BLARPY PUNGLES: Wacky Package XIV

Nights at the Skull Factory

Night 1

Tonight Father Blothus allowed me to assist him at the kiln. We placed the damp skulls on the racks two at a time, lifting them with a broad wooden board. The work was easy, but closing the door of the kiln on all those grins gave me the shivers. Father Blothus laughed when I shot the cold bolt on the door a bit more forcefully than necessary, so I guess my unease showed. Then he told me the story of his first kiln-load of skulls: how they had awakened prematurely, as he was doing the loading, and how they tried to scream.

We sat down for water as the roar of the kiln built higher and higher. I looked around at the glimmering tools, forged by the Great Besinger: the gouges, awls, screws and clamps; the intricate little shelves to hold the brain seeds to the skulls' interiors; the deep cups of corrosive froth.

Father Blothus looked out the heavily-grimed windows and said something about the night being astonishingly simple. I nodded, watching the lights of some of the other Factories glimmer now bright, now dim, now pale reddish, now yellow, as the fires and electrical arcs within scored, flashed, bit and rumbled.

... TO BE CONTINUED.