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"The Notched Guilles"
A Misreport from the Office of Winter Engravement, Vol. 1 — Issued under Directive C110
Billy Trog had a face like slush and a job to match. The government (or something like it) had instated a brand new cold-era initiative called the "Notched Guilles" program—C110 protocol—and Billy, fresh from a failed moth breeding scheme, was conscripted to execute its frostbitten edict:
"Notch every gully in North America before spring. By hand. With feeling."
No shovel. No map. No assistance from known mammals.
Billy began in Saskatchewan with a spoon he carved from his own ankle. The first gully—a shallow whisper in the snow—resisted. It told him:
“I don’t want to be notched. I’m still dreaming.”
Billy notched it anyway. The gully wept permafrost.
By Week 6, Billy was hallucinating aphids with law degrees. They explained parthenogenesis to him in great detail:
“We reproduce without males,” they said. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Billy replied. “I don’t even remember my own chromosomes.”
The aphids applauded his honesty, then produced a tiny set of eggs from their collective hindquarters. Billy signed one and mailed it to Congress.
He reached Pennsylvania and found gullies nested within each other like lies. He notched them all, even the metaphorical ones. He wept with polymorphic regret. A passing wasp explained haplodiploidy to him while sharpening a mandible on his eyelid.
“Your offspring will never speak to you,” said the wasp.
“Good,” said Billy. “I’ve notched too much already.”
Somewhere in Nevada, he mistook a ravine for a gully and notched it too hard. The Earth coughed and gave birth to sexual dimorphism in the form of two sentient snowballs: one male-coded, the other ambiguously smug. They rolled beside him for five states, muttering about paedomorphosis and the weather.
By late February, Billy's fingers were raw chitin. His eyes buzzed. He began to divide like a cursed aphid: parthenogenetically duplicating into smaller, sadder Billys who notched gullies in unison, reciting reproduction facts like hymns.
“Some insects alternate generations...”
“Others gestate in silence...”
“The female lays where the frost breaks most...”
Finally, in Florida, the last gully opened its mouth and asked:
“Why did you do this?”
Billy stared into its wet clay soul and replied:
“Because they told me to. Because I couldn’t stop. Because... I forgot how not to.”
The gully blinked. It folded into itself. Spring arrived and turned Billy into fog.
NOTCHED GUILLES – C110
Approved.
Filed.
Unremembered.
Unduplicated edition of 1.