Message-ID: <thomas.944167020@bubba>
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: FTSD (Belated): 3.
From: thomas@mail.nhn.ou.edu (Rollin Thomas)
Lines: 49
Date: 2 Dec 99 20:37:00 GMT
X-Complaints-To: usenet@ou.edu
X-Trace: news.ou.edu 944167039 129.15.30.220 (Thu, 02 Dec 1999 14:37:19 CST)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 14:37:19 CST
Organization: The University of Oklahoma

Madam was a formerly auspicious woman who boasted that she had 
accompanied none other than the great lunatic Norton I (Emperor of the
United States and Protector of Mexico) to plays and restaurants during
her lengthy tenure in California.  Her centennial beauty dried up at
some point and she found herself penniless and without letters,
forgotten and most of all unloved.  Believing the deep Pacific had 
finally made off with her grace after years of coveting it, Madam fled
inland through mining town after mining town, offering her entourage
of imported wenches to lonely men far from home.  Platillo ended her
exodus, for there her sense of a wasted past subsided.

Given to frightful fits of frank biliousness, Madam would hurl vicious 
invectives and insults at her faithful and dutiful working women.  One 
such fit took place immediately after the abrupt disappearance of the 
mysterious Professor Xerxes.  Disturbed by the arrival of a freshly 
killed rabbit, ostensibly left as a joke by the old illusionist, she 
refused to examine it.  If she had she would have noticed the absence 
of any bullet holes or even cuts.  Her rampage (which included the 
hurling of candles and silverware) prevented cerebral reflection upon 
the fact that Professor Xerxes could not have possibly procured the 
animal.  She was certain the teenage mail clerk that had become 
affectionate toward one of the younger whores had conspired to make a 
fool of her.

Bitter, perhaps because the connection between the two young people 
reminded her of the absence of good love in her life, she took a 
threatening knife from the kitchen and scored the cheek of the young 
cocotte.  Cornelius Cook, the mail clerk with little to do, grabbed
hold of the overweight flesh-proprietor and stabbed her deeply with
the knife.  As she exhaled her final breath, her collection of loose
women gathered around to watch her expire.

Cook dragged her away from the whorehouse to the edge of the forest
and placed her on the ground.  He broke the ground with his shovel and
dumped her considerable body in.  As soon as he had covered her with a
thin layer of dirt, tarantulas began to crawl up the grave.  First a
few, then a dozen, then dozens of dozens until the grave filled with
their twitching legs and glassy eyes.  Disgusted, Cornelius Cook ran
back to the hotel and hid in the bed.  

The next morning, he looked out the window to see that the grave of
the Madam had become a small hill.  Rather than wonder why the hill
had begun to rise at her grave, Cornelius Cook realized that a town of
twenty women and two men would never grow.  So as the snows thawed and
his wife's belly grew full with a child like the pregnant hill, Cook
set out to recruit eighteen men to reify the town of Platillo.
--
  Rollin C. Thomas - thomas@mail.nhn.ou.edu - www.nhn.ou.edu/~thomas
               "Good job, You.  Now back to work."