more intelligent then the other Greegs.”

“Why do you suspect that?”

“He bangs his face against the bars slightly less often than the others.”

a Pair of Old Friends Take in a Show

The crowd laughed and howled and rolled around on the ground. This would never get old. Nothing made them feel better about themselves than seeing a Greeg be a Greeg, and knowing for certain that they were not a Greeg.

Naddy had, in no particular order, and in the last hour:

Attempted to eat his left arm

Realized it was futile considering his lack of teeth

Strained his neck muscles trying to look at his own asshole

Tried to pop his neck back into place

Considering his neck hadn’t been popped out of place, suffered severe damage to his spine.

For a brief moment of self-awareness, Naddy actually realized that he was a source of mockery. He felt the disdain and condescension from the carnival goers. He paused for a second and looked out pathetically. His eyes asked the carnival goers if this was really the way things should be. He questioned why they were so much better than him, and if so, why did they simply point and laugh instead of helping him be like them? He hadn’t chosen to be a Greeg, he was simply born one. The carnivalites hadn’t actually accomplished anything more than him, other than not being born a Greeg. For a nanosecond, he was acutely aware of all of this and he begged with his eyes to be taken out of the cage and to be one of them. His plea faintly registered with no one and was instantly forgotten when he shook off the silly thought at the sight of the female waking from a nap. With no competition from Zook, Naddy had her all to himself. He barely even tried any more. He bumbled over to her side and farted directly in her face. Then he punched himself a few times in the mouth and kneed an inanimate object. Lacking any semblance of self-esteem, the female shrugged and pulled out the procreational paraphernalia.

As the act of sex began it should be noted that I lied a little bit in the previous paragraph. The plea did not entirely fail to register with all of the carnival gawkers. There was one creature who felt a connection and shared a moment of understanding with Naddy. This same creature was now feeling very strong emotions stirring up inside him as the first attempt went down. While it is true that he was hooting and hollering with the rest of the crowd, he couldn’t help but feel a gut wrenching volcano of bubbling anger, longing, jealousy and resentment churning around in his stomach. He tried to dismiss it at first, but he could not deny the fierce reality of the feelings. He surely, undeniably wished more than anything that he could tear off his clothing, go into the cage and challenge the lowly Greeg. He found the disgusting female inexplicably attractive beyond his wildest fantasies. All he wished to do was to rub feces and dirt and bodily fluids all over himself and engage in acts of psychotic and nonsensical physical violence towards the other male. Somehow he knew this would ensure he would get to be the one making the first attempt right now. He didn’t know why or how he knew this was important, but he did.

“Savages, hey?” A familiar voice came from beside him, more prodding him than genuinely asking the question.

“Yes, yes, savages.”

“Everything about them is savage, primitive and borderline retarded… except when they do this. Look at that, look at how they do it. More elegant and caring than a barrel full of Vibrulant Oolorians.”

“Still doesn’t make them any less savage or dumb though.”

“Not at all. Just a bizarre and random fluke. No real logical explanation for it.”

A brief pause, and then the familiar voice continued.

“You’re right though, every Greeg is an idiot, a moron, a complete and total twit.”

“You can say that again… every, single, one. Good for a laugh, and nothing more. Crammington Krish?”

“You bet,” said Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third.

“My treat,” said the former Greeg formerly known as Zook.

Planetary Relativity, Astrospeciology and Fleeing in Haste

It was now 1.7 years after Rip had made his outlandish bet that he was about to win. It should be noted that Rip, being the clever bloke he was, had actually duped the audience considerably. As any seasoned traveller of time and space can tell you, a year is a very relative term. On the planet Schmick for example, a year is about the time it takes you to read:

This.

There you go, another Schmickian year gone by. By the time you next see a period a whole decade will have gone by. The planet Schmick is about four inches away from the sun it revolves around. Well, it doesn’t actually revolve around it so much. Not all planets revolve around their suns. Not all go in circles, or ellipses, or ovals. Some make boxes, zig-zags, figure 8’s, loop-dee-loops, jittery slaloms, loping spirals, corkscrews and spastic shuffles. Some planets interact with one another as they go about their sun; performing doe-see-does or bumping and jostling as they go. Others go directly at their sun, these are called “suicidal planets.” Some don’t move at all. They are referred to as “Lazy Planets.” Some super intelligent, lazy planets have risen up against their sun, banded together and made the sun revolve around them. These are called “Union Planets.” Others, like Schmick, disappear and reappear in multiple places around their sun at a dizzying speed. This makes it appear as if they are actually occupying every single space around the sun at all times. They are doing exactly this. Schmick is not really a planet and its sun isn’t technically a sun. But there’s no point in trying to explain that to you.

Other planets crawl at a pace that would make Grovulant Sloggerz look like Riptulating Froppers. These planets never use the year as a standard of time. Instead they prefer to time things out in general, ball-park phrases like “When that thing happens later on.” These planets are absolutely useless to anyone looking to fuel up their space ship, as clearly no investment banker could ever thrive in such a lackadaisical environment.

So, being that the only sort of creatures who would travel to a remote planet to watch Carnival Greegs with a notorious, gambling drunkard are not the sort of creatures who know an awful lot about the relativity of time and space, and being that Dr. Rip T. Brash was acutely aware of this fact, and that 2 years on this particular planet was longer than the lifespan of most of the witnesses at the Carnival… he was right on schedule to keep his priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships. That is, had he not already lost them in a much wilder and exotic bet to an Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ of his the next night… which he most certainly had.

It was all in good fun for Rip. He obtained and lost priceless items at such a staggering pace it barely even registered. What did register was that he was now sitting at the bar with his Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ and a former Greeg. The Greeg had no memory or recollection that he was once a lowly, degenerate Greeg. The Astrospeciologist was a specialist in Greegs. He was fascinated by them. As was Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. The Astrospeciologist was telling Rip his latest theory on The Greegs. Through his constant reading and research of seemingly infinite sources of information, he had come to the conclusion that there was a planet buried deep in the 59 sunned district of Herb where Greegs were the dominant species. Through absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, and a desire to contradict anything for the sake of a good drunken wager, Rip proclaimed this was both ridiculous and impossible. Rip immediately and loudly bet all of the possessions of a fellow named Jim he was about to own that such a place did not exist. The Astrospeciologist, whose life’s work and lavish lifestyle had been entirely funded by being a ‘friend’ of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third, agreed wholeheartedly to the wager. They would leave in the morning in a shiny fleet of Obotron 7 space ships in search of the mystical All Greeg Planet. Or as Rip put it “To search for yet more proof that you're an idiot, and I am right.”

The planet they were currently drinking on being the planet that it was, the morning was quite a bloody long time away. The former Greeg formerly known as Zook being the former Greeg formerly known as Zook that he was, reacted strangely to the news of possibly going to a possibly existing All Greeg Planet. He picked up the bar tender with one hand and hurled his body across the bar into a group of very surprised Meditating Mockriffs. This unprovoked outburst of violence was unheard of outside of a Greeg cage, and so the reaction from the other creatures in the bar was a combination of shock and anger.

“Hey, how about we leave right now instead?” said the Astrospeciologist.

“Damned fine idea,” said Rip, stealing several bottles of Crammington Krish Fortinis from behind the bar for the trip. As they ran away from the angry and hotly pursuant mob, Rip turned to the former Greeg formerly known as Zook and asked, “Why’d you do that back there old friend?”

“Must be that last CKF,” said the former Greeg formerly known as Zook.

Nowadays he was known as Krimshaw, the only real, actual friend of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. As the priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships took off in haste, Krimshaw took a peek out of the window and saw Naddy making his eighth attempt with the female Greeg. For reasons unbeknownst to him, this inspired him to inflict serious and irreparable damage to the ship’s guidance system, sending it rocketing through space and time blindly. Generally, this is not a good