Mr. Brittle

PACIFIC EVENT B ROLL TRANSCRIPT 02:35-02:56

HARVEY TATE: “That’s right, Roger! It is amazing what you are about to see here. I warn you... this footage can be quite unsettling! It’s enough to give you the jeebies! The heebie-jeebies even. Here in California, the Pacific Ocean has receded approximately one hundred feet from the shore... during high tide. Peculiar to say the least. As you can see from this Stansfield family vacation video, it really just happens almost instantly. Like a drain has been pulled from a bathtub! Truly remarkable. What could have possibly caused this is on everyone’s mind. What does this mean for the world? Time will soon tell, Roger. There are some wild word of mouth as to WHY... uh, or even HOW rather, this is occurring. When we receive more information regarding that then we will certainly pass that along to you at the studio and our viewers at home.”

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DR. BRITTLE

While Dr. Brittle may have been home, he wasn’t much of a viewer. He was not the proud owner of a television set. In fact, he was rather proud that he wasn’t even a disgruntled owner of a television set.

Dr. Brittle lived in a modest place outside of the city. A city of little consequence to anyone really. He seldom explored or bothered himself with the outdoors. The very idea gave him the heebie-jeebies. In short, Dr. Brittle lived alone.

With a stature that suited his home perfectly, the fair doctor contently milled about his home with ease. His demitasse cup fit just so in his dignified right hand. His index finger gently touching the tip of his thumb with just enough force to keep the surface of the espresso still and traquil. The weight of the single, if that, shot of espresso rested upon the doctor’s dainty nub of a middle finger. A double just too much. On the other sinister decaffeinated hand, a quill ceased its writing as a smile came to his face.

He sipped a sip. A sip of a sip. A savory sip of a sippy sip it was.

He restrained a trite giggle. The doctor loved a simple life, full of simple sentences, and all the pleasures that simplicity had to offer.

He drew the curtains to enjoy the ambient silence playing in his ears like a full orchestra. If he keened his ears and listened hard enough he could distinctly hear absolutely nothing. Vivaldi to his ears.

Only today, distinctly something happened. That distinct something starting with a distinct someone. As if crudely over the knee of a Rachmaninoff lover, Dr. Brittle’s rendition of Vivaldi was broken off forever... with a distinct knock at the door. Three times, in fact.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Statistically, that was how many knocks it took to get Brittle’s attention to the door, no matter the interior’s happenings at the knocking’s instance. Perish the thought that one would only knock twice, the good doctor thought. Four and you were just imposing.

“DUDE!”, duded the dude.

Dr. Brittle brittled.

They must have had a tiff. It was Dom.

DOM

The dude lay on the good doctor’s cold black leather couch staring off into the vastness of space, which at the moment looked exactly like the vastness of a white stucco ceiling. Dr. Brittle was discerning and wanted nothing more than to help a good man. A good man Dom was. Even though he stressed his poor couch.

“Dude, my life is flashing before my very eyes.”

“Are you sure it’s your life?”

“Yeah, dude. Flashing. Like a neon sign, man. Eat at Joe’s! Eat at Joe’s! Right there. Before my very eyes.”

“Before or after you-”

“Before, dude!”

“-close your eyes? Before or after you close your eyes? Or perhaps during is more fitting. This is very important.”

Puzzled, Dom tapped his chin. Dr. Brittle debated to himself why he even asked such a silly question. The great debate was short lived and ended with a shrug.

“Dude. I see her all the time.”

“Her? I thought this was about your life?”

Mr. Brittle shook the idea from his head.

“She is my life, bro. Evangelina is my life. We’re like simpatico, man. I mean, yeah, it used to be surfing. But, Evangelina just like... makes life make sense. I dunno. I’m afraid of losing her though because she’s kinda making me lose myself. She’s, I dunno, made me afraid of myself.”

“Afraid of yourself? How so?”

“Well... I look at a dude bite it on the curl and I get the heebie-jeebies. Didn’t used to bother me. A dude gets the wobbles off a break and my stomach is now doin’ a handstand. I mean, is that what I look like to her? Makes a man wonder. Could be me drinkin’ that big glass of water and it’d be a hard swallow, ya’ know? ‘Specially for ‘Lina. Can’t bear that.”

“I see. Heebie-jeebies, eh? Interesting.”

“You ever been surfing, Dr. Brittle?”

“Oh, heavens no. I’d never. Can you imagine me in such a getup? The day my mind comes up as a missing person is the day you’ll see me running around in Bermuda shorts. Or worse. Spandex leaving nothing to the imagination. Let alone running for that matter. Where in God’s name am I in such a hurry to go? Me and water? Preposterous! Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. No thank you.”

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PACIFIC EVENT B ROLL TRANSCRIPT 03:02-03:45

ROGER FULLER: “That was our own Harvey Tate reporting live from Santa Monica. Bonnie, reports are now coming in from Japan, as the truly incredible is happening right now on Nippon Live. We have Kiko Tetsuo reporting from Tokyo. Oh, I am told we do not have her. We do not have Kiko. We do however have her feed. Am I right? Yes, we do have the feed. Now, uh, this is live footage we are getting of a... mountain in the making. A fissure is our guess before we can bring it to the light of a professional. We really can’t quite make it out from here and this is a bit of an assumption. Can we get them to backout? It really is too difficult to make out. That’s good. As you can see, there is a vast water spout and some kind of sea mass swelling from the fissure. Astonishing. Ok, so... they are coming around and focusing... on what may prove to be the most cataclysmic natural phenomenon of our time. Incredible humidity at this point, Bonnie. That is mist and ocean spray collecting there on the lens. Is a volcano inevitable at this point? Or is it volcanic at all? We just can’t rule that out as impossible. We almost have to expect the impossible at this point, Bonnie. HOLY (expletive omitted)! DID YOU SEE THAT? WHAT THE (expletive omitted) WAS THAT?! DID WE GET THAT? PLEASE TELL ME WE ARE GETTING THIS!”

---

Tap Tap Tap tapped a tap.

Right on time. As usual. She’s always lovely.

EVANGELINA

“So, Doc Brittle, ya’ gotta help me. It’s Dom. Love the guy. Truly do. But, I’m afraid.”

The waifish blonde sulked into the black couch her boyfriend once laid. She recognized the brawny trenches left in the couch. She played her fingers in the wake of him. She collapsed and stretched out on the couch with the drama of a Shakespearian cat with Egyptian ancestry.

“I’m afraid. I’m afraid that he’s gonna hurt himself in that big blue ocean. So much unknown. So much uncharted waters. So much charted waters. So much water. Somali pirates. Refugees. Hurricanes. Sharks. Fish with the big googly eyes. You know the ones. Then you got that Mary Anna’s Trench that goes down like a mile. All those creepy crawlies. No thank you. They give me the heebie-jeebies.”

Ever so briefly, the doctor had a flash of déjà vu. For a fleeting moment, it was truly vivid in his mind’s eye. In fact, it was so fleeting it was already gone. The heebie-jeebies really seemed to be making the rounds.

“Heebie-jeebies, eh?” Dr. Brittle scribbled on his notepad. Nothing discernable or pertaining to his patient, but he liked to think that it helped his thought process. A seismograph on a fault line of creative thinking running from North to South, East to West, up to down, corner to corner , upstairs to downstairs, red to blue, and cat to dog. Dr. Brittle crumpled up the impulsive gibberish and bank shot the wad atop Mt. Rubbish. A mountain jutting from his trashcan that one could mine enough paper and ink for both a Dostoevsky masterwork and a Nabokov novella.

“Please continue, my dear.”

Evangelina would continue until her time was up. Both were satisfied with their thoughtful session as they parted ways. He was as brilliant as usual.

Dr. Brittle decided to draw a bath and give Dom and Evangeline’s relationship a good long soak in a new scented bath oil. Much A Dew About Nothing. Cute. That would do the trick, he supposed. He had no idea. He had no idea why he was so afraid for them. His spine tingled. A bubble bath of generic soap would have done just fine. After all, he wasn’t Baby Jesus or a Saudi prince.

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PACIFIC EVENT B ROLL TRANSCRIPT 03:45-04:15

ROGER FULLER: “ O, THE HUMANITY! O, THE INHUMANITY! O, THE MANATEES!

RIP: DOM & EVANGELINA

Dom and Evangelina were soon awarded the Romeo & Juliet Award, as presented by Sir William Shakespeare himself. The couple was posthumously voted ‘The Most Unfortunate Death among Star-Crossed Lovers’ by the Heavenly Host of The All-Saint’s Choice Award in the afterlife. Shakespeare’s soul hoped that his corpse was rolling over in it’s grave for such a slap in the face. In his humble opinion they didn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as his beautiful tragedy, or any romantic ritual suicide for that matter.

Dom and Evangelina were mashed to smithereens and chewed like cud for a good two hours before being deposited in the eighth stomach of Mor De Nor, the once dormant leviathan of civilizations past and scourge of history’s lost societies.

Hardly deserving of the Romeo & Juliet Award, let alone an All-Saint’s Choice Award! Nobody asked ME. Shakespeare grumbled as his soul sulked about the four corners of the heavens for a millennia.

---

MOR DE NOR

&

THE END OF THE WORLD

The gluttonous beast left a swath of destruction unlike the Earth had ever seen before. A partially digested Golden Gate Bridge sat along a ruined Brooklyn Bridge. The twisted similarities were uncanny now. The bile rivers now coursing through the streets wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been for the Kremlin and Chernobyl belched out in sulfuric puke over New York’s projects. The sweet and sour pork product of Bolshevik policy and bureaucracy of free society filled a society that had become a rice bowl of maggots.

A mangled Eiffel Tower served as a twisted jungle gym in the once vast sandbox of the now Sahara Mudhole. Not even cockroaches and Twinkies survived the serpentine cords of tongues lashing out of the creature. In fact, if the flavor of those two ‘Never-Say-Die’s hadn’t complimented each other so much to Mor De Nor’s taste buds then he may not have developed such a savoring of the rest of earth’s creepy crawlies.

The cantankerous monolith rose his clumsy redwood limps to collapse upon the earth herculine footprints of hell burnt ruin. One step over the other, city block folded over city block. Armies swept to the left. Governments swept to the right. Only to all be scooped up later with the slovenly and inescapable maw of Mor De Nor.

Mankind didn’t miss the world as they knew it, because mankind had perished. The disheveled planet sat in wait for worth and value, because every man, woman, or child had been devoured... save for one. The one Mor De Nor had saved for last. The most unlikely of the most improbable.

GaGOOM! GOOM. GaGOOM!

Not friendly knocks in the slightest. However, the trifecta was impossible to ignore. It did meet the agreeable criteria. Very well then, Mr. Hardknocks. What are we going to learn today?

The doctor went clockwise with the doorknob. Just so, as he always did. Or did he? Panic streaked from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. Clockwise, or counterclockwise?! Dr. Brittle second guessed himself and quickly corrected his turn counterclockwise. Corrected? Overcorrected?

His panic was apparently justified because his correction triggered his entire house to explode in 4.6 seconds of the most insane chaos conceivable per square inch in his modest home. A rather harsh retort to his inability to open his own front door.

He knew this would happen. He knew that he panicked for a reason. He always panicked for the wrong reason.

The front door stood alone in the laid waste around him of everything Dr. Brittle owned in life. He reached to open the door. The door plunged away from his grasp in a nose dive from it’s lack of hinges. A pungent inferno promptly blasted hot spittle onto the doctor’s face.

“I am Mor De Nor. Reaper of Worlds, Keeper of Souls, and your end!”

The doctor missed the thing’s introduction, as he was more occupied flicking limp webs of mucus from his fingers that he had just wiped from his face.

What on earth?

I AM on Earth!

What is going on?

I AM going on!

What are you going on about?

I AM going on about ME!

Well go on then. What is the meaning of this?

I AM the meaning of this, that, and all you will ever know!

How is that possible?

I am possible because today I have become your humanity.

You are most certainly not human or humanity for that matter.

I AM. I have brought humanity unto myself and together in consciousness. Humanity is me and I am humanity! And only we remain.

“You’re giving me the heebie-jeebies. You’ve destroyed humanity. It is not you we fear, but us. We destroy what we fear the most, sometimes without even knowing that which we fear. That feeling of not knowing what we are afraid of is often worse than any. I don’t know what you are, but I am afraid that if I became you... then humanity will have lost all its humanity and I’m afraid I’ll have no part of that. You will never become me!”

Mor De Nor smiled his crooked cave of a mouth and coughed a single plume of a crude exhaust.

I need not become you, because I am you and you are me.

Dr. Brittles sputtered sparkling bubbles from his mouth. He awoke to a bleak eggshell colored bathroom. A toppled bottle of Mort D. Norton’s Organic Body Wash pouring freely into a growing mountain of crystalline soap suds in his bath tub. Where am I? His eyes darted about to see his comforting cartoon manatees dancing about his scrunched shower curtain.

Oh the hue of manatees! Thank God. Home. My lovely home. It was all just a dream. Was it a dream? It felt so real. Should I go outside just to make sure? No, no...that’s ridiculous. Why would I? It’s a dream, Dr. Brittle. I’m not a doctor! What am I saying?It was just a fun little fiction that your mind cooked up to keep busy and nothing more. You know that. Everyone knows that. Well, not everyone because you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? Of course not. It’s ludicrous. Why would you tell anyone such a silly dream?

He hoped he’d never contract the heebie-jeebies to anyone else.

I knew it was clockwise.