The Loneliness of the Long Distance SwimmerPart 3Subtitled: Yak coming, too? Elijah jumped off the ship in Hong Kong harbour, and straight onto a transport (that's what they called it, now) to Ulan Batur. I am going to disappear, he thought, wildly, to himself. No one will find me here! This was true. The abbot of the monastery he'd chosen had been looking for him for three days. "I've been looking for you for three days, my son. Where have you been?" Elijah shuffled his feet. "Searching for a suitable cave, your exaltedness", he answered, kicking the toe of his boot against the gravel on the path. "Cave for what, O, One in need of Enlightenment?" Elijah looked surprised. "To live in, of course. That's what hermits do - live in caves and stuff." The abbot nodded. "I know of a very nice one - was saving it for myself, but you can have it. It's... nice!" It was nice. Elijah was pleased. Warm, dry, with a sandy floor, and a small colony of pipistrelle bats to keep him company. Elijah remembered the loris. He resolved not to let a bat anywhere near his dick! "That's what hands are for", he announced to the father bat, who fluttered his wings and shit on Lijah's boot. "Fuck me! Bat shit! That's all I fucking needed!" Elijah, embracing the life of the aesthete with fervour, divested himself of his clothing, wound a rag about his genitals, and prepared himself for hermithood. He liked it. People brought food, and left it by the cave mouth. They sometimes came to stare, but that was no worse than the attention he got when he used to go shopping in LA. He was used to it. And no one said anything at all when the occasional shout of "Harder! Oh, yes! Give it to me, Big Boy!" shattered the peace. The hermit said it was Evil Spirits, and he should know. *** Three years passed. The hermit's beard grew long. His fingernails grew long. His hair, wild and improbable, grew to his waist. He needed a bath. "Hermits don't bathe", the abbot told him, sternly. "They rub ashes into themselves, and dust it off. I'll get someone to fetch some for you". Elijah couldn't see how rubbing himself with ash would improve matters. He determined to wash if it killed him. He went to the stream, tore his loincloth off, and jumped into the water. "Fuck! That's cold!" "Lighe?", an astonished voice hailed him from the bank. "Is it you underneath all that shit?" God, he knew that voice! "Dominic?", he squeaked. "Oh, Dom!" Dom stood on the bank, a vision in purple, his head shaved, a bowl of freesias in his hands. Dom sobbed, and leapt into the water, trailing his robes behind him. "Lighe! Lighe!" he wept on his friend's shoulder. Elijah wept back. Yes, Dominic had joined the same monastery as Lighe. When Lighe went missing, after the shipwreck, Dominic embraced the solitary life. The Time Warp that affected everyone else, did not touch this mini paradise. Dom was the Dom he had always been. Rapture! Joy! Bliss! They lived there, in the cave - two hermits, at peace with the world. And when the frequently heard cry of - "Fuck me, Lighe! Do me good!", or "Yes, Dom, you bastard - Oh, right in there, dude!" was heard amidst the trees, the native yak herders knew - the Evil Spirits were at it again! The End |