Gregora, the Queen of Adjectives, perched on her elephantine throne and listlessly gazed over her subjects. Her detachment was painfully apparent; she did not like this gig.
Or, she was embarrassed by the disgusting oversized throne.
(It was a gift from Gary, who was senile in his old age. Gary, however, was not senile when he presented the cumbersome gift to her at the enthusiastic age of nine hundred and four.)
Gregora tilted her head back and gurgled the word, “qwerty.”
“Gregora, Queen of Adjectives, has spoken!” shouted Barney, the commander of the Loyal Order of Screaming Fishermen. The Screaming Fisherman began bleating and whinnying with suspicious vivacity, but were suddenly silenced by a voice in the back row of the Royal Court.
It was me. “Qwerty? Are you that SAPPED?”
The queen sat up. Everyone turned their crinkle-cut frowns toward me, as they all knew I would certainly end us up in detention.
“That’s not even phonetically reasonable,” I continued. “Sure, it’s easy to type, but the letter Q must always be followed by a U. Phonetically.” The implications that any of this was spoken aloud is staggering.
The queen stood up. “First of all, this means detention for all of you,” she said. The crowd moaned. “Secondly, if qwerty is too hard an adjective for you to pronounce, I suggest you relocate to another kingdom in this land, perhaps one under the rule of the King of Nouns or the Prince of Past Participles.”
I winced at the sheer nonsense of all of this.
The crowd, sensing the queen’s agitation, began whispering to one another such completely meaningful statements as “My, what a qwerty thing he’s doing,” “It’s been a while since something so qwerty was quite exactly that qwerty,” and “That qwerty man is downright qwerty, and if there is a price to pay for being quite so qwerty, than this man is the epitome of qwerty if I’ve ever seen qwertiness exhibited and he will suffer greatly indeed, and in considerably qwerty a manner.”
The queen suddenly became very animated. A rush of excitement and energy consumed her, as my present behavior would herald the first notably thrilling event to ever take place before her eyes.
Flailing her arms wildly, drunk on power, she shouted to the Defibrillator Mounties, “Off with his qwerty head!”
The Defibrillator Mounties were an unpopular but effective branch of the Queen’s Armed Brigade. They could use their defibrillators to incapacitate a subject, but then use the same defibrillators to revive that victim – only to incapacitate them again. This could go on for hours. Savages.
Ironically, they were only unpopular due to Harold Brockenbrough’s negative portrayal of a Defibrillator Mountie in the 1978 film, When Will You Dance For Me, Billy Newbar, Billy Newbar, in which Brockenbrough wore ape makeup and a monkey tail.
Well, they do resemble monkeys.
A lot.
Anyway, the defibrillators must have had low batteries because as they chased me on horseback from the Royal Court, they were throwing forks at me. It only took a single fork in the back of my neck to put me down for the count.
As I lay there on my stomach, incapacitated by a fork, the Mounties circled my unmoving body, chanting “We want the funk.” The leader of the Mounties dismounted his horse and stepped toward me. He leaned down, flipped me over, and lifted my shirt, exposing my tattoo.
I mustered enough energy to groan, “Get your filthy paws off me, you damn qwerty ape.”
The leader threw his defibrillator at me and huffed, “Fine, revive yourself.” With that, he got on his high horse and announced, “He’s not one of us. Let’s go get a low fat yogurt, boys.”
“Clear!” I shouted, and defibrillated myself back to health.
This awoke Rombi, the Defibrillator God. Rombi had three nose piercings and a long beard that spiralled upward into a whiskery coil. Since Rombi was invisible, however, I had to take his word for it.
Well, to make a long story short, Rombi and Gregora eloped and I was elected King of Adjectives through some bizarre monarchal vote (the Loyal Order of Screaming Fisherman fixed the ballots). Anyway, my first act as King was....
"Asdfgh!"
© 2000 kyle t.
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