Original Orgasmic Origami, part four

‘Ole Beard, white as a spruce bough in February, was moving hither and fro at a pace unheard of, or so they told the tale on Main Street. Monday morning the cloud was seen going south, when the wind was more north-westerly. Strange but not surprising. The air currents in Kenetica sometimes behaved sort of hokey. 'True cattywampus' they observed, craning their necks, outside the barber shop.

Mayor Angela wasn’t even trying to disguise the cloud’s movements. She couldn’t if she wanted to locate the illusive Johnny while he fled, presumably south, on his pilfered pony. The cloud didn’t quite zigzag across the terrain, but it did move up and down some, getting a wide angle view. And the cameras could get multiple views and zoom in as well.

 It was the tire tracks that gave Johnny away. He veered off the main road into the countryside, heading for Calypso. Then he changed course, climbing up onto a different road. Highway Three, a connector. From here Johnny could go east or west. Mole City or Gold Rush. At the place where the pony entered the road, the tire tracks were visibly muddy and left a clear trail. The tracks turned east, but not for long, because Johnny made a series of tight loops on the pavements, until his tires shed the muck, then he boogied… but east or west Barbara could not discern. For an hour perhaps she focused on the highway, going east to west and backtracking, until finally she spotted a clue. It may have been something, or nothing. But it was all she had to go on. Barbara made the call, and the Trapezoids left their garage and flew off east toward Mole City, magnitudes faster than any fluffy old cloud could.

 “Stupid cloud,” muttered Johnny, clenching the pony between his knees and rocketing down into the green verge off the road. There was an edging of woods there, and beyond that he reckoned was open fields, who knows what, maybe more woods, and eventually another highway. Johnny had no more than an inkling opinion of what lay between him and freedom. Actually he wasn’t even sure what it was he ran from. Johnny was spooked, and unsure of what had happened, and rehabilitation just scared the bejeebus out of him.  

 The pony sensed conditions under foot, or tread, and its tires widened, rising above the verge which had begun to sog up with precipitation. The grasses poked up from the wet like a frog’s haircut and soon they sunk completely and Johnny was riding on a vast expanse of carpeted ripples. The wheels changed over to ample skis and he sailed ahoy to a treeless horizon, bespotted with the occasional island hillock.  

 “This will not do,” Johnny decided, and pulled the rudder to lee, wanting to get into some firmer footing. Open water terrified him. He didn’t even consider what might lie below, until it poked up some eyes and considered him. Johnny throttled up and left the eyeballs in his wake, heading to shore. The pony left a waterfall from the fire spitting engines in its stead, until he had to turn and reverse course quickly when a cavalcade of tentacled phalangi sprouted in his path.

 Johnny screamed as a fifteen foot arm swooped down toward his head, and several more broke the surface. Geysers erupted in every direction, soaking his already moist body from his dripping hair to the stitching in his underclothes.  He pulled the pony in every direction, dodging the flailing appendages and more pointy beaks than he ever cared to see again on this day or in any future dream, ever. After he decided he wasn’t dead, Johnny figured the monstrous sea creatures weren’t trying to kill, or eat, him. From their delighted squawking it was apparent the great slimy booger covered octopi were probably in the throes of a communal copulatory festival. When Johnny finally made it to shore, putting the heaving ocean behind him, a collective huzzah burst forth from the frothing waters. This was followed by a moan and bubbles arising from the depths as the monsters sunk sighing to the depths of their pleasure.

 “Oh gods no,” said Johnny, moving away from the swampy lowland, “That is not the way to go, no not at all.”

 Angela missed all that from her remote cumulus viewpoint, but she never suspected the direction Johnny’s eventful morning would take him next.