Their Call, Calico: The Series
Part Four
◀ Back to Part Three | Table of Contents
Based on Original Published Work by Author
☯ Legend on reading Calico’s Life:
☴ Indicator for dialogue: “ ”
☶ Indicator for thought, and lyrics: Italic Font
☱ Indicator for action: Bold Font or wording with quotations.
☳ Poems and Songs [ are indicated ]
☷ Names : Bold Italics
☵ Setting set inside: Brackets: {SETTING}/{BOLD}
Calico falls to sleep in the entrance of the bamboo forest looking at the flowing stream.
Waking up, his back fur is covered with some bird droppings from a hawk’s nest above his ground. He goes to the flowing stream and cleanses his body, the sunlight is peaceful in its glamorous flare between rays and white blue. Maybe glamor is not the right word, but there is no better time to feel important than the present.
Calico enters { a flowing bamboo trail drenched in butterflies, webs, and moths. Cocoons start to open, and the silently melodious Lilies of the Valley, and swaying Magnolias begin to reveal flora along a gentle gust.
The still statuesque bamboo continues while overcast shadows close in.
Up ahead, as if sprung from the spiral of stems, is a great gold Buddha statue covered in vines unseen from a birdseye view. The sunlight slices into the melting shade with a crack of shimmer held under the strangling hanging vines. Some sway out with the change of pressure. }
Calico walks up and touches gold for the first time in his life, and realizes he has to move on like Komiak said.
For what difference will fear make, if a secret is shaped by what is unknown or death?
Calico goes behind the statue and eyes only one thin path extending from the statue. Traveling along the path aside tall evergreen trees, he gazes {over the rising ridge into a low valley. It’s as if the sky has become flat, and the sense of a cage gives him comfort. Then, with a blend of wavy leaves another gust twirls reflections in swelling puddles; each inclusive of beams dancing in the shadows.
Deeper into the shadowed bamboo labyrinth, a kaleidoscope of inter-changing colored illuminations from shaking leaves upon the fields beam a projection. Calico laughs as if the leaf is a spectator from the zoo, waving him to come close so his father can take a picture, and Martackadong…}
There is a wide murky stream separating himself from the other end. With little choice, Calico extends his paw, and tossing in his tired weight dips in. What was thought a stream has a shallow depth, and only raises to just above his paws. He walks on this stream road, and then gazes up to the left.
{A slightly cracked brick wall with a circle of gold bars sifting out of the water drenched vines emerges upwards above the pattern oscillating of the bamboo stems.}
Calico, with heavy, with heaving and beatened heart acknowledges this new characteristic of the landscape. He wants to end his travels right there, but terror sets in as he feels the rush of Komiak’s instant of death and what could have been the last moments of love between Jul, Aub and Hig.
{ A well-carved cavern (a tunnel) stands before Calico.} He enters. But upon the entrance, it echoes, and Calico is scared stiff until he sees the eyes of a human.
Is that Bettings? No. It is not.
{ The sloped tunnel is covered with dust and crackling painted images of tigers and humans (gorilla whore) standing and pointing at the tigers as they have a bulbous orange and red glow about them.}
Calico swallows, and growls, and then grabs his mouth in anger at himself. He must move on. He exits the decaying tunnel and sees that the stream has dried at the end of the tunnel. He walks across its smooth compact dirt surface. From one natural trail grows a dusty brick path and it follows into a chilly afternoon. Calico begins to shiver.
The echo of the tunnel plays with his mind, but there is no tunnel. The sound is different against the path. His bowels give and Calico urinates. It sounds like a rampage of streams and aquatic torrents. He finishes, and listens as the last drop echoes in the odd yet serene coldness.
Calico climbs up stairs (as he was familiar with those having seen them at the zoo) {to a much warmer valley. He sees the setting sun, and a long red half-circular wooden bridge going over another dried-up stream.
Behind the bridge is a large brick wall painted in scraped paw red of which is probably two giant bamboo stems in height from the ground. In the center, is a sunlit red bricked wall covered with navy blue tiles. In the wall’s middle, is a set of metal double doors stained with what looks like gold from the sunlight near narrow red metal stairs coming down from it.
The golden door has an imprinted picture of a Korean panda-like himself standing eye-to-eye with a dragon, or to Calico, Hilly as a snake. On top of the doorway are coal black spikes.
Those aren’t spikes.
Those are tarred elephant tusks in the hundreds.}
Calico swallows, and questions his entry into such a place.
He is completely stiff in terror, and becomes unconscious.
He wakes up in nightfall and there is no moon, just an endless shadow.
Calico closes his eyes again to rest until the morning light comes in.
I have come all this way. I cannot turn back as death is around every corner and I have been at the fault of the murder of-
Yes, I am at the fault of the murder of my friends!
I killed them, I was unsociable and I killed them!
These gates are not for me as I am not a pure kind… but that is my kind they say.
It was my fault, all my fault.
But Komiak, he acted like he knew-
He knew the whole conjunction of events that were to follow-
He knew because he saw the worst when I came.
They gave up their lives because of me being unsociable.
Calico begins bitterly weeping, and whimpering.
I have wronged everyone; that is why Bettings threw me out, and why they all died. It was my fault.
But, I cannot end here: but, they’re dead.
I cannot end here! I cannot end here!
I shall listen to your words, Komiak.
Calico begins the ascension of the red stairs into the dragon gate. He stops midway, to glance back towards the rising sun, the creaky half-circular bridge, the still forested mountains, and the world behind him.
At the front of the door, Calico takes in his anger and pounces on the door. Despite its size and structure, the door swings inward as if made of paper. Calico rolls forward from his momentum. After entering this unknown, he gently kicks the door closed behind him.
THE PURE KIND TEMPLE
{ There stands a large grassland field with not one large golden Sitting Buddha Statue as Calico had seen as on the way of the one thin path, but twelve sitting evenly in a circle with equal space between each of them. These statues are positioned so that their shadows do not intersect with another statue’s.
Centered between the balance of the Buddhas is a gigantic tiled circle painted in black and white displaying a Zen labyrinth on a fallen cracked concrete wall.
The boundaries of this land seem limitless until the moving morning sky clouds sweep up into view the next rising mountains. The grass blades wave in an even pattern. Walking past the circular display, there is a long rectangular sand garden path extending into another bamboo forest.
Again, }Calico looks back to the blue giwa tiles covering the brick. He sees{ what look like shapes in the blue, and painted images on the brick wall just like in the tunnel. A human with a black hat, a gat, stares at Calico. No, it’s just another painting. Calico questions his being there.
{Not too far from the hatted figure, a meandering stream sidewinds into view}. To the starting tune of pindrop windchimes hung off the trailing of a nearby bridge jingle. Calico’s eyes wander up to see flower like textures all over the bridge.
{The brick itself is of a rock formation, a Suseok, but immersed in polished cobalt blue. In front of this geologically preserve landscape is the largest Bonsai tree in the world, of which hides under overgrown vines and moss. But, it is there.}
Calico navigates his curiosity over the bridge.
{ As he ventures closer to the grand Bonsai} he sees… he witnesses {
other panda grubbies playing on top, probably forty pandas swinging and enjoying themselves, or are playing around in the leaves. }
These are grubbies like Hig, but they are like me- a Korean panda. Is this my family? Am I where I was born to be?
Calico continues walking forward.
A few other panda grubbies run by peacefully and laugh, Calico pants and a smile catches up to him. Though he estimates that he is a year older than them, Calico feels several years older on account of his recent experiences.
He pushes on. He passes down {a smoothened wildflower hill into a magnolia tree garden with dragonflies swimming about in the air. } Calico is completely in awe of these surroundings. {After an hour of walking in the Pure Kind Temple’s Magnolia Tree Grove, he sees giant bamboo stems tied together acting as a wall.
Passing by this bamboo bastion of a wall, he comes across twelve giant marble Buddha head statues atop a pillar like structure which is acting as an endless fountain siphoning water out of each Buddha mouth indentation of the pillar into a large marble pool.
The grass has suddenly, to Calico, become marble tiled flooring of different polygonal shapes with circles. In the pool are around 90 pandas; some swimming, some licking drops from the tiled flooring.} Calico smiles and another panda nods at him and starts licking up the water. { There are six other pools similar to this Buddha totem poled fountain of delight.}
Calico listens as there are voices all around him now talking about the gorilla whore, the kind and the pure kind.
{This is the Hall of Fountains which extends over a ten-minute walk; there is a large golden stairway inside the wall of a magnificent green mountain providing shade for the Hall.}
Calico glances back again at the pure kind in this state of fantastical luxury and goes forward up the non-rusted and superbly conditioned stairs. {The stairs lead into a tunnel sanded down to perfection, carved stunningly with pink red marble tile lining the flooring. After the brief tunnel through the mountain, Calico comes upon the Temple’s Village.
The Village has blue bricked rooftops (like the wall surrounding the Pure Kind Temple), fields of flowers and overgrown plants, and all of the buildings are built with grey stone, and white colored wood. }
Calico enters the village and {discovers a large building among the others.
This is the Center Temple Palace.
In front of the massive temple is a panda, a pure kind, wearing a golden tasseled napkin cloth or scarf on the top of his head, and with some gray tufts of fur. He wonders how a panda is wearing such a gorilla whore-like object.
This pure kind is standing in front of at least four-hundred pure kinds, and is also conversing about the gorilla whore. This pure kind is Rendemra.}
Rendemra:
“ For it was these gorilla whore creations like Buddhism that they called them fajitalmahs, then faiths, and then religions. These were based on forgetting the joint connection between gorilla mixtures, and the pure kinds that these — and cover your grubbies’ ears if they are near — ‘humans’ (impulsive gasps sound off by the spectators on hearing such a forbidden word) took to forgetting the liberties that we brought forth, and shared with them through all these planetary years and struggles…”
Calico ears capture the dialog only briefly as something else catches his eye in a nearby village house, on the way to the gathering.
{ A sprawling vibrantly painted mural displays different colored circles on an interwoven textured ash black background. The mural reminds him of the ice cream stand that on rainy days would be wheeled near his cage, and he would observe the painted speckles and circles of oh-so-bright colors.}
Calico wanders in, and his eyes are suddenly drawn to the mural’s artist, another pure kind possibly around his age, he estimates.
The pure kind is dipping its paw in different ink bowls, and climbing up on a tilted wooden ladder.
He continues and wanders into the house and watches the pure kind paint. Just like one of the zoo’s janitors which would clean off the signs near his enclosure and bring new life to something so ordinary, the paint dripping paws, the running ink, and the sea of colors were extraordinary. Calico sits down, and feels his journey’s weight melt off.
Calico:
“ Your wall is… ”
Calico thinks of something he heard relating to the ice cream stand.
Calico:
“ Scrumptious! ”
Gammina:
“ Sorry, pure kind brotto, I did not achieve your understanding in my own. ”
Calico:
“ Your wall, the colors, I mean they are scrumptious and delicious. ”
Gammina:
“ Aw yes brotto, the universe has beauty beyond the imagination of our own. ”
Calico:
“ Your uh wall- ”
Calico suddenly becomes embarrassed and he has no idea why. He swallows.
Calico:
“Is beautiful…”
Gammina:
“The universe can do that to our eyes but we must be wary towards-”
Calico:
“I mean you are.”
Why did I say that? What’s wrong with me, I must need to defecate soon, how embarrassing.
Calico:
“ The wall I meant. ”
Gammina:
“ (she laughs) Okay, brotto. ”
Calico:
“ I see it and think of the peacefulness of the night. ”
It does remind me of traveling to the herd with Jul and Aub.
Tears beging to stream down Calico’s face, and Gammina who is now eying him directly, while he stares towards her, becomes a little concerned about this brotto.
Gammina:
“ Hey, um I. Could you join me up here I could use your help? Thank you, brotto. I mean, well is everything okay? ”
Calico:
“ No, I mean yes. I mean no-uh. ”
Aub said not to trust a trickster, but what is wrong with me? I don’t know what is going on.
Gammina:
“ Can I help you? ”
Calico:
“ Help me? ”
Hilly Dallia said the gorilla whore pretend to help and take a little more, she could be a gorilla whore.
Gammina:
“ Could I help you? ”
Calico:
“ Why do you want to help me, what do you want from me? Why are you trying to control me?! ”
Why did I say that? This feeling it’s like that warm feeling but it’s entering my senses. I need to leave. No I can’t leave, they’re watching me-these pure kind. I am a killer to them, I am a killer to all of them!
Gammina:
“ What is the matter, brotto? ”
Gammina gets off the ladder, and notices Calico shivering oddly and his eyes are cracked and red.
Calico:
“ Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I have to keep moving forward. ”
Gammina:
“ What does that mean, brotto? ”
Gammina goes behind shaking Calico and closes the sliding door to the house, and then licks her paws. Calico looks at her closing the door.
Calico:
“ You want to trap me don’t you-you trickster! You want to see Antwon come to me and tear me apart, don’t you?!
I have to keep going, maybe to another forest, maybe elsewhere- ”
Gammina:
“ Brotto, brotto, you are home with Gammina. ”
Calico:
“ Gammina, you are not with the Gengall are you? ”
Gammina:
“ Uh, no. Who are you? ”
Calico’s shaking gets slightly worse.
Calico:
“ Calico. ”
Gammina:
“ Calico, grubby Calico. ”
Calico can’t hold his feelings in anymore, and he embraces her and starts sobbing on her.
Gammina immediately exposes her bottled-up feelings and starts kissing (licking) his ears. She lets go of his embrace and begins licking down his back. Calico sobs but begins to slowly yield as he suddenly feels a sharp pain in his rear.
Gammina:
“ These wasp stingers were in deep. You have great fur, Calico. ”
Calico, now in less pain stares back into Gammina’s hungry eyes, and he is wondering what he got himself into.
Gammina growls. Calico swallows, and scrambles back a bit. Gammina pounces on Calico and claws him across the face. Calico tries to imitate her growl and blood drips from his cheek onto the tiled floor. He gets up, and makes a stronger growl in her face. Gammina growls in response, and bites his lower jaw. She quickly pushes Calico over on his back and yells in his face to then scratch him twice near his nose.
Getting up without feeling the pain yet, Calico is a bit shocked and growls back. Calico pounces on her.
In response, she bites his leg and pushes him into the ink bowls and they splash onto both of their coats.
They both are panting, but stare at each other waiting who will take the next swipe. Panting… Panting.
Gammina growls, and takes her claw aiming to get some more marks off his face. Calico dodges that swipe by anchoring his claw into her shoulder of the front paw she is using to bring havoc to Calico, and he pushes her back. Gammina, to balance herself, anchors her other paw in Calico’s opposite shoulder with his paw that is not being used and begins to push him back. Blood runs into paint, and colors slide through their movements.
Gammina and Calico are standing upright in an effort to push one another over and growling head-to-head, they move in a synchronized manner of two partners in a waltz duet.
Calico forces the duel to an end by pushing her on her back. Calico quickly takes his paw and claws her across her face from her cheek to the top of her ear. The cut runs deep. He then roars in her face. Gammina begins to whimper.
Oh, Calico, oh, what have I done?
Calico backs off a bit from Gammina and sees that she has tears from her eyes, as he did when he had entered her home.
Calico:
“ I should not have done that, I- ”
Gammina gets up and blood deploys from her mouth with drool.
Gammina:
“ Done? Done? We are not near finished yet, grubby! ”
At that moment, Rendemra slides open the door and sets his eyes on his daughter (child — grubby) Gammina, and then on Calico.
Calico:
“ Look. But, listen, I can explain this. ”
Rendemra:
“ Aw Brottoto, I have all the explanations in this village as you should be aware of. ”
Calico:
“ I- ”
Rendemra:
“ It is true then, my grubby Gammina has finally removed her virginity! ”
Calico:
“ Her what? ”
Rendemra:
“ Brottos, this is a great day for all pure kinds. ”
Gammina:
“ Rendemra, he did not complete the acts. ”
Rendemra:
“ -Did not complete the acts? Did not complete the acts?! Is there something wrong with my grubby pure kind?
Yes, yes you are nervous to tell me, and it is true! Gammina you must repaint the entire red wall again starting tomorrow. Come brottoto, let us to the temple. ”
Gammina:
“ Do not forgive me for I have wronged you, Rendemra. ”
Rendemra:
“ And we will not forgive you until your wrong is right. ”
Calico:
“ STOP! Look, I have no idea what a pure kind is, I assume it’s a panda like we are all, and I have been searching for a place called ‘home’ since I was delivered here from San Francisco. ”
Gammina:
“ San Francisco? He used the word ‘panda’! ”
Rendemra:
“ An outsider-an outsider! Have you come to reveal our secrets, outsider? No, I do not see it in your eyes that you would do such a thing.
But, clearly my own grubby would, go and be useful with your days Gammina, and then, will the days be useful to you.
San Francisco Zoo, I take it? Shipped by a delivery truck and attacked by the people who brought you there-is this not the truth? ”
Calico:
“ Well- ”
Rendemra:
“ I thought the same. Gammina, before we take this pure kind, name, bear? ”
Calico:
“ Calico. ”
Rendemra:
“ They named you for your spot. Brottos, they named him for his impairment! Gammina, be quaint and take Calico to the Hall of Fountains and bathe him completely. ”
Calico:
“Rendemra, I can do that on my-”
Rendemra:
“ Nonsense, female pandas need to exist for a reason. Take him to bathe-and if I will repeat myself again, I will need to remove you, Gammina, and four of the youngest grubby out into the world of the kind, is that clear? ”
Gammina:
“ Yes, it is clear beyond words. ”
Rendemra:
“ Take him and do not talk to my level, grubby.
Calico, I will wait for you in the center temple, I assume you can figure the location out — if you have the true intellect of a pure kind. ”
Rendemra sniffs viciously at his daughter and takes the group of male pure kind (brottos) in the direction of the center temple.
Gammina nods, and Calico attempts to comfort her, but they are both silent. Calico is more sorry than worried now : Gammina is deeply worried.
Gammina shoves Calico a bit to imply that they must go down to the Hall.
Gammina leads the way through {the red marbled floor tunnel in the Mountain Gate, and they circle around to arrive at the Hall of Fountains that seems to be isolated as the other pure kind have stopped using the pools.}
Calico:
“ Look, Gammina, I am sorry. ”
Gammina:
“ Please, go into that pool over there, I need to bathe you. ”
Calico:
“ Gammina, I can do it on my own. ”
Gammina:
“ Calico, do you want us both to die today? ”
Calico:
“ No, I don’t want you to die today for the harm I placed you in. ”
Gammina:
“ See, well you…uh me? I have been here all my life, maybe death might be good for me. ”
Calico, feels an overwhelming rush of pain the moment Gammina signifies a possible death wish.
Calico:
“ Have you seen death?! ”
Gammina:
“ No, a pure kind is prohibited to see the physical death, but we are taught that the forces of the body move onto another form or location. ”
She doesn’t understand death like I do. But I remember, I was once like her : naïve.
Calico:
“ Gammina, I have seen death too many times before I came here. Don’t you ever say that! ”
Gammina:
“ Please, Calico, I need to bathe you. ”
Calico eyes Gammina, walks in a marching manner. He goes over into a shallow part of the pool reflecting the clear afternoon sky, and the bottom white marble pool flooring. He begins to observe that she has brought two persimmon fruits and crushes them together with her paws. She rubs her paws together with the juice.
Their wounds while still exposed, begin to coagulate.
Calico:
“ What are you doing? ”
Gammina:
“ Could you look up at me, Calico, and stay that way? Don’t move. ”
Gammina takes her paws and dips them into the pool a bit and scoops the water with the persimmon juice; she then pours it over Calico’s head. Calico closes his eyes and swallows. She repeats a few more times.
She lifts out another persimmon while sitting on the edge of the pool. Her eyes moving from the sun’s dancing rays on the water to watching the persimmon juice leak off his soppy wet face, with his fur hanging over in a facetious manner, as the juice is a little sticky.
While Gammina presses the next persimmon closed, Calico rises out of the pool and grabs her into the water, and laughs.
That feeling… it is coming over me again.
Gammina:
“ What the-! Calico! Calico! Look what you did, I will certainly receive death! ”
Calico:
“ No, you won’t, just let me bathe you, it looks fun. ”
Gammina:
“ How many antinwonians are you? ”
Calico:
“ What does that mean? ”
Gammina:
“ Gorilla whore language (thinking), gorilla whore language uh- how old are you? ”
Calico:
“ Four years old. ”
Gammina:
“ Four antinwonians old!!! I attempted to lose my virginity to a four-year-old!
I am eight years old, and I am a full grauba (full grown). What was I thinking? ”
Calico:
“ I don’t know; you want to know what I think? ”
Gammina:
“ Let’s just finish this. ”
END OF PART FOUR
Including Content from the original story published in the author’s work
The Trails To Attrition © 2007, Wasteland Press, Inc.
ISBN-13: 9781600471520© 2024, Their Call, Calico: the Series
Wasteland PressAdam Mullin (a.k.a. Good Day, Adam)
