Earl and the Rod of Thoth
by Mark Wolf
TIME TRAVEL INC. CORPORATE OFFICES – NIGHT.
Earl Bronson, skinny white hippie boy in his early twenties, sports dreadlocks and a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T shirt as he tango dances with his mop down a long well-lit hallway.
He wears earplugs and listens to music and executes a dance step into the company’s reception area, then changes direction before the company’s corporate logo, TIME TRAVEL INC., pulling the mop behind him like a dance partner.
David Chesterfield, sixty-something, black man and security guard, calls out to him.
“Hey, Earl!” David shouts to make himself heard over Earl’s earplugs. Earl’s eyes are closed in dance ecstasy. He doesn’t hear David.
David tosses his pen at Earl, hitting him in the chest. Earl opens his eyes in surprise, smiles when he sees it’s David, then dances his way over in front of the reception desk. He plucks a red rose from an arrangement in a glass vase in front of David, clenches it in his teeth, then continues to tango, rolling his eyes in mock romantic passion with his dance partner, the mop.
David shakes his head and chuckles, but waits for Earl to finish his dance. After Earl stops and bows to his partner, then leans her up against the wall, he removes his earplugs and offers a high-five to David, who accepts it.
“Daaaveeeeddd! How you be, mon?” Earl says in mock Jamaican.
“Well enough, rich mon. Why you here pushing a mop, anyway? Your time travel trip should’ve given you enough money to retire on,” David says.
“It did, but then I heard about them polar bears gettin’ all hot and dry up north from the ice melting, so I donated it all to lobby groups to help them out.”
“Righteous, that is.”
“I thought so. Bears need love, too,” Earl says as he leans over the counter, scratching at a wedgie in the rump of his hemp shorts.
“So now what? You gonna’ take another run back in time? I hear the eggheads are looking for someone for an Egyptian run.”
“No way, mon, really? Geeptians are cool, with all the dances and wagons and palm reading and shit.” Earl strikes a Cher pose, tosses his dreadlocks back and belts out in a husky voice into his rose microphone, “‘Geepsies, tramps and thieves,’ I hear it…”
“No, mon, not gypsies. Egyptians. You know, pharaoh, the Red Sea, pyramids, Moses.”
Earl reaches over and grabs his mop and lifts it up before him like a staff. “Let my people go!”
“Right on! You got it.”
Earl drops the mop and goes into Bangle’s dance mode, strutting his stuff. “Walk like a ‘gyptian!” Earl does his Pharaoh thing, from one end of the room to the other as David nods his head in time and does a little shimmy in place.
Earl stops his dance in front of the desk and grins. “I like it. I think I’ll sign up for it.”
“Play that funky music, white boy!”
* * *
TIME TRAVEL INC. TIME PROCESSING
TWO DAYS LATER
“What better identity to assume to retrieve Thoth’s rod than Thoth himself!” says Smithers, the not really mad, just slightly disturbed scientist, as he secures Earl’s ornate ibis-headed mask.
Earl occupies himself watching his costume’s other dominant feature bob up and down like a dashboard dazzler. It is an enormous phallus and set of testicles of God-like proportion. Earl wears a blue Lycra suit and does knee bends, clearly enjoying his anatomical swag. He doesn’t realize Smithers is speaking to him.
“Now remember, Earl, when you get back to the burial tomb all you have to do is bend over like an ibis feeds and…Earl are you listening? Quit playing with your penis!” Smithers shouts.
“Huh?” Earl stops his knee bends and runs to Smithers, his penis continuing to wobble. “Oh, yeah. Bend over like this?”
A voice speaks in ancient Egyptian from the hidden speakers in Earl’s mask in an imperious tone. “Bring me my rod!”
“Just like that. Also, when you have the rod push the little call back nanode we surgically implanted in your body.”
Earl looks down at what appears to be an emerald in his navel.
“Hah, I always wanted an outie. Groovio, man! I’m ready.”
Smithers throws a switch and Earl disappears.
* * *
Earl reappears in a cloud of dust and slams phallus first into the wall of the tomb. A crowd of priests and dignitaries surround a sarcophagus and fall back to the stone floor in amazement.
Earl doubles over in pain. The effect is as if he were kicked in the testicles. His mask is damaged, a huge crack appears in the back of it and the speaker says: “Bring me by brappptttt!”
Thoth’s damaged phallus is bent in a 90-degree angle. It hangs in place for a moment, and then phallus and testicles fall to the floor.
Two priests stare at Thoth, then at each other. The older priest whispers to the younger: “I think he demands his male parts back.” The older priest crab walks across the floor and retrieves Thoth’s parts. With head bowed, he reverently offers them to Thoth.
Earl accepts his parts in either hand as he regains his wind. He shakes his head, attempting to clear the cobwebs. His dreadlocks spill out of the back of his mask.
What was I supposed to … oh, yeah … Earl bends over deliberately. “Bring me my rod!” the speakers command, this time clearly.
An expression of comprehension crosses the younger priest’s face. He sidles over to the funerary gifts and pulls Thoth’s rod from the offerings and brings it to him. Earl has his hands full. He hands the phallus to the young priest and takes the rod from him, then presses his belly button.
Everyone stares in amazement at the place where their God had just manifested and vanished. The two priests regard the sacred phallus in puzzlement and speculation.
Earl falls down as he reappears in the lab. Smithers crows in triumph and snatches the rod of Thoth from Earl’s hands.
“How did I do? Did I change history?” Earl asks.
“Just a minute, I’ll check.” Smithers pulls up a history of the tomb. Earl stands up and reads over his shoulder. On Smither’s screen are the murals of Thoth within the tomb Earl visited. Thoth sports dreadlocks and carries his male parts in either hand.
In the caption below the murals it is written: “Thoth is depicted here as Thoth the Trader. Origins of this particular facet of Thoth’s divinity is unknown. Some hieroglyphics lead one to believe that Thoth traded his phallus for something. Further hieroglyphics suggest that Thoth’s phallus burned in a temple fire five-hundred years later.”
“Awesome!” Earl says.
Share
