Cryptofauna

by Patrick Canning

Jim held a stern look on Oz. This was insane. Even for your-crazy-is-our-normal St. Militrude’s, this was insane.

So Jim’s glass was half full 98% of the time. Now though, he risked wandering into that realm of healthier milk, the 2%.

Why couldn’t he have left me to die in the comfort of my marshmallow jacket?

Aside from his steak-and-cherry-only diet, Oz practiced another ritual that might have been considered strange were it performed outside the context of St. Mili’s. Months ago, the persuasive giant had used his slick cajolery to secure one of the only rooms in the facility equipped with its own bathtub. A man of seemingly endless skill, Oz had jerry-rigged St. Mili’s behemoth water heater to produce water at two hundred and eleven degrees Fahrenheit, just a notch below boiling point. Every night he’d fill his tub with the scalding water, add a sprinkling of a homemade spice mix (comprised principally of garlic and gunpowder), and slide his body in to cook.

Barney fell up, Jim fell down, and Mars fell sideways. Then came the familiar inversion before all three were propelled out of the darkness with champagne-cork enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” Jim gasped. Working hard to keep the in/out of his lungs going, he’d heard almost none of the directions. Something about deadly farm equipment? Maybe that was worth some clarification. But Brother Graisse had gone.

Brother Pratique dropped with helium balloon weight from a tunnel above. The monk had the look of Play Dough that’s been rolled between the hands for too long, and an exquisitely trimmed goatee that neatly matched his proper but enthused disposition. “I am thrilled you ‘ave chozen to subject yourself to the art that is lock picking,” he said with a bow. “Excusez-moi— I will be back in two jiffys.”

At no point did Jim feel even a hint of fatigue. The menthol sponge press had left him raring to learn and to do. There was no overpowering jitteriness and no corresponding crash. The high persisted as an even, underlying buzz.