Kali The 2nd, aka Rosy Cheeks, Atop Mountain Range

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eekout.gutterforth.trammelline.

layeracross.flipside.zenturn.

(proceed with edit)

The first arc in my mountain linear graph is her face appearing. She had a long horsey kind of face, wide brow structure, narrow purt mouth, subtle almost imperceivable pastel makeup. I wouldn’t call her a painted doll by any means, so she didn’t look trampish in any sort of sense. In fact, she looked resolute and determined. She looked straight back at me like a doting daughter. I was aware that my thought processes had just created her. Maybe my thought processes should be the first arc point here, but I don’t know what I’m doing with arcs. I only know there are seven major points of eventfulness to which they are strung along and entwined nicely alongside each other, like simple how-to steps in a recipe menu.

Take a situation, and highlight seven different important points which happen in chronological order. That’s an arc. I know, I know, I really do know, there is much more to it than that, there has to be, but not more than I dare to care about. Give me a moment here, before we trip onwards, because I’m gunna Bing it. I used to Google it, now I Bing it. Okay, done. Didn’t take a moment did it. It starts with a ‘hook’ and ends with a ‘resolution’, which is all I render as important.

I always thought I was correct in thinking that there was a bit just after the middle, towards the end, when the baddie, who was primarily thought defeated at one point, comes back for a second go. That happens in every film, the baddie coming back for second helpings, apart from Equilibrium (2002), in which case the final baddie just gets battered before hardly having a chance to draw his sword, by a gunshot from the goodie. Dispatched instantly, without having time to throw a single haymaker. That’s become a thing.

My mentor, who was nowt but a dirty and strong common roofer who bought me breakfasts sometimes (some way to summarise an individual), used to tell me to start at the beginning and finish at the end, if I was confused. One mad hatter told me to write the ending first. He wasn’t Johnny Depp. Even better advice than writing the ending first is not to write anything at all, somebody else recommended! My A-Level teacher insisted that I just show up for class, because I was becoming missed by being steeped in porn. She wrote me a letter actually, hand-written, Andrew, where are you, please come back to lessons, your coursework time is running out…sweet, touching, uplifting, but no match for cannabis and high-resolution XXX. Shame on me. Now, this is far better than XXX. I think…nudge-nudge-wink-wink. Where were we? Or I? You were just making a cuppa, weren’t you…? Lol.

Kali. What we’re doing on top of a mountain, an ill-lighted murky mouintain, is none of your business. It’s none of mine. She appeared from my brain, and looked at me gargling a mouthful of thick stringy white fluid, like milk mixed with blended porridge oats. Yes! She appeared in the ree-al! The real! This, I hope, hooks you in. My thoughts at the time were influenced by an elderly diplomatic shaman and his frog poison. Between these two, my brain waves had ascended off the planet and became resident in what can only be described as a lush casino-like lounge on Neptune, where I picked up Kali (the 2^{nd, she insisted}) and brought her back to Earth with me.

Astra the Shaman, nice name isn’t it, leaned forward and touched the dribble from her lips. He raised it to his mouth and tasted it. The way I looked at him doing this would have tickled me if I could see it in mad dog 20/20 super eagle eye vision hindsight. He seemed childlike, like a tween investigating a milkshake with hundreds and thousands tippled every which way about it. He was always very interested in the psychoactive properties of substances, and Kali’s suspicious white slobber was no different.

After licking his lips, he pulled a sour face and fell off the cliff (or mountaintop, which ever you prefer) backwards, arse over tit. I hate to say that this was the last we ever heard from him. His fading, floating-back-uppy cry down the high side of the prominence haunted, I think, both me and Kali the 2^nd. The terrain, I have failed to mention, was tremendously treacherous. One wrong footing and you were brown bread. Astra just got diddily done proving it to the two of us.

The wind was out to sculpt dunes that night. I had the insane idea that it was pissing its head off at him. When it started screeching, like a ban–

“Let me wash your clothes,” Kali the 2^nd muttered, and reached for me, her stubbed fingers tearing at my lapels.