Steve Katz - Kissssss - A Miscellany

“DOOOJJJIEEE!!!”

“I'm coming, mother,” she shouted. “Bush-face,” she mumbled.

Yerml was about to head upstairs and grab her, just as her daughter came bouncing down in her bra and bikini underpants.

“Is that the way you dress to come downstairs, young lady?”

“Duh, no mom. Of course not. I made a mistake.”

“You know your father's home.”

“O, he's cooking. And what's he going to see, anyway? My pubelets?”

“You should be more respectful, Dojie. And when you come downstairs you should always try to look decent. You never know who's here.”

“I do look decent, Mom. Beyond decent. That's why you notice. You're jealous, Mom, of my beautiful body.” As soon as she said that she wished she hadn't. She didn't know why she couldn't help being so cruel. Maybe it was the pünkscheit that made her weird too.

Her mother smiled. She'd heard worse from her daughter. This would all pass, she hoped. “I'm your mother, honey. You should show me a little respect, at least.”

“Oh, Mom, sorry.” Dojie lowered her eyes to look at her feet. She wished she was anywhere else. She wished she could grab hold of Shonirra Drof, her own older drone, and point his penis at her mother. That was a cruel thought too. Dojie wished she could go away. She couldn't, though, not while her brother was at risk.

Yerml followed her daughter's eyes down to her feet. One of them was yellow, up to the shin. “It's gone far enough already, Dojie. You have to tell us where your brother is hiding.”

“He's not hiding.”

“Then where is he? You know, and you're not telling us.”

“Am I my brother's keeper,” she sang, sarcastically.

Her mother sighed with exasperation. When she discussed her Dojie Problems with Thyka Abset, her friend at the Shoe Riser and community table, they always came to the same conclusion: that it was a stage that had to be tolerated, and that Dojie would get over this; but in the meanwhile, this was hard to get through day by day. “Why are you being so uncooperative? This is important.” Yerml looked down and clenched her teeth in anticipation of her daughter's response.

“So important that you want to eat him, anyway,” Dojie said, as she rubbed her hands together to warm them up. “That's all you want to do.” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling a little chilled in her scant clothes.

“You don't really believe that. You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Pünkscheit!” Dojie blew the word at her mother like an artillery round.

“I'm almost ready, sweetheart.” Sitund leaned his head out the kitchen door, his face covered in a mask of powdered ingredients. “Hi, pretty kitten,” he said to his daughter.

“Meow,” she replied, maybe a little too sarcastically. She didn't want to feel this way about the progs, but they were different now. In their happiness between themselves the pünkscheit was fine, but for the kids, especially for Eukan, it was a disaster. “If you're so worried about Eukan, why don't you get the cops to search for him?” she asked her mother. Her mother sucked in a breath, and held it.

She covered her reddening face with her hands. “It's a family matter,” she gasped. “It has nothing to do with the police.”

The way of all progs, thought Dojie. “I'm cold. I'm going back upstairs,”

“What happened to your foot?” her mother asked.

“What foot?”

“That one. It's yellow.”

“Oh,” said Dojie, starting to climb the stairs. “I've got a yellow foot now.”

The trundle spider stopped working each time Eukan attempted to look at what it was doing, so the youth had to feign sleep to keep the work going, ’til he eventually actually slept. The trundle worked through the night, and once it was done, a few minutes past dawn, it shook Eukan awake. He looked over, and couldn't believe it. A finished boat! “It's beautiful, thank you, Spider,” he said. “It's so beautiful,” he shouted to the spider again, to the forest, to the mountains, to the sky.

The spider then rose up on all its legs, and in one leap it landed on top of Eukan, and pressed him into the ground. “I'm not really a spider,” he thought he heard the spider grumble, in a voice that was like big rocks rolling over each other. He lay there under it for a long time, pressed into the dirt. It wasn't heavy, but like a dream of weight pushing him down into the earth. He felt grains of dirt grind into his pores. He stayed there ’til he realized the spider, or whatever, wasn't going to move again, and he would have to crawl out from under. He did this with some difficulty, and slowly, because the creature, whatever it was, let out little cries of pain. Why would these slow movements hurt it. He was the one being crushed, who should be crying in pain. Finally he fought his way out, freed his body and stood up. When he looked back he saw what had originally been there, a large green mossy tuffet. There wasn't a trace of the Sterub left at all.

The boat was so beautiful, wide in the beam, and deep, symmetrical at bow and stern. The spider, or whatever it was, had sealed the central seam perfectly, and its narrow keel was penetrated at intervals, for when he wanted to bolt a wider keel onto it, for his journey into the rougher deeps. The gunwales were a hardened extrusion of the trundle's silk, that stretched and curved the sides of the boat, widening some pores through which he could later thrust the oars. There was a convenient notch at the stern, to which he could attach a biological motor should he find a propellor plant. And he had to fashion a rudder, and fix that in place too. Now that it was over with, everything seemed to have been so easy. He forgot about the terror he'd felt getting there, the thoughts that he might be lost forever, and the dangers of cutting the leaf. That's all he'd really done, he thought, was cut the leaves, and then button them together. Whatever it was, what he'd known as Sterub trundle spider, had done the rest. Now he had this wonderful boat, thanks to those Etatreh peoples who first developed the way to make this, and originally trained the spider to do this work. All Eukan had left to do was to get the boat safely into the water.

By his estimation, the river was about two hundred and fifty feet away. He had hoped the spider would have stuck around long enough to help him launch his craft. He loved calling something his “craft.” How could he move so much weight by himself? He was just fifteen years old, and of average size, and he knew the limits of his own strength. If his dad were here to help him, he would think nothing of it. Even Dojie could be a help, though she'd complain all the time. And Ajieck, of course. But this was his own problem, and so far he had worked it out alone, and now had to finish alone. The pünkscheit progs, as Dojie called them, were his own problem, even though his sister worried about it a lot. He had to face it himself. No one else he knew, not even Ajieck, had expressed interest in building this boat. This was his project, win or lose; his to solve, his to surrender. He rubbed his hands together the way he saw his father do it when he was about to get down to work. He saw a corridor clear to the river, if he moved some branches, and trimmed a little. And he could roll it, probably on some of the logs fallen hereabouts, but would have to trim and debark them too to make them smooth for rolling. He went down the bank to the river, which was just a large brook at this point. It seemed deep enough to float his “craft.” Wait ’til he showed it to Ajieck and the rest of his gawks. He started working, and felt an elation he had never felt before. A great energy of joy embraced him, and he popped a boner as he worked, and couldn't explain it, and was glad he didn't have to. All day he labored at clearing the track, and trimming rollers. There was no way this wouldn't work. None of his gawks had ever done something like this. “Thank you, Etatreh people,” he stopped to say occasionally, then dipped into the brook and splashed the sweat off himself, and ate the little Clickfish he caught sucking on his fingers. Exposure to air cooked and crisped them instantly.