Hire Archy O'Fneeds? Who's That? And Why Should I?
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Hire Archy O'Fneeds? Who's That? And Why Should I?
"Never!" I announce to the vast, black, echoing emptiness inside what I've been calling my skull lately. "I don't need or want a single thing! No married things, either!"
A draconequus suddenly stands to my left in the beam of a nonexistent spotlight, and except for the horn-rimmed glasses he's wearing, he's identical to me in every respect.
Or maybe I should say "every disrespect." Because when he arches an eyebrow behind those glasses while curving his mouth into a little frown, well, I can't say that I care for it in the slightest.
Stereotypical pseudo-intellectual poser...
I hate stereotypical.
A quick thought—less than a thought, actually—banishes him from my head space, and I continue my soliloquy. "I'm beyond needs or wants, a creature of whim and whimsy!"
Another me illumined by another nonexistent spotlight appears to my right and makes a noise somewhere between a hiccough, a sneeze, and a burp. Wadding his lion paw into a fist, he taps his chest and mutters, "I'm getting a case of the whim-whams right here."
More stereotypes! I spit my sharpest tooth at him, and he pops like a soap bubble made with really muddy water.
I spin to face the void once more. "I have but to snap two or more of my snappable parts, and all things both conceivable and inconceivable would be mine! For I am not a mortal nor anything like a mortal! I am different!"
Light floods the entire gigantic space, every square, round, and triangular foot of it littered with versions of me. "I am different!" they roar.
"I am unique!" I shout.
"I am unique!" they reply at a similar volume.
I can feel stereotype creeping insidiously toward me, but I can't stop the words from squeezing out. "I would never repeat anything I heard some other creature or being say!"
The assembly of mes draws in their assorted breaths to, in fact, repeat what they'd just heard me say, but I banish them back to whatever curlicue of consciousness coughed them up in the first place before they can confirm my low opinion of myself.
"So what the hay?" I exclaim even more robustly. I certainly don't shriek it, though. I may raise my voice for effect every now and again, but shrieking? Never.
I do, however, keep on employing that same robust tone. "How is it that I keep dredging up this tired, maudlin shtick? Isn't it inherent to my nature that I should be inventing new and exciting maudlin shtick?" My eagle talon crackles as I point off into the darkness, and that nonexistent spotlight trains its equally nonexistent beam on a me who's slouching directly ahead, his eyes half-closed and unfocused.
The light seems to startle him, and he straightens up blinking. "You're asking me?" he asks.
"Well?" I wave my arms and several other arms I've gathered together especially for the occasion. "You're asking me, aren't you? So why shouldn't we all be asking each other?"
That brings every idiotic iota of light crashing back into place, and all the myriad iterations of me are now speaking, shouting, gesticulating, and possibly even remonstrating with each other.
No shrieking, though: I've got my eyes, ears, noise, and throat open, alert for that.
Still, it's quite the cacophony, I'll give it that. There's just nothing bracing about it, nothing horripilating, nothing interesting, nothing—
Nothing non-stereotypical.
A sweep of my arm wipes away every trace of light and sound, but the one spotlight remains on the one version of me with the drooping lids and the slouching posture. "That's why," he says.
I snort a tape measure out of my nose and unroll it between my paw and my claws. "You don't know the half of it." Stretching my neck, I bite the tape measure in two and extend one of the pieces toward him. "So here. Educate yourself."
He takes it, donning the horn-rimmed glasses from earlier, and examines it. "Looks like you're down about a quart." The tape-measure segment transforms into a monkey wrench with the monkey still clinging to the top. "Would you like the standard tune up? Or shall I just whale away on you with this thing for fifteen or twenty minutes?"
"Excuse me?" I grab the wrench and shake the monkey off into the ocean that's now sloshing about beneath us. "Whaling away is the standard tune up in these parts." The wrench becomes a flat of lovely wood-grain Formica that I wrap around one of my legs, an eye-patch and long black coat completing my fetching ensemble. The other version of me drops into the small boat beside me, his shirt striped, his cap flat and round, his harpoon not strung like a harp at all but rather like some strange sort of lyre.
"Liar!" he shouts, pointing the harpoon at me. But it's a raccoon by now, and all the raccoon can do is flail its little paws and bug out its little eyes at the sight of the giant, pale-white monkey head rising from the swelling sea.
I grab the other me, aiming him and the raccoon at the monkey. "Thou damned dirty ape!" I shout.
Meanwhile, in the exterior world, Fluttershy gives a second blink, looking up with the expression she might wear while watching a monkey juggle baby raccoons: about equal parts amused and alarmed.
"I'm sorry," I lie again. "I've forgotten the question."
Her amusement comes to the fore, and she gestures to the tea things with one wing. "I just wondered if you'd like the last of the mini quiches."
Which isn't, in fact, the question she actually asked me. She asked me, "Do you need the last mini quiche?"
Now, however, having considered the matter in depth, I've arrived at a conclusion. For while I certainly don't need it, I'm not at all opposed to it.
So— "Why, yes," I answer, reaching out a talon. I tap the quiche and suck it in through the tip. "Thank you."
Author's Note
I'd forgotten:
That there was a Thousand Word Contest going on till the other day when I saw that Cold in Gardez had published one. Combine that with Aragon's recent essay on Moby Dick, and, well, here we are. 
Mike
