Wargermopolis - Appetizer
Treats of Generational Graffiti
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“And then Candlehead appeared!” Said Nuggets. His visa fluttered as he pumped a triumphant fist. “You should have seen him! Swooping on Ordus, at the head of the tourists. The soldiers were stunned, completely surprised. They ran before Jodee’s might!”
Mr. Grey knocked against a heavy driftwood door. He tapped, exactly five times, on the door’s embossed iron symbol; two morays twined around a walking stick. He corner-eyed Nuggets and said, “But not all escaped? You said Ordus retained some. Was Honeydew…”
“Don’t worry on that,” Nuggets interrupted him. “Yeah, she couldn’t get away. But it’s, like, all good. He just brought her here, back to Wargermopolis. They took this city - Defense Force armies - when they invaded Panache. We’ll take it back soon, and free all tourists! Yessiree zimzam vimvoo.”
“So she’s in prison?”
“Well no, she’s in jail. I guess you could post her bail. Seems like a waste though. When you can just wait. Jodee’s revolt approaches. Oh and by the way, how did you get here? How’d you two find the city?”
Mr. Grey rapped his knuckles again on the iron door-symbol. Tom, standing on Nuggets’ other flank, smeared his nose upon the handkerchief; lengthily. Nuggets glanced between them. Eventually Mr. Grey said, “We met a local herdsman.”
“But the Abyssal Desert, how’d you get across? Without food and stuff?”
The synchronized tramping of boots on gravel broke their conversation. Nuggets’s downy-cheeked face, the sallow face of Tom, and Mr. Grey’s expressionless mien looked down the gloomy alley. At the far end, where the Sun Fish’s daylight spilled brightly on a paved road, a trio of Defense Force soldiers entered.
They marched in sync along this narrow corridor of Wargermopolis in which the three stood. They marched around piles of building rubble and over crunching bits of glass. They marched below the broken windows and drooping balconies of upper apartments, and as they went, local residents ducked cautiously inside or softly closed their curtains. The soldiers marched beside the alley walls of wan, gloomy brick; marked in graffiti layers.
The bottommost layer of art on the brick walls told Glory Days folktales. The oft-lightless alley couldn’t boast the ornate murals of the wide, bright thoroughfares, but that bottom-layer of paint on the narrow corridor walls still showed the pride in the artist. The picture of crystal Koi Fish and blushing Salmon Fish twining together, thrice a man’s-height; or the depiction of a cottonfruit reaper gathering a buttery harvest; these were no works of base talent along which the soldiers marched.
Scrawled over both these grander pieces, however, were additions of later generations. The soldiers passed by a multitude of line-art works and block-letter words, touting Jodee’s revolution. Art-soldiers stared at their corporeal counterparts with horrorstruck faces, as tourists bound them in rope or dangled them from cages above dung pits. The mottos and phrases were no less candid, no more creative: ‘Down with Defense Force’, ‘Up with Jodee’, ‘Let the bubbles free, man’. These words, drawn over the old murals in big, bloody letters, heckled the real soldiers marching through the alley.
And yet another layer of graffiti dwelt atop those lesser additions. When the Defense Force retook the city, the locals retook their walls. They’d either tried restoring the old murals - with universal failure - or added new portraits. The soldiers passed one especially-poor likeness of Jodee herself: painted in her sparking-grindstone robe, her alwayslush sapling drooping in one hand, a broken bottle of cologne in her other. Flies and fleas flew in ashen specks from the pits of her arms and rained down on stick-figure farmers.
Such did the soldiers pass as they walked the alley, toward Tom, Nuggets, and Mr. Grey. They kept their guns shouldered, but they marched purposefully toward the three loiterers at the door. The three tried blending with the sneezing, sallow-faced, sweaty, coughing, wheezy, thin, and otherwise sick locals and tourists; roaming the streets with the haunted eyes and hollow breath of starving dogs; or lying exhausted - like road flattened critters - in the rubble. Tom sniffled into his handkerchief with gusto. Nuggets put up a challenging face until Tom elbowed him, at which he too sniffled in his little visa. Mr. Grey coughed once, dryly.
They were the sole occupants of an otherwise empty alley. The soldiers walked directly to them. The central one wore bronze armor with silver bands marking him as an officer. He folded his arms over the metal plate and said, “You three. Tourists are you? Well then, let's see those visas!”
Mr. Grey presented his neatly-folded, fabric, replacement visa from Wine Medo. His face looked almost joyful as he ceded a proper document. Nuggets took the cloth patch from his nose and offered it with a shaking hand. Tom spent several tocks feeling the various pockets of his robe before drawing a visa of his own. Mr. Grey reflected that he’d never seen Tom’s visa; it looked faded and motheaten.
The soldier on the left took all three. He held them out one-by-one, so the officer could read each. The officer glanced between the three before him and each corresponding visa presented. After inspecting, he said, “What are you about then, eh? Not rebelling, are you? Not Jodee’s partisans, are you?”
Nuggets looked away suspiciously. Tom sniffled. Mr. Grey said, “No sir, we’re not rebelling. We’re here to see the doctor. My friend’s sick, you see, and…”
“Sick ehhhh? You three going about without cologne? You do know that’s not just illegal; it’s dangerous. You’re putting yourselves, and everybody else who isn’t accustomed to your odors, at risk.”
“Apologies sir. He sniffed a few too many local flowers. We’re all wearing cologne now.”
The officer gave each a final eyedown. He nodded to the left soldier, who returned their visa cloths. The officer said, “Well, don’t dawdle. There’s a curfew here in Wargermopolis; anytime the Sun Fish swims off by more than a dozen leagues. Make sure you’re not on the streets by then, eh? Carry on.”
The soldiers walked away and left the alley. Tom and Nuggets let out relieved breaths. Mr. Grey said, “That seemed orderly. By the way, Nuggets; is that always this town’s name? Wargermopolis?”
“I don’t know, comrade,” said Nuggets. He looked after the soldiers distractedly. “I’m not a tour guide.”
“Wargermopolis.” Mr. Grey pinched his chin. “It’s not quite a tongue-slider.”
Tom folded his sullied handkerchief with care and placed it into a pocket; he stuffed his visa away haphazardly. He said, “This plan is stupid,” in a deliberate evocation of Honeydew, though his nasally, deep voice tarnished the likeness. “We should find a hideaway. We don’t need treatments, I feel well en…”
Fortunately, Tom escaped into a lawful fit of coughing or sneezing. Mr. Grey had raised his knuckles again to the hospital door. Before he could tap out another quiet 5-note beat, it swung wide…
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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