Meet Ramon…

“Nice to meet ya, how ya goin’?”

Chronicle of the Sworse: Halloween

The Halloween season is a typically busy time for police, firefighters, hookers and the like, but not so for the Sworse. It seems that the forces of evil, intent on destroying the horse industry from within (crappy breeders, horse abusers, and the other broad-spectrum nincompoops), take the day off from horses and aim their mayhem in the direction of the general populace. So what’s a bored Sworse to do?

Sure he could set off some firecrackers. Toss some eggs at a house (or several). Riot, loot, not give a hoot. But really it all seemed quite trivial.

One night, he was sitting on his porch nursing a beer, trying to enjoy a rare night off when he experienced a sharp, stabbing pain in the hock-region of his right leg. The Sworse immediately lashed out, striking with great force, trying to dislodge the lodged impalement but the thing was really in there! He whipped out some killer kung-fu moves and got rid of his unwanted guest only to experience another sharp pain in the hock region of his left leg almost immediately thereafter.

“What the fraggle rock?” exclaimed the Sworse, kicking out again. This time he landed the kick squarely on his attacker and sent him/her/it flying.

The Sworse spun around, eyes wide, nostrils flared, legs splayed, prepared for the next onslaught from the unseen terror. But there was no terrorizing monster to be seen! There was just a cute, cuddly penguin! The penguin was on the far side of the porch, dusting itself off after not sticking the landing of its first (and presumably last as penguins are flightless birds) flight.

“Oi, mate. Not cool.”

“Say what?” The Sworse questioned the air, not realizing the Australian accent was coming from the fluffy, flightless bird.

“Down here, mate.”

“Huh.” The Sworse was not accustomed to talking to land-based aviary creatures and thus was presently incapable of intelligent conversation.

“My name’s Ramon – no relation to the dude on Happy Feet. Nice to meet ya, how ya goin’? Boy you don’t talk much, do ya. No? Well that’s alright. I get it. I’m a peng’ of few words m’self. Me mates is always tryin’ to get me to increase my verbosity and whatnot. Anyways, I’m just passing through, thought I’d stop in, introduce myself to the famous Sworse. Or infamous depending on who’s talkin’, if ya know what I mean. Yup in certain circles you’re known to be good for a bit of mayhem, my friend.” Ramon continued to rattle on in this fashion for several minutes.

Finally, the Sworse had had enough. “What are you doing here! And what the hell are you?” Not forgetting that just moments ago Ramon had made him ponder the date of his last tetanus shot.

“It’s like I said, I heard you were good for a bit of mayhem. It just so happens that yours truly has some privileged information I might be pursuaded to share with the right type of individual.”

“Not interested,” the Sworse grumbled as he turned his chair to face away from his unwanted guest.

“Quit being childish. If I’m disturbing his Sworseness then I’ll be on my merry way.” Ramon replied, not without a note of indignation. “I don’t need no Sworse anyways. What makes him so great?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe it’s my winning personality, or the rippling muscles of my former owner, or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I can do this…” And as the last word left his mouth, the Sworse’s eyes seemed to pull Ramon down into their intense, ghostly blue flames. He felt like he was drowning and on fire all at once! Just when his little flippers couldn’t handle the heat from the blue flame anymore there was the feeling of water crashing over him, stealing the very breath from his lungs – which is an impressive thing to do to a penguin! And just when his lungs were burning, begging Ramone to take a breath of air, though the only oxygen to be inhaled was the O in the H2O, the flames would begin anew. The intensity of the Sworse’s gaze seemed to penetrate all the way to Ramon’s… “Wow is that what it’s like when you catch bad guys?”

“How did you do that? No one’s ever broken away before.” The Sworse was quite puzzled, so much so that he actually shook his head (it seemed to work for cartoon characters…).

“You can’t steal a person’s soul if there’s no soul to steal.”

To be continued…