Gareth Skettlebones: Wild N’ Woolly

Gareth was salting some pork. Why was he salting pork? Turning each lengthy strip over and over across a crunchy granular bed of authentic sea salt? Gently, gingerly gripping the modest cuts between skeletal forefinger and slightly less skeletal thumb (mostly frozen decay had left him with a scrappy thumb); he was passing the midday hours in a most peculiar way. Sunlight clung to the sweeping wings of Gareth’s coat tails, fabric artfully caught in a quaint graveyard breeze. Tortured lich tears cruised down his cheeks. If he had eyebrows, or facial muscles, for that matter, he might be grimacing. Instead poor Gareth had to settle for a grisly setting of the teeth against the pain. Truthfully, he seemed more a jocular skeleton than one in monstrously existential pain - pain tended to be existential for a being without a fleshy body. But, how does one already dead feel pain?

It turns out, salt transcends the barriers of undeath, and considering how for a skeleton your entire form is but a boney open wound, salt is very much a killer.

Gareth should really stop salting that pork.

After a few hours of salting pork, and with no less than thirty kilos (sixty six pounds for those who dwell beneath the heathe) of painfully smeared product, Gareth began to pack up shop. He wiped his bony digits on a tattered cloth he had procured from a sailor who was dying of chronic hempen asphyxiation. The doctor was most accommodating to Gareth, who seemed not to mind the black hood and surgeons axe like most people. Scooping up his withered copy of “Commone Past-tymes of ye Olde Gentry”, conspicuously open on the page regarding the preparation of authentically vintage foodstuffs, Gareth strode from his salting-place.

“Gareth, you mangey frot, someone is here for you. He looks like a molester, make him leave, promptly. I’m having guests over later and I’d rather such obvious rod-nibblers have properly exited.”

“Geez, Finkleton, it’s the Third Era! You can’t just say things like that anymore. There is nothing wrong with people like that, and you should be friendly and accepting of them. God. Now, did you happen to catch a name? I am expecting a parcel from Citadel Express.”

The fellow who had engaged him was an elderly rodent named Finkleton; a common fixture in the cemetery backgammon nights and resident - eugh - bigot. Finkleton disliked many things he found unorthodox or unsanitary, things which, he would spit in the most ignorant words, “are fucking gay and wrong”. Indeed, Finkleton was not a lovable rat. He dressed most aberrantly and in the least enjoyably archaic style; none such that Gareth could appreciate. His wardrobe was that ghastly mix of reasonably vintaged but also distasteful tattered. Rather than the absent fraying elbows of some professor’s tweed ensemble, Finkleton had an eyesore ripped through the leg of his corduroys; replacing what should have been a centerpiece brass pocket watch was a foul splintered and wooden affair that barely kept up the time. One might assume it was as stuck in the past as the old rat was.

“Monstrous, Gareth! I don’t mean to talk to them! Tolerating them enough makes my skin itch.”

“Finkelton! You’re such a mean, dry old rat, it’s a wonder you still have friends. You know what they say, the loudest opposition always turn out to be closet supporters. Statistically, you’re just as likely, if not more so, to be a bedroom beef-gobbler, so I would hold your pest tongue before Rex hears you’ve been finding your way into the men’s birdbath much more than necessary. He’s about as bigoted as you are.”

Finkleton’s pinched rodent face turned even more pinched, in a faintly comic way, and his pince nez flexed across the furred contours of his face. His pink ears twitched spasmodically upon his head and his black eyes squinted and widened in a humorously furious manner.

“You...you aubergine! Cheese swindler! I have done nothing of the sorts! I’ll have you strung for making up such lies, how dare you! Accusing me of pitching my rump for those beasts of burden! You! Nothing more than a pansy piling of bones and ponce attitude. I’m not afraid of Rex, but you should be! Hounds gnaw on bones, you chattering gibbet, and we rodents will laugh as he sucks the marrow from you-”

“Sucking? Oh Finkleton, you are one of them! Why else would you turn straight to the slurping details. I bet you’ve got lewd thoughts running through your beady little head all day straight.”

After some more further expletives and insinuations regarding the consumption of girthy spears, Finkleton told Gareth that the person who had come to see him was “large, black and gay as sin” and then told him to take his “libey propaganda and get back into his coffin”. Of course Gareth, being a cosmopolitan student of modern values, was unaffected by such words and left him with grace, but not before flipping the rat one long bony bird. Awaiting Gareth, however, upon a weighty stone sarcophagus, resting most jauntily upon one bony elbow swathed in black that seemed to entwine the very light that fell upon it, was another lich.
“Garry, oh darling how good it is to see you again! Oh you look absolutely dashing; you’ve always been such a handsome rotting cadaver.”

“Nebuchadnezzar? You wily old autopsy, what are you doing in my quaint old neck of the cosmos?”

“Well, Garry, the times have reached a trough. The peaks are long gone, I say. I...well, to be perfectly honest with you Garry, I’m tired. I’ve spent so many years doing what I do best,” a modest smile split open the glittering white jaw of the newcomer lich, “and really, I don’t mean to say I haven’t enjoyed every single minute of it, but my bones, Garry. My bones ache after so long.”

Nebuchadnezzar, or Nez for short; sometimes “The Nez”; sometimes “Chad” or “The Chadster”; worse, “The Buzzing Electrophallus”. Like Gareth, he was a lich, a long-dead creature of unholy reanimation. Like Gareth, he towered over many mortals, but there the comparison stops. The Chadster preferred the brooding tones of robe and stole, the dramatic flair of a timely gust (natural or not), a style Gareth had often considered to be overly grandiose and garishly calculated during their days of harvesting and debauchery.

It had been many years since Gareth had last spoken to Nez. They shared a lengthy past, one that Gareth had tried to distance himself from for some time. But what had brought the old ‘phallus himself to old Carrowack’s Graveyard?

“Do you remember the good old days? We racked up quite a score, didn’t we. My phylactery was bulging by our last season. As you might’ve guessed, I spent most of it on hookers but I think I made some good investments here and there. You know that fiery valkyrie Tanya? Turns out she was the daughter of some business magnate from Midgaard, and apparently in Valhalla we were like celebrities or something, the girls would all gather on Friday’s to watch us harvest. The wonders of astral projection, eh?” Nez leapt off the sarcophagus and glided over to Gareth. He at least six inches over Gareth, something the poor resident lich wasn’t used to.

“Nez...it’s been so long. I barely think of those days, really. I’ve got a much better gig up here in my graveyard. I make this lovely brand of jam - which I think you’re going to love - out of pine bark and weasel blood, and I’m certain no one else is making jam like that; on Saturday’s I’m on the committee for organising a vintage apparel fayre down at the harbour, and I’m just a few days away from publishing my next pamphlet of poetry: “La Time of Sorrow: A Tale from the Tombstone.” My previous was highly praised, you know.” Gareth seemed nervous. He rolled up his sleeves and rubbed his right ulna with an increasingly fast pace.

“Lord, Gareth. You can’t be serious? Are you trying to say you prefer these bucolic past-times to the wild nights in Hell? The debauched raids through Hades? The bitches in Valhalla?? My God you always were a hipster but I didn’t think you were such a throbbing fag!” Like a slap in the face. Gareth took a step back, his jaw swinging from exposed hinges. “Excuse me, Nez, I never said that!” He exclaimed. “I’m just saying, I’m living my life now. The parties were great, for sure, but I’m not like that anymore. I’ve settled down!” Frustration etched his voice. Why was he getting so worked up over Nez’s careless words?

“I’m sorry, Gareth. I’ve just spent so long trying to find myself, I guess I’m just jealous of you. I don’t know. Come on, lets go have some tea. Where in this rotting parade ground to you call home?” asked Nez.

“Oh, I live in a giant mushroom.”

“Christ, Gareth, why can’t you be like normal dead people and live in a fucking grave.”