Linus has eaten a chimera. He is stupidly proud of this. He keeps wanting to go and tell Tom. He has eaten a chimera that was damned; or maybe that was made out of ants \u2014 he isn\u2019t certain. Are chimeras demons? His stomach can\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n
It is intermittently amazing. There are moments when he almost respects him:<\/p>\n
The cleaning man who fights beside him.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know you even could<\/em> get a damnation stain out.<\/p>\n There are moments when he remembers how much he hates him. (The cleaning man.) When he tries to let the goat have him, but he can\u2019t. Not while \u2014<\/p>\n It\u2019s just, there\u2019s too many. It\u2019s too much. There\u2019s too many people who need him. He can\u2019t throw up, not with his white hat on, but there\u2019s too many people.<\/em> He can\u2019t let the janitor die.<\/p>\n Somewhere in there the goat slips away. It cuts down an alley and it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n Somewhere in there the damned flee or surrender; the demons bend their knee to him, to Linus the antichrist; and all that is left is the ants.<\/p>\n So. Many. Ants.<\/p>\n So many damnable, bloody, unholy ants. They do not stop. They do not stop.<\/p>\n He actually \u2014 after a while he actually can\u2019t eat any more of them. He has to burn them with balefire, which they\u2019re mostly immune to. It takes them forever to pop.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t know what turns the tide, or when it happens. He\u2019s in a haze by then. He\u2019s wandered off.<\/p>\n Most middle managers will do this, by the way, even if they\u2019re pretty enthusiastic about it when they first pitch in at the janitor\u2019s side. Linus gets tired. He wanders off in the middle. All the holes in his face are now bleeding. He is mumbling and he doesn\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n His white dog appears. It pants. It disappears.<\/p>\n He is covered in blood.<\/p>\n He is hiccupping, and round as a ball, and so very tired, and so very hungry, he is starved<\/em>.<\/p>\n He has been unconscious. He startles awake and his stomach rumbles. He is already digesting back to size. He looks around wildly.<\/p>\n It is over.<\/p>\n Is it over? He looks around.<\/p>\n It is over.<\/p>\n He is \u2014 somehow or other \u2014 alive.<\/p>\n He stands up. He staggers back towards his office. He passes a man caught under the rubble of a fallen building. He thinks about ripping the man\u2019s upper body off and eating it, but then he remembers the Doom Team code. Something about not having to be bad, he thinks. He can\u2019t remember exactly.<\/p>\n There was supposed to be an evil kingdom, he thinks.<\/p>\n He looks around. There isn\u2019t an evil kingdom. There\u2019s just most of a ruined city, and \u2014 he looks behind him \u2014<\/p>\n A few blocks, already, that are shining, crisp, and clean.<\/p>\n He eats the rubble. He wipes off his mouth. It looks like he\u2019s accidentally eaten the crushed leg of the man he\u2019s rescued. He gives a bit of an apologetic grin.<\/p>\n He\u2019s made it back to the building. His white dog comes. His white dog goes.<\/p>\n He reaches his office. It\u2019s slewed and slanted but still open. He looks out at the city. He is dazed.<\/p>\n Cleanliness is spreading through the ruins like a swarm.<\/p>\n He passes out again. He wakes up. He is so hungry. He eats the paperweight on his desk. He eats his paintings. He eats his paperwork. This is embarrassing because he doesn\u2019t remember now what it had said.<\/p>\n He asks his assistant for a cup of coffee but she cannot bring it because she ran away a long time ago. He is irritated at first but then decides that he would have run away too.<\/p>\n Everything is slanted.<\/p>\n After a while, there\u2019s a knock at his door.<\/p>\n \u201cNg?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He staggers over to it. He opens it up. It\u2019s Jeremiah Clean.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n He tries to remember what he was doing. He thinks he was sitting on his swivel chair and swiveling. \u201cWorking<\/em>,\u201d Linus Evans says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are a threat to workplace hygiene, Mr. Evans,\u201d says Jeremiah.<\/p>\n Linus\u2019 voice cracks: \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n There is a mop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Linus has eaten a chimera. He is stupidly proud of this. He keeps wanting to go and tell Tom. He has eaten a chimera that was damned; or maybe that was made out of ants \u2014 he isn\u2019t certain. Are chimeras demons? His stomach can\u2019t tell. It is intermittently amazing. There are moments when he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-13","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_PBJ.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5990,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions\/5990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5858"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}