Monthly Archives: August 2013

Audio Link for the blind

Cold. The kind of cold you feel in your bones. Just a few hundred more feet to go. The wind is picking up. I can see the shelter now. My thick black beard is covered with ice and snow but my face is warm. I don’t ever wear a mask. Those are designed for women. Known fact. My beard doesn’t stop really. Line of thick bushy hair goes down from my neck all the way to my belly button where it explodes into a glorious splotch on my nether regions. Say what you will about my lack of “manscaping” or whatever bullshit word you want to make up from being to concerned with yourself. Trimming your pubic hair is for mens whose dicks aren’t big enough to burst forth from their cock afros. I haven’t paid a woman yet who has had a problem with being with me. A real man.

“Why the arctic?” they ask. Simple. Global warming. Sure laugh now at snow farming or icericulture as I call it but you will see. The world will have a shortage of those two things and who will they turn to? Me. Carl Hardstream. There were 6 of us to start. We didn’t know much about cold survival. We learned quick. Or I guess I learned from their mistakes as they died off.

Lesson 1 – Stay covered.

As a joke I took Jim Stevens clothes a locked him outside the prefab shelter we had flown in. He was dead by morning. I was still laughing when I opened the door. Saw his frozen body in a fetal position and it creeped me out a little. The others screamed at me. I screamed back. How would I know? I thought you could insulate yourself with snow. Lesson learned.

Lesson 2 – Killer whales mean business.

Even with a special wetsuit you can only last a few minutes underwater. I was a spotter for Kyle as he dove off the side of the ice shelf to see how deep it went. Seals were everywhere. I thought of an awesome picture. As soon as he came up I grabbed him and tied his legs together and there he was. Flopping around like a seal on the ice. “This will be great” you look just like a seal. I steadied the camera as he screamed to for me to untie him and something about the temperature dropping. All of a sudden the seals scattered from the shore.

“HOLY GOD!! WHALES! UNTIE ME NOW.” He shouted.

“You idiot!” I said. “Whales eat plankton and shit. Plus you are not even in the wa…” Then..fuck me. This wave came out of nowhere like something I have never seen. Out of it was a fucking KILLER WHALE. It was awesome. Right on the shore and swallowed Kyle whole! I couldn’t fucking believe it. It then occurred to me that my friend might be alive in there. I ran to the tent and woke up Peter and grabbed a fish spear. I told Peter to suit up and it was an emergency. He did without question. Kick ass guy that Peter. We got to the shore and I tripped him and tied his legs. No time to hear arguments. He flopped around going crazy.

“Killer whales are attracted to the flopping because you look like a seal!” I yelled to him as I ran away to get distance. “It will come up and swallow you. Like it just did to Kyle. Use the spear and fight your way out once you…” Then two whales came out of the water at once and tore Peter in half. Fucking crazy amount of blood on the ice. Lucky for me I got it all on film. I realized it was too late and went back to base. There was more shouting. Talk of sending me to prison or killing me on the spot but they just didn’t get it. To clear things up I showed them the film. They were horrified.

“See? It was the whales not me.” I said.

Matt lunged at me but I easily fought him off as he was starving because we didn’t ration properly and had been out of food for some time. This is what led me to my final lesson.

Lesson 3 – Ration food.

So Matt has carefully planned every meal for 6 months. More than enough because eventually we could hunt for seal and fish. However, I know how people are when hungry. I took half the rations and hid them and the other half…well just became kind of my midnight snack for a while. Until it was gone. Everyone was furious and demanded to know where I hid the food. See? Exactly as I thought. Trying to get to the rations. They threatened to kill me but I assured them if I was dead they would never find the rations. Regardless Matt and Ted died a few days later of starvation.

I just finished throwing their bodies into the cold dark sea. The bobcat ran out of gas on the way back so I had to walk through this storm for the last half mile. Took me almost an hour. Way too long. I was excited to get to the shelter and the warmth of the heaters and my seemingly endless rations. My gloved hand grabbed the handle. Now the worst part. Unglove hand. Reach into pocket. Pullout keys. Has to be fast or I am screwed. Already hypothermia is setting in and my skin can’t be exposed too long.

Glove off. Hand in pocket. Keys. Where the fuck are the keys? Oh, that’s right. I put them in Teds pocket because mine were full of candy bars I ate on the way to bury them at sea.

Fuck.

Fucking shit ass fuck.

-Carl Hardstream

May 1993

Audio Link for the blind

I stroke my beard as I stare across the vast plain and all I see is the dusty swirl of my lost happiness and the emptiness of my despair. It’s been 2 years since Rita died but I do miss her so. I can still hear her now.

“Get up, Walter. Time to milk the cows.” She would say.

“Come on Walter milk faster you Nancy” She would encourage. The payoff of course was when she would let me milk that bountiful Midwest bosom of hers. I do mean that as she had a lactation problem and had to be milked on a regular basis. However, since I have a milk fetish and she a getting milked fetish I guess you could say it all worked out just fine. Then came the dark times.

I had never seen a dust storm. My pappy used to tell the tale of a dust storm that reached the moon in his days a boy farmer in the last 1800’s. He would get all kinds of riled up spinning his yarn about the size of the storm and the amount of dust that it left behind. I found out later that he had a dust fetish so I am not sure where the truth lied. My mammy would say he could exaggerate from time to time but she had an understatement fetish so she was hard to read at times. I remember the first storm. I stared at it for quite some time. At a distance it looked like any normal storm. I say that but something just didn’t sit right. I went about working the farm and by the time I looked up again it was too late. I tried to corral the cattle and upswing the yarn spin before Rita could uncluck the chicken giblet. I yelled for my boy, Sarah (family name) but he was nowhere to be found. We barely made it inside when it hit. I quickly wrapped my beard to protect it from damage. In these parts a man without a beard is like a man who doesn’t have facial hair covering his cheeks and chin. The storm shattered the glass in Sarah’s room where he was unfortunately pleasing himself as teenage boys are want to do. The doctor said that the shattering glass happening at the exact moment of his orgasm is what cause his broken glass fetish that plagued him for the next year. That is until his death.

The farm fell on hard times. They all did. Most of the cattle died because there was no grain to feed them. The land was bare because of the drought. The preacher said it was Gods will but his fetish of having will imposed on him made him a bit biased if you asked me. The science men said it was bad farming habits. “Oh yea, well you have a bad farting habit!” yelled an enraged Ted Bannister to the science men at a town hall meeting. He later apologized as it turned out one of the men did have a bad farting habit but fortunately his wife was an eproctophile. It didn’t matter. It was what it is and wasn’t what it was not. My boy died in 1934 from an accident no one was clear about. It involved a carbide bucket a mule and a shit load of dimes. The boy around town seemed to know something but they weren’t talking. My lovely Rita was rocked with sadness. I felt for her. I missed my son but in all honesty I never liked him too much. The loss of the cattle was worse.

Rita died on a Tuesday. I buried her myself. No way I was going to let Paul Manfeld near my wife’s graves. He was the local grave digger with a digging fetish. I had lost my cattle, my wife, my boy, and my farm. I didn’t know what to do. The soil was useless. There would be no crops. Word was the entire country was in upheaval. There was no other work. That is when I made my decision to stay. Many were heading west. I knew they wouldn’t find anything better. This was my farm. A farm that had been in my family since my Grandpappy Sarah Lactosington had dug the first well with his bare hands.

I have 4 cows, 1 horse, and a carbide bucket I use for a thing now that Rita is gone. They say it will turn eventually. Well, it has too. I stare at the graves of my wife and boy. Rita Reeta Lactosington and Sarah Familyname Lactosington. This isn’t for me. This is for them. This is to keep the family farm alive. A tear rolls down my face and is lost in the tangled mass of my face crop. That tear finds its grave with so many others as I have stood looking on where my family is buried. But this tear will be the last. I smell rain in the distance. I look out and see it far beyond the plains as it blurs the sky. Flowing like milk from my Rita’s bosom. Its heading this way. Looks like things are turning around. Tell those nancy boys in New York to stop jumping. Walter is about to farm some Goddamn land.

-Walter Lactosington

April 1937