i’ve read so many well written things in college, but none of them compare to the prose my friend wrote when he was like deathly ill
In the wretched year of our Lord, thirteen hundred and ninety-score, within the stone-ribbed keep that men now call North Hall of Scholars, there lay upon a straw-stuffed pallet one Sir Geoffrey of the Lower Bunk, a knight-errant of the lecture-hall, sore afflicted.
A foul ague had seized him. His bowels roared like dragons in torment, his head throbbed as though smitten by the mace of a Saracen giant, and a fever burned within his breast hotter than the forge of Wayland Smith. The leech-physicians of the university had fled, crying “Plague! Plague!” and barring the oaken door with charms and Latin curses. Alone he lay, wrapped in sweat-drenched wool, whilst the candle guttered and the moon glared through the arrow-slit like the eye of a baleful wyrm.
Yet in the deeps of his delirium there came a vision, clear as the bells of Canterbury: two mighty towers of flesh and bread, each piled four patties high, swathed in molten cheese the colour of beaten gold, crowned with the crisp green of lettuce and the scarlet seal of tomato, and anointed with sauces both sharp and smoky. Double Stack Burgers, the heralds of Buffalo Wild Wings named them, forged in the fiery pits of that distant tavern fiefdom beyond the River Lot.
“Yea,” quoth Geoffrey, his voice a rasp upon the midnight air, “though death claw at my entrails with iron talons, though the Black Rider wait at the threshold, yet shall I rise! For these twin bastions of beef shall be my salvation, my holy relics, my very Eucharist against the pestilence!”
With trembling hand he seized his scrip of silver—three weeks’ stipend from copying manuscripts—and cast it into the brass speaking-trumpet that connecteth the dormitorium to the outer darkness.
“Hear me, O ye servitors of the Wingèd Bison!” he cried. “By the bones of Saint Dunstan and the beard of Merlin, bring hither with all haste two Double Stack Burgers, each of four tiers, with extra sauce of the infernal buffalo and rings of onion fried in the fat of the leviathan! Tarry not, lest I perish ere they come!”
The trumpet answered with strange runes and numbers, yet within the turning of half a glass there came a thunderous knocking. A serf in crimson tabard thrust open the door, bearing a paper ark sealed with the sigil of the Winged Bison. Steam rose therefrom like incense before the altar.
Geoffrey dragged himself from his bed as one risen from the tomb. His knees smote together, his vision swam, yet with heroic might he tore the sacred wrappings and lifted the first burger aloft.
“Behold!” he proclaimed to the empty air and scuttling rats. “The meat of renewal! The bread of life twice doubled! Though the poison of a thousand nights rage within me, this shall cast it forth!”
He sank his teeth into the towering relic. Juice of beef and cheese ran down his beard like the blood of a noble stag. The spices scorched his tongue as Greek fire, yet he devoured, and devoured again, until both mighty burgers lay vanquished within his belly.
Then fell he back upon the pallet, breathing like a bellows, his eyes wide as chapel windows.
And lo, in the third hour of the morning watch, the fever broke. The dragons in his guts were silent. Strength flowed into his limbs like the tide at Avalon. He rose, stretched forth his arms, and laughed a great laugh that rattled the flagstones.
“By the rood!” he cried. “I am made whole! Let poets sing and chroniclers write: Sir Geoffrey of the Lower Bunk, sore stricken with the flux and the fire, was saved by no potion nor prayer nor bleeding-bowl, but by the valorous eating of two Double Stack Burgers from the house of Buffalo Wild Wings!”
And from that day forth, whenever sickness stalked the halls of Saint Aldric’s, the scholars whispered one to another in awe:
“Send for the Wings. Send for the Double Stacks. For verily, they be the true medicine of heroes.”
germansingergirl
2087
janainaart
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
