Mermaids For Attila - Excerpt

War Memorial World-

At the entrance, one hundred guards in various states of squashedness. Mo, the tallest, exhibits concave rib cage. "How did it happen. Mo?" "I leapt into military situation with my hoedown still tapping its vim in my ear-ka-blooey!" We get enough of the picture. His friend Alexis is revering something small and metallic on the floor. "Come close," he says to our pleated-trousered leg. "This war," he says, involved a cost of three thousand bushels of aught-aught-six, and a good many lives of my comrades gentle in brooks and the fairs we got so very, very used to." Where is his face? "In the sixth month of it," he says, "the bloodhounds contrived to undo me."

"Tell us about your face."

"This war," he says, "involved the throwing of abundant livestock into the rivers of Hell. We were marching and growing a certain panache when clummo! The river swelled and only by remarching all the back to the front could we have repaired our situation, so clummo! We threw a farmful of livestock into it. Boom! The river stopped. Now who says there ain't no such thing as sympathetic magic?"