The Stars Are Out.

12/25/09

[caption id="attachment_7363" align="aligncenter" width="273" caption="Ton-dog"][/caption]

They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. –Judges 5:20

Ton-dog snapped them off and trotted through the portal with a Porpoise. The Holly Spirit sounded in a sea of change and leaped in the lightless firmament. “Spirit two too-oh,” growled Ton-dog, sitting at the foot of Waldo’s bed. Mammals seemed a good idea.
“Look, honey,” purported Waldo, shaking a sleeping Ms. Waldo, “a giant border collie!”
“She can not hear you,” growled Ton-dog, emitting starlight from Sirius’ dog-dish. “You are now on a mission from Dog.” The stars were out because Ton-dog stopped the light. Few noticed except isolated astrophysicists and lonely astronomers. The sky was black. There was nary a murmur in the mainstream media about the vanished Universe.

“Why me?” Waldo pleaded with the Dickens-style Apparition, “Tell them yourself.”
“Because that is not the way it works,” snuffed Ton-dog.
“The way what works?” Waldo wanted to know who would believe a talking Dog.
“The Universe, old man,” snorted Ton-dog, “and don’t freak out about the mirror.”
Waldo snapped his head around to look in the mirror and saw nothing. When he looked back, Ton-dog was gone. Waldo spent the rest of the night looking into the empty mirror without seeing his reflection, like a scene from a typical Vampire movie. He could move objects outside the mirror, but in their reflections they stayed where they were.

Practicing with this phenomenon, Waldo learned to pass through walls and become invisible. His advancing age ruled out the obvious visit to the local Girls’ shower room, and with gripping fear of Porpoise, Dog’s mission obsessed old Waldo.
“I’m off to see the President,” he told Ms. Waldo on Christmas Eve.
“Try not to talk about Dog,” she cautioned while basting a turkey. “It’s just weird.”
Naturally, Waldo ignored her advice. “Look,dude,” explained Waldo to the startled Black Man, “when Dog ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” The obviously disturbed Chief Executive listened to the entire rant before “security” streamed in.

To Waldo’s surprise, the Executive remained silent with eyes fixed on Waldo while .pistols pointed like porcupines. “I’m not just invisible to them,” explained Waldo, “I don’t even exist. The stars are still out. The moon will grow, but it is not the moon… it’s the singularity at the end of our universe. You know what you have to do, and we don’t have much time.” Then, it was out the Oval wall, through blast barriers, razor wire and a tank or two. Home for Christmas, the sump pump dumped, the basement was basted, and an engorged blood-red ersatz-moon silenced even the network nattering heads.

A Monday-mental dumpster would await the Waldo’s subterranean homesick shoes. Next to a celestial cone the star-gazers now taken Sirius observe a Border collie, ear cocked toward the vanishing point. All dogs go to heaven, and we can too. They wait with wagging tales and Porpoise; hard things, heavy times on the parsec palindrome.

God ton not dog.