The letter W sat near the back of the horse-drawn cart full of nightshade berries, her tiny font size 12 legs swung off the cart like literary tire swings representing a very deliberate and ham-fisted metaphor. And, of course, of all fucking people, Darryl was siting next to her. His dumb, long, meaty legs dragged along the ground like a giant a-
“You can’t call Darryl that, it would be a narrative infraction if you did.” Uiasdmnzx’Mansdjhqiuw interrupted the narrator’s flow state.
The narrator sighed, and began again.
-his dumb, long, meaty legs dragged along the ground like clumsy ribbons. Darryl, looked at the nightshade berries and sighed.
“Why are those the only kind of crop we grow in Eden?” he complained. It should be noted that Darryl, although being awful, had a respectable distaste for crop monocultures.
“It’s Eden, Darryl. What else did you fucked expect?” W snapped, bitterly. She looked turned away from the half-giant, and was now staring off into the voluminous plume of dust that had risen behind the cart and now mixed like an oil point with the unblemished sapphire of wild west sky. How she longed to be like the dust and heavens now, unalone.
“Is everything okay, W?” Darryl asked.
“I’m fine-”
“No you are not.” Darryl said the second useful thing he had ever said in his entire life. “I may be big. Clumsy. Maybe even a little bit dumb. But you’re hurting. I can tell.”
W sighed. The half-giant, unfortunately, was right.
“I miss them.” she admitted. “We were together for so long. And then we went to that show and-”
A single tear rolled W’s cheek.
“We were supposed to go to the promised land together. After we took revenge-” the tiny letter shuddered in pain. Darryl put his ponderous meat-paw down for W to lean into as a torrent of grief erupted from her. The clumsy titan did the third intelligent thing he had ever done his entire life: he shut the fuck up and listened.
“And it turns out it wasn’t even Galadhorn who had killed E. It was his fucking sword. And now, despite having literally murdered my best friend with his bare hand, he gets to run around free doing the thing he loves: paint. The I’mos just let him paint with the corpses of my dead family.” W punched Darryl’s pudgy and useless hand in anger.
“How is this fair?! Why does he get to live?” A slight wave of relief overcame W. She had never been much for anger and arguments like P and T were. But she had to admit, it was a bit cathartic.
Darryl, to his credit, thought very carefully about the next thing he was going to say, giving W a good ten minutes of silence before speaking.
“I am sorry you’re going through this W. I can’t say I’ve ever had anything like this happen to me before,” the words rolled over Darryl’s stupendously dull tongue like your aunt’s horrible mayonnaise-filled potato salad from the annual family picnic, “but are you actually upset about Galadhorn? I know you’re smart enough to know that revenge wouldn’t make you feel better. Killer-throatslitter-taxevasion-littering’s defeat didn’t help, and I think you know killing Galadhorn wouldn’t help fix this pain you’re feeling.”
W thought carefully about Darryl’s words before she responded.
“It won’t help. But it’s still not fair. Why do I have to be alone? Why couldn’t I have been with my family when…whatever the fuck happened to them happened?”
“Because ‘paint’ doesn’t have a ‘W’ in it.” Darryl said, making a massive assumption that W was asking him about spelling, because he is dumb.
“I wasn’t asking you, Darryl.”
“I know you weren’t,” the meathead lied, “What I’m trying to say is that it is impossible to change the past. Even if you were to get people to accept that ‘paint’ is spelled ‘wpaint’ you would still be here. They would still be-.”
“-Dead?”
“Yup.”
W allowed more bitterness to show in her voice at Darryl’s rude and blunt statement.
“And you felt the need to point that out, why?”
Darryl sighed, and turned away from the 23rd letter of the alphabet, although his hand remained down to comfort her. Some time passed before he spoke again.
“I think I will continue on from Aldernath, it is not really my kind of city.” he said. W was silent. Why should she bother to talk to him? Afterall, he was Darryl. “Mildly useful” would be a gross exaggeration of his utility as a person. And, despite being useless, he still had the gall to continue the conversation.
“What will you do in Aldernath, W?” he asked. Incredulous! The narrator rolled his eyes at Darryl’s rudeness.
“There’s usually a few openings in larger cities for folks like me. Letters go missing all of the time. I’m certain I’ll find something.” W said.
“Really?” Darryl, of course, had never heard of letters being hired before. What else would you expect from him?
“What do you mean by ‘really’?”
“I didn’t know people hired letters. How much does that pay? Is it fun?”
“It’s kinda boring, you just sit there all day.”
“Does that mean every sign is paying its letters to be there?”
“No. Most letters on signs are just portraits.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
The two let silence hang in the air between each other again. W broke it this time.
“When you say Aldernath isn’t your kind of city, what do you mean?”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
The half-giant thought for a very long time, which was quite rude of him.
“I would be lonely there, they are not the most…accepting people. As you can see, they are the main importer of nightshade berries in Absurdia.”
“And where else will you go?” W asked.
“Wherever I am wanted.”
“And you weren’t wanted in Eden?”
“Is anyone wanted in Eden?” The ponderous half-giant gave a low chuckle that sounded more like the rumbling of thunder than laughter. W gave a small half-laugh under her breath.
“Won’t you get lonely? I hate being alone.” W asked.
“Loneliness is not something that bothers me. I’ve been lonely before, and I’ll be lonely again. But I always make friends along the way wherever I go. I’m sort of hard to forget.” Darryl said, definitely lying. Him? Friends? Really?
***
Several more weeks passed on Darryl and W’s journey to Aldernath. The carriage pulled them through the varied landscape of Absurdia: up mountains covered with litter from plastic bottles, across streams filled with those beer can rings that you really ought to cut up before you throw them away, and the through pines of the northerly (but not too northerly) forests which reached towards the stars, only to have their valiant struggle for heaven stunted by the bureaucracy of gravity.
And then they arrived in Aldernath. At first glance, it was beautiful. Stunning even. The large white towers of Aldernathi royalty projected a sense of order, and grandeur. The tallest structures in Absurdia, they are visible from hours away.
(Parole Officer’s note: the height of the Aldernathi towers is a hotly contested issue.)
But make no mistake, Aldernath was just like any city. While not nearly the crime-ridden hellhole of a place to live that Eden is, there are many cracks in its foundation (just like any other city). For example, the traditional artform of the Aldernathi aristocracy is gambling. Dozens of casinos line the busy streets of its world-renowned tourist district. The traditional form of poetry in Aldernath is defined by its reliance on glue in order to make collages showcasing one’s purported gambling history. The higher the loss, the more beautiful the poem is (allegedly). Of course, the valiant troubadours who “compose” these poems aren’t actually gambling away any money, since they own the casinos. In fact, most (if not all) lines incorporated into these poems (via glue stick) come from duplications of interesting receipts from the casinos the aristocracy own. In other words, Aldernathi poetry is mostly bullshit written to impress people about how rich you are. Here is a particularly famous example of Aldernathi poem:
All On Black
50 Gold Hilants on Horse #8
Payout: 0 Gold Hilants
50 Gold Hilants on Horse #7
Payout: 250 gold Hilants
250 Gold Hilants on Horse #6
Payout: 2500 Gold Hilants
1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale
Total Oz. 16
1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale
Total Oz. 16
1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale
Total Oz. 16
1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale
Total Oz. 16
2500 Gold Hilants on Black Roulette Wheel Result.
Payout: 0
1 Copper Piece on Nightshade Berries
Total Oz. 1
1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale
Total Oz. 16
The narrator’s parole officer quietly urged him to cut out with the tangent on Aldernathi poetry, and return to the matter at hand: W and (unfortunately) Darryl’s arrival to Aldernath.
Darryl carried W through the busy streets of the tourist district, as to help her avoid being stepped upon. They were on a hunt. The job board in the middle of the market had said “letters wanted,” and with luck, these people needed a W. Heck, she could even fill in as a “M” or an “E” in a pinch. And, although she had never tried to be a number before, W thought she could pull off a decent “3” impression (but she wasn’t that desperate, yet).
Turning a corner of the hustle-and-bustle streets, Darryl and W finally made it to their destination: The front sign of the casino, 1 Gold Hilant on Dwarven Ale (did I mention they name their casinos after their shitty poetry?), was in perfect shape. The inside was dingy and full of cigarette smoke. The whir of slot machines filled the air, sounding almost like pigeons (damn rats with wings). Just as Darryl was about to enter, a voice rang out from the smokey darkness.
“Stop right there buddy!”
Darryl stopped, and out from the cigarette-laden house of vice walked a man in a pinstripe suit with dark slicked hair, with rings on each finger. A white flower dropped from his lapel like a disappointed four year old at a toy store.
“You gonna cause any trouble in there for me, buddy? If you are, I can’t let you in.” the man in the pinstripe suit asked. His face was creased with suspicion. If he was afraid of Darryl, he didn’t show it.
“Not here to gamble.” Darryl said.
“Then I also can’t let you in. Sorry. Them’s the rules, pal. Now scram!”
“Not here for me either. Here for her.” Darryl extended his right hand, and presented W to the man.
“Hi, I’m W. I saw the ad for letters wanted. It said you needed immediate assistance.” W said.
The pinstripe-suit man looked her up and down, before taking a long draw of a cigarette, blowing smoke away from her and Darryl. His face lit up.
“Oh man I was hoping for a W! You’re exactly what we need.” the man extended his finger for W to shake.
“The Corleone daily has owned this casino here for generations, and I currently run the joint. My name’s Pinochio, nice to meet you.” Pinnochio smiled.
“Pinocchio? That’s an interesting name. I’ve never heard of anyone with a name like that before.” W said.
Pinnochio’s smile fled his face faster than a dirty dealer can shuffle a deck of cards. The casino boss and aristocrat reached into his coat pocket to grab something, presumably a weapon.
“You callin’ me a fuckin’ liar?” Pinnochio’s voice was ice cold.
“No! No! No!” W refuted, “It’s a really cool name! That’s all!”
Pinnochio pulled his hand back out of his pocket and assumed his friendly smile once more.
“Hah! Of course it’s a cool name! It was my father’s name, and his father’s name, and so on!” Pinnochio extended his hand to W, expecting the letter to step on and come with him.
“Please, let me show you where you’ll be working. As mentioned on the poster, pay is 2 gold hilants a day. Comes with free room and two meals a day.”
W looked up to Darryl’s massive (yet somehow empty) head to see a single tear rolling down her friend’s cheek.
“Can you give us a second, Pinnochio?” W asked.
“Oh sure, you two need to say goodbye? I’ll be right over there.” Pinnochio pointed to nowhere in particular, and walked about 10 feet away, before turning around to wait for Darryl and W to exchange pleasantries.
“Darryl, thanks for your company.” said W, which was no doubt the first time anyone had every told Darryl that ever.
“Of course W. I’ll try to drop by soon, if I get the chance.”
A single tear rolled down W’s cheek as well.
“W” Darryl hesitated, “don’t be lonely.”
W looked at Darryl, here times-new-roman body filled with a sudden sense of understanding.
“You too Darryl.”
The letter nodded to Pinnochio to grab her. As her and the aristocrat sojourned over the casino floor, W watched Darryl vanish into the passing crowds of tourists and cigarette smoke. For the first time in months, she was without him.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” Pinnochio said “You know how hard it is to find a good W these days? We’ve had an ‘omens’ bathroom for the past three weeks, and all of the ladies are pissed that the door won’t open for them!”