Slub Glub, who actually would have been able to swim if he had bothered to try, sank like a stone. As his lungs filled with seaweed, he turned an even darker shade of blue. He rested peacefully on the ocean floor, waiting for the long nap that would finally be his.
Up above, the giant squid (whose proper name was Seamort) was busy trying to swallow as many of the little pink pinching crabs as possible. The crabs seemed almost happy to oblige, offering little resistance as they surfed down the great gaping gullet of the monstrous leviathan. After several frenetic moments of swallowing, sucking and thrashing about, Seamort had eaten all the crabs around and let out a mighty belch.
It was then that something blue and strange caught Seamort’s eye. That strange blue thing was Slub Glub, who lay at the bottom of the water below, his tentacles flopped among the coral crusts of the ocean’s briny bottom. Seeing Slub Glub’s limp, noodly tentacles, similar to the squid’s own, awakened some sort of familial paternal instinct in the massive pink squid’s Squishy cephalopodic brain, and he dove down in Slub Glub’s direction.
Seamort’s giant pink tentacle reached through the ocean’s dark depths towards Slub Glub, who thought this was the mighty finger of the Lord coming forth to nudge him to the afterlife. Slub Glub was surprised, then, to find the Great Squid’s tentacle curl around him gently and pull him swiftly to the surface.
Emerging once again at the top of the water, and still cradled in Semort’s twisting, suction cup-festooned appendage, Slub Glub stared at Seamort’s slimy face and also registered a subconscious connection. Though they differed greatly in size and color, and Seamort had 8 tentacles to Slub Glub’s two, they appeared to be from the same general class of organism.
“Are you my mother?” Slub Glub asked.
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Get the graphic novel from Eraserhead Press.
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb