The great shipyard of the Vest was tumultuous with the sound of athletically-wielded adzes, the shouting of big hairy varlets, the shrieks of circular sawmen newly de-thumbed, the fractured grinding of blackened teeth and the whooshing of gleaming galleys as they rushed down lardy ways into the grateful waters of the Ocean. May Thor Bless All who Row in her, and may there be Frigging in the Rigging and Wanking on the Planking, these and similar refrains echoed gratingly again and again on the chilly Skye wind and off the cool flanks of the nearby mountains.
Blowing intermittently on his freezing fingernails, the shipwright Julius J. Junkerpfartzenparten searched, doubled up from the effects of hypermethrophia brought on by a recent and unexpectedly intense bout of Pianistic Schuman-Krenzile Groping involving divers instrumenti, for a small washer he'd inadvertently dropped in a pile of pine-wood shavings not twenty femtoseconds before. Although not overtly on any particular spectrum other than that of visible and partly-visible Merestotenlicht and similar vibrations of the electromagnetic and beachboysian varieties, yet the aforementioned Julius J. was prone and predialectically primed to sweary outbursts of rude exclamatory statements, and so on this occasion it turned out.
Such was the performance - all over a miniature annulus of Swedish steel, mark you! - that several shipwrights, semi-deaf and otherwise, observed admiringly and took notes in their rough handwriting, to the considerable displeasure of various virtuous wives and bidie-ins when later that day they went home with their starched cuffs all scrawled-upon in Serious Sans and HB thick carpenter's pencil to demand supper and Qvick-About-It, although not necessarily in that order. It is one thing, as many better positioned than ourselves to aver have vouchsafed, to have a reputable set of fixers, but another article entirely to act appropriately when vital parts of the assembly not only hit the dust but furthermore secrete and insert themselves wilfully and evidently with subversive intent surreptitiously underneath that same substance into the bargain.
Fuck and double-fuck and demi-semi-dotted-rhythmical-fuck and buggeration with knobs on in B flat major, fuckit black and fuckit white and fuckit polychromatical, chanted Julius J. Junkerpfartzenparten loudly in a cascading series of several shouts generally rated at 93 decibels at a distance of 10 metres, and fuck you all and fuck the universe, up Mac's hole in America to put it mildly, he added, mainly out of consideration for the more sensitive among his audience, some of whom had already ducked under the keelson wantonly convulsed with anxiety and scheisskopfschmertz trying to make themselves ever scarcer in accordance with the inverse square law. May you all be instantly transported, and hurled screaming, continued Julius, into the interior of the fiery northern mountain Abraxasdottir where the dogs bark not nor the cocks crow and there suffer interminably from the gout, plantar fasciitis, coccalgia, the Myth of Siphyllis, uncertain perineal sensations and the ethereal neurasthenia that comes from being short-changed on the Copenhagen underground for all eternity.
Despite these proceedings and protestations, not a bit of a washer was to be found, no nor would it be before many centuries had passed and it fell to a chit of a gurl, to wit a young professoressa of archaeology called Pasta Mastroianni from Glasgow, to brush away the soil and crumbling remains of woodwork and pick up the missing metal annulus still bright and gleaming in the Skye sunshine and pack it carefully and wonderingly away in a plastic bag which not long before had held the lunch of her wee dog Uggerly, but by then the langenboote had long since sunken, some say as a result of the lack of a single washer, others opining that the vessel had been cursed from the moment the shipwright Julius J. Junkerpfartzenparten had opened his big foulmouth in that holyplace and dispersed the gentle spirits who should by rights, custom and practice have been protecting the aquatic vehicle like an Acme Ever-on plasmic condommiere di Venezia.
The small but couthy country boy Johanssen was meanwhile watching the scene from the bootjård gate and on an impulse decided he would maybe try flying. Hah! Whether by some ancient esoteric metempsychosis or purely through hitting on a pro-Vikkking phenomenon known only to a small number of especially insightful shamans, Johanssen found to his surprise that he could fly quite well, although in truth it seemed to the boy to be a procedure more akin to swimming. At any rate, he took to the skies and coasted using a form of breaststroke at an altitude of 30 metres or so, far enough away from the fire and smoke drifting along from the smithies to render the atmosphere breathable but near enough to see things in sharp detail. The air seemed viscous like colourless new honey, and time seemed to have slowed, so even the ranting of an increasingly berserk Julius J. Junkerpfartzenparten was now a low rasping rumble. One thing he noticed pretty quickly was the hundreds of thousands of rats sweeping at that moment over the crest of the shoreline, still dripping blackly wet from their lengthy swim, and making directly for the bootjård. On the back of each rat, which Johanssen now saw was saddled with a tiny dark-brown leather and green silk saddle, sat a large insect, perhaps a cockroach or wood-eating scorpion, with glistening eyes and champing jaws. The progress of the wild beastly-arthropodical horde too was suddenly slow, the galloping rats suspended in mid-air, reflected sunlight proceeding photon by photon like a gradually drawn curtain, their little flags and pennants scarcely perceptibly waving in the thick atmosphere.
Pasta Mastroianni, in the same place, but at a different time, looked up from her dog Uggerly's lunchbag and noticed the breeze sweeping over the coarse sea-grass, swarming and sparkling with light, and for a moment an image of crazed rats came to mind; she paid it no attention, for she was used to eidetic visions, having experienced them from early childhood. When it's mentioned that Pasta paid no attention, by that of course the old storytellers meant that she observed the image and made a mental snapshot of it for later reference; for one never knows to what such intuitions may refer, whether a warning from the future or an insight into past events. But really, she thought, scorpions on ratback? Be serious, woman. Uggerly's birse had stiffened along his back, though, and Pasta noted that too. Certainly the place had a very curious feel to it, and the backs of her knees and the skin of her calves were prickling strangely.
© Donnie Ross 2012
