Monday, June 30, 2014

Prompt: this fountain

PROMPT: This fountain in front of the Delaware Museum of Natural History.

RESPONSE:
Once upon a time there was a mischievous god who was kind of an asshole.  His favorite activity was disguising himself as an animal so that he could visit the kingdom and reward those he found causing trouble.  He did this frequently - so frequently, in fact, that the residents of the kingdom soon became used to the idea of a huge wild boar that seemed to like watching them.  Soon the people took no notice of the boar-god and did things in front of him that would otherwise have cost him quite a bit of money in pay-per-view fees.
The other gods - especially his wife - thought this behavior was incredibly tacky, and they came up with a plan to teach him a lesson.  They waited until the next time the boar-god was distracted by the shamelessly wanton behavior of nearby humans.  Then they struck, using their combined powers to freeze him in place, his haunches reclined on the ground while his front half leaned avidly forward, drool slowly spilling from his opened mouth.  He was stuck in a shell of bronze that prevented him from moving ... but not from thinking.
The boar-god's thoughts see-sawed from one extreme to another.  How could they do this to him?  Actually, it was kind of a good trick - it would be hilarious if they had done it to anyone but him.  When would they let him out?  He should pretend to want to stay here, just to annoy them.  No, seriously - how long was he going to be stuck here?  He wanted to get out, NOW!  And that was all in the first second or two - the boar-god was kind of a drama queen.
The other gods congratulated themselves on a prank well-played, slapping each other on the back and giving each other high-fives.  After a few minutes, one of them declared it was time to release the boar-god from his prison now that he had been taught a lesson.  The gods all looked at one another, nobody's face showing the slightest sign that they knew how to dissolve the curse that had trapped the boar-god.
The god of fire finally came up with an idea.  The god was trapped inside the hollow shell of the statue - so if she could melt or cut her way through the outer layer, the god would be set free.  So the fire god summoned a blowtorch and set to work cutting through the bronze.  But since she was a former girlfriend of the boar-god (and kind of pissed off at him for how he had ended their relationship), she attacked the spot on the statue which was most likely to cause the boar-god pain if something went wrong ... which it did, almost immediately.  The second the blowtorch touched the crotch of the boar statue, the metal began to melt and flow, shrinking it instead of cutting through it.  As the shell began to thin, more metal from the surrounding areas melted and flowed to the thin spot, ensuring that the torch never punched through to the inside.
The boar-god, meanwhile, was horrified to see his ex-girlfriend approaching his package with a blowtorch.  His thoughts rose to a fevered pitch as the flame got closer and closer to his favorite body parts, and he just about passed out when the flame hit him for the first time.  His consciousness bounced around inside the statue like a ping-pong ball inside a lotto machine, staying far away from the heat and anticipated pain in the statue's groin.  He waited for his opening, ready to escape through even the smallest pinprick of an opening in the bronze, but none ever came.
Eventually the fire god gave up, as did the rest of the gods who had played the prank.  They washed their hands of the situation and went back to whatever it is that those guys do all day, leaving the boar-god stranded on the outskirts of the kingdom.
Oh, well, his wife thought, dragging the heavy statue behind her as she started toward home.  I better find someplace safe to stash this until we figure out how to get the nimrod out.
She found a museum under construction and offered the statue to the managers, free of charge if only they would take it off her hands.  The managers were a little surprised to see such a small woman single-handedly dragging a huge bronze statue across their parking lot, but they readily agreed to her suggestion.  It was a science museum, not an art museum, but they were happy to explain to all of their visitors that "pigs are science, too - kind of boring science, but it still totally counts."
The boar-god was delighted in the change in scenery his new installation allowed ... right up until the first visitors to the museum decided to use him as a jungle gym.  Kids climbed up, over, and around him, using the least appropriate parts of his body as footholds and handholds on their ways up.  It's probably a good thing the boar-god was still trapped inside the statue and couldn't feel anything other than the existential embarrassment of having a bunch of Kindergartners use his wang as a stepping stone on the way to sitting on his back.
This went on for years.  Then one day, a morbidly obese boy decided he wanted to climb to the top of the statue.  He placed one foot on the base of the statue, then put his other foot right on the boar-god's genitals.  As soon as he tried to put his weight on his second foot, that part of the statue snapped off, tumbling him to the ground.  The boy hit hard, and he was still trying to clear his head a few minutes later when he watched a dense purple smoke pour out of the small hole he'd made in the statue.
"Later, bitches!" the boy heard echoing across the parking lot as the purple smoke dribbled away into the camouflaging darkness of the nearby forest.

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