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The Story That Is Built One Sentence At a Time By Those That Read It

 

"In a land of mysticism, bad speeling and poor grammar, there emerged a story, unlike any ever told, that begins with an extremely overworked introduction sentence and continued as it was added upon by all those that read it..."

 

A flash of lightning tore through the tumult, illuminating the grizzled Elemenstor and his ambulatory dresser. Pausing uncertainly, the sagacious one pulled out a well-worn and faded parchment. It was a grocery list from six years ago. The Elemenstor frowned a grizzled frown, barely visible through his significantly grizzled beard. "This will not do," he thought. He still hadn't found the legendary Pickle of Decay. It had been almost literally ages since he had set out for the store, his kind wife reminding him, "Don't forget the milk, dear!"

 

She was gone, now - slain by the Dark Elemenstors. The milk she had craved had long since curdled in the second drawer of the dresser. The bitterly acrid smell of soured milk had been the Elemenstor's constant companion for all these long years; it was the stench of regret. The Elemenstor turned to his gentle, wooden companion and searched through its cavernous compartments, taking stock of the vegetables, meats and fruits of his long quest.

 

Little did he know that an ebony cupboard was watching him, hidden in the darkness of the night! Its handles glinted in the moonlight, and it twitched hungrily as he searched.

 

 

Gathering his robes around him, the Elemenstor continued to trudge through the forest. The village of Slishpoy lay a night's travel ahead and a with it the promise of information. As the lightning flashed overhead his constant mahogony companion; who until that moment had been trundling gracefully at his side caught the talon-held ball of his right front leg on a branch and tumbled awkwardly into the mud.

 

"Drat this lightning," the Elemenstor said to himself in his grumbliest, most Elmenstatory tones. "And drat this storm."

 

"Drat yourself," the storm replied. "Some of us are busy trying to earn an honest living around here."

 

The lightning snickered.

 

Ignoring the rude weather, the Elemenstor arose to continue his long, and thus far, boring journey. Just then, something incredibly surprising and unbelievably exciting happened!

 

The ground twisted and heaved, and the Elemenstor leaned heavily upon his ambulatory dresser as molten lava fountained into the sky. "Finally! A reason to do some Elemenstation on this dratted journey!" he cried, and unleashed a powerful shielding Elemenstation on himself and his dresser.

 

A bright orangish-purple glow began to emanate from the very molecules of air surrounding the Elemenstor, and dresser began to hum as every fiber of his being became suddenly infused with the violent erruption of his master's energy. As the raging, tempestuous lava flow wilted back into the earth, a twisted, inhuman snicker echoed forth from the darkness. Off in the distance, a shadowy figure emerged.

 

"Old friend," the figure hissed, "It's been too long - and too long since it's been your time to pay for what you did to my dark master!"

 

The Elemenstor raised his staff and shooed away his dresser, who regressed sheepishly into the dark shadows of a nearby grove and turned to shield its eyes from the confrontation.

 

"I always knew you would return. The terrible transgressions that transpired under the tutelage of your terrible teacher were too transfiguring to, to, um, let's see here..." the Elemenstor declaimed, stopping to rummage in the folds of his robe for the speaking notes he had prepared for this very occasion.

 

 

 

But the time for notes was not now and perhaps not ever, depending entirely on the outcome of the battle that threatened to ensue as the Glowing Fence Cage of Combat appeared and encircled the field of play.

 

"Wait, wait," proclaimed the shadowy figure in a dark and shrill voice as he withdrew a long parchment of eldritch symbols, "I haven't read my significantly longer and more convincingly alliterative speech!"

 

"Oh bollox," the Elemenstor said to himself, and sighed. "I knew you'd want to steal my thunder."

 

"When the white winds were washing Wonder from the world," the figure intoned, ignoring his foe. "And all the arrows of the Hierarchs aimed along the sights of Arcady..."

 

"And he wonders why nobody listens to him," the Elemenstor said. "Convincingly alliterative, my foot."

 

The figure glared: "Are you going to let me finish this, or not?"

 

"Go on, go on, you might as well."

 

The Elemenstor beckoned his dresser back out of the shadowed grove -- the danger having passed for the moment -- and took a seat with exaggerated weariness upon its glossy, but not unused, top.

 

"Thank you," the figure said, clearing his throat. "Now..."

 

The figure frowned.

 

"You'd made it to the bit about Arcady."

 

"Ah. Quite--" he ahem'd, and resumed with extra drama, hoping to recapture the atmosphere of mystery after being interrupted "--When all this came to pass, my master met MooMaa the Maleficient, maker of many murderous masterworks, and spake serious spaeches--"

 

"Look, that's not even a word," the Elemenstor said.

 

"The like of which no man hath h'never heard hence. MooMaa merely Ma--"

 

It's a pity that the figure never quite finished the word -- it was the beginning of not only the most rhetorically important passage of his speech, but it also happened to be the single most important word ever uttered -- or not uttered, in this case -- in the long and storied history of all Battal. It was The Word Itself, and the figure was the last being alive that knew what it was.

 

He failed to finish speaking The Word because something very, very painful happened to him just as he began it, and which quite continued until long after he would otherwise have finished it. He looked down at his chest and saw a gyser of blood. His eyes strained to see the weapon with which he'd been undone, but there was only a tube made of some foreign substance rammed through his vital organs, and in a flash it, and its wielder, were gone.

 

Sullenly sliding off the top of his dresser, the Elemenstor did his best to take stock of the increasingly bizarre situation. From the shadows to his right emerged the ebony cupboard, which had been silently waiting for the most dramatic moment to make its appearance-- and its attack.

 

"Predictable, that," the Elemenstor's Dresser thought to itself. "Those ebony pieces are always putting on airs about how dark and mysterious and stealthy they are. Think they're ninjas. Bah."

 

"I am no mere ninja!" cried the ebony cupboard as thunder boomed in the heavens. "Ninjas would wish to cower at my feet. I am power unchained. I am His keeper of things. I am-"

 

"Splinters, if you don't bugger off," the Elemenstor said.

 

"How'd it know what I was thinking?" the Dresser thought. "Hello?"

 

"Your elemenstatory powers won't save you from my wrath, fool!"

 

"Testing, testing," the Dresser thought. "Heloooo?"

 

Vexed, the Elemenstor rolled up the sleeves of his robe: "I did ask you nicely."

 

"You told me to bugger off!"

 

"I threatened you, too."

 

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven," the Dresser thought as omnidirectionally as it could. "All good cupboards go to--"

 

"Oh, well, that's very polite, isn't it?" the ebony piece said. "Threatening a stick of furniture half your size."

 

The air crinkled with flashing fronds of power -- the Elemenstor's fingers glowed. This elemenstoral quality - the regality - of this entire encounter was going downhill fast, he thought to himself.

 

Crackles of purest elemenstation spat from his fingertips and the top of his tall and very pointy hat.

 

The ebony cupboard cowered against his vast epicness, awaiting the inevitable end.

 

"Eh, sod it." shrugged the Elemenstor. The power around him winked out as he tipped the cupboard on its side.

 

"Hey, no fair!" yelled the cupboard as it struggled to right itself.

 

"Now," said the Elemenstor as he took a seat on a nearby tree root, "Tell me where I can find the legendary Pickle of Decay."

 

"Yeah!" chimed the Dresser, "And no more mind-readin', or I'll thump ya!"

 

"Very well", sighed the cupboard, "though I cannot give the precise location of that which you search for, I can point you in the right direction."

 

The cupboard stopped wobbling ineffectually on its side, and a dangerous glint appeared where its eyes may have been, had it had eyes.

 

"So, are you pointing right now?" inquired the Elemenstor, "I can't really tell. Which end of you should I follow?"

 

"My hands," the dark cupboard shrieked, "My hands you fool! Well, they're not so much hands, they're more like, my front legs... Or something. Man, I don't know."

 

"So," the Elemenstor said hesitantly, looking at the malevolent cupboard's feet, "you're saying that the legendary Pickle of Decay, elemental icon of oxymoronity, the most powerful of pickled artifacts, is in the Forest of Burning Britches over younder?"

 

The elemenstor's dresser gasped, recognizing the infamous forest by reputation, for from its wood was born the most demonic of furniture, the dark one's Twisted Furniliars.

 

With a dramatically raspy voice, the ebon cupboard intoned,"Yes, fool, yes. The forest! The forest of pain, and suffering, and more bad things to come! Your britches will burn, fool! Burn for all ages!"

 

Suddenly, with a sound that sounded like a million papers being ripped apart at the same time, the ebon cupboard exploded and its wood turned into dust.

 

 

The Elemenstor blinked as the dust settled. "That was interesting..." he said, furrowing his already signifigantly furrowed brow. He mulled over his situation for some time. Then, reaching a decision, he set out toward the Forest of Burning Britches, stepping over the large younder in his way.

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

Horatio was not in a good way.

 

"Higher. Higher. Little more. Liiiiiiitle more." The woman sighed. "Yeah. Hold it there."

 

"Are you sure? Cause I'm not going to move that sofa for the next two hours. I have a life, you know?", he lied.

 

She sighed, made a little 'tut' sound with her tongue, then said: "Oh darling what will we do with the portrait of Mummy?"

 

Horatio sighed. Thus was the life of a Tribbit. Safe... leisurely... boring. His heart ached for adventure. Well, not adventure, as such, but at least something more exciting than redecorating the house all day. Even the life of a Mucksucker, filled with sweat and dank and good honest work, appealed to him. You see, Horatio was the youngest son of the powerful (in the Tribbit world) Luskfish clan, and that carried certain responsibilities. Mainly, to keep out of the other members' way, and to keep a nicely decorated home.

 

Horatio wanted something new in his life.

 

His fiancé, Wendybell, was not so inclined.

 

"I said", she intoned with her practiced upper-class accent, "What shall we do with the portrait?"

 

"I don't know! Do anything!" screamed Horatio. As Wendybell's face quickly changed from disbelief to anger, Horatio knew he must act quick to extricate himself from this predicament. He ran screaming and flailing his arms, down the stairs to the first floor and outside into the market square.

 

Upstairs, Wendybell cocked her head to the side as she gazed at the portrait. "That does look...yes, I do believe that's the perfect position on the wall there. Now, where did my lovely little fool of a fiancé go?"

 

As Horatio ran through the hustling and bustling market square, he wondered aloud exactly how a square could hustle and bustle in and of itself. His ponderings were cut short as a surly armoire slammed into him, knocking Horatio to the cold cobble-stone.

 

"Watch where you're go--," Horatio stopped mid-sentence, his collision with the armoire threw its doors open, and in its musty depths Horatio spied a rather startling symbol.

 

It was the symbol of The Item lawyers Makers Guild, which Horatio had had quite a nasty tussle with years ago, and below it was a single roll of parchment marked with Horatio's name.

 

Horror donned slowly upon the face of poor Horatio for he knew then that his frivolous and youthful violation of Item Law 32 had finally caught up with him. He knew right away that he must think of a brilliant plan to hide his knowledge of Culimancy, that he absolutely had to have his brilliant idea before he could even think another word!

 

As Horatio scratched his goatee, his eyes flowing around the market square in search of inspiration, the armoire glared at him expectantly, tapping its front-left leg softly upon the cobble-stone street.

 

An idea rose in Horatio's mind with such brilliance that he blinded himself, a brilliance some would expect only in a retard than a mere mortal. "Pbxys Ssyvnz Gvuu-!" Horatio started. The armoire raised an eyebrow.

 

"May I help you?" it asked. Bracing itself for the unwelcome cloud of dust that always seemed to settle upon it when events of deep Epicness were brewing, it awaited an answer.

 

"You could, um, burst into flames?" squeaked Horatio, adding "If it's not too much trouble, that is."

 

This particular event being only about as deeply Epic as the history of the small depression in the center of Small Puddle, or perhaps not even, a very small amount of dust settled about the armoire; being just enough to set off its rather inconvenient type of allergies.

 

"Aw, come on! Did'ya really have to do that?" it asked, sneezing.

 

Horatio only whimpered. His knowledge of Elemenstoring, a field forbidden to Tribits, was understandably sketchy. However, he was certain that last spell should have blown the armoire off its hinges.

 

"Y'see," the armoire sniffled, "I'm tryin' to find this Horatio Luskfish guy. Got a subpoena for 'im. You know where he lives? Should be a big house with lousy decor."

 

At that inopportune moment, a familiar voice from the crowd caught Horatio's ear. "Horatio!" the voice called. "Horatio Luskfish! You still haven't fixed that lousy decor!"

 

Horatio's heart dropped to his stomach as Wendybell draped her arms across his shoulders. He contemplated denying it, claiming she must have mistaken him for someone else, but somehow that didn't seem like a feasible option. So he did the only other thing he could think to do: He pushed Wendybell away and fled.

 

Horatio knew that he needed to get away, and also knew that the furniture had trouble telling Tribbits apart, so he ran towards the one place where he could blend in; the Mucksucking fields.

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

Three years later, a rather grubbier Horatio (now using the clever alter-ego "Shmoratio Shmuskfish") toiled away in the Dooblegnards' swampy fields.

 

It wasn't quite as pleasant as he had imagined.

 

The Dank was filled with the odors of hundreds of Dooblegnards, all warm and rich and musky. It was also where Horatio spent his time pulling muck off the fattest, nastiest, most demanding Dooblegnard: Duke Alfamarma.

 

Duke Alfamarma was ugly, disgusting and would give the nastiest commands to all who he did not deem worthy of his presence. As much as he loved the Tribbit known as Gabe, he hated Horatio. "SHMORATIO!!!" he boomed through The Dank. Horatio had heard him, and didn't want to go, but all the other Tribbits said he ought to go, be it that they'd want to leave The Dank that night to go celebrate Mike's birthday. Horatio knew of neither a Mike, nor of his birthday, but, as his fellow Mucksuckers insisted, he went anyway.

 

As it turned out, the party was boring and uneventful. After only three and a half elims Horatio threw back his last cocktail and headed off, a little tipsy, to find Duke Alfamarma, knowing well that his tardiness would not be looked upon kindly by the rotund Alfamarma.

 

As he approached the Duke, the obtuse man stared down at him from over his stomach and cried "Shomrey!, how have things been?" Many of the others in The Dank turned to listen, as little better was going on.

 

Horatio tried to sober up by shear act of will. He needed his wits about him; not only was Duke Alfamarma the name of the biggest, nastiest pit boss working the Dank, it was also the name of the biggest, nastiest Dooblegnard, whom Duke (the Tribbit) had named after himself. Things would not go well for him if he confused the two.

 

Meanwhile, Duke (the Dooblegnard) chewed his cud thoughtfully, or at least as thoughtfully as a large, slow-witted quadruped was capable of.

 

 

 

Realizing he had paused for too long and the boss was becoming impatient, Horatio stammered his response.

 

 

"I sh-shwear it washn't me."

 

The Duke narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Get to working, lazy-bones." He snarled. "You're already on thin ice for skipping out earlier, if you don't watch it I'll cut yer pay. Or maybe even fire you."

 

"Shir, I'm shorry, but being on fire ishn't mush fun."

 

"I'll say." An Elemenstor appeared quite suddenly behind Horatio, his pants blazing. "I shouldn't have gone through the Forest of Burning Britches. Didn't even find that Heirarchs' cursed Pickle."

 

Horatio immediately sobered up when he saw the Elemenstor.

 

"Anyway, I - oh, for heaven's sake!" The flames were spreading to the Elemenstor's tunic now. "Excuse me for a moment", he said. Ignoring the stares of those present, the Elemenstor waded into the middle of a nearby shallow pool. Head held high, surrounded by an aura of dignity and Elemenstorial authority, he cleared his throat and sat down with a splash.

 

"You'll have to excuse him," said a large Ambulatory Dresser, who had been following the Elemenstor, "He's been feeling rather... left out recently."

 

"That Dooblegnard won't scrape the muck off its own back, Shmoratio!" boomed the Duke, "I'll take care of the trespasser."

 

"If by 'take care of', you mean 'provide with momentary amusement'," said the soggy Elemenstor," then by all means."

 

The Duke reached into his pocket and held his hand there for long moments, trying to increase tension (the Elemenstor clearly annoyed), before bringing out a weasel.

 

The Elemenstor extended his Elemenstave (theatrically) and inside his mind's ear heard a TONG as the weasel froze absolutely solid.

 

The Duke panicked, as can be well and easily imagined, as his fingers initially felt the icy chill that crawled through the whole of his hand, imparted thereupon by that flash-frozen rodent.

 

"That was my FAVORITE WEASEL!" shrieked the Duke, "Just WHO in the multiple hells do you think you are?!"

 

"My name..." said the Elemenstor, pausing for effect, "Is..."

 

Before the Elemenstor could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by a strange, muffled sound. "Hlmpf!" it sounded like. "Hllllmpf!" The sound seemed to be emanating from the rear end of Duke Alfamarma, the Dooblegnard.

 

 

 

---

 

 

The air hung thick and stale in the ancient library, when a black raven flew in through a high open window, a note tied to its leg, and flapped down to its perch, beside a gnarled throne composed of weathered skulls.

 

An armor-clad hand reached out and grabbed the raven by the wings, ripping the note off its leg as it did so. Apparently the person belonging to the hand found the letter to bear good news.

 

"So, Harbinger, my old friend. You're at the Dank."

 

"What does this mean, sire?" croaked a hunched figure standing just behind the throne, in the official "henchman" position.

 

"Time will tell, Morris." replied the shadowy, armored man in the throne, "Time will tell. Now take this bird away before it messes on my weathered skulls."

 

 

 

---

 

 

Pixlies are generally lively, energetic, good-natured, mischevious and extremely annoying creatures. They are small, attractive (some would say "cute"), heavily infused with magic, and can live for eons, barring accidents.

 

For Bibee, the last few eons had passed particularly slowly. Slowly to be sure, but more importantly, the last few eons had passed disgustingly, encompassed in a putrid mix of congealed Dooblegnard sweat and the mud-caked algae.

 

"Help, heeeelp!!" Bibee beat against the walls of her prison with tiny fists, "Let me out!" After fruitlessly

banging on the sides of the glass for a while, Bibee sat down, disgusted by the leering customers of Oblivion's lonely bar.

 

---

 

 

 

"Hlllmp!"

 

Horatio wrinkled his nose at Duke Alfamarma's rearend. Why was it talking? He reached out, wiping away the muck and out popped...a pixlie?

 

"I can see Oblivion's through your muck."

 

"Of course you can, silly Pixlie, the vile putrecence under the posterior Wargnle plate of a Dooblegnard is notorious for its transdimensionality (both real and imagined)", quipped the Elemenstor.

 

"Uh, yeah, it sure is." muttered Horatio, wondering how the Elemenstor managed to pronounce parentheses.

 

The wisened Elemenstor exscused himself to the Duke, who was still distraught over the fate of his beloved weasel. "What were you doing stuck in there, little one?" he said, lifting Bibee by the wings to roughly eye-level.

 

"Halucinating. What's it to you, you old fart?" spat the tiny pixlie, squirming in a vain attempt to escape the Elemenstors iron grip. Horatio took a few steps forward in order to get a better look.

 

"And what are you staring at?" Bibee hissed at Horatio. "A helpless pixlie is trying to escape the grasp of mister hairy swamp-mummy here and all you can do is stare? Probably going to stuff me into his read end next! That's all right with you, is it? YOU don't care because YOU haven't spent ages trapped in the filthiest, smelliest hole imaginable so YOU are just gonna stand there like the spineless maggot you look like? Huh? Huh?! FREE! Free am I from the vile, the putrid, the wretched stink of the beast's folds! No longer sleeping in a filthy bed of oozing refuse; no longer waking to the sounds of my own vomiting! And to whom do I owe the favor of my freedom... A whelp of a Tribbit. I wonder if perhaps I can still fit beneath the scale..."

 

"Aww," said Horatio. "It's so cute."

 

"Cute but deadly!" the angry creature hollered, as it pounced, nay trounced, the unsuspecting and oblivious Horatio.

 

Horatio tried to pry the Pixlie off, but it clung to his whiskers with surprising strength and determination.

 

"OH GOD SOMEONE KILL IT!" screamed Horatio, his opinion of the pixlie now somewhat lessened.

 

"Extrapicus," muttered the Elemenstor and Horatio was sent flying in one direction, while the Pixlie was sent with a fist full of whiskers in the other direction.

 

The tiny Pixlie recovered from the tumble with remarkable agility. "I'm going to tear your HEART out for that, you old..." she screamed, waving Horatio's whiskers at the Elemenstor - then clamped her mouth shut at the sight of electricity sparking between the Elemenstor's fingers in a decidedly threatening manner.

 

"Then again, we might discuss it in peaceful, static way", little Pixlie suggested sneakily.

 

"That's better," the Elemenstor said evenly and then continued, "now if you'll excuse me, I have something rather pressing to attend to."

 

"Good", the diminutive girl answered, and turned to Horatio. "Now, where were we?"

 

Horatio promptly pushed her down the stairs.

 

"Why the $&%! did you do that!?!"

 

"Sorry, I was startled by the sudden appearance of stairs in the middle of a swamp," Horatio stammered as the Elemenstor decended the suddenly appearing stairway, only to stare in disbelief as the steps disappeared soon after the Elemenstor was below ground level, leaving only a mild swirl of swampy brown water to indicate there was a disturbance.

"Ok," Horatio smiled, "Now, there are those five wishes business matters!"

 

The Pixlie looked at him pointedly and said, "You do realize that 'five wishes if you push a pixlie down the stairs' is just an old wives tail, don't you?"

"You mean that me mommy lied? I just lost another thing I believed in my whole miserable, pathetic life!", Tribbit burst into tears. Tears that flowed like the hot lava of a life-giving volcano, back in another world, that no living being could remember and yet one that the collective consciousness could, somehow, not forget.

 

"Weeeell," An idea had come to the Pixlie, "There is one thing you can do if you want wishes granted."

 

"And what is that?" cried Tribbit fevrently, looking at the Pixlie with new hope shining in his eyes.

 

"You can find the Beef", she stated, while doing a handstand for no apparent reason. She also imagined that she was a sun flower.

Comments

 

My "friends" who aren't as familiar with ELotH:TES as I am have noted that the title "should" read "...By Those WHO Read It". This misconception stems, naturally, from a lack of familiarity with the source material (noted below). "Those That Read It" refers not to people, but to Furniliars, the first line being built/read by Bix the Endtable. ~rubian

 

Note: Consider it good form to use wiki-links while adding to the story. Not only will it emphasize the Epicness of this wiki, but it will aid your next contributor in transcribing the next line.

 

The title of this story implies that it would fall under Fan Fiction, but when I read it I noticed that it was identical thus far to the strangely titled story from The Temptations of the Bix the End Table, and other tales. In keeping with the practise, I only added one line. I recommend you do the same. I just wanted to address any concerns that this story was non-canon. In fact, it now comes to my attention from the endnotes of The Temptations of the Bix that this story was in fact an early, rejected, manuscript for Book 1. -256