¬.¬
The insidious god of fried chicken drippings stood slowly,
relishing the fervor of the moment and not at all wanting to get up
off the couch. However, duty called. A landlubber mermaid, probably
the one who had been bothering him last week, was abusing that of
which he was deity – again. He knew this because, being a god,
he was all-knowing.
Okay, not really: in actuality, his annoying
manservant had procured yet another over-the-top water gun and had
soaked him with it, simultaneously relaying the news.
Irritatedly, he lumbered over to the manservant and wrenched the
water-gun off the guy's back, nearly collapsing from the weight.
Then, with a final heave, he toppled out the door and down the
ornately decorated, if somewhat littered by beer cans, stairs,
landing in an ungainly heap at the bottom and shattering the water
gun.
The insidious god of fried chicken's head hurt. It did that a lot
lately, but this was a different sort of hurting, as in, it was an
indirect result of drunkenness instead of a direct. Proving that, if
it were a direct, his head wouldn't be bleeding. But, sadly and
depressingly, gods cannot give up. He stood up suddenly, and would
have returned to kiss the ground with his brain as existence reeled
around him, had not that persistent manservant been looming just
behind his current position.
“Sir, you forgot your banana,” the annoying servant
said tonelessly.
The god slowly and agonizingly turned to glare at his manservant,
although the effect was mostly ruined by the fact that he was soaking
wet and also still had to rely on the guy in order to remain upright.
“Odwall, don't you think that if I left without my banana, I
probably meant to leave without it?”
“I don't know,” the manservant replied in the same
toneless voice. “You told me before not to think. So I don't.”
Glaring, the insidious god finally got his balance and stumbled a
few steps down the plant-encrusted street, before whirling back to
the motionless servant. “Odwall, my steed!” he ordered,
wiping slightly dissolved, crusty splotches of vomit off his ornate
robe.
“I'll get the Flamingo, sir,” Odwall replied crisply,
and then smoothly turned and glided toward the stables, floating a
few inches above the ground.
The god of fried chicken drippings glared after him and tried to
look godly as he waited, but naturally failed miserably. So he went
back to glaring, since it was all that he was really good at...
besides drinking, that is. Then, as the god's brain was beginning to
shut down from all that exertion, Odwall returned with the prised
Giant Undead Flamingo From Hell.
A few moments passed while the god contemplated his Flamingo, but
when it became obviously apparent that he had no idea what to do with
it, Odwall hoisted him into the saddle, strapped him in, and turned
the bird in the right direction. Then it ambled off, and as the
figure of his god slowly diminished in the distance, Odwall was
finally able to breathe a sigh of relief and make a series of
seriously demeaning faces at the retreating figure.
A few meters away, a manhole cover slowly raised itself a few
centimeters and a pair of curiously orange eyes peered out.
“What is this world coming to?” the owner of the eyes
muttered. Inside the manhole, another pair of eyes turned to regard
the first owner impassively.
“Don't try to convince me that you even know what world this
is,“ the second owner said. “Face it. We're lost.”
The manhole cover eased down once more, shrouding the two figures
in complete darkness.
“Lost? Of course we're not lost. I know exactly where we
were and exactly where we're going. Therefore, we're simply between
there and there!”
“Thats what you said on the last planet we went to. If you'd
care to recall what happened there, we were very nearly eaten by a
giant fanged steak, and it didn't help that there were several
vampires of the normal kind chasing after us as well, coincidentally
also trying to get their sustenance from us.”
“I still don't understand what was wrong with my idea to use
that steak on them... and besides, its not like we didn't find a way
off that jungled hell–”
“Shh!”
“Although I do find it kind of odd that that god guy would
use one of the native flamingos from there as a steed–“
“Shut up!”
Amazingly, the chatterbox did, and
after a few moments of lightness silence, they heard a rustling
noise.
The one previously too busy talking to
hear the noise shrieked.
“Oh, for the sake of serenity...” the other muttered
and produced a ball of light, revealing the culprit: an animated glob
of partially congealed newspaper. “Well, I admit, that wasn't
quite what I expected. But still...” the figure trailed off,
noticing her companion. “Was your hair that color when we
left?”
“What?” the other, a Wielder of Giant Broccoli dressed
in an oddly shaped tunic and really baggy black trousers, asked. Her
hair was a soft blue-white, contrasting oddly with her violently
flame-colored wings and matching eyes.
The magician, a short gnome-like
creature in an acid-green sequined dress that overwhelmed the damp
ground beneath her feet, replied blankly, “Never mind.”
There was a long silence. Then the
winged one said, “I still don't think we're lost. After all,
its as they say: 'You're not lost until you see a hiphopolatamus.'”
The light went out. “What?!”
asked the magician blankly. “What illegal narcotic substances
have you managed to procure this time?” But the other remained
silent for a change and simply raised the manhole cover to look out
again.
“Oh crap.” The orange eyes winced. Then she hoisted
her companion up to the level of the street, while still holding the
manhole cover up with her wings. “Okay, fine. We're lost.”
Outside the manhole a bizarre creature
consisting of a unicorn's head, a mer-person's tail, a lion's paws,
an avariel's wings, and many other miscellaneous parts too obscure to
name lolled on the roots of a nearby tree that had broken the road
nearby to to it to pieces. Muffled laughter matching the voice of the
gnome-like creature echoed from the manhole as the cover slammed
shut.
Little Billy Jiyas stood on his
mother's ornate porch sucking a lollipop as he watched all this come
to pass. His eyes widened alarmingly until it seemed that they would
pop out of his skull. Finally, he wet his pants.
“...Mommy?”