It wasn’t till Og had brained the man, built a fire, cut off the man’s arm and started roasting it over said fire that he realized he might have a problem. He remembered the others he had seen on the other side of the hill; remembered being puzzled when he’d seen them running around down there, making odd noises. He thought that maybe they wouldn’t like what had happened here. He thought that perhaps they would come over to his side of the hill. He thought they might want some of the arm. He quickly peed out the fire, gathered up the arm, took the other attached arm in his free hand and dragged the dead guy to the underside of a huge rock nearby. After sufficiently concealing the pieces of guy, Og set out for the other side of the valley. Thirty-five minutes later (if minutes had been invented, which they had not) he came slinking back, wondering without direction about the two people he’d seen on the other side of his world.
Now before we go on, it must be made clear: Og, at this point, did not have a name. Nothing had a name. Since this is the story of how things came to have names, it follows that, at least in the very beginning of the story, nothing had a name. What actually happened was that a vague series of events transpired in this particular caveman’s imagination. The series of events made him feel uneasy, and so - in an attempt to ease his worried mind - he took up a physical action, which was to travel on foot to the opposite side of the mountain he lived on in hopes of meeting some other caveman/cavewoman and doing something to/with him/her.
At the moment when all this happened, Og hadn’t a clue as to what he would actually do if he saw those other people, but as he walked he decided that he would probably try to eat them, and that if one of them was a female he would probably want to have sex with her. The thought got him all hot and bothered, and he decided then that it didn’t matter if one was a female after all. He would make it a point to fuck both of them regardless.
It’s important now to explain - before we get to deep in who did what to whom - just what happened between Og and the poor fellow whom he’d been preparing to eat when we first made his acquaintance. To do that, it must be understood that the man who was becoming food in the first few sentences of this story was the first human being (besides himself) Og had ever seen. Ogs own mother had pooped him out just in the immediate vicinity of the water-hole near which he himself now lived. His mother, however, had died just a few seconds before Og was born and so by the time he was old enough to want some answers, she’d been dead for many years. Because Og had been born so near the water-hole (and mind you: the water hole had no name either - not even the term “Water Hole” had been coined!) it had been relatively easy for him to get along and he forgot about his questions almost as soon as he realized hat he’d had some.
Water was, of course, never a problem, and even when he was too young to understand his need of it, instinct led him over to the small puddles surrounding the larger hole to frolic and drink. After a while he began to take notice of some of the larger animals that would come to the water from the surrounding jungle. Sometimes one would die and eventually become dinner for whatever lucky meat-eaters who happened by. Other times, a larger animal would drag a carcass over to the jagged grey rocks surrounding the water. He learned that the bigger animals would never eat their whole kill in one sitting but rather they would take time in between pig-out sessions to strut and preen all around the area, oftentimes losing their meat and sometimes becoming dinner for some greater beast, sometimes even to Og himself. But I both digress AND get ahead of myself.
By the time he was the equivalent of 11 years old, Og had himself a near-perfect system at the water hole, and for a year he enjoyed what had to be the most satisfying and pain-free existence of pretty much any cave-person that had come before. Alas, this tranquility was not destined to last. On that momentous day Og rose as he did every day - at exactly the time when the first rays of the new rising sun touched the high rocks around the hole and reflected back down into the fertile green pocket where the water was. He stretched. He farted and pooped and peed a little. And he crawled over to the shallow pool now filled with warm fresh water and waited for the first rat.
Now of course, Og didn’t know that the creature he’d been waiting for was a rat, or even that it was even any different then himself. He did know that the little beasts a) showed up every day at about the same time to drink and swim in the water, and b) were slow and easy to catch, kill, and eat. Og’s days had basically been winnowed down through the years into alternate 12-hour periods during which he either lay in wait for rats, slaughtered rats wholesale on the sharp rocks in his nearby cave, fucked rats he’d recently killed, and - once in a great while - tried to fuck rats he hadn’t killed yet; all this time blissfully ignorant of the verminous nature and toxic reputation of the rats of the future. To Og the rats weren’t rats at all, but rather incredible, tiny, tasty miraculous creatures that made him feel awesome in many different ways.
The rest of the time he spent eating and sleeping. Sometimes both at the same time.
So you see, it was with GREAT surprise when a rather different looking rat appeared one day at the water hole in the chilly morning sunlight. A rat that looked a lot like Og himself. Og watched as the creature tentatively approached the water, splashing in the shallow out-lying pools and then settling contentedly into one of the deeper ones. The rat was big, meaty, and two-legged just like Og. The rat smelled like new meat. The rat was no rat at all. Og looked from the safety of his cave and tried to choose between the myriad ideas waxing and waning in his poor under-developed cranium.
In the end though, he just did the same thing with this newer, larger rat that he’d done with the smaller ones. To be completely fair about it though, he wasn’t all-together comfortable. For a creature whose entire existence heretofore had consisted of destroying, eating, and fucking every living thing he’d come in contact with, this new creature presented a vexing predicament. Destroying it would prove exhausting, eating it would prove complicated, and fucking it - well that was damn right well impossible.
We will not track, on a blow-by-blow basis, the long, strange, and wholly revolting sequence of events that came to mark this new rat’s demise. After a while even the most reprehensible and inconceivable of violent acts becomes gratuitous and loses its effect. Suffice it to say though, that it took Og a good hour to fell the beast and another two or three hours to make it stop moving. He was finally able to end things using a piece of rock as big and wide around as his arm to violently expose the deep insides of his rival’s head to the cool autumn twilight. Og lay on his back and watched the rat’s legs twitch and jump. He had a vague thought about more rats shaped like this one. He’d heard them and seen them in the hours since he’d murdered the first one. They were yelling and trudging around on the far valley wall. A hundred yards away if you were throwing a rock but a thousand feet down and back up over jagged, toothsome rocks if you meant to make the distance on foot. Again he was uneasy.
Now would be a good time to tell you that, despite the title of this story, things actually did have names before the events depicted. However, at the time no human knew the name of anything. Most animals knew that things had names and a great many of them knew a great many names. Also: it’s important to keep that in mind when we meet the next character on our little morality play: The Bird. The bird had been watching Og with some interest for a long time. Og fascinated him. He’d perch on one of the cyprus trees around the water and wait for Og to come from his cave and watch him all day. He watched Og kill the creatures that came into his unfortunate orbit. He watched Og eat them and fuck them. He watched Og flagellate himself violently for countless hours as the prehistoric days oozed by. Of course Bird knew - as did most birds and most animals - that only destruction could come from communicating with a man. So instead, he watched. And so it was that he was watching the day that Og caught the unfortunate man fixing to swim in his water. Bird was especially fascinated with what had happened and after thinking about it for a day or so, he made a decision. A decision upon which he acted the very next morning when he introduced himself to Og.
Bird hardly found the caveman in good sprits. Og had spent most of the last few days going back and forth toward the other side of the valley. He’d set out all fired up, and then, just as he began to climb the hill on their side of the valley, he’d lose his momentum and sit down to ponder a bit before - inevitably - setting back toward his cave and his (by now almost completely rotten) food. It’s here that we find him, and it’s here that Bird finds him - but not before thinking up a nasty little manipulation guaranteed to keep him in meat for a least a few weeks.
Bird said “hello,” and you must understand: Bird did not actually say anything, but instead he projected ideas into Og’s way-underdeveloped mind and then sort of read the ideas that Og had in response. I know you read this and say “fuuuuck…” but at the time when the story takes place - before man controlled fire, before he understood his place in the Omni-verse, and, of course, even before he had given things names - before all these things there was magic on the land. A bird that spoke using telepathy and schemed to be the undoing of a dumb human was hardly controversial. In fact just the opposite. If you were a human living around this time and came to the end of your days without even once having been fleeced by a member of the animal kingdom, you could consider yourself favored amongst the children of God and you could die easy. All of which brings us back to Og and Bird and their summit at the cave:
Bird said: Hello
Og said nothing. The birds voice was but one of many clanking around in his brain.
Bird tried again:
“You, who stand before me. You who lives here in this cave. You who wants to go cross the valley, to the other side to deal with those big rats over on the far wall. I am here above you, alight on this stone at the edge of your cave.”
Og glanced around. His gaze found the bird standing so boldly at his step. He stared for a moment, and then launched into a series of paroxisms and gesticulations. He danced around, he began to sweat. His eyes bulged, he got a gigantic erection and fondled himself, fell onto his back and screamed and shit out a steaming pile of fetid black scat. He cried without knowing he was crying. Finally he was still. The bird began again:
“I understand you, and despite your trying to dissuade me from the fact, I know that you can understand me as well. That’s good my friend. Very well indeed for you!”
And with that, Bird proposed a long con simple enough for even Og to play at. By the time he was done, Bird was quite certain that the next morning would find him successful, and rid of at least one more of this virulent strain of two-legged creatures that made its home altogether too close to his own.
“But how will they know that they must come here when I call them?” Og had asked.
“They will come because I know their names, just as I know yours. And just as I have made myself known to you, so I will make myself known to them. And just as you - by my favor and my favor alone - now know your name Og, so to will they know theirs. You must wait until the sky becomes dark and then becomes light again before you act.”
Og spent the night entire standing in that position. Birds words echoed in his tiny, inefficient consciousness. He became very dehydrated and at one point he believed he had taken flight. He rose up over the ancient valley. The blusters of that old sulfur-tasting sky carried him up even higher than the highest hard ground he could ever have imagined. He looked to his left and saw the Bird smiling back at him. He looked to his right, and the Bird was there too. He realized that the sky was full of Birds. They were all the same and they were swarming and thick and twisting. Their number grew and eventually Og was no longer flying at all, but instead borne up an the ever-shifting birdmosphere from which there could be no return. Bird was talking to him in words he would never come to understand. He started to cry. It was then that Bird told Og the names.
When he woke, the sky was already aflame with new brutal sunlight. Og followed the Bird’s instructions to the fucking letter.
Bird knew that there were a few ways to play out his little theory; where men were concerned, options were never at a premium. His original plan had been simply to tell the other two cave-dwellers that Og was into doing some evil to them and that they’d have to go over there and smoosh his head with a rock while he slept. It was the simplest plan and Bird knew that simple was usually best. Even so, he thought, there is something to this man, Og. When Bird had first seen him he knew that this man was somehow different than the rest he’d seen moping about the area. For one, Og was a good bit taller than most of the men. In addition, Og was the only human Bird had ever seen who seemed to be able to create fire at will and that was something to consider - no small feat taking into account that matches and lighters and fuses were many lifetimes removed from this one. Most importantly, bird realized that there were two big plump humans on one side and only one on Og’s. From a strictly pragmatic view, Og’s success offered a more substantial culinary possibility. In the end, Bird decided to give equal armorments to both sides and let the winds decide. Bird was in no hurry, after all - and that last scenario was more rewarding in terms of dramatic potential.
Bird had said: “Go back to your cave and give me some time with them. When you see that I have left them, call their names as I’ve taught you. Once they get to your fire, my new friend, it’s all up to you.”
And he took wing. Og watched as Bird caught a bluster and rode high into the sky over the valley. For a moment he hung there, and Og was blinded by the pollution-free light of pre-cambrian morning. He picked up Bird again on a low swoop into the valley and watched him ride another gust - this one at ground level - into the very midst of the strangers across the way.
“…He will come because I know his name, just as I know both of yours. And just as I have made myself known to you, so I will make myself known to him. And just as you - by my favor and my favor alone - now know your names, so to will he know his. You must wait until the sky becomes dark and then becomes light again before you act…”
When the sun finally came tear-assing up the sky the next day, Og found himself at loose ends.
He’d only thing on his mind since his compact with Bird had been sealed. All through the night he replayed their conversations across his puny, depleted psyche. All night long keeping vigil over a predicted and hoped-for sequence of events. He did not sleep. The Jurassic sun beamed and reflected and bore into him. It burned his eyes as he walked to where his part of the valley wall cliffed off and bellowed:
“HAAAAAHHNNZ! HAAAAAAHHHNZ! BECKY!”
He shouted over and over drawing out the ‘HAAAAHHHNNNNZZZZZ”’s and clipping off “Becky” just as Bird had said to do. Then he was silent, and watching. His opposite numbers on the far wall stirred. He could see them trying to bridge the valley with their eyes. The walked around some over there. They sat down next to each other. One of them began to vomit profusely. The vomit looked (at least to you and I had we been there to see it) like Mexican black beans in their own juice. Og didn’t like any of it. He peed down his leg a little. What had bird told them?
Then he heard it, and a few seconds later he saw it. One of the two, the one that had been ill: cupping its hands over its mouth and screaming…AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.
And after the 12th-or-so time Og recognized his own name. He grabbed a rock about the size of a baseball and started down his valley wall.
While it isn’t necessary to recount every last detail about Og’s adventures on the opposite wall, it might be helpful to note a few truths pertaining to that situation. Firstly, Og never did end up using the rock. Secondly, Bird, whose tolerance to extreme, brutal, often senseless violence was off the charts, did not get even halfway into his viewing of the goings on before having to look away. Fly away actually, and when he returned, his friend Og was nursing a roaring fire. The meat was - as predicted - more than sufficient.
The two didn’t talk or share any thoughts until well after midnight (midnight, that is, in some future world where the concept of Time had been proposed and accepted). Bird thought he saw Og begin to drift off to sleep and he turned to leave. Just then the caveman swept him up in one giant hand and took the birds head between his index finger and thumb. A signal was sent from the fetid pit that was Og’s brain stem toward the ( ) muscles that would squeeze the finger and thumb. A quick moment before that message arrived however, Bird was weaving his carpet:
Og, I’m not afraid to die, and if you think I didn’t know you’d try something like this, well, lets just say I was born at night brother, but not last fuckin’ night. Anyway, allow old Bird to pass along one more gift before you do what you’re going to do. There are more rats, Ogger. Yes, that’s right, you heard me. I’ve flown the length and breadth of this valley and a hundred others, and you know what? There all chockfull of folks just like these folks. You like the taste? Then together we can taste it! Kill me now and maybe things work out for you, and maybe they don’t. But spare me mighty Og, and we will summon them all here and they will come. A night. ONE night, Og, to name them all. One night and you will know all of their names…
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