"Paul Di Filippo - Jack Neck and the Worry Bird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

While the Puppet was clutching its abused noggin and sobbing most piteously, Jack stepped around it
and flushed. Widdershins and downward swirled the invader, disappearing with a liquidly dopplering
"Nooooooo--!"
Jack did his old man's business quickly while the runnels still gurgled, then lowered the heavy toilet lid
against further home invasions. He stepped to the sink and the sweatcrusted mirror above it, where he
flaked scales off his reflection. He shaved his forehead, restoring the pointy dimensions of his once-stylish
hairline, plucked some eelgrass out of his ears, lacquered his carbuncle, and congratulated himself on
meeting so forcefully the first challenge of the day. If nothing else adventured, he would be
polly-with-a-lolly!

Back through the bedroom and out into his sitting sanctuary, where Motherway lay snoozily on his
fulsome scrap of Geelvink carpet. Approaching the dirty window that looked out upon Marmoreal
Boulevard and the Isinglass, the incautious and overoptimistic Jack Neck threw open the wormy sash
and shouldered forward, questing additional meaning and haruspices from the day.

And that was precisely the moment the waiting Worrybird chose to land talon-tight upon the convenient
perch of Jack's hapless hump!

Jack yelped and with an instinctive yet hopeless shake of his hump withdrew into the refuge of his
apartment, thinking to disconcert and dislodge the Worrybird by swift maneuvers. But matters had
already progressed beyond any such simple solution. The Worrybird was truly and determinedly
ensconced, and Jack realized he was doomed.

Big as a turkey, with crepe-like vulture wings, the baldy Worrybird possessed a dour human face
exhibiting the texture of ancient overwaxed linoleum, and exuded a stench like burning crones. Jack had
seen the ominous parasites often, of course, riding on their wan, slumpy victims. But never had he thought
to be one such!

Awakened by the foofraraw, Motherway was barking and leaping and snapping, frantically trying to
drive the intruder off. But all the bonedog succeeded in doing was gouging his master's single sensible leg
with his hooves. Jack managed to calm the bonedog down, although Motherway continued to whimper
while anxiously fidgeting.

Now the Worrybird craned its paste-pallid pug-ugly face around on its long sebaceous neck to confront
Jack. It opened its hideous rubbery mouth and intoned a portentous phrase.

"Never again, but not yet!"

Jack threw himself into his slateslab chair, thinking to crush the grim bird, but it leaped nimbly atop Jack's
skull. By Saint Foraminifer's Liver, those scalp-digging claws hurt! Quickly Jack stood, prefering to let
the bird roost on his hump. Obligingly, the Worrybird shifted back.

"Oh, Motherway," Jack implored, "what a fardelicious grievance has been construed upon us! What oh
what are we to do?"

Motherway made inutile answer only by a plangent sympathetic whuffle.

The first thought to form in the anxious mind of bird-bestridden Jack Neck was that he should apply to
the local Health Clinic run by the Little Sisters of Saint Farquahar. Surely the talented technicians and
charity caregivers there would have a solution to his grisly geas! (Although at the back of his mind