Storymania - The Legend Of Pygman by David Clark

The Legend Of Pygman
David Clark

Long ago, a man came up with a fantastically ridiculous idea that people should stop using words like ‘fantastically and ridiculous’. He was torn apart by a swamp gas sucking oracle impersonator and burn up inside of his anointment robe.
In other news… Some time after the gods had started to interact with the humans there was a kingdom. The one in charge of this kingdom was the ridiculously imperious King Analus. Since humans were made in the form of the gods, Analus unfortunately best reflected Cronos. Analus ruled his kingdom with an iron fist, asking too much of his subjects and maintaining order by throwing his potential enemies and violators of the law down a bottomless pit, witch he aptly named, “The Mouth of Cronos”.
Prometheus never intended a human to have these sorts of qualities. He had only made Analus in order to make a caricature of Cronos (This is why Analus had a large, exaggerated head and disproportionately small body). Prometheus intended to have taken all the life out of the clay before he formed Analus. He put the life into a bottle and the bottle was hid in the heavens. Eventually Zeus found the bottle and, thinking it was nectar, drank it. The contents did not agree with his stomach and he vomited it upon the earth (this form of precipitation is still not classified). The life came back into the clay body of Analus and he became human. Analus obtained his throne by assassinating the king of Hartford, by means of a giant head butt.
Once the tyrannical rule of Analus began his subjects decided that they would leave the kingdom. They didn’t really have to put up with him after all. In order to keep people form leaving his kingdom Analus surrounded the area with all sorts of vicious beasts. There was the twenty-tailed Thydra, the Nymean Ill-Tempered Cat, the Sirings, a middle school quire closely related to the Sirens. Their song was so off key that anyone who heard it within a 12 mile radius would promptly commit suicide. Other beasts included 1:8 scale smoke-breathing dragons, escaped mental patients, dull-toothed rats, Yorkshire terriers, killer rabbits, peeved guppies, evil teachers and possibly the most fearful of them all, Kenny G, to name a few (For an extensive list of creatures please see Homer’s Big Little Scroll of Nasty Places to live. Entry: Hartford).
The issue at hand here was that this anal-retentive king was holding an entire kingdom hostage. No one could leave and Analus could not be dethroned. Insurrection was a 100% sure fire way to die. Analus’s security staff of beasts were so fearful that even the god’s were reluctant to intervene.
Incidentally, one god did try to intervene, an unknown god by the name of Si. Si was unknown because he was a little weak and useless. One thing he did have though was a sense of duty. He planned to go have a chat with Analus and tell him what was what, what to do with it, and suggest a few places to put it. Upon entering into Hartford he was immediately attacked by a dull-toothed rat, after personally wetting himself he ran screaming in fear all the way back to Prospect Mountain (He was not even good enough to be on Mt. Olympus.). That is why to this day the word for girly man is Sissy.
And so Analus’s rule ran uninterrupted for 14 years. He became more and more powerful. He married a rather butch Cretian named Henrietta, more commonly known as “Hank the Tank”. It is rumored that she came from the same family tree as the Minotaur.
In time Hank gave birth to a child. Analus didn’t want anyone to
take over his kingdom, and Hank didn’t want him to eat her dinner. They couldn’t decide on who would get to eat the kid so they threw him down the bottomless pit.
Now it is a little known fact that the bottomless pit actually does have a bottom! The pit goes all the way through the earth to where the Titan Atlas is holding up the sky. After a brief stint where Atlas had gotten Hercules to hold the sky for him he finally figured out that he could just prop up the sky with a stick. So when Analus’s son came falling out of the pit Atlas caught him and raised him. He named the boy Pygman, because Atlas has a strange sense of humor, and he taught Pygman everything he knew, which basically consisted of how to prop up the sky with a stick. So Atlas decided when Pygman was twenty-one, that he could teach him nothing more and sent him back up to the earth.
And that is how Pygman came into the world; he was completely alone, knowledgeless, possessionless, and really not knowing what to do with himself. Athena, the goddess of wisdom looked down on Pygman and took pity on him because he was pathetic and had a silly name. What Athena saw was a blank canvas.
She came to him while he was sitting on a rock and announced, “Pygman, do you know who I am?” Pygman didn’t know who she was because Atlas didn’t tell him much. He had been out of the loop for quite some time.
He replied to the goddess, “If your tired I can prop you up with a stick.”
She shook her head “I am the goddess Athena.” Pygman responded with a blank stare. Athena realized what she had to do. She said “Pygman, I can see that you are stupid and I want to help you. I foresee that you will become a great hero. So I am going to give you the gift of wisdom.”
And this is how Pygman became wise. Other gods also foresaw greatness in Pygman and gave him great gifts. Hermes gave him cleverness and speed. Aphrodite gave him sea foam. He wasn’t sure what this was for but it did make him a hit with the ladies. Apollo gave him ambition. Artemis taught him to hunt. She only asked that he not sneak up on her while bathing, and lastly Zeus gave Pygman strength. The gods had groomed Pygman to become a hero. I could embellish on many of these stories but that would be boring. Most people would rather skip to the part where he beats things up.

Despite his cleverness and wisdom the only thing Pygman did with his power was rescue cute little kittens from trees. Shaking their heads wearily, the gods decided they should give Pygman a task. So Hermes came to Pygman on his winged sandals, laughed at his name for a while and then told Pygman to go and kill king Analus. The gods had chosen king Analus purely by chance and had not even considered Pygman’s relation to him. Even Pygman had not given much thought to who his real parents were. So he trained a bunch of guys with red hats called firemen to rescue the cats from the trees and began on his quest to take over the city of Hartford.
Hephestius was the only god who thought to prepare Pygman for his journey. He forged Pygman an unbreakable sword and shield. Pygman thanked him and was on his way, the whole time wondering, “What is Aphrodite doing with a freak like that?”
Pygman traveled on his way to the great city of Hartford. While on his way he encountered a band of heroes doing battle with the infamous Thydra at the base of a cliff.
As you remember it was a beast with twenty razor sharp
tails and teeth on its one head the size of an oak tree.
One man tried to slice off a tail but it cut his sword in two! Another man was sliced by the Thydra’s tail. One hero tried to cut off the beast’s head but was pinned to the ground by two of the tails and eaten. After seeing that the heroes were going to lose the battle resoundingly, Pygman decided to help them out. He climbed a nearby tree and leapt onto the Thydra’s back. Using his sword forged by Hephaestus he sliced one the tails off in one clean swipe. The tail fell on the ground and suddenly grew into another Thydra! All the other heroes ran away. Pygman, being cornered, spied a long pointed tree lying dead on top of the cliff above him. He let the Thydrae charge at him and at the last minute ducked under a rock. The Thydrae blitzed him and slammed into the cliff ending up on top of each other. This jarred the tree off the cliff and it fell down running through both the monsters and killing them so that they died and ceased to live. R.I.P.
After the battle was over the remaining heroes came out of hiding. The first came to thank Pygman and said, “Thank you good hero, what is your name?”
“I am Pygman.”
Trying to hide a smirk the hero said “Well, Pig-man….”
“It’s Pygman.”
“Right, sorry my arm got bitten off earlier today and I haven’t been the same since.”
“Your arm?” Asked Pygman.
“It, uh, grew back. My name is Hurculees.”
“The Hercules?”
He looked down, “No, Hurculees. Two E’s at the end. The other men were starting to come up. “And this is Jayson, with a Y, Achillese with an E at the end, and Perseus.”
“What? Perseus with a silent q and two P’s?” Asked Pygman sarcastically.
Purseus piped in, “No, its spelled Purseus.”
“So you are THE Purseus who killed Medusa.”
Purseus also looked at the ground, “Well, no. But I did meet her in a bar once and almost completely drank her under the table. I also auditioned for ‘Clash of the Titans’.”
Hurculees interrupted, “Pygman, we can see that you are braver than us so we will join you on your quest.”
Not knowing how to take this Pygman responded with, “k.” The gods had not given him the skill of eloquent speech.
Pygman and his men continued on the road to the city of Hartford.
At this time king Analus was in the process of forcing the king of Athens to send him seven young maidens to do the chicken dance to appease the Thydra. The king of Athens had to comply because other kings were always picking on him. Analus’s trusted soothsayer came in with some rather unpleasant news.
“Thire?” Asked the Soothsayer, whose name happened to be Jim.
“What is it Jim?” responded the king.
“Uh, well thire, the Thydwas have been kiwled.”
“What!” “Why couldn’t these magic guys ever be normal?” he wondered. Jim was overweight, pale, had a goatee, he always insisted on greeting people with ‘Live long and prosper’, and had an obvious speech problem.
“Yeth, I’ve just theen it in the Orwacle pool.” The Oracle pool was a remarkable device. All you had to do was pour in one pint of moose pee, or Canadian beer, what ever is on hand at the time, and it would tell you exactly what was going on in any given location at any given time. On top of that it would also check the weather, e-mail, surf the web, and play DVD in full surround sound.
“You must show me this,” said Analus. So he was led into the pool hall and shown. “They’re all dead!” he exclaimed.
“Whath dead?”
“The Thydrae!”
“Thanks, captain obvious!” remarked one of the king’s guards. It was the guard’s first day, and his last because he was then thrown down the bottomless pit. Atlas would have caught him but he was busy trying to woo a cloud. Atlas really wasn’t that sharp.
Jim continued, “And thith ith the hewo wesponsible fowr kiwing them.” The pool showed an image of Pygman, traveling down the road to Hartford.
Analus inquired, “So what’s his bit?”
“Hmm, wets find out.” He poured in some more beer and it made a cloudy green swirl in the pool. “Ah, it theemth that owr fwend’s name ith Pygman. I think he wooks mowr wike a Woger, definatwy a Woger. Or maybe a Bwian.”
“Get on with it!”
“Thowwy thire. Pygman hath been waised by the Thitan Atwas, and hath the bwessing of the godth.”
“Who is his father?”
“Ah, Thire. That’th where it getth intherwesting. He ith your thon.”
“My what? My son?”
“Yeth, your thon.”
“Well, he undoubtedly is coming back to claim his thrown.” Analus said rather calmly. “Has he killed any other beasts?”
“Yeth, he forthed the Thirens and Kenny G to fowm a band and their headth exthploded.”
“This is all true?”
“I thwear buy Hermeeth.”
“Is that a type of medication?”
“No Thire.”
“Why do you talk so weird?”
“Thowwy Thire, I’m a Woman.”
“You’re a Woman?”
“No, a Woman. WOE-MAN.”
“Oh, a ROMAN.”
“Yeth, yeth, a Woman.”
“Well, er, thank you Jim, for this information. I think I can take it from here. You may go now.”
“Thank you Thire. Wiv wong and pwosper.” Jim made a jesture, splitting his fingers apart, and left the room. Incidentally, Jim was the first person in history to get a wedgie. Analus really was just trying to get rid of him so he could think. He paused for a second.
Meanwhile up on mount Olympus Zeus, king of the gods was just finishing up with the Olympian board meeting; “-Oh Kay, thank you Hades, god of the underworld, for that… uh, wonderful speech on how to properly care for your three headed dog. I’m sure that information will be… uh, useful, in the future.” Sparse Applause. “Wasn’t that nice Poseidon, god of the sea, and Hermes, messenger of the gods. And Aphrodite, goddess of love, and Ares- What are you doing Ares, god of war?
At that moment an unknown god by the name of Jerry spoke up, “Father Zeus? Just a suggestion, perhaps you do not need to say the gods title every time you say their names.” Jerry promptly felt a lightning bolt surge through his body.
Incidentally there are a lot of gods in the world, and not all of them chose to be mentioned in the texts One of these was Dave. Dave actually was one of the favorite gods but personally had himself stricken from the record of many tales. He popped up into heaven on a cloud elevator with a trail of nymphs following behind; he always had a trail of nymphs following behind. Dave was just that kind of guy. Dave was quite the powerful god, but he did not want to tie himself down with the responsibility of something like hauling the sun across the sky or making sure that the frogs croaked on time. He did sometimes sub in for Demeter. He had a trademark move of making it snow on one persons lawn but blue sky and sunny for the guy next door. Dave was most famous for being fiendishly good looking.
“Dave,” spoke Zeus, “I’m glad you’re here! We were just about to discuss the affairs of Pygman, and how his quest is going to assassinate his father.”
Dave casually sat on a cloud, plucked one of Aphrodite’s golden apples and began eating it. “Actually Zeus, you don’t have to worry much about Pygman.”
“Why not?”
“He’s out of our jurisdiction.”
“What!” exclaimed Zeus in surprise and alarm. At this a few dozen lightning bolt were hurled out of heaven and fell upon a perfectly harmless family of eels, which have been electrified to this very day.
Dave pulled out a map of the Earth. “You see,” he held it up for the gods, this is Greece…” He paused because the gods could not handle too much information at once. “Pygman’s quest is to find the city of Hartford and that is located all the way up here.” He pointed into the future asia. “Our sphere of influence ends here, at the border of Greece.”
Zeus gaped, “That’s completely ridiculous, were the gods! Earthly boundaries cannot hold us. We’re immortal, invincible, all powerful!”
Dave explained, “It’s like this you see: once Pygman leaves Greece there is nothing you can do to help him. You would need to petition Mother Earth, get a temporary bypass warrant from universal legislation, and schedule a hearing with a vote in two-thirds majority in favor of voting again. All in all the process should take about five hundred years.”
“This is all preposterous. I’m king!”
“Well maybe you shouldn’t have slept so much in Government class,” added Athena.
“Everybody sleeps in government class!” bellowed Zeus. And at this a harmless flock of seagulls suddenly fell victim to a shower of lightening bolts. The seagulls, witch had previously been quiet, mild mannered creatures, suddenly felt the urge to squawk loudly, eat garbage and harass people on beaches, on account of a certain amount of hereditary brain damage. If any accountable person had been around at this time they would have been shocked to see a large tortoise rise up out of the ocean waters and say to anyone who cared to listen: “Time for another abrupt scene change.”
Pygman glanced around the forest scene. The road to Hartford was a long and grueling one and he began to wonder if he would ever near his journeys end. He and the others had been traveling the road for a good amount of time and began to think that they maybe should have bought a map.
Truthfully though, a map would not have done him any good. It only would depress him. The idea that that the shortest distance between two points is a strait line had not yet reached Hartford. The only road to the city took some serious detours, like a dog chasing it’s tail. One traveler to Hartford once passed the same point the road so many times that he eventually met up with himself again. The traveler was so shocked and amazed and utterly stunned at this that he promptly, and without any coaxing by a pharmacist, went insane.
Fortunately Pygman was past that. The place he found himself in right now looked something like this:
The forest closed in, the trees becoming like cave walls around the winding path. Branches stretched overhead and interlocked to tightly form a chapel roof. Any gaps were filled with leaves and dense vegetation. The forest was so thick that not even light could penetrate the woody surrounding. Only Hades itself could have had a tighter grip on darkness. Through the light of his torch Pygman could barely determine what was around the next bend, he found solace in the fact that he didn’t want to know what was around the next bend. With every turn the knot in his stomach grew and tightened to the point that he thought that there must be a boy scout in his stomach sitting there tightening the knot. Through the flicker of the flames even the tiniest ant became a dragon.
Just when the mood of the place was really beginning to set in an obnoxiously gaudy light originated out of nowhere and flashed so bright that it temporarily blinded anyone who saw it (being that it was so gaudy it would have completely blinded any female from California or New Jersey. Turning their leather to pleather at the same time.)
Pygman blocked his face with his hands as shafts of salmon and pink seeped through his fingers singeing his eyes. Then, just as water runs down a drain, the light absorbed into itself and left in its place a man.
He was sitting in some sort of lawn chair with various sorts of pinwheels all over it. To avoid useless detail, the pinwheels were of the ridiculous variety. What pinwheel isn’t? The man himself upstaged the pinwheels, he was wearing a straw hat, Hawaiian shirt, bright shorts and sandals that could only been outclassed by perhaps bright yellow Nikes.
Now this sight that was beheld by Pygman was not of the normal variety according to anything that he believed to be normal, and he was right. Pygman, you see, had just met the world’s first time traveler: Tim Temple.
Tim Temple was a thinker, a dreamer, and an intellectualist. After he had received a university grant from several unsuspecting community collages under the pretense of “discovering a prescription drug that did not involve bowel movements as a side effect”, he then used the money to fun his research for time travel. After years and years of calculations he concluded that any possibility of time travel was totally absurd. A curios chain of events then followed that some how involved Tim, pinwheels, a lawn chair, and the complete Hawaiian shirt outfit, the formula for time travel was discovered. The formula basically states that in order to achieve a mathematically absurd event such as time travel, the time traveler must be equally absurd, in appearance. Upon discovering this, unfortunately, Tim had opened up a time rift and was forever lost in time. What Tim did once he was lost in time is, clearly, nobodies’ busyness. Actually, this whole “explanation of time travel” bit was all coming together very well but suddenly lost momentum at the last minute and a unanimous decision has been reached to skip to the good part. I don’t mean the end.
“-And so Pygman,” continued Tim, “That is why your father, King Analus has his entire army waiting for you at the end of the woods 100 yards ahead.” This is what Tim would have said to Pygman had he got the chance. Yes, that is exactly what he was going to say to Pygman, had he not at that very moment accidentally stepped on a butterfly that led to another chain of events that contradicted the very existence of Tim in the first place and he disappeared in a puff of nothingness. All in all, making the whole experience a complete waste of time, for anyone involved.
“Right.” Commented Pygman, “Lets move on, were wasting valuable time with this quest and all that.” All agreed.
And so they agreeably continued on the journey until on hundred yards down the road one thousand peeved men with many arrows flying in Pygman’s general direction greeted them.
General Svenge gazed down from the hilltop with his hand shading his eyes from the sun. He did this to look important for it was a well-known fact that the sun was not shining. Svenge knew he must maintain an important looking image because he had important things to do. Today was Wednesday and his first order of business was to see to the death of Pygman. That is why he had one thousand of his most peeved men poised with one thousand bows pointed at a hole in the woods where Pygman was soon doomed to appear.
“Lovely day isn’t it sir?” proposed Svenge’s first officer.
“Beautiful day number one.”
“Yes, yes it is sir. Not too sunny though sir.”
“No, no it isn’t.”
“How’s the wife and kids sir?”
“Awfully tiring dialogue number one.”
“Yes, you stupid piece of rat cake, maybe if you bothered to notice one single solitary thing outside of your puffed up egotistical pea brain and stopped being so self absorbed about you and your big nose, maybe, if you bothered to look in a mirror and realized the ignorant pile of pig slop that you really are, and maybe, just maybe you could look outside far enough to pop that pimple on the end of your nose, maybe after that then you could be capable to carry on a conversation a little more in depth than the *@#@#$ weather!”
“I’m sorry what was that number one?”
“Yes, I agree sir. Look! There’s Pygman!”
“FIRE!”…………
.............

Number one leaned over to his direct inferior. “Never seen the general swear like that before.”
Number two spoke out of the side of his mouth to number one, “Yes, but did you ever see one thousand men miss a single non-moving target before?”
“No.”
“By the way, you owe me five clams.”

..................

Pygman looked up at the thousand silhouettes on the top of the hill. Then he looked at the thousand arrows that littered the ground all around him, lastly he looked at the angry little man in the general’s hat at the top of the hill flailing wildly and screaming profanity.

...................

Svenge’s face was now as red as his uniform, “Don’t just stand there!” he shouted at his men, “Take another shot!”
“Were, uh, all out sir.” Stammered a solder.
“What!”
“Well sir, hah! Well, you know, who’d think that we’d all miss.”
“Well attack him or something.”
“With what sir?”
“A sword!”
“Well, you know sir. With the odds of us missing so small and all I decided to leave my sword at home.”
“Well that’s just fantastic,” rolled Svenge, “here we’ve got lousy Alexander the Great conquering the known world and I’m stuck here with a bunch of cross eyed fools who forgot their sword at home.”
“I’ve got a sword, sir.”
“You do? It’s wooden!”
“My good ones in the shop sir.”
“Oh, no that just takes the cake!”
....................

Now there comes a time in every man’s life when he observes two people arguing and has to decide whether or not to a:) jump them by surprise and knock them out, or b:) steal there car and make a swift getaway. This is exactly what Pygman did because when Svenge and his men looked up again Pygman and his men were riding off to the kingdom of Hartford on Svenge’s horses. Several new swear words were invented by Svenge that day.

.......................

Pygman looked behind him as he road away on his horse and laughed at the thousand angry men desperately trying tying to catch up. The gods looked down from the clouds and cheered him on. Analus looked out the windows of his palace, saw Pygman coming with what looked like an army behind him and started to franticly board up the windows. He ran to Jim who was still at the oracle pool.
“Jim! Why did you not tell me Pygman was coming with such an army?”
“Thowwy thire, I wuth on the Dungionth and Dwagonth web thite.”
Analus cried for the gods to help him but the only reply from the heavens was a voice saying, “Sorry buddy.” As for Analus, he cast himself into the bottomless pit and was impaled by one of Atlas’s new inventions: the pointy stick.
Pygman, still on his high horse was thoroughly caught up in the moment. He took the time to make a few friendly gestures to his chasers and told them some facts they didn’t know about there mommas. He was in fact, so delighted at how things were going that he completely neglected to avoid the giant canyon in his path and went careening into it. His hoarse was rather gassy and exploded on impact.
And so ended the legend of Pygman. The people of Hartford decided that they could finally skip town and migrated to the city of Troy, witch they heard was having a big party on account of a giant wooden horse. Jim, the soothsayer, invented a popular card game for skinny kids with acne and has been doing well ever since. Hank the Tank invented tiny muffins and opened a bakeshop. Hurculees, Jayson, and Perseus formed a boy band. General Svenge is currently undergoing therapy. And Atlas found his true calling, sharpening toothpicks. Dave has a talk show.