Captain Hooker and the story of the mysterious, moldy MacGuffin.
Monday, June 02, 2008
I stare at the copy in my hands. It is a leather bound volume with the words Captain Hooker embossed across the front cover. Captain Hooker. I read it aloud and chuckle.
The book has seen twenty summers, in a manner of speaking. For the sake of reducing the incidence of misunderstood metaphors, it must be clarified that books are incapable of vision and the summer season cannot really be seen inside a dusty old library, but rather felt by the effect of the raised temperature. I had noticed the book as a lad; the library was a bustling centre of intellectualism at that time and this volume occupied the proud position of the best of the best sellers (a title that did not really refer to the sales figures of said volume, but rather the creativity of the hype machine of its publishers). The machine must have run of steam though, the wizened old Librarian tells an older me, both of us aged by twenty years, pointing at the book, now tucked away in the discount bin.
"This book is cursed", he says, interrupted by a rasping cough, "It has brought this library bad luck since the day it was placed on these shelves. It has been borrowed not once, not even once, and I wait for the day that it might be begged for or stolen." A part of me, the rational part to be specific, wants to correct him. To dispel the myth and the superstition. To tell him that sailors are entitled to be superstitious about having women on board their ships, but Librarians are not, especially when the superstition is not about a woman on board a ship, but about a book about a woman on board a ship. But I haven't the heart to do it so I offer to steal the book while he sets a rat trap or perform whatever other activity he can think of as an alibi to offer the bored investigators who turn up to investigate a book theft.
He agrees. I steal. I walk out with the book. And customers come in. In droves.
My eyes bulging, I look back into the library. The Librarian is standing, looking back at me, with his right hand outstretched with a closed fist and thumb pointing upwards, mouthing a silent 'Thank you'. I smile weakly and glare at my inner rational self who merely shrugs and goes back to his cave, shaking his head in disbelief.
As I reach home, I open the book and place it cover down on the floor, showing pages three hundred and forty one and three hundred and forty two. I stand in front of the book and take off my shirt. As I unzip my pants, I hear a scream from beyond the Fourth Wall. A prude perhaps, I think to myself and continue the process until I'm down to my birthday suit. A couple of she-wolf-whistles this time from beyond and I blush. I recover my composure quickly and crouch down and dip my finger into the book.
I suppose describing the following process to an audience ignorant of the fourth dimension of a book is going to be difficult. However, to avoid losing audience interest in this narrative, I dig into my arsenal of plot devices and pull out my trusty explanation monologue :
"And this is part where I, the yet unnamed first person protagonist of this story, reveal my modus operandi. The mode of operation to perform what task, you ask? It shall be revealed soon, my impatient friend. Sooner or later. Mwahahahahahaha!
Oh, terribly sorry about that. I tend to get carried away by the dramatic nature of monologue delivery. As I was saying, before I interrupted myself, books have an unseen, to the human eye that is, fourth dimension. Humans can see the length, width and height of a book, but I, the still unnamed protagonist of possible superhuman origin, can feel the viscosity of it.
"The viscosity?", you may ask loudly and incredulously. "Yes", I reply in equal volume. The viscosity. For books have been known to be written in a range of writing styles from the negative extreme of sparse, minimalistic writing to the positive extreme of an ornate, flowery style and the only book in this entire universe to lie in the middle of this scale with a perfectly balanced writing style is the unpublished memoirs of an opium farmer, thought to be eaten by a goat driven so far by hunger to bother not about the earth shattering loss of this literary treasure. A dip of my finger, which I refer to dramatically as the Finger of God, which really does not have anything divine about it though, into a book and the subsequent stirring motion calculates the viscosity of the book. "
"Is that all?", an anonymous coward heckles from beyond the Fourth Wall.
"No, that is not all, you swine without a spine. My real power is something that needs to be demonstrated. Look upon my unclothed body as I begin.."
"I'd rather not", replies the cheeky, disembodied voice, emboldened by his anonymity, "You are a rather ugly person."
Resisting the urge to break through the Fourth Wall and strangle this anonymous annoyance, I stir my fingers through the pages and feel resistance. I read a few sentences. Flowery language. I sigh, wishing for the power to deflower books.
"That is the wrong usage of deflower, dweeb", continues the heckler, apparently able to hear my inner thoughts. I shut him out, shut my eyes, clench my nose and take a dive.
Into the book.
As I splash into page number three hundred and forty two, a liquid; so viscous that words cannot describe it, precisely because it is made of words; engulfs me. I think of a clever metaphor comparing my situation to a swim in a bowl of extra syrupy alphabet soup, as words enter my every orifice choking me. I lose consciousness.
I wake up in a strange bed, in a strange room. I feel the room moving. I try to remember where I am, my memory throwing up the number 342. I cannot associate the number to anything so I give up and look around.
I see a strange lady beside me. I shriek and jump out of the bed.
"Ahoy! Mister Lampoonist! Ye come down 'ere to be Cap'n Hooker's First Mate?"
I shriek again. And look down and find myself still wearing my pants and then realise that the First Mate referred to was the nautical term for the Chief Officer of the Captain.
"Aye", I reply, grinning.
posted by foogarky @ 10:11 AM,
4 Comments:
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At 2:04 PM,
Mesh said...
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Oye Cap'n, pass the joint onto us lesser folk!
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At 2:20 PM,
:) said...
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That was amazing. :D I won't get into the technicalities, because the content more than makes up for any minor grammatical issues (and because I can't really be bothered at the moment:P).
I absolutely loved the end.
Looking forward to reading more o your work in the future. :)
-Aishwariya -
At 5:52 AM,
P said...
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Hey, matey, can I has the hooker?
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At 2:38 AM,
Pradeep said...
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Young man, you watch too many British sitcoms.
And um, hurrah for reader incompetence. :P
The Author
foogarky
foogarky is the pseudonym of the fictional construct who battles for supremacy with other constructed personas in the mind of a crazed individual. He describes himself as a man living in a non descript house in Rio De Janiero, Brazil with two dogs and a parakeet.
About This Blog
The Loony Lampoonist serves to parody, spoof and satirize everything that needs to be parodied, spoofed and satirized. Due to the fictional nature of this electronic journal, any anecdotes appearing here ever so often that seem to be personal in nature, would suffer from the effects of conflicting personalities, the creation of fictional events and the inclusion of non existent characters who did not make it to the big league in the author's literary works. Thus, the Loony Lampoonist is also a purgatory for characters and ideas that have missed the limelight.
