It was a beautiful bright day outside, good for sunning, bad for hunting. The sort of day where you could spend sixteen hours straight doing nothing useful and feel good about it too.
So it was a bit surprising to Slump that she was spending it all on her own. Not that it was an UNPLEASANT surprise – it meant she had all of the best sunbathing rock to herself, instead of half of it plus whatever she could steal off’ve Grumble’s tail – but it was peculiar. And maybe just a little insulting. She was gravid right now and wanted a little attention.
So she dragged herself off the big warm sunny slab of concrete that had once been part of what the ancient world had called a ‘bank’ and sidled slowly and comfortably down the wild and boiling way, content in her knowledge that it was too early in the day for the buffalo to be out and that the massacranes were still north for the season, so as to prevent their delicate feathers from burning up at high noon.
At this time of day, at this time of year, Heloderma Spectacular – the Greater Western Gila Monstrosity – was the apex predator of the land. For a little while, and that was more than most got.
Slump found Grumble taking full advantage of his passing time in the sun hiding out of the sun underneath a crude lean-to of boulders, cement, and rusty rebar. An awful little machine buzzed insolently at her from its place atop a level bed of asphalt, and she hated it immediately.
“What are you doing and why isn’t it paying attention to me?” she asked Grumble.
“Learning,” said Grumble distractedly. He held a small and ridiculous piece of plastic with twiddles and fiddles on it in one massive claw, digits oscillating wildly. “It’s to help.”
“How?”
“Remember how you found all those old books on motherhood from the old days?”
“Yes,” said Slump. That had been a rare find; her mother, Mulch, had been adamant that books were for nerds and had personally eaten the bulk of them her family had discovered over her sixteen decades of life before dying of hyperrhea.
“Well, you know what we didn’t find? Any books on fatherhood. And then I found THESE, and they’re full of advice on it. We’re going to be parents before the acid rains come again, and I don’t want to be unprepared. You remember what happened to my dad?”
“No, I never met him.”
“Yeah, that’s because my older sister Junk bit off his snout and he bled to death. If he’d known to feed her more often that wouldn’t have happened. This sort of information is vital and important, and I need access to it if I want to do the best for our clutch. Also I don’t want to have my snout bitten off or bleed to death.”
“Wuss.”
“Look, watch. And be quiet: I can’t learn if you’re talking over the dialogue.”
***
A bearded bear-shaped human stood in a cold storm without a shirt and picked up a sharp stick and hit another human with it over and over until its face was a red smear and wet bone splattered over the snow.
“Offspring,” he muttered as he paused to change arms, “don’t do this.”
“But you say that about everything!” said the human’s offspring in feeble piping protest.
“That is because you must never be like me,” said the bear-human, who was now using his foot to stomp on the other human’s neck over and over. “Since your mother, who was good and kind and better than I deserved, is dead, I cannot show you how to be a good person because I’m awful and tragic and doomed and can only do my miserable best against my nature. So instead I’m showing you all the things I do so you won’t do them. Now stop talking and pay attention, I need to show you how to not draw and quarter those who oppose you.”
***
“I don’t get it,” said Slump.
“It’s simple: I’m the father, and it is my job to commit war on any who threaten my child.”
“You only have ONE? Wow, he wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t a good father; what happened to the other thirty-six?”
“That’s where the pathos comes from,” argued Grumble. “Being a father is about being sad because your spouse is dead or gone and your kids are in danger of being dead or gone or they are dead and gone and you find another kid to be sad at about them.
Wait, wait, wait; I don’t understand this,” said Slump. “How is this father still alive if the mother is dead or gone? He is clearly frailer and smaller than she is.”
“She left. That’s part of why he’s sad.”
“If he pissed her off that much, why not eat him?”
“Humans don’t eat each other unless they’re bad people.”
Slump’s tongue rolled around her mouth in shock. “Oh my god. No WONDER they all died if they were that wasteful. Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand it?”
“No, no, no, it’s all here in this other educational game. I’ll load it.”
***
A bearded, rangy human being stood in a destroyed human city with a ragged shirt and shot another human with a gun and then pistol-whipped them with it over and over until its face was a red smear and puddles of every fluid in the rainbow were seeping into the overgrown dirt that had once been an asphalt highway.
“Adopted offspring,” he grunted as he paused to kick the other human in the groin, “don’t look at this.”
“But you told me I need to pay attention to learn how to stay alive!” said the human’s adoptive offspring.
“That’s because I’m a liar who refuses to admit I’ve conflated you in my head with my dead prior offspring and it’s my fault she died and I’m a bad person who can’t find meaning in anything anymore but raw survival but now you’ve reawakened my moral impulses and I’m torn between my desire to protect you and my need to see you avoid becoming like me because I’m awful and tragic and doomed and can only do my miserable best against my nature,” said the human, all in one breath. His beard fluttered in the wind of a ruined world. “Now c’mere and I’ll show you how to scavenge a corpse.”
***
“Wait, what was that about?” demanded Slump.
“The thing that killed all the humans just happened, I’m the last of dad, and it’s my duty to protect the last of daughter. Mostly I kill people and weird mushrooms and then I-”
“No, no, no, the ‘scavenging’ thing. Why were they slapping their hands all over the body and not swallowing it?”
“Humans kept their valuables on their outsides in fake skins instead of storing them in their gular pouches.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Slump. “These games are going to be a bad influence on our children.”
“They’re not for kids,” said Grumble. “They’re full of important truths and lessons about being a father. We can show it to them when they’re planning on being fathers.”
“Important truths and lessons about what? Whining?”
“It’s really hard, being a father, okay? You wouldn’t get it.”
“You’re not a father either. Not yet.”
“You won’t get it.”
“If you mouth off any longer you won’t get a chance to get it either,” said Slump, baring her teeth from her gumline just enough to make her saliva run bright red.
“Right, right, I’m really sorry please don’t eat my snout PLEASE.”
“Fine.” Slump’s dorsal scutes settled down to a semblance of calmness. “I’m surprised at how quickly you folded, even for being stuck in a confined space with me. Usually you’re less sensible than that.”
“I’m telling you, it’s these fatherhood games. See, the secret of being a good dad is to admit that you’re the entire problem in every way. Like this!”
***
A gigantic firearm shot seventeen times, sending massive explosions through a balloon full of armed humans each of who spilled a galloon of blood everywhere as a first-person human bludgeoned them each in the face with a sort of arm-mounted pinwheel hook, opening throats and tearing off jaws and cratering faces.
“You’re my father,” said the human’s surprise offspring. “And you’re killing all the people in this awful floating city so horribly. Also you’re the same person as the evil man who built this awful floating city and who raised me in a tower all by myself.”
“All I do is kill,” said the human. “I’m a monster who hates myself and if I forgave myself I’d be even worse.”
“I’ll help,” said the human’s surprise offspring, grabbing him by the head and holding him underwater until the bubbles stopped.
***
“I can’t help but notice,” said Slump, “that all of these fathers don’t seem to have partners. Where are the other parents? Are they ALWAYS dead or gone?”
“Dead or gone because being a father is very sad. That’s what biological dad infinite is about. Fathers are the worst people who ruin everyone’s lives with their mistakes and they show their kids how to not be them so the kids can take their place and feel sad about them.”
“What if you try not being a terrible father anymore?”
“No, it’s just how it works,” said Grumble sadly. “If you’re a dad, you ruin everything and your partner vanishes or dies and maybe your kids die and then you show them or someone else that you’re very sad, and then you die and they’re very sad. There’s no escaping it.”
“I can think of one,” said Slump.
“Oh?” said Grumble, and then she ate the console and the television and the generator and left.
“Oh,” said Grumble.
Two minutes later Slump came back and ate him too, just to be safe.
***
She really didn’t mind having all of the sunning rock to herself all of the time, anyways.