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CURRENTLY UNKNOWN TITLE

Chapter 8: Quite Frivolous and Silly Occurrences

"It is difficult to perceive just what the fuck is happening here."

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow




The multicolored flashing helmet the Omega Dolphin was wearing sprayed out a jittery array of lights. She was evidently doing something that required great mental concentration. Her companion, Major Tentacle, said, “Have you got it yet?”

“No…” the Omega Dolphin replied. “I’ve almost got it but not quite…”

“Hurry up, I really need to see this!” Major Tentacle said.

“Hm… ok, I think I’ve got it! The answer is… lumbog!”

“… what?”

“I don’t know, that’s just the answer.” The Omega Dolphin looked about as confused as Major Tentacle.

“That doesn’t even answer our question!”

“No, it doesn’t. This helmet is a cruel mistress. Helps one day, refuses to the other.”

“Yeah. I suppose so,” Major Tentacle replied. They didn’t have a mouth or anything, but was able to talk through unclear methods. They also had no nose, eyes, ears, or anything else. They couldn’t see, at all, but their acute sense of smell helped them to find their way around the world. They were, you see, a large black tentacle. No one was really sure where they came from or how they came about. When asked, their only reply tended to be “I never sleep, I was always here, and I will never die,” which didn’t really make very much sense. They had the useful skill of being able to stretch vertically and horizontally an arbitrary amount, which allowed them to get around a lot easier and faster. It was also very helpful for causing vast amounts of comical mischief, which was their main hobby, along with the Omega Dolphin.

The Omega Dolphin herself was an ordinary dolphin, except not really, since she was born with incredible intelligence, particularly compared to others of her kind. But also compared to humans. With an estimated 653 IQ, she didn’t really have anyone to talk to among her fellow dolphins. Thankfully, one day she came across a discarded flashing helmet on the bottom of the sea (originally designed by Mark Silverhammer), which she promptly put on. Through some variety of esoteric magicks, the helmet gave her the ability to speak, along with immense psychic ability. It was really a very stupid series of events. After meeting Major Tentacle under mysterious circumstances, they now went land to land doing unpleasant and irritating things to others.

As a matter of fact, they were at the moment headed toward John Nineinch’s apartment building with the intention of annoying the residents as much as possible. Their only real goal was to do things that were humorous, which were mostly things that were horrible. For example, as the pair swam up to the shore near the landmass John’s apartment was on, the Omega Dolphin spotted a friendly-looking fellow walking down the beach (one Mr Michael Swann). He turned and saw the pair of grotesque creatures, waved kind-heartedly, and kept strolling. The Omega Dolphin thought up a command for her light-helmet, which shot out a ray of electrified heat that vaporized Michael into a pile of ash instantly. “Heh,” she chuckled, “serves him right!”

“What did he do?” Major Tentacle asked.

“People who wave really piss me off,” the Omega Dolphin replied.

“I can understand that.”

The pair unfortunately encountered problems with regards to being on land, though, considering that the Omega Dolphin, despite being Omega (unclear what this signifier means), was also a dolphin. She swore some Twirlesque words to herself and turned to Major Tentacle, seeing if they could go to the apartment without her, maybe following some of her suggestions for general mayhem. Major Tentacle could be on land just fine, due to their ability to move around rapidly by doing slinky-styled contortions. They agreed to go scout out the zone, climbing out of that ocean around those parts and slinking over to the nearby city streets of that city around those parts. They held out a tentacular thumb for a taxi driver, who soon picked them up.

On the ride, the driver asked where they were headed to. “The apartment headed by John Nineinch,” they said.

“Oh, there? That apartment isn’t visited too frequently. The, uh, dying chimpanzee noises tend to put off possible future residents.”

“Hm, this place sounds more interesting than I thought. I don’t mind a place with some noisy animal screams.” The driver started driving a little over the speed limit.

To avoid getting possibly murdered by this creature, the driver (Mr Will Recherche) tried to maintain some light-hearted small talk. “So, Mx Tentacle,” he said nervously, “what are some of your favorite bands?”

“Oh,” Major Tentacle said, “I’m real into these guys called I’m gonna kill you.”

“Come again?”

Major Tentacle stabbed Will in the chest with their unpleasantly sharp tentacle terminus and threw his body aside with their unpleasantly strong grip, taking his spot in the driver’s seat. They drove all the rest of the way to John’s apartment, to the sound of Will slowly bleeding out.

When the car pulled up to the parking lot, Will was dead. Major Tentacle ignored him and slinked out of the vehicle, slinking over to the main entrance, where they stepped into the dully lit lobby. The receptionist (Ms Jamie Anodyne) was reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette at the front, and didn’t notice Major Tentacle. They slinked up the long stairway to the top floor, where they went over to an arbitrarily chosen apartment (218) and knocked politely.

“Who’s there?” It was Mell Ceremon, talking from the other side of the door

“This is John Nineinch, your landlord.” Major Tentacle had the uncanny ability to perfectly imitate the voice of anyone, even people they’d never met. They appeared to have some seer-like powers. “We need to discuss your rent, and how you haven’t been keeping up with it.”

“Really? Fine. Whatever.” A few seconds passed and Mell opened the door (Wef Joydi was also there, a little further back in the room). She immediately fired a hefty shot at Major Tentacle’s middle portion with her shotgun (she had managed to keep this concealed from John for longer than she’d expected), knocking Major Tentacle back with the force that they broke clean through the window lining the outer edge of the exterior hallway. They fell an awfully long distance.

“Who was that?” Wef asked.

“It wasn’t John. Some tentacle monster.” Mell had fired the gun before she noticed it wasn’t John, actually.