THE TECHNICAL MARVEL OF HUGO'S DIGITAL WORLD, LITERATURIZED

booklet one - hugo's cousins

The first he saw himself he had thought he had never seen a more gruesome smile than that. A bone exhibitionist, he bared his teeth to the mirror as if his lips would not cover them; a rather disgusting boy, or such was his impression of himself. He most sort of hated very much how he looked, vampiric fangs curling down into his lip (an exaggeration) and thin eyes staring beadily into space.

How gross!

pre-booklet one - introductions


I’ll take it upon myself as your best and favourite author of every good story on this planet to introduce the main characters of my telling. Then we’ll get on with the plot.

So now, Black Tar is perched upon the back of his favourite armchair, that across from the unlit fireplace invites the memory of a warmer time. He has opened before him the newspaper from last week- he often indulges himself in the remains of other people’s reading by collecting old papers when he is out and about, and it does him well in setting all the rest of humanity a week in the future. He has some time now before he is, says his precise schedule, to set off to do his work and this is a thought that pleases him, as while he is not without a strong sense of duty, he would still much rather stay seated, legs crossed, on top of his chair. Now he is reading the ads that find themselves nestled between superhero comics and obituaries.

At the other end of the house and a few meters above Black Tar is his trouble-making younger brother, a person named Hugo and the protagonist of our story. He finds himself on his bed, on his stomach with his feet up, clutching a warm BlackBerry in a sweaty right hand and bearing a mouth wide open in speech. "Nuh-no," tuts Hugo noisily in the direction of his hand and the phone, "that's not it, but whatever."

Hugo pauses at length here, craning his neck down to hear what the other line had to say while chewing on his lower lip.

He opens his mouth again, a string of spit connecting his top and bottom front teeth before he licks it away. Hugo asks the BlackBerry when it will visit him, first making sure to emphasize a hearty 'blah-blah'.

The line responds clearly that it hasn't a clue, and Hugo rolls over onto his back, bare feet pulling up to rest on the blanket below him, toes wiggling madly, and gripping the sheets.

"What do you mean? Don't they have aerolanes in Sweden?" asks the protagonist. He moves the phone to his left hand, freeing his right to wipe on his popular media emblazoned pants.

"They do, but..." the line stops for a bit, and Hugo almost says something in the break before it starts back up again, "yes, I will find a way."

A spiny smile rushes to settle on Hugo's face, though his distant companion cannot see it. Okay, he says, that's good.

Next, quite a ways away from Hugo, is the second-best of this story. This is the youngest of the Tar brothers, Linus. Where he is now, outside, winter air rushes across his pale, sharp-nosed face and he shivers wildly. Linus is indeed out in the snow, lying flat on his back in an immodest spread-eagle, limbs enveloped in down-filled garments much too large for his small frame, but that protect him from the biting cold anyway. Flailing his arms and legs, he makes a meager snow-angel then gets up and makes it a snow devil by stomping two shoeprint horns above its head. It’s time to go inside.

Linus trudges up from the front yard near the road, heavy snow boots making prints much larger than the real size of his feet, mostly because everything Linus gets is a hand-me-down from Black Tar (skipping Hugo because he is somewhat selfish and an avid hoarder), and is thus much bigger than the youngest’s correct sizing. Anyhow, Linus makes it up, breathing unnecessarily hard, to the somewhat-grand front door of the Tar house and raps quickly on the wood, as he’s not yet tall enough to reach the bronze lion’s-head knocker. Charles, the housekeeper and also something else important that I have forgotten for the sake of the story’s development, answers, and here our story begins.

NOW ON WITH THE STORY

grotesque duet - hugo's cousins

Like any young boy in a large, mansionesque house bearing a tall entryway staircase, Hugo, after emerging from his cluttered room with Janko Janko, the night-mares, trailing his mussed body, sits himself on the downwards-curling wooden handrail and kicks his feet up as his pet does the same, allowing his body to slide downward and, eventually, plop down on the purple-carpeted floor of the first level.

“Little brother!” Shouts, near-instantly, a more mature voice than Hugo’s scratchy one. Hugo scrambles up and dusts off his back pockets, then calls back a meager, froggy “what?” and tugs on Janko Janko’s leash so that the doggie falls in beside him.

Black Tar appears around the yellow corner. “What did I tell you, little brother, about your antics with the stairs?” and he phrases it as if Hugo were being indecent. Hugo puts one foot behind the other and twiddles side to side on his toes. “I’m sorry, older brother,” he says dejectedly, though he doesn’t mean it at all and will be back on the railing later that day, “never again.” He adds that for good measure.

Black Tar stares trademarkedly unblinkingly at his younger brother’s clenching and unclenching hands for just a moment before talking again. “Please go fetch Linus, and put the dog away. He’s unsightly,” he says tersely, as always. Hugo pouts and holds Janko Janko’s leash tighter as if refusing only with actions, then points up the stairs and barks, “go”. Dispirited, the housepet slopes up the steps and eventually disappears behind a door. Hugo turns back to his brother with a slight glare in his eye.

“Good boy,” Black Tar says, “now do go get Linus.”

So Hugo stamps away and Black Tar vanishes behind the purple corner (is everything purple?). To the grand front door he pouts, and opens it to be greeted by an unwelcome wave of icy air that condenses against the wall of warmth that radiates from within the house, and our protagonist calls for his brother.

“Linus!” Hugo shouts with a hand cupped to his face like they do in cartoons, and the called-for adolescent appears before him like a charm. “There you are. Inside,” Hugo prompts and steps aside for his brother to stomp off the snow on his boots and shuffle inside their home.

Today, Linus’s coat is an offensive chrome orange, three or so sizes too large for the twig-like Tar, and overfilled to bursting, which it does through numerous small ripped holes, with duck down. He waddles inside with his arms sticking out by his sides like a fat person’s and plops down on his rear by the umbrella stand to struggle in removing his snow boots as Hugo shuts the door and watches his brother in his difficulty.

“Hurry, hurry, slug,” Hugo says, really indifferent to his brother’s struggles as he stands offensively rigid (repercussion of wearing a back brace through his early childhood to cure near-crippling kyphosis) at the smaller’s side.

“I am, I am,” Linus assures his brother, and pops off a boot, which tumbles a fair meter away from him. He leans forward to scoot towards it then grabs and retrieves the somewhat soggy object. Then, soon enough, and after a great amount of grappling about the thing, the second boot comes off and Linus huffs with satisfaction, promptly reaching up to unzip his ridiculous gown, which, when he clambers to his feet, he hangs on the coatrack and lets take up the space of three garments.

As if sensing that Linus was back inside, Black Tar materializes once again around the corner with his hands clasped and back pole-straight.

“Little brothers!” he more or less exclaims, though lacking in any emotional inflection.

“Older brother!” Linus returns with in contrast great emotion, and Hugo half-leans half-arches backwards to satisfy an itch on the back of his thigh, not having forgotten his short-lived grudge against the oldest as he pointedly avoids looking at him.

Sharply and promptly at the end of Linus’s exclamation, Black Tar whisks away the reactionless Hugo and Sweet Little Brother to the living room (marked with a sign as ‘dying room’) where he sits them down with a softly audible thump of the cushions. Standing before them with his hands behind his back, Black Tar makes his announcement.

“We,” he begins thinly, as if it were something he was dreading, “I have collected you both to make an important announcement. We will be visiting our cousins today.”

Not one of the brothers on the sofa make a sound besides the shuffling of pant leg against pant leg emanating from Hugo’s swaying lower limbs. Linus picks at his chin.

“So?” Black Tar prompts, sharping his ‘s’ so it’s really more like a ‘z’.

Hugo shrugs and shoves a finger up his left nostril to dig around and produce nothing, for he does this all too often for any kind of debris to accumulate in there anyway. Linus drops his hand from his chin.

“So…” the youngest Tar starts as if required, “when is that?” and adds that he kind of wants to see cousin Sucre, which he pronounces as ‘soo-kur’ like any abnormal little kid may.

Black Tar is satisfied with the question and responds in kind.

“Four thirty-five, we should leave,” Black Tar replies promptly and in a drawl, glancing at his watch. It’s a commoner’s watch and is nothing special, having been Charles’ childhood device. It would have been Swiss Army had the lettering and logo not completely faded off.

“If there are no questions… dismissed,” Black Tar finishes after a silent moment that was frankly somewhat awkward.

Hugo swings his legs up once, in time, together, and extra high, then stamps them back down as he raises himself from the sofa with a soldier’s ‘okay’. Then off he dashes, with Linus following soon behind while yelling a fast-paced ‘bye’ to his other brother.

Hugo takes the foyer stairs two at a time, palm hovering above the handrail all the while, as Linus struggles to keep up behind him, breath as fast as his steps.

“Where are we going?” Linus pants, as if he were asked to come along, and that is how Hugo replies.

“Were you asked to come along?” Hugo replies in that froggy voice, jumping up to the second story landing.

Linus is a bit hurt and slows his steps but keeps up a great spirit nonetheless. He still sniffs a ‘no’.

Reaching his hoarder’s palace room and before Linus can skip in after him Hugo slams the door shut, promptly flopping onto his bed and scrambling for the BlackBerry. Janko Janko looks up from underneath the desk where his dog bed is. He doesn’t do anything but reach out a spindly limb and tug on Hugo’s blanket where it drapes off the tall mattress (a full foot of fabric and springs!). Hugo squirms around until his leg and bare foot is off the bed, and kicks at Janko Janko’s hand until it withdraws.

“Bad,” Hugo mutters, still focused on dialing a number, “don’t touch my stuff.”

So it’s pretty clear what number he’s calling so we will skip to the part where he talks, but thirty or so seconds later. Holding up the phone to his eternally-warm ear, the protagonist waits for a bit for his friend to answer, where he plans to be much more enthusiastic about the imminent family gathering than he appeared to be when faced with his brother.

Eventually Philip picks up with a quiet Swedish ‘hello’.

“Yellow,” Hugo returns quickly before launching into his monologue, which I will shorten here, “so today my big brother […] said, basically, that we’re […] seeing cousin Sucre and the others, which I think will be fun […] and some such, mostly since it’s been ages […] since we’ve seen them, because Charles won’t take us, but I guess he’s taking us now, which is cool.”

Philip manages to cut Hugo off before he rockets into another sentence.

“That’s very neat,” he says, “I really hope you have much fun.”

And Hugo gives his thanks for the well-wishes then holds the BlackBerry to his ear against his shoulder as he stumbles off the bed and to his dresser through the mountains of Stuff, tripping over Janko Janko’s still-extended arm. Of course, Hugo hisses like a cat at the surprise then scrambles around through the Things for the dropped phone where Philip has undoubtedly heard the commotion of the fall and is asking, repeatedly, what happened.

After locating and picking the thing up Hugo shoves his way, finally, to his dresser where he opens the drawers to fish out a pair of pants and a shirt he deems appropriate for a meeting with family, which is to most people not very formal, but is really just his Outfit, which he has many duplicates of in his wardrobe.

He tells Philip that he’ll take a moment to get dressed and then hops around the clearing he has made, a valley compared to the rest of the room, trying to pull off one pair of slacks and get on another, identical as they may be, the only difference being that one pair is cleaner. Then he does the same with his shirt, however being less successful this time and falling onto the sharp peak of one mountain, then getting up and falling onto another.

Eventually, when dressed with a dark mauve turtleneck and matching pants, he stares at himself in the mirror for a moment.

“Hugo?” Crackles Philip over the line. He’s been left alone for a while, and it’s lonely in Sweden, I’ve heard.

Hugo doesn’t answer and instead drags his hand up through the air and settles it, fingers stretched out, at the opening of his mouth to trace his teeth. He thinks they’re sharp, but in reality they really aren’t very. Regardless he drops his hand and picks up the phone instead, hand even sweatier than it was so the BlackBerry kind of slides in his grip, and with a saliva-filled mouth he reassures Philip that he’s still there.

“Oh, good. I was worrying,” Philip says simply. Hugo sets him down again.

Now, it’s already around four fifteen so Hugo tells Philip ‘ciao’ and hangs up in favour of leaving his room with contained mild excitement and sliding down the handrail like Black Tar told him not to do. Linus, having heard the door open, leaves his room and follows close behind.

“Big brother!” Hugo calls, and that big brother appears.

“What is it, little brother?” Black Tar asks as if this were a perfect sitcom family.

“Well, let’s get on with it, my most wonderful older brother. Let’s go,” the middle Tar says.

So out the door they go, Linus calling the second ‘bye’ of the day to Charles, wherever he may be, as the three of them leave the house and cross the perfectly-kept lawn to their Ford Freestyle, a pretty ugly vehicle in Hugo and Linus’s collective opinion, but a just fine car to Black Tar, who drives it anyway. Hugo calls shotgun, is refused the seat by Black Tar, and disappointedly takes his place in the left seat of the way-back, next to Linus, who is cheerily swinging his legs.

“Cousins, here we come!” charms Linus, and Hugo smacks his head.

The drive is unimportant so I will skip that just for you.

Eventually, they arrive at their destination, the house of a certain cousin named Flukeweiser, a shabby thing with ugly off-white siding, and for once Hugo is proud of his house’s facade. Linus isn’t old enough to have opinions, so he likes Flukeweiser’s home just fine.

Black Tar is the first to get out because Flukeweiser and the other visiting or in-residence cousins saw them coming and are already outside, quickly approaching the car. Hugo scans the area for Sucre, who hasn’t appeared yet, and watches his big brother stiffly yet politely embrace cousin Marcy. Hugo opens the door and slides out, Linus following.