Greegs & Ladders Read online

  CHAPTER 5

  Coverings

  To be caught wearing clothes is a most heinous crime. There is no need to inflict punishment, merely the embarrassment of being publicly seen ‘all covered up’ is enough to send any Greeg into self-inflicted exile. No Greeg has ever been seen ‘all covered up’ in public without banishing themselves into “the cleanliness,” as they call the savagely clean lands outside their “civilization.”

  It should be noted that despite the fact that no Greegs wear clothing, there are many clothing stores full of coverings for all parts of the Greeg body. It is silently agreed that no respectable Greeg would ever be caught dead in one of these filthy smut shops. Astoundingly, if one was to do the math, they would find that nearly every individual Greeg must have stashed away hoards of cover magazines, coverings, and other cover related paraphernalia. The only industry on par with the lucrative schmold trade was covering.

  To be sure, there are Greeg ‘Cover Bars’ where adult Greegs can go and watch lower class daughters of schmold bottlers cover up their fingers and toes, or maybe even arms, legs and torsos depending on just how skeezy the establishment and how badly the coverers need the schmold. To cover up the genitals would never happen, even in these scummy outposts. Covering the genitals only occurred during the act of procreation. The Greeg equivalent to what you humans would call “Sex” involves an ornamental and intimate genital covering for both male and female. The male covering is a tube that sucks ejaculate out of the male Greeg, funnelling it into a seal-able and sterile tube, where it can be kept for over forty hours. To complete the act, the sterile tube is placed in a receptacle attached to the side of a covering that looks similar to an earthling gas mask. The gas mask forms a suction around the female genitals with a tube leading inside her, directly to the womb. The male ejaculate is pumped into the elaborate female covering and transported right to the biological doorstep to complete an “Attempt.”

  The Greegs have the highest fertility success rate of any creature on record in any universe.

  In their daily lives Greegs are a filthy and disgusting and vulgar creature in every imaginable way. They go out of their way to show off just how slovenly and insensitive they can be. In the private act of procreation however, they are clean, sterile, sensitive, caring and humble. It could be said this is the real Greeg, the one they keep suppressed. In this act of procreation alone, they become one with the planet on which they reside.

  CHAPTER 6

  Quiggs

  The grimy condition of your average Greeg colony was not always easy to maintain. The Greegs' desire to live in disastrous mud camps was once put under great threat by an indigenous life form known as the Quigg. Quiggs are (or more appropriately, were) the cleanest creatures living on one of 11 planets containing wriggly, walky, breathy things in the hopeless, undeveloped but reasonably entertaining to look at from a safe distance sun system of the 38 planets in the 59 sunned district of Herb. Whether randomly or because the planet was trying to save itself from obliteration, the Quigg seemed to have evolved with a single purpose in life. To clean. Every bodily function they have (or had… well, you get the idea, or will in a moment) in some way results in something, somewhere being cleaned. The very movement of their feet acted as a natural waxing agent against any surface. Rather than having sweat glands they secreted an antibacterial gelatin from their skin. Instead of hands and fingers they had elaborate scrubbers and brushes protruding from their arms. They also wished for nothing more in life than to be rid of filthy Greegs. In a valiant yet futile attempt to return their planet to its once immaculate state of varnished marble, shiny glass windows and freshly bleached tile floors, the Quiggs offered their impeccable cleaning service to the Greegs, free of charge. All the arrangements had been made to blast anything unclean onto Garbotron. The Greegs would have to do no work at all. Rather than dignify this gracious offer with an answer, the Greegs simply hurled globs of lesser-quality schmold at them from a distance. The blindingly acidic and parasite-ridden properties of schmold indeed make a formidable weapon, however the attack did deter the Quiggs. Instead of fleeing back to their various homes in The Cleanliness as they should have, the Quiggs in their steadfast manner set about collecting schmold and cleaning it. Only they didn’t just clean it. They reinvented it. A stunningly impressive chemistry set was designed specifically for analyzing and purifying schmold, with the intent to remove from it all traces of bacteria and filth. Filtering screens visible from space were built and hung up between the largest of old-growth blue-leaf trees. Quiggs could be seen tirelessly running schmold through the filters day and night. They even successfully removed schmold's unique glow, which was considered distracting and superfluous to the high art of cleaning. They laboured for many suns and moons, perfecting their experiments with a meticulous attention to detail that has only been matched once in the universe (by a strange being we will arrive at much later in the story). They even went so far as to spend 3 wintry years crafting a collection of very fine flasks made out of Jardian mega-prisms. The flasks were never required in any of the experiments, but they looked very clean and pretty nonetheless. A shelf of great honour was set aside for displaying the beauty of the useless flasks, and 4 respectable Quiggs were given the job of dusting them every 7.33 minutes. Oh how the Greegs loathed them. They could barely wait to fill the flasks with all sorts of disgusting things (namely schmold) and then break them. The Quiggs slaved away until they’d acquired a hefty supply of schmold so clean it would have made trillions of dollars throughout the galaxy if properly marketed as an unparalleled kitchen counter-top cleaner. The Greegs saw this as the grossest possible violation of all things that are Greeg. Fear took over the community. The total collapse of localized schmold trade seemed imminent. Numerous Greegs fell into despair and were never seen or smelled again. Many wandered into The Cleanliness in a suicidal fashion not at all dissimilar to the way so many of your humans leaped from skyscraper windows during the 1930s collapse of your fake stock market.

  The remaining Greegs came up with what they considered in their stupidity to be a rather brilliant scheme. They stole the purified schmold and mixed it with regular schmold to make it dirty again. The now-filthy schmold was then angrily hurled at the Quiggs, who set forth purifying it all over again. This cycle went unchanged for generations, even outlasting the ridiculously long lifespan of the metallic tetra-turtle. It was finally decided the total extinction of the Quigg species would be the only way to keep schmold in its naturally polluted state. Thus was born the event in Greeg history commonly referred to as ‘The day all Quiggs were thrown into a schmold pit.’

  It is my fervent opinion that far worse events would have transpired had the Quiggs' plan to send all the trash to Garbotron succeeded. We have already learned about the disastrous results of Garbotron pollution caused by a single cannon blast, so it can be assumed the phenomenal number of cannon blasts required to rid the planet of the Greegs' mess would have caused the destruction of countless other (and better) civilizations. Because the plan failed, one species died off on a planet that had no use for it anyway. That is, how you say, taking one for the team.

  Over and over again, great minds have hypothesized and sometimes successfully proved that time does not exist. Nevertheless, time is always relevant. And short. Especially if you are thrown into a schmold pit, as no creature can tread schmold for longer than an Earth hour (unless of course you’re a metallic tetra-turtle or weigh less than helium while on the 7th moon of Grebular). In their final hour, the Quiggs frantically purified as much schmold as they could before sinking below the surface and drowning. Foolish as it was, one cannot help but admire their dedication to cleanliness. Unless of course one is a Greeg.

  Quigg skeletons were henceforth sometimes found in the schmold reserves. The Greegs never knew it but the bone marrow of the Quigg contained a powerfully sterile cleansing agent which diffused in the schmold for years after the extinction, thus making all the latter-day schmold slightly
less filthy. It’s nice to know that even after their complete annihilation, the great Quigg species continued to inadvertently clean up the universe.

  CHAPTER 7

  TV and Pets for Greegs

  You might be wondering what a Greeg did for entertainment when not fishing Quigg skeletons out of schmold reserves, mining for schmold, or taking in the guilty pleasures of a particularly skeezy Cover Bar while intoxicated on mass quantities of schmold. Television is popular with Greegs, but the only show is ‘watching schmold,’ as all Greeg televisions are merely hollowed out glass cubes filled with schmold. This does not stop them from wholeheartedly believing they are seeing something different when they change the channel (an act that is supposedly done telepathically). A typical Greeg conversation in front of the TV is as follows:

  “Turn on the TV.” (An act done by removing a blanket placed on top of a hollowed out glass cube filled with schmold).

  “What channel?”

  “5.”

  “Ok.”

  “Actually not channel 5. I've seen this episode of schmold before. Look at that familiar cluster of bubbles in the bottom left hand quadrant.”

  “But the schmold-guide says it’s brand new.”

  “It’s a re-run.”

  “I’ll put on channel 8 instead.”

  “Good choice. The sheen of schmold is brighter on channel 8.”

  “I don’t like it. Let’s watch channel 3.”

  “The schmold movement is too frenetic on channel 3.”

  “What channel do you want to watch then?”

  “Channel 8.”

  “But I don’t like channel 8!”

  These sorts of arguments are known to carry on for hours until someone solves the problem by smashing the television.

  A favorite household pet is a school of shimmer-fish. The fish are kept in tanks filled with, you guessed it, schmold. Viewing the fish is an impossible task, being that schmold is the antithesis of clear, but this problem is quickly averted when the fish die and float belly-up to the surface. The underbelly is what shimmers the most anyway, so a floating upside-down dead shimmer-fish is actually the most entertaining type of shimmer-fish a Greeg can own. If you were hosting a party you would be most embarrassed to learn your shimmer-fish had not died before the guests arrived.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Greeg

  While our Greegs freely romp about their own planet trashing the place whilst drawing blueprints for the next schmold museum, many faraway Greegs languish miserably in cramped carnival cells. As stated, on most planets Greegs are a small-numbered population put on display by creatures of greater intelligence and power. These imprisoned Greegs have never even heard of schmold, much less seen a drop of it, yet buried somewhere in their collective consciousness is the memory of schmold and how wonderful it might be if they had some. Carnival Greegs dream every night of a tantalizingly unattainable green substance. They always wake up just before the moment of acquisition, left with feelings of disorientation and disappointment. When they’re unable to sleep they gaze at whatever moons are in the sky of wherever they are and imagine the moons are green and made of schmold. If the moons happen to already be green, well, they especially enjoy looking at those ones because there's a good chance they might actually be made of schmold.

  Carnival Greegs do very little while performing, as the mere sight of these silly creatures is enough to send even the most freakishly bizarre alien into a fit of laughter. The most popular carnival attraction is the viewing of sexual intercourse. Every mid-afternoon the Greegs are separated into groups of two (or more if you can afford the tickets) and left to perform for the paying crowd. Most aliens are fascinated with the process of Greeg intercourse. How and why do such brutish slobs perform procreation in such a dignified and sterile manner? The mystery was best discussed by the famous Dr. Kipple in his psychological think-piece Purified Procreation: Greeg Sex and What it Says About Their True Nature.

  CHAPTER 9

  Klaxworms and Flying Grimbat Messengers

  As previously mentioned, Greegs are the most intellectually evolved creatures on this planet. That does not say much for everyone else. We have witnessed the folly of the Quigg, but that is nothing compared to the pure lunacy that are Klaxworms.

  A Klaxworm is a medium-sized slithery type creature with thorns and barbs and other dangerous things adorning its skin. Klaxworms exist solely on one of 11 planets containing wriggly, walky, breathy things in the hopeless, undeveloped but reasonably entertaining to look at from a safe distance sun system of the 38 planets in the 59 sunned district of Herb. The Klaxworms' estimated 3.2 trillion populace lives entirely in a single cave system. It is crowded and unpleasant to say the least. During the day there’s a stifling heat so intense it can boil the organs of unfortunately thinner-skinned Klaxworms, while the sub-zero temperatures of the evening results in all Klaxworms being frozen to the ground like the tongue of a foolish human who licked metal in the wintertime. For about 9 Earth hours every night the Klaxworms are stuck in mid-stride. Once things warm up in the morning they continue their daily routine of hoping their organs don’t boil while deciding where they’d like to end up frozen for the night.

  Klaxworms do not want to live in this wretched cave. But they don’t leave. They are perfectly aware (through aid of flying Grimbat messengers) that right outside their cave exists all sorts of remarkable things like varnished marble, shiny glass windows and freshly bleached tile floors; in short, the entire surface of a planet for their roaming purposes. No one is stopping them, yet they cannot leave. Why is this? A Klaxworm has no great enemy to fear in the world (except the odd Greeg has been known to wander in the cave and eat a few of them for a late snack, apparently forgetting they’re deadly poisonous to everything). A Klaxworm will talk your ear off about leaving the cave, how in just a moment they’ll slither right out into the vast fields of polished marble, only they never quite make it to the exit. Along the way there’s always a distraction, such as a good discussion about leaving the cave, the boiling of one’s organs, or the finding of an excellent spot to be frozen in for the evening.

  The squalor of the cave has no actual relevance with their desire to leave, for even if Klaxworms had evolved in an oasis paradise they still would have wanted to be elsewhere. To be displeased with the surroundings while at the same time attempting no change whatsoever is the unwavering state of the Klaxworm's consciousness. It is a very disagreeable purpose to have in life, one that usually results in not doing anything other than stewing about in a cave waiting for ones organs to boil.

  Are Klaxworms really this stupid? Not quite. They are merely one of the universe’s laziest creatures.

  Another mysterious creature on this planet is the briefly aforementioned Flying Grimbat messenger. The Flying Grimbat messenger looks like a triplet of tie-dyed Perusian vampire bats mashed up in a quality vice grip with 3 sets of pterodactyl wings frantically flapping to keep its monstrous body afloat. They feed on a strict diet of watered down schmold, making them somewhat of an enemy to Greegs (who fear the notion of sharing schmold). Luckily the fact that Grimbats water down their schmold means they don’t use very much of it. If a Grimbat consumed pure schmold the Greegs would have wiped them out ages ago. It is also true that for some reason the Greegs feel a compelling affinity with the Grimbats, as if they are one of them. Flying Grimbats have appointed themselves messengers of the planet, like a spontaneous organic media. The only problem with this flying epidemic of mass media is that nobody wants to hear their mind-numbingly boring messages, making Grimbats possibly the most useless creature on the planet. Certainly more useless than Klaxworms, who at least mind their own business and don’t drop excrement on the recently varnished marble. Grimbats are confounding blabbermouths. They are heedless busybodies swooping around the skies, eavesdropping from behind shrubs and sheepishly claiming it’s for the good of public knowledge when they get caught doing it. The parallels between Flying G
rimbat Messengers and human paparazzi are staggering. In my eyes, the only blatant difference is that a paparazzi looks like a triplet of tie-dyed Perusian vampire bats mashed up in a quality vice grip with 2 sets of pterodactyl wings frantically flapping to keep it's monstrous body afloat, as opposed to having the regular 3 sets of pterodactyl wings commonly found on the Flying Grimbat Messenger.

  Like I said, they are a mysterious creature

  CHAPTER 10

  The Scam of Religious Holidays for Greegs

  A Greeg calendar is an interesting collectible to come across in your space travels. Just the fact that Greegs have invented a calendar is mystifying, but matters are made more baffling when you discover there is no semblance of logic or pattern in any of the 473 pages, all of which are constantly being rearranged and rewritten due to squabbles about which holidays should be celebrated and which should never be spoken of again. Random holidays (some enthralling, some downright shameful) are perpetually coming and going, but the celebration of one in particular has always been agreed upon. It is marked on the calendar by every 4.3 rotations of the small moon Dromos, and it is a day in which all respectable Greegs must pay reverence to their deity, known by the name ‘Whatever It Is That Created Everything For the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg.’ On the day of reverence a Greeg says thank you to Whatever It Is That Created Everything For the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg, and prays the supply of schmold be plentiful for at least the next thousand revolutions round the sun. The centrepiece of the event is the great tradition known as The Offering of Schmold. Each Greeg family is expected (nay, commanded by law) to place a worthy offering in front of a stone altar, where slaves of the congregation collect the offerings and take them to a secret volcano that is the living heart of Whatever It Is That Created Everything For the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg. This was once a pure act of sacrifice, but over time the Offering of Schmold became nothing more than an egotistical competition to see who could offer the most intricately expensive display. Much of a Greeg's time between days of reverence is spent planning out and constructing their next offering. Commendable offerings in recent years have included: a 2-dozen set of schmold candles (a truly rare item considering the near impossibility of solidifying schmold short of owning a bottle of Ice-Nine), a flat-screen schmold television (with all the channels of course), a schmold-multiplier (a remarkable machine that can increase your schmold supply at a rate of .03% per rotation of Dromos, assuming you’re able to afford the astronomically bankrupting task of plugging it in), and the ever popular schmold-cake (acceptable only when baked to a crispy charcoal texture and stomped on a little bit).