Rabbits and Ravens and Sand, Oh My! Sandy Koufax is dead. I don’t understand, my confusion matches the incessant throbbing in my head. “I’m not the Sandy Koufax, stranger.” Twirling his hat, he reveals a white B stitched into it; a Brooklyn Dodgers B. “Everyone knows Brooklyn is the real home of the Dodgers.” Sighing, he looks at the white B longingly. “Those were the days, back when they played in Ebbets Field.” Ebbets Field? That was over fifty years ago! And Sandy...err the captain, looks like he’s only about ten years older than I am. The crew and I wait while Sandy is lost in his daydream; but with the way he talks, he acts as if they are memories. A guttural belch that rivals the record books breaks the silence; tailspin. I really need to stop whipping my head around. None of the crew members even bats an eyelash; what I fool I am, it’s only Beauregard. “You’re quite right Beauregard, enough with the past, the present waits for us!” With a flourish, the Dodgers tri-corn hat flies from the captain’s hands and settles perfectly on his head. “All hands on deck! Bring the stranger with us.” Sweaty and meaty hands grasp my shoulder, I somehow manage to struggle out before the iron vice of Beauregard’s hands clamp on fully, “I’m not going anywhere with you! All I know is that you’re a captain of this ship…thing, and that you go by a dead man’s name. I know who Sandy Koufax is…but who are you?” “Speaks quite strongly for one who fell out of the sky.” Says a woman. “Fell out of the—” “Yes stranger, saw you falling out of sky, not far from here. Surprised you weren’t more than just a bloody mess considering you fell on the open plain. Unless you can jump real high, which I doubt; you did fall from the sky. The question should be then, how did you get here?” He looks me over, rubbing his clean-shaven chin, “You’re from Earth, maybe from Dallas, but none of that is important. I haven’t been able to travel to earth since the darkness has fallen…when was that? Thirty years ago?” “aven’t ‘ad a decent meal since then. I tell you cap’n, you should send me up to the castle, I’d et’ the Raven.” Rumbles Beauregard. Ravens and darkness, what are these people talking about? An unfamiliar voice pops up, “Only he can defeat the Raven.” “Well bless my dreams, Offrey, what brings you here?” The captain bows extravagantly to a diminutive figure in an oversized trenchcoat and old-style fedora; like a detective from a forties or fifties movie. The coat floats…or hops, as if a specter resides within. A rabbit!? Its huge ears flop around as he bows towards me. “Off-White Rabbit at your service, but everyone calls me Offrey (Off-White Rabbit is far too lengthy and has too many syllables to be used in common discourse; Offrey sounds better nonetheless, though my dear old mother would roll in grave).” He does have a tinge of some kind of color in his fur…but what exactly is it? “I believe Koufax has done a poor job of explaining; I brought you here, with some of my cousin’s tricks. You are here to break the curse and bring peace and prosperity back once more to our land.” “And what is this land?” Gasps fill the air but the rabbit…err, Offrey remains as stoic as a stone. “Should we really be so surprised? We haven’t been able to regularly visit Earth since the Raven came to power. We are what you Earthlings call (quite disparaging I must admit) ‘fairy tale creatures’. This is the Sandman—” “Don’t call me that!” Shouts the captain. “Call him Koufax, not Sandy…please not Sandy, he thinks it makes him sound too much like a beach (What he has against beaches I hardly know, especially him being a sky pirate and all). Anyways what I mean to say is that you are in the land where us ‘fairy tales’ (blegh, that term again, oh how I hate saying it, it’s like taking a bite of a rotten carrot I tell you) live; you are in the Land of Whimsy.” A tremulous tickling stirs in my belly, a terrible sensation I can’t fight.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 04:15:12 +0000
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