by Treadwell » Fri Jun 28, 2013 4:21 pm
Warnings of Marta and children give the toymaker pause; the words of the Fat Man before them root Aloisius's feet to the floor.
"That was I, so long ago."
The words rumble, they bellow, they roll, much as Treadwell's bloated belly does under his coveralls and belt.
There is admiration from Treadwell to Fat Man.
There is a licking of slobbery lips behind floofy white beard, a nod of the head, and hunger again sets the Treadwellian belly a-burble. . . but most importantly?
There is recognition. A faint similarity of features in the face--the nose, especially. The height, a few inches too tall, the girth, slightly bloated out of proportion, the dining habits more repulsive than they ought to be, but where the Fat Man's voice is a thunder, a singular phrase blubbers and bursts squeakily from the toymaker's lips.
"Such a grand catch, hmm hmm, a grand catch!"
Insights.
A hunt for a legendary creature immortal and foolish--young, preferred, to be a prize, if even for a fleeting moment.
A virgin sought, pure of heart.
The only one around, of course, had been the wife: barely little more than a maiden, barely wed, and manipulated through a husband's callous cruelty unknown due to her innocence.
She was the unwitting trap, the lure, of a mythical one-horned creature.
A blur of recollection--no true cognizance, yet, or images, but one: standing atop a young man, barely more than a child, but a child who hid more to him than most would even suspect. Gleeful malice wrapped over the fleshy lips, one hand playing with the tight curls of a floofy, graying beard--a beard that, at a distance or through tear-misted eyes, might be mistaken for containing maggots instead of its curls and knots.
"A grand catch!" blubbered again. And then?
"Clayton! Out! Out! For the door! Go!"
Thus does the heavy-bodied, heavy-limbed Treadwell turn to flee from the oncoming mass of lard and flesh, hurling himself as a jangling mass of tools and fat for the doorway they just entered, a doorway that, once Clayton is through, will desperately need slamming shut to try to keep the monstrosity in.
But not before Clayton is through.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium