Dragon Tale Concluded

Unlike mathematics or science where all you have to be is smart and study a lot to get the correct result, creative writing requires a dip into the spookier, less accessed parts of the subconscious where stories and such lie hidden. I mean anyone can find out the square root of 24,612 right? Or explain how software works and why wainscoting is a funny word, but uncovering a decent ending for an indecent plot, for instance, can require hours of internal exploration, dream interpretation and being abducted by aliens to be successful. The square root of any number will always be the same, but a story's end must be unique. That said, all I'm lacking now to finish my uncalled for dragon story - I didn't ask for it, did you? - is that alien abduction part. I've done the internal research and dreamed my head off for a couple of days without a fruitful result. I'm left with nothing left to do but sit here, write this, and watch the skies. Where are those UFOs when you need them?


Dragons can match angels for majesty when they soar through the air. On the ground though, not so much. They have a lot of weight forward and aft to balance and sticking their wings out like a wire walker's pole requires an airport runway's unobstructed width to do successfully. Flying was not an option either as the jungle's canopy was too dense to see through. Nope, if Fearful and Laughsalot wanted to pursue Lord Snarly Flatulence, they'd have to do it on foot.

Laughsalot was not in favor of that. He felt the outcome of catching an armed Flatulence would not be one that left them laughing, but rather, one that left them in stitches...real stitches. His pleas to just forget the whole thing fell on deaf ears; enormous, sticky-up, pointy, but, none-the-less, deaf ears.

Fearful, however, was adamant. Flatulence had taken a pot shot at her pal Livingston and needed to be taught a lesson. She wasn't sure what she had in mind on that score - something along the lines of a second degree scorching that would leave him peeling for weeks seemed about right - but she knew that once she had him in her clutches squirming and pleading for mercy, she'd probably let him off with just singed hair and missing eye brows. Fearful was a softy at heart.

The trail left by Snarly Flatulence snaked its way through the jungle back to a bar cleverly named, Trail's End, from whence Snarly had begun his fateful day. He had arrived there safely ahead of his pursuers and was now loudly decrying the fact that dragons were allowed to roam about bothering innocent citizens. On most occasions and in most bars, when a patron is bitching about dragons or other fanciful creatures, the bartender will immediately cut him off and show him the door. Especially, if like Flatulence, the customer is a lousy tipper. The Lord, however, had been frightened sober and the bartender at the Trails's End figured he wasn't drunk but merely crazy, a condition that didn't necessarily warrant being Eighty Sixed.

As Snarly babbled on and downed one drink after another, the bar's patrons, mostly bass fishermen in from a day on the lake, began to take more and more notice. These were men looking for excitement and a tale to tell. Playing a bit with a whacko quite suited their mood. "What did this dragon look like," one of them asked, and "where did you see it?" Snarly, now approaching inebriation anew, his favorite state of being, was about to elaborate when the roof of the single storied building that housed the bar was suddenly lifted and the Lord was snatched from his stool, hoisted into the sky and flown out of sight.

It had taken some time for Fearful and Laughsalot to make their way to the Trail's End, what with Fearful lumbering along, wedging herself through the trees. This bit of time had given Fearful an opportunity to calm herself and Laughsalot a chance to convince her that hurting Flatulence would only bring unpleasant repercussions; the kind that most likely meant more men with guns. What really needed to happen, he reasoned, for the good of all, was for the Lord to just disappear to somewhere else. Anywhere else, actually, would do.

It was not surprising then, to anyone apart from Flatulence himself, that a short while later Laughsalot's chuckles amped up into actual belly laughs as Fearful flew away with old Snarly in her talons. He knew he would never see the likes of the Lord again because Fearful could cover great distances in a very short time. And he was right. Although Fearful returned from her journey in a couple of days, Lord Snarly Flatulence was never seen again in Livingston Laughsalot's part of the world.

Back at the Trail's End, the bass fisherman all told the same story, something about saucers, green men, red eyes and a beam that sucked up old Snarly. Nobody, of course, believed a word of it.

So...if you have ever wondered how those UFO sightings come to be...now you know.

The End.