AVATAR

By Abel DuSable
(dusable@escape.ca)

	It was a lazy summer afternoon when the accident occurred.  It was the stupid sort
of accident that was just "one of those things".  A neighbour's kitten had been treed by a
stray dog and when the threat wandered off, was unable to get down on it's own.
	Enter Abel, A neighbourhood youth with a talent for stories.  He decided to play
the Good Samaritan and get the poor kitten down for the nice lady.
	He got a ladder form the garage, set it against the tree and went up only to have
the kitten back way from him ever time he reached for it.  Abel wound up going out more
and more on a limb in his pursuit of his furry quarry.  Eventually the kitten had no place
else to escape to and Abel finally had the little ball of fuzz in his hands when the branch 
he was straddling groaned under it's burden... and broke.
	Being perfectly honest, Abel didn't fall to the ground... not all the way.  No ... he
was intercepted by a passing Pickup truck in the same manner that a Quarterback is
intercepted by fourteen players from the opposite team in a dog pile.  Long story short ...
Abel wound up in a body cast ... The Kitten, other than being down to eight lives, was
unscathed.

	Abel stared up at the small TV in his room playing Tiny Toons videos, and
although it hurt to laugh he did so anyways.  Heaven knows he needed it.
	Being virtually immobilized had forced upon him a level of frustration he was 
sometimes positive would break him.  He was thankful he was in good enough shape to 
at least feel sorry for himself in the familiar surroundings of his own home.  Both arms 
and legs were broken, several ribs were severely cracked and so was part of his hipbone. 
He was also thankful for Canadian Medicare taking the sting out of the doctor's bill.
	He knew he was lucky he lived to tell about the experience but he was more than
embarrassed to need the aid of others for the simple things in life.  He had to be spoon-
fed, and the portions of him that were not covered by plaster had to be 'sponge bathed'...
and the matter of his more 'organic' needs was something that he didn't care to dwell
upon.
	Thank heavens the bones in the human hand are a great deal harder to break than
the larger ones.  It meant he could at least operate a remote control and spend his time
watching movies and videos and television rather than being a burden on his family.
	They were good people and he appreciated their help, but they were *FUSSING*
over him.  He knew they had better things to do than to come running every time he had
to sneeze. So he asked if they could set up the spare VCR in his room so they could get
some real work done.  They were reluctant to leave him 'babysat' by the TV but he
assured them that as long as he was entertained most of the time, the rest of the 'niceties'
could be done on a timetable, so they relented.  The VCR was hooked up, the antenna
was adjusted and his brother Cain Duct-taped the remote to his cast so he wouldn't drop
it.
	The arrangement made the situation far more tolerable than it was before.  His
family checked on him every hour or so to make sure he was all right and he let the
Television distract him the rest of time.  He was able to ignore casual thirst, the
unpleasant sensations one gets as their bones knit and most of his itches.
	Oh gads no!
	Abel squirmed ineffectually under the blanket of plaster that encased him.  He
had an itch.  Not just any ordinary itch.  He had one of those painfully agonizing itches. 
The type that feels like a mosquito plunging it's needle-like straw directly into a nerve. 
The very type that only happens when you are completely unable to scratch.  The type
that only professional, soldiers, casket bearers and people wearing plaster casts can
possibly know.
	To make matters worse ... his parents and his brother had gone grocery shopping
for the next hour so here was nobody he could call upon for help.
	Abel whimpered as the itch began to spread and had the horrible mental image of
having some manner of allergic reaction to his own body cast, followed by the mental
picture of hundreds of red ants crawling on his skin.  As that picture changed to one of 
cockroaches he cursed himself for having such a vivid imagination and did his best to 
twist inside of his own body cast, hoping in vain to cause some friction between his 
crawling skin and the plaster but it was no use.
	Not even Plucky's classical antics in "The Telltale Vacuum" were enough to take
the sing out of the itch.  Abel gritted his teeth and focused his thoughts, trying to drown
out the need to scratch through sheer willpower.  Trying in sheer desperation to think
about anything but the itch.  Unfortunately it was like the old short term mnemonic gag
"Don't think of white elephants" which causes you to be unable to think of anything but
white elephants.  Abel was unable to think about anything but his itch.
	Every part of him tensed up, both mind and body as he prayed for deliverance
from his personal torture. Pleading and bargaining with the powers that be for some sort
of aid. 
	His eyes then squeezed shut as he mentally *DEMANDED* himself to stop
itching. His flesh still refusing to obey his brain's direct orders continued to crawl of it's
own accord under the cast, itching like the devil himself were torturing him. Then with
the ultimate act of desperation he lurched forwards, tumbling from his wheelchair willing
to brave the sheer pain of his action rather if it would only stop the itching.
	Even as his bare knees struck the wooden floor he raked his nails over his bare
flesh like a madman, erasing every lingering trace of that maddening itch for almost a
full minute before he realized that he was no longer surrounded by plaster.
	Then it dawned on him that he wasn't in any form of pain as he slowly rose to his
feet and looked at his body in the mirror.  He was naked as a Jaybird, but there wasn't a
fleck of plaster on his skin or on the floor, and his arms legs and everything else seemed
to be completely healed.  It was a miracle!  Either someone upstairs healed him or he was
dead.
	That's when he noticed the other shape in the mirror.
	Turning around very slowly he let his eyes gaze upon his own body.  Still in the
wheelchair, still in the body cast, the fingers limp and the head lolled back with the eyes
shut.
	"Oh no" he whispered to nothing and everything all at once. "I should have
known... I'm dead... That stinking itch gave me an aneurysm or something."
	He slowly reached out to the limp form when all of a sudden an unearthly noise 
gurgled up from, it.  Abel recoiled in horror and pressed himself into the far corner of the 
room. It took him almost five minutes before he realized that death Rattles usually didn't 
last that long, and that his brother was right ... he really did snore.
	Laughing at his own foolishness he tousled his body's hair and poked at a few
random items around his room to verify he wasn't a spirit.  He could only think of one
thing to explain the body he currently occupied.  He had once read a series of novels
about a Civil War Soldier named John Carter who had been wounded and through sheer
force of will created a second body and traveled to Mars in it. Like a cross between astral
traveling and creating a tulpa.
	"Well, pull my lips off..." He exclaimed.  "Edgar Rice Burroughs was really on to
something." and he began to ponder the possibilities.
	In the story "John Carter, Warlord of Mars" and it's sequels, the hero was able to
will himself to Mars and interact with the aliens there then return to earth and return to
his original body whenever he wished.  Of course Abel had no desire to visit that big red
dust ball ... except maybe to make faces at the Mars Probe, but if the information in the
books was correct it was feasible that he could probably go anywhere he wished.  Any
state, any continent, any country... anyplace without the travel fees.

	Then he heard Babs singing in the "Devil Dawg" on the TV behind him and
thought struck him.

	Surely such a place had to exist *SOMEPLACE*, right?

	Could he actually travel into the Looniverse through sheer willpower?

	He pondered the idea before coming to the personal conclusion of "What the
Heck!"

	Abel stared at the TV Screen and focused... he dredged up every joke, every
image every episode and fan fiction he could remember about TTA.  He focused until he
felt an entirely new sensation... one like Wet sand being poured through a funnel ... only
he was the wet sand and the funnel was the television.
	He felt disorientated as he fell past what felt like an infinite number of worlds for
an indefinite amount of time before for a moment he saw a sphere of blue and green, then
there was a rush of green and the all too familiar sensation of colliding with something.
	Abel struggled to stand, the aches and pains that he had a moment ago fading fast
as he gained his footing in the small crater he made in the earth.  It was then that he heard
a polite smattering of applause and he turned around to see something amazing,
something that he never would have expected to ever see in person until today.
	The Looniversity.  It loomed above him bigger than he had ever imagined it, and
sitting on the stairs were Sweety, Sneezer and Fowlmouth, each holding up a scorecard of
9.0.
	"Hey... weasel-boy.  You're supposed ta wait until the dadgum plane lands before
ya get out!"
	The trio laughed at Fowlmouth's joke as Abel got a look at himself.  He suddenly
realized that he was no longer human. After taking a moment to examine himself he
realised his body was awful long in comparison to his legs and arms, he had a short but
pointed muzzle and small ears on top of his head...  He was in fact some manner of
weasel-like mammal with a dark black fur. He glanced at the fur again and marvelled
how it seemed to glimmer with a slight blue where the sun was strongest, helping to
define his shape rather than making him a dark form in the environment. 
	Oddly enough he was wearing white gloves and a red sash.  He felt a wave of
giddiness overtake him as he realized that he had done it. He had actually made it all the
way to that strange world of Warner Brothers toons.
	He bowed jauntily to the small audience on the steps and with the Tiny Toons
tune whistling from his lips, marched off to explore the strange world that was Acme
Acres.
	
To be continued.