By Andrew Goldfarb
Chapter Two: The Worm’s-Eye View
“Hmmph. Watch where you flop there, fatty,” said the disagreeable worm.
“It’s not my fault. I’ve been evicted,” said Slub Glub, getting up and dusting himself off, rubbing his lumpy torso with his two tentacles. “There’s a housing crisis, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know,” the unpleasant worm replied, burrowing back into his mound of dirt.
Slub Glub sat alone for a few minutes, until a distinct rumbling in his belly disturbed the silence.
Suddenly hungry, he poked his head into the earthworm’s mound of dirt and felt around for the nasty little grub with his tongue.
Successful, he swallowed the earthworm, only to find that the earthworm is aptly named in that he does indeed taste like earth, and not good earth at that.
“Let me out,” the undigested worm yelled from inside Slub Glub’s mouth, pounding his forehead against a cheek. Slub Glub obligingly spit him out back onto the ground.
“That was rude,” said the worm.
“Look who’s talking!”
“If you’re hungry, why don’t you go down the hill and find yourself some coconuts,” the worm said with finality, diving back down his hole in the ground, this time taking care to plug the opening behind him.
“Coconuts?” mused Slub Glub, who wasn’t sure what those were but liked cocoa and liked nuts, and figured the combination of the two would be a good way to turn the day around.
He raised himself onto his two floppy blue feet and began to waddle earnestly downhill, commencing a journey that would take him through the forest, to the bottom of the deepest sea, into the farthest regions of space, then face to face with The Cosmic Powers That Be, and eventually to another world entirely, all before dinner-time.
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb