A Contemporary Fairy Tale Slightly Twisted

OSCULATING BUFONIDAE -- Part One
by J. Richard Jacobs aka evidentialist

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The alarm ground out its obnoxious rhythm.

Zzzzzt...zzzzzt...zzzzzt.... But it shouldn’t be doing that, he thought. This is Sunday, right? I thought I turned the thing off last night. Too drunk, I guess. Ooooo, my head is unzipping and falling apart.

Samuel Sapperstien, eyes still closed, slapped the snooze button expertly and pulled a pillow over his head.

It sounded again.

Sam slapped again.

Again it sounded, more insistent.

Again, Sam slapped, but with more force, as if that would convince the alarm to shut up.

A small voice screeched, “Ow.”

Sam peeled the pillow back just enough for him to see the clock. Sitting on top of the controls was a greenish brown something-or-other glaring at him and rubbing at its head. He dragged the pillow over his face, then pulled it slowly down so that his nose and mouth remained covered. It was still there.

“What the hell are you?” Sam said. His voice would have carried a squeaky, terror-filled shrieking sound had it not been muffled and smoothed out by the pillow.

“I’m a dragon, buster, and you’re lucky I didn’t burn off your fingers for that little stunt. You should look before you slap.”

“Dragons don’t exist...and you’re what?—three inches tall, maybe? Dragons are supposed to be big and frightening. You? You’re just a funny little lizard...at best. You have a name?”

“Look, bud, don’t let my diminutive size fool you into thinking you can get the best of me...and I can’t help being small. It’s a long story, Sam, so don’t ask—and you wouldn’t be able to pronounce my name, anyway, so just call me Vern. And I am not a lizard.” The creature unfolded its wings to a full span of a little more than six inches and gave a couple of flaps while releasing tiny puffs of smoke and licks of flame from its nostrils to drive home the point.

“I have time, Vern. Vern—odd name for a dragon, isn’t it? And how did you know my name?”

“My actual name is much more impressive but, like I said, you couldn’t get your tongue around all the consonants with no vowels, and your name is in our files back home in Trillianum. And, as for time, no, you don’t have much of that at all, if we are to do what needs to be done. Now, get up and do whatever it is you people do these days to get ready for a semi-formal party.”

“But...but this is Sunday.”

“So? It’s Sunday. So what?”

“Saturdays and Sundays are my days off and I use my Sundays to repair the damage from Friday and Saturday night. I don’t go anywhere on Sundays, except the Slick-Quick store down the street for one of their Crispy-Crunch Burrito specials...and I haven’t been invited to any parties. Especially not a semi-formal one. Come to think of it, I’ve never been invited to a semi-formal anything. Now, leave me alone. I have some serious sleeping to do. Go back to wherever it is you came from. Um...who sent you here, anyway?”

“Morgud the Great,” the apparition sitting on his clock said with considerable pride. “You wouldn’t know him. He’s a freelance wizard from the suburbs surrounding Trillianum’s outer wall.”

More Good the Great, Sam thought. What kind of a name is that? He pulled the pillow over his eyes and swore under his breath that he would have to stop drinking so much on Friday and Saturday nights.

The creature continued, “I can’t go back to Trillianum until my job here is finished and you, Sam, are my job. As for the party, you’ve just been invited. I invited you. Now, pull down the pillow, throw back the blankets and get up.”

“That’s pretty nervy of you. Suppose I don’t want to go to any party, which I don’t.”

“Sam, I swear I’m going to set that bed ablaze with you in it. You’ll be the Crappy-Crud burrito special, or whatever you called it. Now, just shut up, get up, and let’s go.”

#

Sam came out of the bathroom, not too gracefully sidestepped a stack of blankets he was going to wash...someday...and straightened his favorite—his only—tie.

“Okay...I’m dressed. Now what? Um...where’d you go, Vern?” No answer. “Um, Vern?” he said a bit louder.

“In the kitchen, Sam.”

“What? What the hell are you doing in my kitchen? Did I say anything about you having permission to scrounge around in my kitchen?” Sam said as he stumbled over a mound of dirty clothes in the hall and trudged to the kitchen.

“I’m hungry. Is that all right with you? Long trip on no food.”

“Okay—as long as you don’t eat me out of house and home.”

“Now, how can anyone as small as I am do that?”

“Yeah, right. Forgot about that. So, how come you’re so small?”

“I told you, don’t ask, and we don’t have much time. She’s probably getting ready to osculate with more Bufonidae while we’re flapping our jaws about this junk you call food.”

“Osculate? Bufonidae?”

“Kiss more toads, you moron.”

“She who? And I’m not a moron.”

“Could have fooled me. Would you settle for ‘imbecile’?”

“Okay...okay. Enough already. A wise guy miniature dragon I get on a Sunday morning, sheesh. I should still be in bed. And who would be dumb enough to go around kissing toads? She’ll get warts on her lips.”

“You don’t get warts from handling toads, Sam. What kind of education do you people get these days?”

“I got a good education and from some damn fine schools, I’ll have you know.”

“I guess, but you don’t seem to fit the educated picture—warts, for the sake of the gods. She, for your information, is a princess...and she’s not literally kissing toads. That’s just a figure of speech that comes from the idiots who make up folk tales, faerie tales and other absurd nonsense for scaring little kids into following ‘the rules of the cultural road’. What she’s doing is looking for her prince, but she’s doing it in all the wrong places. We have to put a stop to that before she makes the big blunder and marries one of them, which will screw up the line of time.”

“We? Why...we? Why don’t you just go sit on her alarm and tell her that what she’s doing isn’t cool? Go tell her she won’t find her prince that way. I’ll bet she’d like that as much as I’m enjoying your company now. Anyway, wouldn’t that be simpler?”

“Um...probably. Certainly less aggravating to me, I’m sure, but we wouldn’t be able to get the two of you together quite as easily that way. You live in two different worlds and, as far as I can tell, if you were left alone, you’ll never be in a position to enter hers—and I’m sure she wouldn’t deign to come near yours. Not in a million, gajillion years.”

“Whoa. Let’s wait a minute while you explain—in detail—why you need to get the two of us together.”

“Well, that’s simple enough. You’re the prince, although I’m having a hard time picturing that. I would have thought that even someone as slow of wit as you apparently are could have put that one together right off—all by yourself.”

“Look, you little creep, there’s no need to go denigrating me. You awaken me out of a sound round of zees and spring this ‘osculating Bufonidae’ junk on me with no intro, then expect that I’ll pick up on your meaning, no matter how vague it is. Well, up yours.”

“OoooOO, aren’t you the testy one today.”

“You’re one to talk. A shrunken, imaginary anachronism of a lizard sent here by some dude named More Good from the dingy depths of ‘Make Believe’ telling me I’m being testy. Know what I think? I think you’re just a bad dream and that I’ll wake up any minute and you, thank God, will be gone.”

“Again, I’m not a lizard, Sam, and that’s Morgud the Great to you, mere mortal—and you are being testy—and forgetful. Go back and put on your shoes, then we can leave.”

“Oh, yeah, shoes.”

TO BE CONTINUED Click the link below for Part Two

[agnostic.com]