The Martian Grackle a work of Fiction by stuyvesant (chad ) MarsÖthe quiet red plains. Still deserts, placid mountains. Empty blue skies. Ah, so peaceful. Oh, and did I mention BESTIALITY, BUGGERY, SEX in all its curious forms?, GIANT MARTIAN BIRDS who just DON'T CARE? Definitely a better place than earth. Denny flew high above the orange of the desert planet. Some said that Mars had been born too close to the sun, and that the sun had burned it, but every night, the moon would calm the hot surface of the planet, limiting the harshness of the orange-red to a colder grey. For now, the sun blazed on, reflecting from the red dirt to the underside of Denny's feathered belly and spread wings. That always got Denny turned on. The feel of hot wind rushing through naked form, without a soul in the sky. He was one of the last Martian Grackles. Not the very last; there were a few more, but they would all be dead within a few generations. Or maybe not. Maybe they would survive and procreate despite all the odds, but he doubted it. Not that he really cared, of course. They were all so far apart. Everything on this planet was. Even the shrubs were sparse. Such a dreadfully dreary planet, he thought, before something caught his eye. A little metal thing on the ground. Moving. Ohmigosh! How Cute! It's one of those little hairless monkeys from down on the third planet! They've learned to fly! These thoughts were followed by Why ever is it covered in metal? And How the hell did it beat the shark? The little hairless monkey brought a rush of buried memories of the third planet, and he felt himself involuntarily longing for all his old friends, for the old days, when they used to fly through space together, find some interesting planet to visit, stay awhile, move on. That was how it had always been, except that they had always come home. Then things had changed. They had visited that planet just nearby, the third from the sun, and it had been lovely. Lots of blues and greens. All Denny's friends went, Denny too. As usual they got bored, went home for awhile and visited more planets. Rindi was Denny's best friend. When they went to that planet for the second time, Denny wanted to have some fun. Pull a few sharks out of the water, throw them in a jungle, see what happens. Sodomise a few dumb beasts. Listen to their animal ecstasy. Put a few cheetahs on a fly spot of an island. Throw on some hairless monkeys for fun. They scream real good, don't they? But Rindi wasn't in for that today. No, she just sat under a tree. She said she was taking time out to enjoy it. Whatever 'it' was. Personally, Denny didn't see anything that was enjoyable that couldn't be improved by the wit of creative circumstance. Denny started thinking that the third planet really sucked. It had become a thing to do. Everyone was going there, even though he and Rindi and their little clique had found it first. Well, not first, but they had made it into a regular spot. Now it seemed everyone wanted a piece of planet three. Denny was disappointed. When he thought about it, it really did suck. Higher gravity, too much noise, and closer to the sun, which meant hotter and one metaphysical day, burnt to a crisp. Even worse than Mars. So Denny found it particularly hard when Rindi didn't come back. Rindi liked the third planet. Better even than her own. One day, long after Denny started hating planet three, Rindi never came back. And she hadn't been the first. A new concept came into Denny's thinking. Emigration. He supposed he had always known that anyone could stay somewhere, but he had never thought it, that somebody actually would. Then it was the new fad. Now that everyone realised it could be done, everyone wanted the experience. I'm going to live on the third planet now. A brave new world of wonders and exotic things and extravagant living. There was nothing Denny hated more than a fad (although possibly nothing he enjoyed more than a counter-fad, or a fad of rebellion, especially if he was the leader). So he stayed on the home planet, wings over Martian soil, and got lonely. He still visited other planets, but it wasn't long before he realised that it was his friends who had made it fun. It was boring pitting creature against creature and creature against nature and partly disabled creature against more able-bodied creature without friends to laugh at it, to laugh with you, for your ingenuity. Even bestiality was mundane when there was only the beast to share the experience. So mostly, he stayed on Mars. A lone Grackle. There were a dozen or so others in his region remaining, but he was alone. He used the days to fly over the same burnt orange soil, hot wind breathing over his feathers, sun reflecting onto his underbelly, horny as all and free as can be. He had returned to the third planet once, a long time later, when loneliness had seemed unbearable. His friends had changed. Not just personality wise either, but physically. The atmosphere had done something to them. They had lost the ability to fly, excepting little flitters from one tree to another and the like. They had shrunk to less than the size of Denny's foot. They were tiny. And their brains appeared to have shrunk proportionately. Not as slow as those little hairless monkeys, but slow. Actually, those hairless monkeys had gotten a whole lot dumber, too. It seemed they had all discovered they were hairless and were trying to recapture their evolutionary days of hairiness by covering themselves with bits of plants and animals. Stupid hairless monkeys, But the Grackles were a whole lot dumber than the sharks. They couldn't even talk, except for a few elementary whistles, such as Look out there's a ----- (fill in the blank with ambiguous dangerous threatening whatever). Actually, that was pretty much the only whistle they knew. So that was the last time Denny went to the third planet. Or, for that matter, left Mars. But today, there was something of interest on the orange desert plain. A little hairless monkey, flying all the way up here. Ohmigoshohmigoshohmigosh! Denny thought it extremely humorous and exquisitely cute. He flew down to the monkey, and maybe it was that birds are attracted to the bright and shiny (though no one could call the hairless monkey bright, it was certainly shiny); maybe that Denny just hadn't gotten any in such a long time; maybe it was that hot rush of wind on the underbelly, but Denny was very quickly very horny. He cawed and cawed to all those lost friends - come look at my new joke, join in my new game, watch the hairless monkey squirm - and was oblivious to the silence. He flew down to the shiny hairless monkey and buggerised it to bits, squawking and thrashing likeÖwell, like it was pretty much as it was. Inter-species sex for the first time in a long time. And then (because Martian Grackles of any gender could indulge in multiple orgasms) he did it twice again. When Denny had finished, he stepped back. (There was no cuddling afterwards; bestiality was just for fun and never a relationship thing on Mars). The hole in the seat of the monkey's pants was spraying gas. Denny recognised that smell. It breathed of the third planet. Uggh! Those hairless shits had brought their damned atmosphere with them, and all its pollutants, no doubt. He flew up a way to escape the stench. That was odd. The monkey wasn't moving. They usually ran away, afterwards. To tell all their friends, he presumed. Perhaps this one didn't have any friends. Oh. The thought struck Denny. It's dead. Was it the sex? No, surely. Maybe it was the atmosphere. Maybe that's why it brought its own. Haha. The hairless monkey couldn't live unless surrounded by its own stench. This would have been hilarious if he'd been with his friends. Actually it was bloody hilarious as it was. Denny laughed and laughed until the moon came to take away the sun's damage. It was a shame though. If he'd known the little hairless monkey would die just like that, he would have taken a bit more care of it. Although he didn't quite know how. Maybe just a bit of simulated bonking. A dry bonk or three, before the grand finale. He laughed. Oh, the hilarity of it, and then was sad for a while. Oh well. There'll be others before too long, he thought, and flew off into the cold grey. Created on Tue, 16 Sep 1997 and last modified on Tue, 30 Dec 1997.

LOUDonline - http://www.loud.net.au - Fri, 10 Apr 1998