MacKenna's Gold

Steely cold blue misty night. Two riders approach on dark blood-nosed horses - twins, the horses that is, not the men. The men seek locks of MacKenna's gold tresses from her hidden areas - locked away and guarded by her blond bearded man. The riders unsheathe their scrolls and ready for a duel. The creatures of the night settle in their front row thrones, chewing on the carcasses and sipping the blood of the weaker ones that fell on the way.

Mistah Owl, he Wise, hoots to commence the duel. The first rider's voice cuts through the night, but only steel can cut steel, and his soft voice only cuts through MacKenna's heart like putty - a gal raised on cliched foreplay techniques and premature orgasms. The wolves yawn at the moonless sky, the jackals frown like Italian circus clowns, the wild boars pick their filthy noses with their tails. If it were a Disney musical, the forest chorus would lull themselves to sleep amidst all this romantic 'nonsense'. Blondie just scratches his blond beard like a taxidermist in the wrong room at a PETA convention. Finally, after what seems like three lunar cycles, Rider #1 pauses a beat for breath, but it's a little too long, as Mistah Owl, he Wise, starts to hoot uncharacteristically like a roadside Romeo. The wolves start howling at the moonless sky, the jackals laugh nervously, like virgin fillies on first rides. Rider #1 is stunned into silence; MacKenna is caught red-handed with her hand up her skirt (and quickly withdraws the right hand).

The next sound is that of bullets fornicating at a shooting gallery - the pure, evil, shrill of a Tenor gone astray. It's Rider Deux reading from his frozen scroll - projecting like Shakespeare before he published. The carcass gallery quietens down and listens to the most beautiful eagle sounds if there ever were one, but this is a man - ostensibly so, he has arms and legs and a head and toes, thinks Mistah Owl, he Wise. The jackals amble over to the wolves and chase their elusive tails. The boars on the other side, are smoking from pipes fashioned from long bark trees. Blondie, raised on timid female attention and disinterested sex, is elsewhere. He is bouncing off puffy white cotton clouds on his fuel-empty red circumcised jet (more aerodynamic, they say). He takes his butcher's blond yellow hairy hand and puts it on the gearbox, he pauses, stroking it, as if it were a Cuban cigar, reveling in the pure entirely selfish pleasure and gives it a thrust, moving faster and faster, like a vulture, spreading its wings over the carcasses of other vultures. And then, just as it began, it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang, but sudden, like reindeer in headlights, and there is a beat of pure, holy silence, as the crowd takes it all in.

And then, and then, Blondie drops his pants - that's the sign! The boars regroup like a group of stoned teenagers out looking for Whitecastle and poof, thud, poof, it's done, just like that, not with a whimper or a bang, but suddenly, Rider #1 and his twin are torn to carcasses. Rider Deux smiles shyly like he's just won American Fuckin' Idol. His steed, too stoic to weep, is all glazed-eyed, staring straight at MacKenna, who has the air of someone who just bet on the wrong horse at the tracks. Deux gets bold. He jumps off his horse and goes down on one knee (the left one) and does an encore, directed solely at MacKenna and her gold hidden tresses. A couple of lines, but alas, Blondie, betrayed like Monsieur Bovary, pulls his pants up. A beat of stunned sobriety and then the boars go to town on Deux and his twin.

And so it ends, not with a whimper, or a bang like in the past, but suddenly. The wolves and jackals go back to each of their homes, the boars burp discordantly with their short tails between their stocky legs, MacKenna goes back to cliched romance and premature orgasms with Blondie and Mistah Owl, he Wise, does nothing but sighs. It's a deep sigh, as only Wise old owls can manage. It's not visual, but internal and nothing in those eyes, those stony steely eyes, that has seen countless massacres by stoned wild boars on moonless chilly nights.