Igor

As the girl finally left the temple she tripped over the drunkard who was muttering half sentences and she fell into the mud and then got very angry with the drunkard. “Can you not find another place to be a burden?” she snapped. The drunkard didn’t notice her, he kept babbling and lying in the way. She said “grrrr!” and the spirits of vengeance which inhabited the temple laughed and caressed her hair, and she felt a strange courage come over her and she spoke to the old man such: “go write a book and don’t make any spelling mistakes, you!” And the old man suddenly was silent, grabbed his nap and his sack (which had some beef jerky in it) and wiggle-waggled off to his womans hut, intent on finding the feather he had used to write with when he was still a respected member of the forest. And the girl looked everywhere for Igor until it was night and she was suddenly face to face with an owl. She knew the owls are not what they seem. She asked “are you Igor?”

The owl at first did not respond but simply gazed at Aletheia with a strange look on his face which made the girl quite uncomfortable. His look was so intense that Aletheia at once could believe that possibly the owl could set her to flames. But yet again, her curiosity and her need to know far transcended any fear for her safety.

Finally, in what seemed to Aletheia to be a lifetime, the owl finally spoke. He asked her: "What is your purpose in being here, Girl? At first, silently to herself she murmured “Ah, so he is not simply an owl” and she tried to hide her smile hoping that whoever and whatever it was before her, could not so much see her in the dark even though, it was, after all and at least for now, an Owl.

“Please”, she begged and went down on one knee as if genuflecting to some kind of a god - “just in case” she mused. “I want to find the man who they call Igor.” Do you know of his whereabouts, Oh wise and mighty Owl? I am told that you are able to turn your head around in all directions at a whim. Might you have seen this man in his comings and in his goings?

Again, the Owl asked Aletheia in more of a screeching sound this time “What is your purpose in being here”? Poor Aletheia almost fell to the ground in fear at that. " I only want to speak with him". “Is that so strange a thing to a mighty owl like yourself?” The owl smiled to himself at this.

Aletheia said: “I came upon Igor in a temple and his words left me with such a curiosity in my heart that I could not begin to shake it. I want to find him and sit with him under the stars. See, look up, Owl. Do you ever look up? Do you see all of that beautiful light above you? Oh well, I want to ask him what he was doing in the temple and what is this thing called vengeance which I have never ever before heard of. There was just something about him ~~ even though his countenance is nothing really to look at ~~ I want to meet with him. I would never ever hurt such a creature as himself.”

The owl then asked Aletheia: “What will you do? What will you say to him upon first seeing him?” The Girl answered honestly and with some hint of surprise on her face: “How can I possibly know beforehand what I will say, how I will act. I only know that I go in search of Igor and hope to find him.” “If you do not know of his whereabouts, would you like to accompany me on my journey? I have heard that down through history many gods have walked with creatures like myself as companions. I have no idea how long this journey will take or how treacherous it will be before we finally see Igor but I have also heard it said that when one has flown as far as one can, one is halfway there. If you are a god, you will not have that problem. As for me, I can walk on and on and on forever.”

The owl flapped his wings, rose up and flew onto Aletheia’s shoulder. “So, are we flying or walking, Girl?”
“Both” said Aletheia as she and the owl made tracks…

***Paraphrased from The Legend of the Guardians

Then the owl showed The Vampire and Igor together, as the were:

youtu.be/WmetLBAaMac

youtu.be/TJAfLE39ZZ8

It was there great plateaus of the French Atlantic where Igor stood facing the great Archangel.
Once here had been armies.

Igor said: Why have you come to me at this hour, O mighty Angel.
As it goes when one talks to an angel, the answer appeared before Igor as the question had reached the angel.

Now Igor missed the Angel, for he has gone with the wind in a streak of Purple.
But his heart told him to head for the hills, where the temple of Vengeance was hidden.

Igor noticed he was holding a sword.
It was rusty and had another mans name engraved on it.

A sudden flash came to him of an alcove, a cave like hole, and armies outside, and a merciless old hag passing out this sword to him - no not him - someone else - someone whose feelings were now his - he cast off the sword and thunder rumbled. When he looked around after a while he could not see it.

Now he came to a pool and washed his hands. The water turned to purple and Igor knew he was asleep. When he awoke he was only halfway to the temple, and he had to cross a great swamp.

upon entering the swamp igor noticed a small company of men talking with a cyclops who kinda looked like chris squire, the bass player for Yes, and was carrying a spear. the thought occured to igor; why would a cyclops choose a spear as a weapon? depth perception requires two eyes, so how could the cyclops use the weapon with any degree of accuracy?

igor sat down on a stump and thought this through. maybe the producers of the movie hadn’t considered this? he glanced to the side of the company of men holding counsel with the cyclops and decided to intervene. there was a small camera crew filming the scene.

‘excuse me,’ said igor, ‘but i think a melee weapon would be a much better choice for a cyclops.’

‘cut!’, shouted the director. ‘who is this guy?’ the crew and cast now stood silently as if considering what igor had said, and waited urgently for the director to respond.

‘he’s actually right’, offered marcy, assistant organizer for the costume crew. ‘here… close one eye and try to hit that tree over there with this rock.’ marcy hands the director a rock, who turns it in his hands to study it. after a moment or two, the director rears back and throws the rock.

‘splash!’ the rock misses the tree, falling at least ten feet short of it, and lands in a small pool of water.

‘told ya, dude!’, sounded marcy triumphantly. the cast and crew now aghast and whispering among themselves.

‘alright fine. give him a sword or something,’ demanded the director. ‘but sir, wouldn’t a battle axe be more appropriate? my brother used to play dungeons and dragons and he said the bigger guys always carried axes or halberds.’ it was quincy, the mircophone guy. he shifted his feet nervously as the director stared ominously at him.

‘look, i don’t care what you give him, but give him something because we’re running out of daylight and i need to get this scene finished.’

And in the end the studio had to pay for a reshoot of the whole swamp scene because management couldn’t sign off on an intervention at the hands of a Russian, or anyone carrying a Russian sounding name.

The director, who was allergic to swamp creatures, moaned to his wife and turned in his bed and asked why, why am I here?
To suffer and bleed and make something of this shit, she said.
He huffed and puffed and got out of bed and put on his sunglasses, socks and tie. He slurped some powder into his nose, stood up in front of the emblazoned mirror and began trying on underwear.
His wife looked at him bemused.
Your tie.
whaddaboudit.
Its going to look bad under your shirt.
He angrily started ripping at his tie, nearly choking himself to death like Baron von Muenchhausens suicidal brother.
Jesus this day gone broke! He relapsed in his old mommies tongue.
Don’t bear it in mind, said the wife. She’ll come around.
She came out of bed and embraced him.
He, drawing her with him, sat down on the ground and embraced her like a convert embraces a priest.
If you say so, he sighed.
He then got up and looked in the mirror and said
help me with my tie.
and so the day of the great director began in earnest, and this was the day of the reshoot of the swamp scene.

SWAMP SCENE

INT. SWAMP - DAY

the bubbles are unmistakable. A RUMBLING comes out of the near black in which we are located.
FAINT RAYS OF LIGHT come through the tarmac of green and reveal us to ourselves.

Igor delved in his soul and found a rubber Duckie. He tossed it outside of his body and it became a whirling storm that sucked him up and slurped him down the drainpipe of a bathtub of which faint memories remained intimate to his mind. He then slew seven dragons and twenty beasts with no heads - slaying them meant screwing on their heads - during which he got bit several times with rabies and other, more sinister madnesses, and for this he had to calmly flute herbs under a Buddhic tree and make a fire of a non-Buddhic tree and sit in the rain and smouldering ashes afterwards, contemplating everything one can do with an apple aside from eating it.

Igor now aimed his hypertrusive obstacular at the skies underneath and overhead and blasted.
What happened has been registered in and as every cartoon ever made.

Then he went out to eat, breakfast. It was noon. It was allowed. He had a hamburger and coffee.

And Munchausen aside, he grasped the iPhone in his pocket since he was expecting to vomit out a breakfast ill prepared by his wife, and suddenly forgot her name, and as he tried to recollect, a total loss occurred, in fact, the time of great reckoning was it hand, forgot everything about everything lead ing up to NOW, as if the instance, this, ate up every bit of memory had left, and no, he told himself, I will reboot one the taste of this badly prepared brew leaves my lovely apprehensive taste buds.
Igor was perturbed by Dracula, very much so because Dracula tried to out him, and he knew the rules befitting the service, otherwise his position of s double agent will be given up, even though it has been marginally been deposed and filed into some abandoned memory storage since microfilm days, dumped and forgotten.
So why should now be worried about dracula’s whereabouts and activities when Dracula was immersed in time travel as eagerly as he is?
He’ll if wife became overly inquisitive about his whereabouts, he could refrain from directly facing her underlings and proceed to tell her not to call any of drac’s acquaintances, drac he knew, was not much into too much daily exposure any way, and tried to keep it to the minimum.
In fact him and drac were attuned in certain ways to the swampy underground that meant certain exposure since Dostoevsky days when letters from underground didn’t mean much, and could not in a thousand ways indicate swampy terrain.

So slovenly forgot about the awful contents of the ill prepared breakfast brewed up by the missus, after stretching it out inordinately, and put on his well its another day another dollar day mask, went about his daily routine.

On a normal day, Igor has breakfast with coffee and hamburger - that is when he finds the opportunity to shove the wife’s conjuring in a plastic bag which he then maneuvers into his briefcase, which he possesses expressly for this purpose. The wife thinks Igor is an accountant, but Igor is in fact, a Man. In the occasional case where Igor is forced by his wife’s scruples to absorb into his digestive tract her conjurings, said digestive tract disallows the stufflings trespassing beyond a certain point, and addresses them back to sender in pulp form, yet Igor, polite being that he is, is compelled to find other locations into which to emit the retoured plasma than the Formica living-table, and in a bout of characteristic illuminance he has contacted a Finnish programmer he had remained in contact with from the days of “purple motion” and “second reality” to manufacture an iPhone app which will allow him to projectile vomit the plasma into to the phone-screen, where the app will secure its absorption and disposing into “the cloud”. However this morning it appears that the apps tolerance is still found wanting and the plasma smothers the physical object of the phone - meagre by proportion as the physically is next to the cloud-ness, the virtuality which holds the true significance of the device, despite its sleek design which is still, even covered in yellowish chunks, unmistakably American, and therefore real.

Igor wakes up and meets an eagle. He says “No matter what you’re told, I have a heart of gold”
Is it the eagle which says this, or Igor? It isn’t clear. He tries to remember and nearly falls asleep doing so!

Then Igor instantly finds a great measure of peace as he remembers his old friend, Rumi. He remembered the wonderful star-lit night when he and Rumi sat at the edge of the village at their favorite spot in front of a warm, comforting fire.

He had been trying to solve a problem that evening too, a conundrum of sorts. Rumi could see the almost anguished look on Igor’s countenance. He smiled at his friend, Igor, and said: "Ah, my dear and lasting friend. Igor looked up at him and marveled how Rumi’s countenance glowed as Rumi spoke the words:

Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Igor was so moved by the memory of these words that tears began to flow. It was as if this great weight had been lifted from his heart. “Does it really matter which of us spoke the words to the other?” All that truly matters is that I have met my first Eagle. We will speak to one another and learn many things from one another. I especially shall learn many, wondrous things from my Eagle Friend. Ah, I cannot imagine the things which this wonderful Eagle has to teach me, to tell me.

Then Igor looked up and called down the magnificent Being. Smiling to himself, he murmured: “It is beginning” and his heart soared!

As he was called from far asunder Rumi smiled with awe that If it would try to conjoin him in a wondrous union by the sacred tree of life.
Then he remembered that the sacred Eagle was never permitted there, Therefore he gathered all his mystical powers, . and Rumi transferred his eagle nature into the remarkable bat Dracula.
Then he flew, muse-like whipping Prometheus into , his alter narcissistic ego into an enchanting and slightly curved eclipse of plunging flight into Igor’s domain, where the holoscopic tree of myths and wonders stood within mystical shrouds in one of many hidden universes.
The tree proudly stood as time immemorial first planted it"s beguiling seeds , guarded by black angels of bestial virgins. They hissed and stabbed at the mythic poet with such vengeance and cruel stabbing motions, that even the primordial viper was taken aback with surprise and bewilderment.

Beneath its shadow Igor pulled down one of its forbidden fruits, biting into it with lasciviousness gluttony, spitting out the seeds to begin the cycle anew.
Then he drank deeply from the river Styx, refusing the boat captain’s invitation, he turned away from forgetfulness and began marching towards the sunlight - his eyes squinting, his retina’s ablaze, he endured the discomfort, slowly seeing distinctly, he re-cognized the bell tower.
Climbing it, one arm length at a time, he reached its pinnace where a heavy bell waited and weighted - he punched it with his fist listening to the reverberations spreading across the sundrenched landscape. He stood there, alight, looking down, and made it his home.
Deciding to ring the bell, twice a day, and thrice on holidays - to wake up the sleepers and cast fear in the souls of the priestly messiahs that preyed and prayed upon the sheeple below.

Igor was standing at the well with his sawed off still smoking and wondered how many sicknesses would come into the world from the corpse he had just dumped in there. He, absentmindedly, blew some smoke from his barrel. He looked at the sky which grew dark and then back to the shed. The moss on the roof glistened in some pale sunlight which managed to pierced through the western clouds.

He began wiping the barrel down and contemplated tossing the weapon in along with the corpse but then decided against it. He slowly walked back to the shed and sniffed the crisp air. Then he noticed a cluster of daisies and suddenly felt heavy with emotion.

Had he had the right to kill? But it hadn’t gone like that. One had not given him a choice. Still, choice, right, whatever. It weighed on his heart now. He crouched down, laid the gun on the grass and plucked a daisy. “it was just, it was unjust, it was just, it was unjust…”
Once a verdict had been reached, Igor had ceases to care.

Igor was looking at some monkeys in the zoo eating their own asses out. He marvelled. There was plenty of food thrown around them, fresh fruits and pieces of raw bird-meat. But the monkeys wouldn’t touch it. They kept burying their heads literally in their own asses and, when these heads where withdrawn from the holes and stuck back in the sunlight, there was a grinning about them, almost triumphant, as if, in that asshole, they had accomplished some victories no one would ever know about. Yet they seemed to know about each others victories alright, as soon enough they were crawling into each others anuses and lingering there for a while until there was a circle of monkeys with their heads in each others asses, like an obscene ouroboros. Igor had no idea why he was watching still, as he felt definitely queazy and just quite annoyed at the monkeys, too - what could possibly be the advantage to them, doing this weird performance demonstrating their fallibility, over just eating some good fruits and meats and being natural and sane? Damn, it was quite the conundrum for Igors brain and he stood there, under a tree, and the Sun passed over the tree and shadow passed over Igor and the monkeys … nothing changed about them. They were in their anal circle and bopping around as such, and it seemed they would never leave each others ass holes as long as some shit was produced inside of there they could eat, and then shit out into the next one… finally Igor threw up under the tree, which was by all accounts a very clean and proper way to act there and then, and he went about his way.

Igor was fast asleep. The steak had been good. Perfect.

Wine had been good, too. Pure pinot noir, round and almost sweet, almost decadent, almost bad. Just on the edge. Which is how he slept - and his dreams zoomed in and out of the black, the dark, the abyss, the nothingness, and they were jagged and sex pervaded their junctures.

When he woke it was early and birds were singing. He got up and made a cup of coffee and another one and sat on the porch and thought about people he would have to hurt to make things right. He thought about them carefully, clinically. He nodded to himself and got up, and walked to his truck.