Karkataka or How the Crab Got Its Knees By Jeremy Edwards (Part 1)

I'm really excited to be able to post this great tale - in multiple parts - by Jeremy Edwards. Thanks Jeremy!

Karkataka
or
How the Crab Got Its Knees
By
Jeremy Edwards

Note: This manuscript surfaced in a trunk of Rudyard Kipling’s underwear that came up for auction at Christie’s. Fortunately, Jeremy Edwards was present in the gallery; and, feeling flush from a recent short story sale, he entered a winning bid for the document. As this was an auction lot, he is now also the owner of Kipling’s underwear. (Contact him if you want to make a deal.) Although the identity of the “Best Beloved” addressed in the tale is uncertain, Edwards is quick to point out that the inside lid of the underwear trunk features a sepia toned photograph of a buxom lady dressed (partially) in an orangutan costume, positioned in what might be described as a classic orangutan posture. The photo is lovingly inscribed to someone called “Kippers,” and the text of the inscription includes several evocative anatomical terms that Edwards hopes someday to revive.

You may sit on my lap, Best Beloved, though you are no child. Oh, but do not do that, Best Beloved, or I shall never be able to concentrate on the story.

Long ago—so very long ago that it positively tires me to say it—the World was a pudding that was only just beginning to set. And as it set, one part of it decided to set into a place called India. Here lived Man-Man and Woman-Woman, who liked pudding almost as much as you do (but were tidier with their serviettes).

Man-Man was ’ceedingly manly, though not quite as macho as his cousin Man-Man-Man, who could be downright overbearing at times, and that is why I have not invited him into this story. Woman-Woman, on the very other hand, was ’ceedingly womanly; and she bore a striking resemblance to you, Best Beloved, ’specially around the hills and valleys.

One coniferous night, Woman-Woman said to Man-Man, ‘Let us settle comfortably on the bank of the great Yab Yum River, without any clothes on.’

‘I like the part about no clothes,’ said Man-Man. ‘But I don’t like the part about the Yab Yum River, which I believe is ’ceedingly far away, p’raps in Tibbet.’ You see, due to a clerical oversight, Man-Man thought that Tibet had two b’s in it.

So instead they settled comfortably, without any clothes on, beside the mediocre Yum Yab River, which was not nearly such a fine River as the Yab Yum, but which was almost laughably close.

‘Hee hee,’ said Woman-Woman, who didn’t hear me when I said ‘almost.’

Woman-Woman looked ’ceedingly voluptuous and ’cessively alluring in her outfit of no clothes, making Man-Man forget how mediocre the Yum Yab River was.

‘Incidentals!’ said Woman-Woman, because she was excited, and that’s what she sometimes said when she was excited. ‘Your horn is beginning to swell and stiffen.’

Man-Man, who was not so macho as to automatically contradict people, agreed that his horn was beginning to swell and stiffen. He congratulated Woman-Woman on this observation. ‘And your oyster is beginning to oil itself,’ he said, because he’d been taught that it’s always polite to answer an observation with another.

‘Suppose we lie side by side,’ said Woman-Woman, ‘like two data points, and contrive to put your horn inside my oyster.’

And because it was such a coniferous night and the River was so mediocre, this is exactly what they decided to do, Best Beloved. Man-Man put his horn inside Woman-Woman’s oyster.

And it was a very good thing he did. What pleasure Man-Man and Woman-Woman felt, as his horn scraped the inside of her oyster, and her oyster scraped the outside of his horn! It was like having pudding and chocolate and digestive biscuits all at once. They could not remember ever feeling so ’ceedingly good—which made sense because they never before had.

‘Reach between us and contrive to award some tactile attention to my little hornlet,’ Woman-Woman requested. So Man-Man did that very thing.

Soon Man-Man felt so good that he didn’t know what to do. So he grunted like the Assiduous Elephant (which is a kind of Elephant that grunts) and growled like the Corrugated Sea-Camel (which is a kind of Sea-Camel that isn’t corrugated, but which had succumbed to a taxonomical error). And, as if by calibration, his horn delivered warm treacle into Woman-Woman’s oyster, even though she hadn’t ’spressly ordered it and nobody really has treacle with oysters.

At ’proximately the same time, Woman-Woman felt almost so good that she didn’t know what to do, but not quite. When she heard Man-Man grunt like the Assiduous Elephant and growl like the Corrugated Sea-Camel, and felt Man-Man’s horn deliver warm treacle into her oyster, even though she hadn’t ’spressly ordered it, she wanted to feel so good that she didn’t know what to do, too. But she tried and tried and still only managed to feel almost so good that she didn’t know what to do, which is not at all the same as actually feeling so good that you don’t know what to do. So she didn’t know what to do.

Stay Tuned for Part 2

The libidinous fiction of Jeremy Edwards has been widely published online, as well as in some thirty-five print (and e-book and audiobook) anthologies. His work was selected for the two most recent volumes in the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series (and he will appear again in the forthcoming volume); he has read at the In the Flesh series in New York and the Erotic Literary Salon in Philadelphia; and he has been featured in the literary showcase of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Jeremy's eroto-comedic novel Rock My Socks Off will be published by Xcite Books in 2010. Readers can drop in on him unannounced (and thereby catch him in his underwear) at www.jeremyedwardserotica.com.