Axes and Frogs

Finally! I have written the third in my series of Rick stories. And - it has turned out to be of great length for a Rick short story, and I get more and more astounded in the insights I can gather of the possible madness inherent in men.
WHY DON'T MY STORIES MAKE ANY SENSE? You might want to ask.
Well, you should know that they are not supposed to. Art for the sake of art may be a bit lunatic, but does it have to be completely rational? No! It shall be creative. And, yes, it shall be lunatic. This is certainly more interesting than, for example, apples. I could also write stories about apples. I'm certain somebody, somewhere, has done it. But I think a lunatic person in a confusing world devoid of sense is great material. So ... Enjoy!!

[Axes and Frogs]

Rick disobeyed his car and left it in order to enter a doorframe.
He observed it then be struck by a bolt of lightning that sizzled and tunked the night in green light and sent drops of molten metal flying past his shoulder onto the wooden door, where they hissed furiously and ate holes. A voice from within the entrance shrieked in Chinese, something like "You Bastard It's Always The Same (What the hell did you do to my DOOOR) With You Dammit Everyone In This Country Is The Son Of A Tibetan Lama And A Capitalist Chicken..."
Rick, a man of diminished composure, hurried inside and bowed slightly to the dried-out-looking woman leaning over the counter which held a sortiment of dead and living but unhappy frogs.
"I'm sorry. My car was angry."
"Well don't let it happen again!" A husband said in English, piercing the dusty air with soundwave. Rick got a glimpse of him in a shadowy corner where he stood with an huge axe and used it to forcefully carve monstrous chess figures of formidable height, a height that slightly dwarved the monocled figure of the man with the name Rick. He was a bit mistempered being outnumbered by the sharp axe and the sword of the Knight Piece which rose up behind the stoutly breastmuscled husband (retired). "I didn't intrude", Rick said, and took torn out pages from a fashion magazine from his pocket. He then watched a giant moth which circled one of the battered ceiling lanterns that failed brightening the room. "As an afterthought. I meant, I didn't want to intrude." He sat carefully on the wooden floor, then he got up, removed a glass shard from his behind, and sat again. He crossed his legs and meditated.
"I don't think he intruded", Gertrude - the elderly Chinese woman - said to her husband (they weren't married, but Rick thought he had wed them, which is another story, so what the hell.) "Do you think so?"
"Maybe he thought he had interrupted something", the husband said.
"Oh, you mean, because we are married."
"Are we?"
"I thought not." Gertrude pulled one of the bones from her hair and consulted it for signs.
"I think, though, I just declared us to be married, didn't I?"
The man shook his wild grey hair confused and stopped himself to swing his axe and hit a big chunk from the bishop in front of him who gave a satisfying groaning noise of splintering and pain. The Asian fortune teller looked up from her frog collection as her husband said, "I don't really get this philosophical stuff. I'm more into practical matters, as you know." She regarded him from hooded eyes. "Now why did you have to kill that nice bishop?"
"Why not? It's my job. I craft chess pieces."
"But usually they're wooden!"
"So?" The man let his eyes sweep over the body in front of him. "Once the rigor mortis has set in, he will make an excellent chess piece. We should dry and mummify him." He leaned on the shaft of his axe and yawned. "I think I'll get me a beer. Do you want any?"
"That awful grain drink? No thanks. Anyway, where did you get you that bishop?"
"Oh, I don't know." The crafter wandered into the backroom. "He was just hanging around. Kinda looking around the shop or something, came through the side entrance." He appeared in the door with a two-litre bottle of beer swinging from the hand not occupied by the axe. "I think he was the guy always pestering you, trying to close your shop for practicing heresy. Consider it a favor."
The female Gertrude Chinese heretic woman spied over the top of the counter again. "Your friend, that Rick guy, is still sitting on my wooden floor since he and that car of his conspired to destroy my nice door. Strange American chicken."
"I don't know him so well. I always thought he was your friend."
"What? For ten years? I was of the thinking that he did come to the crazy-wedding place with your friends. Well, doesn't matter. At least he tried to wed us when the priest with the black attire didn't want to."
"I'm still trying to figure out why he didn't let us marry."
"I am still very sure that it was because I am not in the Capitalist party."
"Sure."
"Don't you get smart with me. I know very well of these political matters."
She spoke from the counter which she seldom left to the little man on the floor. "Can I ask you what you are doing with the papers on your head?"
Rick awoke from his trance to see things with a new clarity. "Frogs", he said, showing deep inside into the transcendent state of the universe. Then he said, "I try to let the knowledge which is depicted on these pages sicker into my head. It is a new form of reading." Gertrude looked sceptical. "Does it work?"
"Not yet."
Rick took a good look around the room, perceiving the clouds of smoke, the cubistic paintings on the walls next to crazy African masks staring through the room, the carnivorous flowers in the display window, and the looming chess figures in the crafting corner. He also saw the small ornated and brightly colored door which, he knew, led to adjacent rooms that were far larger and filled with things that no chance visitor was ever supposed to see. He elegantly overlooked the bloody corpse on the floor. He asked, "Can you tell me why I'm here?"
Dieter-Helmut, the craftsman and the murderer with the axe, said, "You don't know why you came here?"
"No."
"Perhaps you wanted to visit me."
Rick's uncertain eyes flickered to the corpse for an instant. "I think not."
Gertrude fixed him with a contemplating gaze. "You don't know why you came here."
"No."
"Hmm... Do you remember coming here?"
"I just remember something about Tibetan Lamas?" He looked at her, confused. "And I remember starting to meditate."
"Strange. Your car was struck by a lightning bolt when you came in here."
"What? Really?"
"Yes. It killed my door."
"I'm sorry to hear that. They say such things do happen."
She stared at him intently. "The sun was shining. There was no single cloud in the sky."
"Well..."
"You said your car was angry."
"Ah. That would explain it."
"This is another matter I was going to talk about." She looked at the corpse, at the door, at the mess outside, and snapped a few words in Chinese to her murderer husband. He left obediently and appeared in the door a few moments later with a broom, a bucket, a shovel and wearing a bulky apron.
"Your car has been destroyed. It has completely molten. It is not usable anymore."
"Perhaps we could remelt the parts in your oven...
"Trust me. It cannot be repaired. I know of such things."
Rick knew better than to argue.
"Should I clean it up?"
"Don't worry. Dieter-Helmut will do that. He has to remove all the blood anyway." She shot her husband in question a dark look.
"Since your car melted, you cannot leave. That may be a problem." She stroked the head of one of her surviving frogs. "Having no means of leaving, the only solution I can think of is that you move in for a while until we think of something."
Rick thought it over and shrugged his shoulders. "If I'm unable to leave, then it seems so. Well, why not." He thought of the chess crafter and his axe.
"Don't be afraid of Dieter-Helmut. It looks like I did some mistakes, but I always thought of him as tame. He's a nice person, really. Even though he is no person."
She evaded the quizzical gaze Rick gave her and studied her frogs running around in their cages and tiny mazes and mechanisms. Every now and then a little "Pling!" would sound and a chunk of disgustful food would pop out of one of the walls. After a moment, she looked up brightly.
"Oh, I know why you're here. You're the chessplayer!" She pointed at the monstrous pieces at the wall and the very dead bishop.

To be continued...