The Hydra of Lambistan by Leila Allison

-1-

I wake up every morning, face on desk, at the wee Sinatra hour of three. I’m surrounded by empty jugs and mounded ashtrays that look like Beaver dams. One thing I have going for me is I do not suffer from hangovers as badly as the Boss, her boozy hand heebie-jeebies (man oh man how those things do the St. Vitus boogaloo) will sometimes schedule me for 3:02, but mostly I come to on the hour.

The reason involves the Boss’s worldview. She was a long time graveyard worker and upon retirement her attempt to rejoin the daylight world created insomnia; she figures if she’s up and since I’m her Penname, well you can figure the rest. She can be a bit of a fucker.

My auto-wake is one thing that follows a schedule. The rest tumbles out like clowns from a tiny car. Although hangovers do not trouble me much, I like to start my day the same way the Boss does. It is invigorating when the shit kicks in. It must be a sad thing knowing that waking is the best you will feel all day.

The main event of my “breakfast” requires a prescription and is a liquid whose name places a snarl on the faces of the artificially holy. Fuck em. It is followed by constant cigarettes and referrals to the bottomless coffee mug that our Witch HeXopatha gave me for my birthday. The main event is sleepy juice for some, but it hits me high and it takes about twenty minutes to land, and when it does, it fires a special enthusiasm that brings me to a hellzapoppin boil. The stuff is designed to last up to thirty hours but as a lift it works til lunch when I can begin emptying new jugs without meeting too much satirical resistance.

That’s how my day begins. For the record, let’s call the one I’m about to tell you of “the other day”, which unerringly lands on Tuesdays in Saragun Springs.

-2-

After ingesting my medicinal intents and purposes, on that other day, my system loosened up enough to throw some food into it. I devoured a Winchell’s blueberry fritter with such mindless fury that I bit my thumb. I yelped and immediately heard snickering outside my window, which I now keep open because of the nearsighted Bluebird of Happiness (drunkenly) crashed into it three times over the weekend. It seems that Happiness is as flying blind as sucking down an entire fifth of sloe gin at age fourteen can make you.

I discovered that I was being studied by two Lambs who were sitting on a pair of barcaloungers, perched some twenty feet outside said window. I saw them in the shine of our Moon Ping. For most people the sight of little Lambs in the morning is comforting, but for me it was a mortal lock that this was going to be one of those other days.

There’s an enormous number of Lambs in Saragun Springs, but I knew these two. Tzat and Zeekey, sister and brother. Lambs favor ironic names. They are students at The Lambistan Rock and Roll School, which means they are intolerable smart asses of the highest conceivable degree.

Tzat is a “tween” Ewe currently dyed electric fuschia, Ram in waiting Zeekey prefers natural color (a combination of cream, feces and urine), and, of course he had *doinked his head wool. Imagine the face of a Lamb with an Art Garfunkel hair corona and you will have Zeekey.

(*I guess I should tell you that “doinking” is a Lamb protest fad–an “unnatural natural.” That is an ironic statement which describes their viewpoint of the “unnatural order of Saragun Springs”; the Lambs consider me “The Establishment”, which, I believe, is a term last used seriously in that long ago show The Mod Squad. As stated before, Lambs are hip to irony. Dig?)

And, sigh, a second parenthetical paragraph:

(The idea behind doinking is the concealment of ears. In a rare moment of looking ahead I made it so you could tell the gender of essentially look-a-like Lambs by their ears. The girls’ ears point slightly up, the boys’ are versa to the vice. In all other ways they are identical (and I will be damned before genitalia is visible in our realm). The idea was placed in motion due to Penrose the Flying Weasel. Penrose refuses to declare a gender. I do not care about that sort of thing, but as a writer I detest he/she; that is clunky writing. And I refuse to use incorrect number pronouns for one person. I was a particularly hard kid to educate and I ain’t giving any of it back. “They” meaning one lets the ignorance in and nothing breeds faster. And since there are a zillion Lambs and since they are smart enough to seize on no point being too small to exploit, the ear thing comes in handy. And it still does because, as far as I’ve seen, only the little Rams doink; the girls think it is silly, but the boys are being stubborn, I think that is because they know that stubborn people are usually quite annoying and being annoying little skullfucks is something they are attracted to.)

Twenty minutes had yet to pass after my conspicuous consumption. I was going to spend that moody time asking myself what I might do about my possible over-reliance on parenthetical inclusions, italics and quotation marks for unspoken words. If I timed it right then perhaps an answer might be gained when the chemical tsunami came rolling in with the ferocity of a quake-slapped sea. I was hoping for Eureka! and got an oh shit; story of my life. Lambs on barcaloungers pushed that project off to another other day. For about five seconds “Where the hell did they find barcaloungers and where can I get one?” challenged their being there at all for the top spot in my mind. But that vanished when they spoke at the same time, as twins often do:

“Hi Leila–How’s your thumb taste?”

“Hi yourselves,” I replied, leaving “what do the hooved know about thumbs?” lying on the editing room floor of my mind. I’ve been trying to be a kinder, gentler Chief Pen, at least verbally.

I lit my second cigarette. Tzat, although still at least twenty feet away, faked a cough. “Sarcasm noted,” I said. “Maybe you could put a mile between us for the sake of your health. Have they taught you kids the concept of social distancing at school yet?” That remark hit me more than it did them. It is amazing how quickly things can go from now to ancient history.

“You’ll live longer if you don’t smoke,” said Tzat from the start to “longer”, at which point Zeekey said “if” and took it home. They do a lot of tag team sentences.

I smiled as sweetly as possible when I’m still any amount of time away from a state of artificial bliss. “What an ugly thing to say,” I said without much conviction. What was meant to be clever and perhaps withering just sort of sat there because it was not the type of sarcasm to leave a mark on a person no more than eighteen months old (magic, talking Lambs are no different in that regard). So, I rooted through my desk and located two packages of Bo Peep’s Black-Eyed Peas. They claim to be “deep air fried” (whatever the fuck that means) and they are the junk food of choice amongst the legume lovin’ Lambs. I shook the bags and they trotted over, with purpose but not to the point of shedding their dignity. We are all Chow Hounds in Saragun Springs, so testified the bruise on my thumb, but we do use manners when we know someone is watching.

The good people at Bo Peep know that their main customers are thumbless, hence the packaging is edible. Some sort of asparagus based paper is what I’ve been told.

As the Lambs ate, I continued consuming coffee and cigarettes, considering maybe two fritters in the morning is an idea worth exploring–apple is pretty good–three if they would bring back cherry. And I counted down first the minutes then the seconds until lift off. There is no such thing as “about” or “within” at Saragun Springs in matters of time. When something is stated to be happening in however minutes, it does just that. The instant I assumed that my philosophical consumption would hit me in twenty minutes, it went on the clock.

…three…two…one…

In the unglazing of an eye I went from almost there to “on it baby!”

“Well, well my little Lamb friends, now that we have had a snack maybe it is time to explore why you two are here in the first place. After all, it is three-twenty-two in the A of M on a school day.”

Although my words do not convey the immense joy I felt, trust me there was such a tremendous warmth and flow of goodwill throughout my soul that I would have become as sloppy, ill-advised and promising and oath making as an early in the experience drunkard (perhaps that sloe-gin fourteen year old I mentioned earlier) if over the course of the Boss’s fifty years of debauchery she had not developed some sense of control. She (thus I) have a reasonably effective safeguard against the wages of professing deeply meant promises of the type that would not be at all meant in the cold light of near-future reality.

Two things can happen when you’ve been around the block as often as the Boss and I have. You either get yourself shit on worse than a public toilet at a sports arena or you learn to seek and define the tells in the faces of others and do the best you can for the sake of everyone involved. When I lit up (medicinally, not smoke-wise) I saw a surprisingly cynical pleasure in the faces of the Lambs. Oh, this was an old trick indeed, from page one of the Great Book of Greasing the Pig (aka, The Date Rapist Guide to Toxicology).

I laughed. “Whatever it is you guys want, you are so so so wrong thinking that coming round when I’m at my happiest will make me as easy as an Epstein rent-a-girl to get. Now, come on–tell me what you want. Maybe I’ll say yes, you never know–I guarantee I’ll say something.”

My giddiness forgave much of the Lamb’s constant state of cunning. Still, one must be generous with our Lambs because they don’t get much direction from their parents. Saragun Springs Lambs are the children of a large herd of Scottish Blackface Sheep who entered the realm via a mistakenly unlocked interdimensional gate in 2024 (“Daisy-gate” is the common term for that, but it is unwise to mention it when near the Great Goatess). The Sheep rather like it here and do not wish to return and they are welcomed citizens of the realm, and they do a hell of a job keeping the grounds trimmed. But having been born on Earth they remain regular non-talking Sheep in Saragun Springs. I imagine it must be impossible for kids like Tzat and Zeeky to take seriously parents who (though in no way diminished) often eat and defecate at the same time.

But I could tell from their sideways glances that I had hit the Donkey with the tail. “All right, spill.”

“We are interested in acquiring a Hydra, like the one you have hidden in the GeeBee for Lambistan,” said Tzat. (“GeeBee” means the Great Barn.)

“The Hydra’s not ‘hidden’,” I said. “And if you ask them they might want to visit, or even live in Lambistan, if they like you well enough.” I should have seen this coming. We recently acquired a four-headed Hydra via the newly formed Fantasy Realm-Mythology Exchange Student Program. Fenwick Cloverleaf (brother of our famous Daisy Kloverleaf–who chooses to spell her surname with a K), Queen Maab the Photobomb Fairie, Lord Fishstyx the Cealocanth and Aoife the Irish Hare are currently matriculating at Mt. Olympus and are having a hell of a good time according to their latest inter-dimensional post cards (Zeus and Maab are frequently seen together–when asked, Hera confessed that she hadn’t given a shit about his affairs since the fall of Rome, and she too has been keeping company with the Ghost of the Careers of The Backstreet Boys). The Lambs were a bit steamed about not being invited for the swap, but I told them that they can go next time, which only calmed them enough to be less annoying.

“You see, gang, there’s only one Hydra I know of. And they are something like four thousand years old–which is a result of having been born in hella, ancient, way-back, olden times.” I paused. Sometimes, when the stuff kicks in, my highfalutin’ speeches tend to crumble into tautological messes. Inspiration soars, but my planning is poor. Anyway my words get to be a box of stale crackers that have been kicked around like a soccer ball. This is when the similes tend to pile like a pile of similetical—”Oh Jaysus H,” I said, shaking it off like Taylor Swift advises. “Let’s can the small talk and go to the G.B. and ask old four heads how they feel about it.”

-3-

“Where did you guys get the barcaloungers?” I asked as we crossed the grounds on our way toward the GeeBee. Moon Ping, a fellow philosopher about all things fermented, who still had a bit over two hours until Pingset at six sharp, which is the exact time his brother, Sun Pong rises and takes over the skies of Saragun Springs, deviated from his normal path and shone a light for us. This meant he was headed the wrong way, but I asked the Lambs to remind him of that when we reached the GeeBee in case I forgot.

“Mistress HeXopatha,” said Zeekey, all sarcastic-like.

For about an hour after lift-off I’m not always as “wit dependable” as I should be. Although I understood that they were hoping that my early mental speedball might make me easy to push around, which was a high mental function, easy stuff like being unable to figure out who gave them the chairs even though only one person in the realm was capable of it (well, technically, the Boss could, but I cannot feature her doing such an expensive task) did cause eyerolls and perhaps reignited the flames of dampened over-confidence. Lucky for me, however, I already knew what they wanted and the sharp Hydra should easily get to the why of the situation–which, even in my occluded estimation, hadn’t been satisfactorily explained.

We entered the GeeBee. It is not your typical stables and hay affair. No no indeedy. Think of it as a lobby of a Grand Hotel, like those shown in movies during the 1930s. Oh, there are Pigs and Chickens and the usual lot, but these are not crap on the floor types like the Blackface Sheep herd who sleep in a meadow near the Woak Grove. Their bar, though nice, is what you might expect when you think of a barn.

The goddam word count made it necessary for the Hydra, by name Dr. Nikki-Nolteous, Dr. Situationeous, Dr. Zippy-the-Pinheadious and Dr. Vikki-Beckious (the Hyra had gone through Rome long before appearing on our step). Despite the early hour (caused by a similar vexation) all four were wide awake and seated in the lobby, each one reading a section of The Saragun Times (Published by guess who? Yes, Dame Daisy).

When the Hydra arrived we noted that four brains supported by one cardio system resulted in what the old Romans called dimmious wittious. But after solving the brainless conundrum the same way Professor Marvel/Oz did in that realm (we prefer to think of it more along the line of “tradition” than theft), we had four perfectly useless PhDs in Saragun Springs.

“Hello Hydra to the fourth,” I said. Once again the nitty was pushing the gritty as far as the word budget went. “Meet Tzat and Zeekey of Lambistan.”

I was beginning to even out and I felt extremely clever upon my word thrift. But that would have been blown to hell if I were to record the blather that ensued. You see each head of the Hydra has a doctorate in a useless field. And the Lambs, knowledgeable about the budget, and being little a-holes, began asking all sorts of questions; if such were answered completely this work would make War and Peace look like a pamphlet.

It finally boiled down to one question, which I asked. “Why do you guys want the Hydra to come live in Lambistan? I will veto any evasive, political sounding answer.”

“We think a four-headed Dragon would be rad,” said Zeekey. No female in history has ever used the word “rad” in sincerity.

“We can offer the Doctors the finest accommodations in the realm,” added Tzat.

And although it was the Hydra’s choice, a memory came back to me. In a long ago conversation with HeXopatha she lamented having to leave her childhood pet Dragon behind in Honalee as she chose to depart for Witch School. Witch schools greatly vary from the Harry Potter stuff, for those of you smelling a Rat. The students burn them down upon graduation. No sequels.

Then the answers fell out in rapid order. “Yes. I’ve always longed to be a Dragon. Of course. Do you have cable?”

I decided to let them work the details out on their own. After all, I had two barcaloungers to fit into my office.

And in a rare moment of early clarity, I whistled up to Ping and called “Time to head the other way.”

Leila