Dear Tim,
Oh, what fresh hell is this? What new plagues have been brought forth upon me? It has been at least thrice a fortnight since last you have received my correspondence, and woe, Tim, woe is me, for I fear I have reached my lowest.
My various indiscretions at home were beginning to weigh on me, so I decided to pack up and move somewhere remote — somewhere no one would find me: a place where I could be another anonymous cog in the hellish machinery that is the crucible of all mankind. Thus, it was with great apprehension that I boarded a plane to Alaska. I knew nothing about the wilderness nor the unsullied country that I would soon call home, but I also realized that no one would know me. Upon disembarking from the plane, I strode along the permafrost until I caught a bus that ferried me to the center of town, which was small, brown and frozen — much like a dog’s feces left in a backyard on a cold winter night. I spied a bar, stepped inside, and went straight to the bartender, whom I asked if any jobs were available. My life is over so I will do anything, I explained. He mentioned a logging corporation that was looking for scabs. There has been a strike, he said, and the company is eager for raw balls of clay to form into mountain men. I couldn’t believe my luck! Sans hesitation, and with a hearty flourish of my pen, I became a mountaineer. Oh Tim, I had a purpose once again!
The first day was a doozy. I met so many wonderful people and quickly became the talk of the town: the veritable toast of my newfound arctic paradise. Jonah, a bear of a man, wrists as thick as a faggot of sticks, was who I would call boss. He was rough toward me at first, but as the day wore on, I had cemented myself as his right-hand man. Around evening time, Jonah and I got called away on a special assignment, where we were told it would be our job to cut down a massive redwood tree, the crown jewel of the Alaskan forest. So big this specimen was, Tim! So big that perhaps not even a football team could link hands and cover its circumference.
Jonah wasted no time. He went to the truck and brought me a chainsaw, and, after issuing a wink, began to go to town on the tree with his own sawed chain, taking frenzied glee in every ounce of wood pulp produced by its roaring machinery. I looked down at my herbicidal instrument, hit the primer, and pulled the starter cord. Soon I possessed a pulsing, throbbing agent of destruction. I revved it up, and the saw soon began tearing into the redwood like an orphan tearing into presents at Christmas. After mere minutes, the tree was quivering; it was ready to fall. Stand clear! Jonah shouted, afterward instructing me that he would direct the redwood’s descent, in an effort to preserve the delicate balance of birth and destruction that this company had worked hard to cultivate. Tim, I will be blunt with you: I was having none of this.
As Jonah turned his back to adjust his belt, I saw the redwood swaying; its snaps and pops could be heard from all forty-nine distant states. I sidled behind the tree, pressed with all of my might, and watched as the mammoth began to topple. So tall, so top-heavy, it teetered and fell with cacophonous crash, eventually finding its resting place on the earth. Jonah, of course, was crushed, killed instantaneously. He had only been good to me, but alas Tim, I must sow destruction wherever I go, for it is in my blood; my psyche feeds off it. So, I hoisted myself up onto the trunk of the tree. The forest seemed thin to the south. I noticed that the mountain was steeper in that direction as well. Oh, Tim, it was then that a nefarious bird laid a truly evil egg in my mind. It took but a look down the mountain and a glance at the wisps of the industrious town’s smoke below to incubate that egg, where it soon hatched into a moist, murderous fowl.
I hopped off the trunk of the tree and took in the spectacle: a truly massive trunk, but cylindrical — perfect for rolling. I found the appropriate spot and pushed, pushed, and pushed some more. Tim, have you ever had an eyeball bulge from straining so hard? I have. In fact, at that moment, my left eye became completely disjointed from its socket. However, l still continued to push. Meanwhile, a huge and expectant boner arose in my corduroys; and appropriately, the tree trunk began to shift, the shifting was begat by rolling. to which I trotted underneath. There was a sharp drop-off — a cliff, if you will — about sixty or seventy feet ahead. I lunged with perseverance and hopped atop the rolling death machine. And glorious Tim, how resplendent I did look! Keeping my pace on top of that log, I could see the town in the distance. Its petty, framed buildings were begging for some kind of splintery payoff. The wheel of wooden doom began to speed up. I fought valiantly to keep pace, sprinting as fast as I could to maintain my body the crest of the crushing wood-valanche.
As my phallus personified made its way down the mountain, numerous mud slides — the product of years of logging and insufficient replacement planting — began to form. These huge earthly tears also started speeding down the mountain towards the town. Closer and closer, my death dealing sycophants rumbled toward the hamlet, and with a mighty and erogenous crash, they plundered and blundered into building after building! The mayor of the town (I later learned) was out strolling the promenade when a boulder thought itself to be a guillotine and sliced the man’s head clear off; the town apothecary was flattened like a panini by the rolling bulk of the felled redwood tree. The school, the pharmacy, the entire downtown strip was flattened, buried, decimated by the onslaught of boulders and gravel. I, still using the redwood as a treadmill, witnessed this devastation, this unheeded natural disaster, saw these people, their belongings, their whole livelihood destroyed in one fell swoop. The torture, the agony, the sheer suffering — Oh Tm! I’m not afraid to say it, I promptly came in my pants.
Artwork AND Story by basper01, a man of many talents. Check out his blog.
Originally published at deartimtheblog.tumblr.com.
