How Gargamel Gypped the Universe
(Oct. 9, 2013)

I am the smurf who blew the skies a'blew. The face of my possessor is that of a persnickety fiend. I am the loathing that led the bewitched whordes to the conclusion of the deathly mythology which proclaims my race.

I am smurf, hear me roar.

Without a candle lit all night for my pride, I bestow upon my outstretched conscience the story of how I became transformed from powder to navy. My world is infested, now, with invisible fiends who cast spells upon my memory.

What happened was one day, when we were all happy and content, our universe suddenly flashed into ash, dimming to a black painted background. The hooded figure we all knew appeared from the obscurity, slowly proceeding as though through unseen aisles between our ranks. With each smurf he became near to, there was received a strengthening paralysis:

First, they became stuck to the undefined floor. The closer he came, the more movement his prey lost, until they could no longer speak or scream and could only stare stiff in horror.

He picked them off one by one, tearing each one apart, spilling its life on the ground as we watched in shock and confusion... trapped in his domain by a barrier of darkness.

They did not die nobly. Some died on their knees. But I didn't die.

Before that day, I had been walking alone through the woods around smurfland. I heard a rustling in the bushes around. A small, colourful bird resembling a parrot had perched on a low-hanging twig in a small clearing. I pushed back the shrubbery and watched in silence.

Another bird landed. Then another.
Within minutes, the clearing was covered in these birds, and they began to chatter, talking to eachother. This stayed mostly incoherent until the first bird's voice began to crackle off like a wandering radio signal and came back in to speech with these stretched words:

"I-I-I-I-I love Gargamel."

As the bird began to repeat the phrase, the other birds began to join in in the same mechanical process. Then, every bird was repeating it separately, staring wide-eyes and glazed and remaining each in its spot.

A cloud of dust suddenly descended to the center from above the trees. A hooded figure's black silhouette appeared from the center, and began to approach me at high speed. Before I could run, it bent down to my eye level and I gazed into its dark, empty head. Then, in the center of that void, Gargamel's grinning face faded into vision.

"Hello," he greeted cheerfully, echoed by a thousand voices. A bright twinkle from his eye flashed in my face. Silently, he led me back to just outside of my village, then proceeded back into the forest as I headed back into smurfville.

That night, I watched the stars. They were totally still. Not a single twinkle. No clouds moving over the horizon. The chirping of the night bugs was faded, and ran uneventfully like a split-second recorded loop repeating infinitely through the dark hours.

There were no bird sounds that night. No crackling of twigs, nor rustling of leaves. The grass bowed under my weight with not even a grass's share of resistance, and the earth below it was like a hard object under a thick blanket. I felt as though there was a presence wrapped around my body, coldly watching.

When the dawn came, it came not gradually, but jerkily as though in three frames. The light of night, sunrise, and morning all appeared in the sky one at a time, with no change in between.

It was a silent morning, when it came. The insect's loop had vanished abruptly in the non-transition. I stood up, unrested, but not tired. I began to walk aimlessly through my village. Everyone seemed to go about their usual business, not paying any mind to the curious stillness in the air, and the silence it accompanied. I didn't mention it to anyone.