Suddenly, I awake. I’m standing, alone. I’m under a mountain-top with no way to get out. I’m being circled, slowly, by ten or twelve of them. The air is surprisingly silent. Who sent them to my cave?
The wail of a siren alerts me to the proximity of what I once loved, at the same time letting me know that I can never get him back, but the siren sounds almost identical to his. I realize they’ve been there for days, waiting for the moment I raise my relatively small head.
Floating out from under the mountaintop, I notice the depth of the fire engines. Finally they are able to speak in the droning tone that was once so familiar. All at once they begin to chant. “We’ve been waiting for you. Keyboard has come. We've been waiting for you. He is one of us now. He can never return.” The circle opens and Keyboard wheels forward. I’ve known he wasn’t completely dead since the beginning of my journey, but the sight still fills my two and a half eyes with glistening tears of whole milk. The lemonade that once occupied my tear ducts has long since become antelopes. I have not seen the antelopes in a while now.
“Hello, Keyboard,” I say in awe.
“Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meat.” Keyboard’s drone once again fills my head.
I realize that he has said meat instead of meet. “Meat?” I ask, running my fingers through my ears to relieve the tension of the moment.
“Yes, meat.”
The trucks close in and begin to dance, chanting the same duck song that has haunted so many of my moments, but I’m fed up with his antics.
“Keyboard, what were those tigers for? They weren’t for nourishment, were they?”
“No, would you like to meat?” He asks again.
“Don’t change the subject, Keyboard. Don’t lie to me anymore.”
“I’m not.” From behind his ladder, he produces a platter of meat.
“Is that… Tiger meat? For me?” I promptly pass out once again, the delicious aroma swirling around my beard hairs. Keyboard raises his ladder again.
“Wingardium leviosa!”
Flashback
They’re still watching me. Hovering below my body, they converse quietly. I don’t understand the language, but now I realize what I need to do. A sentence I can finally understand squiggles into my ears, “Your cubes await you.”
And again, the antelopes have returned, for what I hope to be the last time. But I know it won’t be.
End Flashback
I wake up in the circle of trucks, sniffing for the scent of Keyboard but only finding the smell of wild fire engine and tiger meat. When I look up, it is Keyboard. He has become a feral truck. I can only imagine what it must have been like. I spend 20 minutes trying to imagine, but Keyboard left several minutes ago, and finally I need to stop because of my sensationally dry noses. I pull out my handy dandy cardboard flavored chapstick and smear it all over my face. That should keep my gills moisturized for a while. Afterwards, I take a small nibble and arise from the surface of the horizontal canyon. Keyboard cannot be saved without the defeat of my mother.
