My Bluff Is Called
Well, I'm not exactly sure if I should be flattered, uneasy, or what, but our good buddy Bill from Viking Funeral (rejected motto: putting the "fun" back into "funeral") has responded to the challenge I never made in my previous post and extended my ramblings further into the fully-developed story category, i.e. he continued writing the stories I said I never would. I have yet to decide whether I should continue further with them myself, or let you, "good" reader, send me your submissions, but feel free to crank up your thinking caps and spew some literature at me. For the nonce, please enjoy the fun (original text in italics, Billwork in regular lettering):
Wingate opened up his satchel and let the pungent vapors contained therein waft slowly across the room and into the waiting nostrils of Mrs. Teasdale and Frau Beckenridge.
After the passing of several minutes, as marked by the polite ticking of Lord Feathering's massive cherrywood grandfather clock, Mrs. Teasdale turned to her Bavarian companion and whispered "Jesus H. Christ, Eva, do all krauts smell like sun-baked bear shit, or is it just you?"
******
Cletus scratched at the base of his medulla and frowned slightly. It seemed like the water was rising around his ankles, but he wasn?t quite sure. Suddenly, he had a taste for pudding.
But it wasn't his Aunt Lucy's homemade butterscotch pudding he craved. No, his inner thighs still bore the scars from the hot, sticky, just-boiled butterscotch that Lucy had cruelly applied to his puffy white flesh as punishment for what he had done to the neighbor's nanny goat.
What Cletus really wanted was some cold, nearly tasteless national brand vanilla pudding from the Piggly Wiggly down on Main. Licking his harelip, he sloshed out of the wet basement and headed for his trusty Ford pickup, the one he called "Momma".
******
"Desist!" shouted the angry vicar at the milling throng. "Hasn't this boy had ENOUGH?!"
Captain Enderberry shifted slightly and pulled nervously at his mustache. "We didn?t mean any harm, sir," he mumbled. "It's just that you don't normally get a chance to see that much hair in one place..." his voice trailed off as he clumsily dropped the pruning device into the ravine.
Danny the cabin boy exhaled slowly, trying to hold in the tears of pain building up behind his reddening eyelids. His prized five-foot braid of belly button hair may have been gone, but he still had his pride, and he damn well wasn't going to let these scabrous sea-dogs see him blubber if he could help it. If only his beloved Nellie, the trained California seal, hadn't had to bear witness to this humiliating episode!
******
Tess smiled to herself and leaned back in her seat. First class! She thought excitedly. There was just something...opulent about traveling so luxuriously on a train bound for Paris. She giggled. Nothing could break her mood, now, nothing! Except...she frowned slightly as she remembered the boy with the ham sandwich. There was something about him...where had she seen that bulge before?
It was about the size of a tennis ball, and located in the small of his back, under the silky fabric of his French-cut beach shirt. She could have sworn she had heard it whistling the tune from an old laundry soap commercial, but then, she had taken three times the recommended dosage of her pain killers just before boarding at Calais.
Momentarily forgetting about the boy, Tess watched as a cardinal swooped out of the clouds and smashed itself against the train window, its spraying blood coagulating into tiny dancing gremlins in multicolored robes. "Oh my," she thought. "Isn't France a wonderful place!"
Suddenly, a shadow fell across her. She looked up, seeing the boy with the bulge standing in the aisle.
"Ou est mon sandwich de jambon?" he demanded.
******
Stanley realized that the hounds were gaining on him. He struggled to increase the speed of his frenzied running; if only he could make it to a clearing he might have a chance. But there was nothing but dense jungle as far as he could see. Damn, where were Professor Russell and the Machete Seven when you needed them?
Leaping over a man-eating Narcissus, Stanley caught the leg of his trousers on one of the plant's deadly six-inch thorns, and tumbled head-over-heels into a muddy tributary of the Gambia. Already held together by patches and packing tape, the pants disintegrated completely, leaving Stanley to swim wearily to the opposite shore wearing only his ball-tight orange Speedo and the remains of his green fishnet muscle shirt. He shuddered to think what conclusions Professor Russell might jump to if he could see him now, especially considering that the old man had, just two days ago, caught him gently fellating young Nubungo the machete-bearer.
