KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy (5 page)

Many galaxies away in a remote part of the universe, some two million millennia before Flower had her craving, the planet Fresseria Beta played host to a terrible war.  Two tribes known as the Ari and the Osto were in the midst of a bitter century-long dispute over a small cluster of mines that were the only known source of Fresserian spice.  Both tribes coveted the rare treasure but each for an entirely different reason.

The Ari were a group of thrill seekers who deeply enjoyed the more earthly pleasures in life.  While they weren’t spending time in elaborate amusement parks and hopping discotheques, the Ari engaged in the timeless art of seduction or, as they preferred, in fantastic giant orgies that lasted for weeks on end.  These events resulted in euphoric sounds that could be heard clearly for miles in every direction.  The consensus was that the key to the success of one of these romps was the small amount of spice mixed into each Ari’s tea.  This provided their bodies with the stamina and their vocal chords with the fortitude to bring the whole affair to its proper, glorious pinnacle.

The Osto couldn’t have been more different from the Ari.  Collectively, they were among the stuffiest, most cerebral and boring individuals known to inhabit the universe.  The Osto spent most of their time trying to design the perfect sport utility vehicle.  Of course, since they were exceedingly dull and tedious people, they were never invited anywhere and their matchless fuel injection system spent most of its time along with their SUVs in Osto garages.  Over the years, as the Ari parties got louder and more fun-sounding, the Osto became increasingly testy.  One day, when an Osto scientist discovered that adding spice to an SUV’s gas tank improved its fuel efficiency by ten percent, the king of the Osto finally had a pretext to declare war on the Ari since it was the Ari who controlled all of the spice mines on Fresseria Beta.

Unfortunately for the Ari, they were having too much fun to take the Osto’s declaration of war seriously; and, insipid as the Osto were, they did have a knack for planning things.  In the end, despite a valiant last-ditch effort, the Ari were decimated, their society left in tatters.  Worst of all, without the spice, the surviving Ari were extraordinarily horny, even for a species that had seventeen horns strategically placed along the surface of their bodies.

Desperate, the supreme commander of the Ari smuggled himself into the enemy capital in an attempt to decapitate the Osto leadership.  With only a dagger in hand, he managed to sneak into the Osto palace and enter the king’s chamber.  Seeing the king facing away on one side of the bed to clip his toenails, the commander soundlessly crept up and slit the throat of the queen.  In a final bold move, he set his sights on the king.  Seizing the regent’s shoulder from behind, he raised his dagger to strike again, but stopped when the king said something strange.

“Ooh, a little to the left.”

Taken aback, the supreme commander of the Ari moved his hand a little to the left, his dagger still poised to deliver the final blow.

“Oh, yeah!  That’s it.  Keep going,” said the king, leaving the Ari supreme commander in an awkward position.

In fact, the Osto king was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t seem to care when he turned a moment later to find that the person giving him the massage was not his wife but his sworn enemy who had come to assassinate him.  Although the two men did not speak a word to each other for the next several minutes, both statesmen felt that they had reached a common, perhaps historical, understanding and all through a simple touch.

Over the next few days, the two leaders negotiated a truce between their peoples.  The Osto would return the Ari’s spice mines with their apologies and, in return, each Ari would devote ten hours per week to massaging an Osto.  With regards to the delicate matter of the brutal murder of his spouse, the Osto king was particularly gracious.

“Bring me another wife!” he had called to a servant.

And so, Fresseria Beta came to know a level of tranquility the likes of which it had never seen in its history.  The Ari returned to their fabulous orgies and the Osto loosened up and relaxed thanks to Ari massages.  This harmony was only to last for the briefest of periods, however, because armies of the Salvia tribe from Fresseria Alpha had been waiting patiently in orbit for centuries.  Unlike Fresseria Beta, Fresseria Alpha had no spice mines and the Salvia, a society of innovative pastry chefs, desperately wanted a supply of spice with which to lightly dust their confections.  Sensing weakness on the part of the peoples of Fresseria Beta, the Saliva took this opportunity to use their aptly named obliteration ray to obliterate both the Ari and the Osto.

Although the story of the Ari and the Osto is a sad one, it did have an enduring positive influence on the rest of the cosmos.  You see, the universe took notice of their special bond and, in death, the Ari and Osto began a tradition that would spread far and wide, long outlasting the hated Salvia…the art of massage therapy.  Many peoples throughout time and space owe a great debt to the Ari and the Osto and humans are no exception.

Jude was walking through the streets of Boston with a sense of purpose now.  There was a spring in his step because he had remembered all of the details of his one and only appointment of the day which, he now recalled, was scheduled for twelve thirty.  If he walked fast, he might not even be late.  The meeting was important for his ostensible career but, as he spent little time working at his stated profession and even less worrying about working, it had nearly slipped his mind completely.  In fact, he might never have remembered if not for the hissing cat in the doorway of the Starbucks.  You see, to spite his parents, Jude had chosen a job so pointless, so utterly frivolous and inconsequential that it practically defied the mind to think about it.  But, of course, that was the point.  One day, after an exhaustive search, he saw a listing for this particular line of work in the Boston yellow pages and immediately fell in love with the idea.  From then on, Jude resolved to devote his full attention to becoming the most lackluster cat massage therapist in the entire north east.

Jude had done some research and found that a small trade school in Portland, Oregon offered courses in cat massage.  Having no desire to actually move to Portland, Jude used his powers of persuasion, as well as a sizeable donation he managed to scrounge up, to convince the program coordinator to allow him to take the classes by correspondence.  Learning the curriculum by correspondence had its advantages, most significantly the fact that Jude was never actually required to be in the same room as a cat.  You see, while Jude loved the idea of cat massage therapy as a means of revenge against his parents, he truly hated cats and had for nearly all of his life.  His mother had owned a little black Siamese which she loved and cared for with far more affection than she had ever shown Jude.  In a way, he had a kind of sibling rivalry with the fickle little animal which took every opportunity to prod and bite him.  Ironically, the only theatre production his mother ever took him to see was the musical CATS.  Even then Jude was certain that he was the only one in the audience rooting for Mr. Mistoffelees to be run over by a car.

His parents were quite dismayed to receive a picture showing Jude graduating from his cat massage therapy program.   Jude had hired a professional photographer and gotten all dressed up in gown and hood to pose with his diploma.  The photographer had thought him mad.

As one might guess based on his feelings toward cats, though Jude wanted the title and reputation of a cat massage therapist, he had a strong desire to avoid any contact whatsoever with the creatures.  So his next ambition was to present himself as the least attractive cat massage therapist he could be.  His first task was to size up the real cat massage therapists in town.  Returning to the yellow pages, Jude was shocked to find that there were no fewer than fifty-one cat massage therapists listed in the greater Boston area.  Immediately, this worried him.  Was there some incredible yuppie demand for cat massages in Massachusetts?  Investigating further, he found that most major cities had few or no cat massage therapists.  Are pet owners going to be knocking down my door day and night?  No, he thought.  This was indeed a crowded marketplace, but he had a plan.

First, Jude found the perfect spot for his shop.  It was in an old three-story office building in a slum adjacent to a sewage treatment plant.  The building was surrounded on all sides by a parking lot that was littered with old cigarette butts, needles and shards of broken glass.  Jude affectionately called it the “cat gauntlet”.  When he first visited the place and met the owner, he noticed a large sign that read “CONDEMNED” in big block letters on the front of the building.

“The building is condemned?” he had asked the burly, unshaven cigar crunching landlord.

“Nah, the sign’s feh the pa-king lot,” he replied snorting in its direction.

“How can you condemn a parking lot?”

“Huh…what do I look like to you, an u-ban planna?”

Jude was satisfied and he snapped a picture.

Although most of the offices in the building were available, he leased a space underneath the boiler room.  He sent his parents a picture of this as well.  Then Jude came up with a perfect name for his business.  Kataclysm.  The addition of a K instead of a C despite the obvious allusion to cats was exquisitely bizarre.  Also, the fact that the name implied a complete lack of relaxation made it the perfect choice for Jude’s massage parlor.  And finally, for the coup de grâce he decided to advertise his services under the category of “pest control” in the Yellow Pages.

Needless to say, Jude didn’t have any income as a cat massage therapist.  In fact, it cost him a small fortune to maintain both his office and the secretary he had hired so that he could prove that he was massaging cats for a living to his parents when they came to visit.  So in order to survive, Jude had to take on a second job, though of course one had to use the word “second” loosely.  As a brighter than average Rhodes Scholar, this did not present him with much of a problem.  He managed to land himself a job as Political Editor for the Boston Globe under a pseudonym.  In the age of IT, it was quite simple for him to work at a major newspaper without anyone discovering who he was.  Indeed, he had never met a single one of his columnists and he always sent underlings to the daily news meetings.  Aside from the occasional urgent text, he was generally able to get most of the week’s work done in an hour and a half on Saturday morning.  His staff produced first rate work that always met deadlines, so no one really seemed to pay him much notice.

Not a single person had tried to procure Jude’s services since he had started his business almost two years ago.  Still, he was uneasy.  So he had made an appointment with the competition to feel things out and to get a sense for how he could make himself less appealing.  As he rounded a corner to arrive at Greg’s Cat Massage which flanked a shabby stretch of Boston waterfront, he was startled to find a dilapidated building that somehow rivaled his own office in its sheer offensiveness.

Two galaxies over on the planet Adnexia, Epoophoron’s dinner party was quickly reaching its climax.  She had invited all seventeen members of her ladies’ complaint league and they had spent very little time at all complaining about the food.  You see, the Adnexians were a highly evolved species.  On most other planets in the universe, the females got together once a week for the stated purpose of playing any number of different games when, in reality, these women spent most of the time complaining about one thing or another.  Female Adnexians, in contrast, dispensed with this façade and simply congregated in large “complaint leagues”.  This had a surprisingly positive effect on the mental health of the female population in general who rarely sought the services of local psychiatrists.  Those males, however, who were unfortunate enough to have to sit through dinner parties organized by a ladies complaint league kept the Adnexian psychiatry business thriving.

Paroophoron went into the kitchen for a breather and took the opportunity to check his watch.  He smiled for the first time that day.  Adnexian dinner parties could stretch for days in Earth-time but Paroophoron was content in the thought that in a short while, he would not have to think about hosting the complaint league again until the next party in eighteen weeks.

Epoophoron burst in carrying the scraps of a devoured order of Kung-Po chicken.

“Darling, what a wonderful idea!  Chinese food has been a complete hit with the ladies, even with Salpinx.  Can you believe how much that woman complains?”

“I thought that you all complain?  I thought that was the whole point of this evening,” said a perplexed Paroophoron.

“Well of course it is dear, but there is complaining and then there is complaining.”

Epoophoron took a minute to arrange a bouquet of flowers brought by one of her guests and then opened the swinging kitchen door.  Still in the doorway, she turned back to Paroophoron.

“Be a love and set Wu’s famous fortune cookies on a platter so they’re ready to put out as soon as dinner is finished.”

“Fortune cookies?” said Paroophoron with a frown.  For a moment, the tiny green alien appeared a little tinier and greener.

“Well of course dear, without the fortune cookies the dinner is nothing.  I’d never hear the end of it,” replied Epoophoron in a huff as she turned her head to attend to one of her guests.

A moment later, looking back in Paroophoron’s direction, all Epoophoron saw was a sad-looking jacket swing out the garage door.