MSTed: The Seven Stars, Chapter 2 (Part 5 of Many)
Kevin Mowery
True, Ol' Jung had never dealt with horrors like "Lord Valthrustra."
Or, at least, he had never written about it. He would have been
crucified!
What was most frustrating, though, was the fact that I was, as a rule,
a "lucid" dreamer—someone who could realize a dream for what it was
and control it. But this latest series of nightmares had me licked.
CROW: So they were better than my real life, really.
I felt like one of my case studies,
dazed and confused by the horrid, unconquerable fiends of the
nightmare world.
And, to further confuse things, I kept smelling the aroma of Sammy's
Southern-Fried Breakfast, which was sizzling and popping
ninety-to-nothing in the kitchen. I should have never started thinking
about those damn woks!
MIKE: Then I never would have smelled breakfast!
Michael would kick my ass for this...
TOM: Oh, he'd kick your ass for a lot of things.
Well, never one to give up the ship, I decided to accept the fact that
my mind was a bowl of mush and get on with the main problem, besides
hunger, that was plaguing me: the name "Tatternorn."
My name is Christopher Hathorne Logan, not "Tatternorn."
MIKE: Twenty pages into the book, we find out who's talking.
My first name was given to me by my mother, who just happened to like
the little boy from A.K. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. Given
the possibilities, I guess "Christopher" was better than "Eeyore" or
"Piglet."
CROW: Even though there were no little boys named "Eeyore" or "Piglet"
in those books.
MIKE: Let him be. He's trying to be clever.
TOM: It's "AKA Milne" heading our new TGIF lineup here on ABC. Paul
Rodriguez stars as Milne, a very Hispanic-looking Brit trying to start
a career in stand-up for children! Zaniness and hijinks ensue.
And it was fitting, no doubt, that both Christopher Robin and yours
truly had trouble separating fiction from reality. Except, of course,
that he had stuffed animals and I had Lord Valthrustra, Skurge, and
something really nasty called "The Dragon's Breath." Hell, if they
made a Saturday morning cartoon about my imaginary friends, it would
scare the absolute pee-pee out of the little kiddies! And their
parents, too!
TOM: It'd bore it out of them, more likely.
My middle name, with its unusual derivation of "Hawthorne," came from
a not-so-distant uncle on my father's side. After a lengthy
genealogical track-down, it turned out that this not-so-distant uncle
of mine was in fact some sort of faith-healer, one of mixed Native
American blood who claimed relation with not only the Choctaw Nation,
but also with the Cherokee and Hopi Nations as well.
MIKE: Good Indian name, Hawthorne.
CROW: They were the first Hopi to come over on the Mayflower.
Guess he got around quite a bit. And I guess it was from that side of
the family that I got my high cheekbones and long, straight black
hair—not to mention my own penchant for getting around and seeing the
world. (Playing in a constantly-gigging traveling band can work
wonders for that wanderlust, dig?)
TOM: So he's a travelling musican/psychologist?
My surname, as custom permits, was from my father's side of the
family,
CROW: Thanks for clearing that up.
passed down from some long-ago mountaineer ancestor. I preferred my
surname in conversation; and, as such my friends knew me. Besides,
"Logan" made a better stage name than "Christopher," which I refused
to shorten to "Chris," which was androgynous; or to "Christ,"
MIKE: Which no-one, in the history of the world, has ever shortened
their name to.
TOM: Should go without saying.
CROW: He must have been paid by the word.
which was, at the very least, offensive to about half of
the world, not to mention a bit presumptuous.
CROW: And Logan is almost as cool a name as VoidSpawn! <Butthead>
Wolverine is cool.
So, to make a long story short, my friends called me "Logan," not
"Tatternorn."
Still, it seemed so... so familiar, so right. Tatternorn. Shit!
TOM: I think he'd be more used to being called the latter.
Names! Damned names!
"Frailty, thy name is..." I paused, unsure how to continue.
What is thy name, cruel Frailty?
MIKE: Coherence?
CROW: Plot?
...Tatternorn?
Right. And the only "Skurge" I'd ever heard of before was a
cat-o'nine-tails.
I exhaled a long breath and rose to my feet. The static on the tube
was still going strong, sharply accented by the sound and fury of
frying bacon, which sizzled and popped like nothing else in the world.
My stomach growled immediately, so I moved into the kitchen, an
invisible noose of bacon smoke pulling me onwards to my cholesterol
doom.
TOM: Please come soon, cholesterol doom.
Sammy had toast going, bacon cooking, scrambled eggs frying and a full
pot of black chicory coffee brewing. I felt as if I had walked into
heaven, although I had trouble imagining Sammy as anything but a
misplaced imp looking to stir up some fast trouble.
Sammy Joseph.
Sammy always looked like he had a secret to tell. There was always
that Cheshire Cat smile that slid open just wide enough for you to see
the tips of his canines. His big brown eyes held an inner mirth that
was reflected in almost everything he did. He was always whistling or
humming some old song, always busy with some task or another. Sammy
could make the sun shine on a cloudy day, whether by personal
magnetism or by electromagnetism.
TOM: Huh?
There weren't many people who would be so happy in his shoes, however,
because Sammy's shoes were very small. Sammy was only an elbow taller
than a yardstick. He was an adult by age but not by physical
development, looking for all intents and purposes like a very young,
albeit well-built, eight-year old boy.
CROW: Which had nothing to do with my decision to move in with him!
TOM: Is it possible to look like a very *old* eight-year old boy?
Good Ol' Smilin' Sammy.
Throughout the many years of pricking and prodding by the best medical
specialists in the country, he always kept a tune on his lips and a
smile on his face. They subjected him to tests that were as hellish as
Nazi war atrocities, and still the eggheads were baffled. He was
neither suffering from achondroplasty—a sanitized name for
dwarfism—nor from a defective pituitary gland. He was neither dwarf
nor midget, as the eloquent eggheads would bleat, slamming their
textbooks in rage. Except for a couple of his DNA bases being garbled
(forming, in some very interesting places, a third helical strip in
between the two "normal" DNA strands), they could find nothing to
explain his condition.
MIKE: <doctor> Except for not being genetically human, there's nothing
wrong with this man.
(Right. Even the Blind Man could see the word
"mutant" glaring in billboard-sized neon green letters at this point.
But none of the eggheads could, or did. Strange, that. Or totally
incompetent, take your pick.)
TOM: Conveniently unable to spot an obvious plot point?
Although Sammy seemed frozen in time as a child, his strength was
deceptive for his size.
CROW: He looked like an eight-year old, but was no stronger than an
infant.
TO BE CONTINUED....
--The MST3K characters are copyrighted by Best Brains, Inc. The text
of the novel is copyrighted by Nova Eth publishing or Todd King or
whoever. No infringement is intended.