Flower Up

My foot was bothering me this morning, and I felt pretty skanky, so I hopped into the shower. The hot water felt good on the bruises. After I'd soaked in the steam and spray, I took a pumice stone to my foot. Much to my surprise, chunks fell from the bones like overcooked meat.

Hunks of green, purple, and blue flesh swirled into the drain. The clogging made the tub fill up 'til I was standing in a gory stew. It smelled of flowers and not putrefaction. I was surprised at how yellow my foot bones are. I'd expected them to be whiter.

The good news is that I can now wear dainty shoes on my left foot. Now, if I can just scrub my right foot down to match, I won't be such a mutant.

River Horse

I saw a hippo riding a hotdog like a rodeo bronco. It was one of the strangest things I'd ever seen. Dark greybrown-skinned thighs clutched the pink sausage as it bucked and writhed and gambolled. I don't know how a weiner can sunfish without legs, but this one was going to town.

The hippopotamus screamed in joy, his peg teeth gleaming in the winter sun. "Yee haw!" he chortled.

The hotdog responded by bucking all the more.

But the hippo was in peril. Despite the constant kick stroke of his mighty hind legs, the hotdog was steadily making its way toward an enormous pot of baked beans cooking over a huge camp fire.

"Look out!" I screamed, but the hippo paid no heed. Instead, he threw his head up and laughed. The frankfurter wrigglelurched its way closer and closer to the steaming-hot beans, and with a mighty squeeze, shot itself from between the hippo's thighs. It shot like a rocket and impaled the beans on its length, bobbing in the juices.

The hippo stopped laughing and wailed in vexation.

You've never seen sad until you've seen a hippo cry.

Pollywogs of Mead

Although most people with a background in Old English literature are aware of the monsters of Beowulf (ie. Grendl and his Mom), no one seems to be cognizant of the tadpoles. This is precisely because they live in the the caesuras: the spaces between the words. The tone of Beowulf is stern and lacking in humour, but the Beowulf pollywogs swim between acts of bravery with a gambolling ease. The tadpoles are the oldest baby frogs in the world.

Their parents, the sea monster frogs of Breca, laid their eggs in the mead of Hrothgar's Hall around the year 1,000 AD. And on the first night that Grendel attacked Hrothgar's Hall, he carried in the slime of their eggs upon his hair. It wiped off his skin and fell into the kegs. And from this serendipitous act were borne the Pollywogs of Mead.

When the eggs hatched, the tadpoles affixed themselves to the pen of the bard who first copied down the words of the ancient song.

The rest, as they say, is history, albeit an unknown one, up until now.