text: Sometimes lunch falls from the sky. I suppose that may seem like some blessing, but I’ve had about enough of it, myself. Have you any idea what that kind of impact does to a half-eaten meat pie? I once heard a wet explosion and stepped out of my neat grass hut to find my fire pit covered in gravy. Nor does lunch tend to land in the most opportune of places. Yesterday about midday I had a banana. Nearly killed me. The Goony Birds drop all manner of objects as they fly across the valley sky, always from Mount of the Moon to Purple Panther Peak. Papers, coins, clothing, shoes, dark eyeglass , beverage containers, writing implements. I have a dune of mostly obliterated or useless Goony Bird crap that grows by the day. Worst of all, they sometimes drop lunch after it’s already been eaten. Solid chunks land several seconds before the fine spray. It’s only been this way for a handful of seasons. I can easily recall when my sky was clear of Goonies and the shrieking zip of their flight. Then, life was considerably more normal. My days were occupied with foraging, sometimes hunting for meats or skins, and regular visits from Teela. On occasion, strangers would wander in from distant valleys. We were always happy to welcome them. Teela was my closest neighbor, living just past the arse-shaped rock downstream. Her flesh was sparse, and her head of hair was ample. Sad story, Teela’s. I can’t help but recall the pleasant times, though. She would drop in at least once every few days with something new to show me.Spiny fruits, dead insects, smelly things. She had a strange obsession with useless objects. I would call her an odd one, but I’m afraid I haven’t known a sufficient number of normal people to justify saying so. We shared meals often (I made the food my responsibility; one could never be sure what Teela would bring to share), and more than a few times we explored one another, sharing in the vagaries of physical pleasure. Having her around was always good fun. At least, that is, until the freak show appeared above our heads. Teela fell under the spell of the Goonies. “Such lovely big birds,” she said to me the day after they first whizzed through our pristine sky. “They’re no proper birds,” I told her. “Do you see wings?” “They don’t need wings; they have otherworldly powers. Dummy!” When the so-called birds started dropping their crap, Teela lost her coconuts. “Look at this!” She picked something up from the dirt outside my hut. It was a small piece of canvas emblazoned with the perfect image of a person, but this person was like none I had met. Pale as a cloud and still sporting baby fat as a grown man. Goony-looking. Unfortunately, this only helped Teela to deify the Goonies. I tried to tell her they were just people. “Dope! They only take the form of humans so as not to frighten us, the simpler beings. And how do you suppose they fly, smart guy? Our minds are not capable of fully comprehending.” Teela began spending every day at my hut. My place was a hotspot for Goony junk landings (Teela took to calling it the ‘Place of Great Heavenly Bounty’). I didn’t mind that she took all the junk-I certainly didn’t need it-but watching her lose her mind was too much. I once snuck off to her place while she was trying to find a suitable way to dress her wild mane around a set of gleaming cooking tools that had crashed into the stream near my hut. When I crossed the arse rock, I could scarcely believe the state of her living space: the slipshod grass shelter was consumed by an intricate altar of stacked Goony garbage. It was no wonder she bummed around my place; hers had become storage! I was lucky enough to have a morning to myself when a most intriguing specimen touched down. As I lounged on a bed of moss, sipping spiny fruit nectar, a bush across the stream burst into a flurry of leaves. Normally I would have let the thing lie and notified Teela, but my interest was piqued as I discerned a small racket coming from what remained of the foliage. What I found was a small, heavy picture-box device. It was like several I had seen before, but unlike the others, this one was in working order. Well perhaps it wasn’t undamaged from the fall, but it repeatedly displayed the same moving image: it was one of those Goony white people smiling, laughing with his giant teeth and sticking his thumb in the air. He was on a mountain peak, approaching a precipice. When I looked close, I could see that he was wearing an apparatus that protruded from his midsection and connected him to something that reached far into the open sky. It was a line. As the Goony in the picture-box launched himself over the precipice and wailed like a young girl, the situation suddenly became clear. I tore my rapt eyes from the box, studied the sky with greater scrutiny than I had hitherto thought to give, and soon found what I was looking for: a barely perceptible line bridged the sky between the peaks on either side of the valley. Teela was not receptive to my discovery. “Blasphemy! Omnipotent beings do not dangle from vines.” “But it’s right there above your daft head! Just look up!” “I don’t need to; I’m strong enough to have faith in the inexplicable.” “We’re human beings, Teela. Rational thought is our most powerful tool, and you’re ignoring it altogether. All you have is faith in ignorance.” “Don’t talk down to me. I won’t hesitate to defend my values.” That’s when I showed her the moving image in the picture-box. She couldn’t draw her eyes away until it repeated four times over. Then she met my gaze with a leer that would cleave stone. “Tempter! Demon sent to corrupt!” Teela was in the throes of hysteria. She wore the mean look of a cornered badger. “Death be upon you!” My friend must have known she could not slay me, and too that she had violated the boundaries of our friendship. Sadly, I’d no time to pose a question before she came at me with a shiny blade pulled from her Goony headdress, and she’d no time to redact herself before I smashed her head with a rock.There was a thud as she dropped and the slight clink of a bloodied spoon tumbling from her head, but then there was only silence. Teela was my dear friend, daresay my only friend, and I had killed her. I reexamined the fact repeatedly before I could bring myself to believe it. I had bludgeoned my friend to death, but only as a reflexive reaction to a life-or-death situation brought upon by her irrational hysteria. Did I have a choice? And did she understand the implications of her delusions? Was this mess our fault? No. It was those great Goony bastards playing cheap tricks with twine above our heads. After all, they had no divine enchantment, nor even the power of flight. They were only men, and men could fall. That night, I put in no small effort devising an operation to take back the valley sky. As the moon rose over its mount, I felled no less than a dozen trees, each of considerable height, and carried them past the arse to Teela’s. I then used the heftiest limb I could salvage to reduce her Goony shrine to what I had always seen it for: a mound of garbage. Consider it grieving. Next, I proceeded to construct a pyre, reinforced with all the pieces from the hulking mound of Goony garbage, of such magnitude that according to my calculations, her flames just might lick the strand in the sky. Consider it retribution. As the first rumor of dawn found the horizon, I spent the last of my strength carrying the corpse of my friend to the pyre’s pinnacle. When I returned to the ground, I set the first spark of what promised to be an unforgettable conflagration and proceeded to collapse on my back, eyes turned to the slowly waning stars. I cared little that had my structure failed, flaming tree trunks and landfill would have rained down upon me and brought my end. Life thereafter was optional, so long as the Goonies were stopped. The heat of the growing blaze soon crept into my skin, and before long, I could perceive the line in the sky giving off a faint glow. Yes, I thought, my final act shall come to fruition. I may at least die with integrity. With my head laid back on the hot ground, I closed my eyes and let the roar of the inferno fill my senses. It was then that I became aware of something else: a second roar, carried by the wind from a near valley. I sat up and watched as a massive object blotted out the first rays of the breaking dawn. It was a fat, Goony flying machine, and it wasted no time. From its great metal belly dropped a deluge, which soaked the entire valley floor with a single, thundering crash. I was cold-cocked and washed halfway to the stream bed while the bonfire collapsed into a half-ashen dune of wet garbage. When I coughed back into consciousness, I was surrounded by flopping river fish. The first thing I thought to do was examine the morning sky. Indeed, the Goony line hung intact above me. My struggle had been in vain. Logic advised me to laugh, make light of the situation, accept that what had happened was beyond my control. But no smile would come. All the humor of a cruel reality was wasted that day on a single, melancholy man. The only thing left for me to do was rebuild my home and carry on. I have never thought at length about what should be done with the remains of the pyre. Perhaps I have secretly hoped the forest would someday overtake it and reclaim it for the Earth. Yet the dune stands to this day, a memorial to my foolishness. I had hoped it would scare away the Goonies, or at least be enough of an eyesore to diminish their numbers, but no. It didn’t work out as such. I guess some problems cannot be solved. Dave, The Xtreme Jungle Zip-n-Camp Adventure shift manager, stood on the mountaintop platform, green in the face. He’d managed a ski school before he moved out here. This was well outside the realm of his professional experience “Are you sure it was a real-” “Yup,” said the greasy part-timer. “Trus’ me, you’ll see it.” “Well... I suppose I’ll have to phone the director, then.” The part-timer nodded and backed away. He wanted nothing to do with that conversation. The shift manager unsheathed his cumbersome weatherproof satellite phone and pressed 1. He always felt weird using a phone with actual buttons. “Good morning, director.” “...” “Yes sir, I’m aware that it’s four a.m. in your time zone. I apologize. “...” “Well, I’m out here trying to open line eleven, and I’m looking at... there’s no other way to put this: it’s the charred remains of some sort of aboriginal human sacrifice, and it’s directly below the line.” “...” “Yes Sir, a genuine dead body.” “...” “I see.” “...” “And a good day to you, Sir.” The shift manager ended the connection and took a deep breath. “Whadda he say?” The part timer had been standing not far off. “He’s thrilled! Said we should charge an extra ten per guest for line eleven and get in touch with marketing to organize a special promotion. We’ll also have to draft an amendment to the waiver.” “He said that?” “Not that last bit, but I’m thinking ahead. If we play things right, we might get a raise out of this.