#anyways love my ugly ass giant duck lizard

[lockedtowers]

seeing ppl in the tags super used to the j/apperwock(y) in b/urton's alice and then getting mad at how 'ugly' the s/yfy version is is absolutely hilarious to me bc the s/yfy version is literally just lifted from the original illustrations

[ecotone99]

[MF] Lizard

“This story spans 8000 years, not a second less and not a second more. It started on the 0th second and it ended on the 8000 x 365 x 24 x 60th second, which works out to the 4,204,800,000th second.

After the 4,204,800,000th second, precisely nothing happened concerning this story ever, ever, ever again.

The thing that happened on the 0th second is that somebody threw a rock at a lizard to scare it away because they thought it was ugly, and instead the rock caught the lizard square in the head and crushed its brain and pinned it to the warm patch of stone it had been sunning itself on, and it stayed there unburied for about a week until the rain washed it down onto the grass and nature reclaimed it.

The thing that happened on the 4,204,800,000th second is a little more complicated, but it started with me kissing you at church camp, and it continued with you falling in love with me, and it ended about 120 seconds from now with me throwing a rock at your head and pinning you to the linoleum. I’m going to dig up that part of the flooring and let nature reclaim you. But that happens outside of the story. The story ends when the rock hits your head.

Honey--the door’s locked. And so are the order of events. I’m fully aware you’re going to scream and yell anyway, but I tell you in my calmest and most reassuring voice that I’m as helpless to stop this as you are.

Please let me just tell my story. I haven’t gotten to what happened in the middle at all.

Basically what happened is that I was reincarnated many, many times. I’ve been a dove, I’ve been a plant, I’ve been a mailman, I’ve been a caveman, I’ve been one of the 12 disciples. I’ve been an ass, both in the animal sense and the human sense.

What’s beautiful is you have been, too. You just don’t realize it. The thing is--most people don’t. There’s only a few people who realize what’s happening and start remembering all their past lives and being able to weave a big picture out of them, even though everybody’s lived thousands and thousands of lives.

I’m a rare breed, see. I remember all of mine. After a while, I started to be able to recognize the people around me, too--I could tell when the milkman had been a blade of grass I met in a past life, et cetera. You start to recognize energies. You start to know the universe very well, the ebbs and flows of everything--you start to realize you’re just a piece of a giant machine--that everything that’s ever happened and is ever gonna happen is set in stone and if you look just right, you can see it all. Over time I learned all this. I’ve become very special over hundreds and hundreds of years.

There’s one person, though, who I started to recognize very, very early on in my learning. What was so unique about this person was that they didn’t just pop up in one of my lives. They were in every single one.

Do you know who that person was?

You. Yes.

You.

Every time I thought I had my life figured out, it was you--first with the rock 8,000 years ago, then countless other times--the Roman guard who hung me upside down on the cross, the saber-tooth tiger who sunk its teeth into my neck, the poison dart frog that climbed into my soup, the cheetah that grabbed my tail and dragged me up a tree, the sparrow that pulled me out of the ground and slurped me down--always you. Always. I know you don’t know what you’re doing--you’re just living your life and killing what you have to kill in that life, and once you pass to the next life the previous ones are forgotten--but it’s not that way for me.... and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Olivia, you have ended my earthly existence no fewer than 5,600 times. And now that I finally lived a life where I have had the luck to find you before you find me, I am going to return the favor. I have worked for years to woo you, to wed you, to give you a beautiful child, and to finally catch you with your guard completely down--and here we are.

I know that it’s stupid to kill someone when they’re only going to return in another form, probably to kill me again. Perhaps you’ll even be the one who ends this life for me, one of the few times I’ve been lucky enough to be a moderately attractive human...

But I’m going to get this one win. This one win. I’m going to show the universe that things can be reversed--that even the most intractable patterns can be destroyed by the will of man. I am going to show the universe that Steve Jameson is a force to be reckoned with!”

There was an awkward pause. Olivia did not move, or break her composure, or beg for mercy. Steve was breathing heavily. He had not paced his speech correctly and public speaking had always made his mouth dry out and his stomach hurt.

Finally Steve stumbled towards Olivia with the rock in his hand, raised up high. He seemed confused whether he was going to throw it or hit her with it, and so ended up sort of just being passively carried by the weight of the rock forwards. Their baby was crying in the next room and the sound of crickets outside floated in through the window. It was a beautiful California summer night.

Olivia took in how small of a man Steve was, and how pathetic and strange he had sounded throughout the whole story he told her. She thought about how sad it was to wait 8,000 years to deliver a speech and then for the whole thing to sound so stilted, so passionless. The delivery on the whole thing was a C- at best.

She had heard him reciting it before, in the mirror to himself before they went out to dinner. She had felt him thinking of this speech as a plant growing on her window sill, a plant she had fed rubbing alcohol for a few weeks before it withered away. She had known he was thinking of this speech when she was a hawk and he was a rabbit and she had swooped him up and dropped him into the river. She had heard him reciting the speech to himself when she had shot a flamethrower into his foxhole. She had heard.

Steve swung the rock after what felt like ages, and Olivia ducked and swept out his legs, and the rock skittered across the carpet. She grabbed a kitchen knife in a flash, pushed him backwards, and held it to his neck, him flat on the ground, her on top of him. They both breathed heavily and Steve tried very hard not to move.

“When’s the 4,204,800,000th second?”

Steve strained his eyes to look at the kitchen clock without moving his head. Olivia pressed the knife up into his chin harder and pinned his hand to the floor with her knee.

“20 seconds.”

For 20 seconds, Olivia pressed the knife to his neck and kept all her weight on him, and they both listened to the time pass.

“That’s it.”

Slowly, Olivia took the knife away from his throat, but stayed on top of him, pinning him there.

“Did you see that happening, with your “very special” vision of all events past and present?”

“I did. But I had to at least try to change it.”

Steve laughed a little bit to himself and wiped away a tear from under his eye with his free arm, careful to move as slow and un-threateningly as he could.

“8,000 years we’ve known each other now, in a sense.”

“8,000 years.”

“Did you know it was me when we got married?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Did you know you were doing it?”

“Killing you?”

“Yeah.”

“Not at first. But after a while, yeah.”

“Why?”

“I just kept being in a position to do it. And you always make it so easy.”

Steve thought about this for a second.

“I guess I would have done the same to you if I was in your place.”

Olivia listened for the baby for a second. He had calmed down. She moved her knee off Steve’s wrist.

“Are you gonna kill me again now?”

“I guess if you want me to. I need help around the house, though. And you just got promoted.”

Steve contemplated this for a second.

“How about in a couple decades, then. Once John’s grown and it won’t scar him. ”

Olivia smiled down at him. She kissed him on the cheek for the first time in a while.

“Deal.”

Steve laughed. It felt like finally saying his speech had unhooked several belts from around his chest. He had been practicing it for 400 years, ish, and he had had to update the language in it a ridiculous amount of times.

“And then I’ll find you in the next life and we’ll do it all again.”

“Don’t worry about finding me, Steve. I’ll handle it.”

He reached up and held her around the waist. She smiled, and he pulled her down to him and kissed her. In the darkness of the kiss, Steve looked out at the next 8,000 years and saw they were much the same, and he knew that was good. He turned from the future and returned to the kiss, and proceeded to lose himself completely in it.

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