By Andrew Goldfarb
Chapter One: The Hideous Shrieking of the Rising Sun
On Tuesday of last week, Slub Glub was awoken from his peaceful slumbers by the hideous shrieking of the rising Sun.
“Get up!” the fiery orb yelled, as she did every day, sending flaming embers in the general direction of Slub Glub’s blue, globular body.
Slub Glub raised one of his two tentacles to cover his ear holes, ignoring the star’s hysterical screaming. In response, the Sun wound up one of its thousand angry fists and pitched a blazing comet down, setting Slub Glub’s tail on fire.
With a murmur of discontent, Slub Glub rolled over onto his belly, sniffing the acrid smoke that was now coming from his bottom. Emerging unwillingly from behind the veil of sleep, he opened his lazy yellow eyes and saw that he was on fire.
With a snort from his dangling trunk he briefly roused his bulbous head in alarm, but his yelp became a yawn, and Slub Glub decided to ignore his flaming tail and attempted to go back to sleep, burying his face in one tentacle and hoping to get a fresh start under better (and less fiery) circumstances a few hours later, or even the next day.
However, within moments his repose was again disturbed, this time by a violent pecking against where his belly button would have been, if he had had one.
A muffled “Squawk” emerged from the same region, and then with a concerted effort, the family of birds who had been uncomfortably squished beneath Slub Glub’s flabby, flatulent body managed to forcibly eject him from their nest.
Apparently he had been using their home as a bed, and was very much an uninvited guest.
Landing on a mound of dirt, Slub Glub was forced to greet the new day, and found himself eye to eye with an earthworm.
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb