Walrus
Greed
Cannot use the letter ‘P’

I like this one because it forces me to choose my words carefully, not being allowed to use a specific letter. This should be a nice writing exercise!

The stick exchange

Wallace Walrus was a walrus. He lived far away in the icy cold ocean, on an enormous ice floe. He was a leading member of large colony of walruses. Their daily routine consisted of lying around on the ice, enjoying the sun, catching and eating fish, and more lying around.

Wallace was one of the best divers of his colony, and occasionally he would bring some very interesting items to the surface. He didn’t get any more fish for his efforts than his fellow walruses though, and he started thinking about this. Was this really fair? Wasn’t he entitled to more than the others, being such a diligent worker? He decided to go to the head of the colony, Willy Walrus.

“My dear Willy,” Wallace said, “I must talk to you about something. Isn’t it time I was rewarded a little better for my efforts?”

“What do you mean?” Willy answered, his moustache quivering as he uttered the words.

“This. I catch most of the fish, and yet I do not get a larger share than the others. This strikes me as unfair.”

“Why, I have never even considered this… you may be right, yes, you may be… but you must understand, if I were to grant you this boon, the other walruses would start to mumble and grumble.”

“True, true,” Wallace answered, stroking his fat chin. “Ah! I have an idea! It’s brilliant, if I do say so myself.”

“What? What?”

“Just wait here.”

And with that, Wallace swam off into the sea, on his way to the bottom of the ocean. Once there, he gathered some sticks and shells, and brought them back to the surface. He lay them out on the ice floe before the assembled walruses, who had been called together by Willy, who by now was quite curious to see what Wallace was on about.

“My lardy ladies and gargantuan gentleman,” Wallace began, trying to sound as official as he could. “I have here the beginnings of a momentous undertaking. It is the start of what I’d like to call a collection. When you have finished a tiresome day at work, catching all manner of fish, do you not at times long for a sense of homecoming? Indeed, you have your wives and husbands and cubs, but is that really all there is to life? Would you not like to decorate your homes with beautiful things, thereby creating a comforting mood in your own home?”

Murmurs of agreement arose from the audience.

“I see you agree, my friends. I have here for you the solution! These sticks and shells I have gathered from the ocean’s floor are just the things to achieve this end! Distribute them around your home and you will feel at  home among them.”

“Aye, that’s all very fine and dandy,” said a croaking voice, “but what’s it gonna cost, eh?”

“I am glad you asked, Wilbur! The going rate for one shell will be one fish, whereas a stick shall cost you just two fish (besides the large ones, which will be going for three big fish or four small ones). I intend to increase the goods on offer here at the Stick Exchange (for that is what I will call it) to include other things as well. I shall also consider taking other things besides fish to trade you these for.”

“Sounds good!” the audience roared in unison.

Wallace Walrus continued to grow his business, which after a few years became known as Walrus Street, and soon he was the richest walrus on the floe, having more fish than he could eat, as well as other assorted seafood.

Yet a few years later, Wallace had been hoarding so much fish that the other walruses were starving. Cubs were crying, mothers were muttering, fathers were fretting.

This sad state of affairs continued until one day a walrus was born with an enormous beard. He said that this situation must not continue, and if the walruses were to reclaim the governance over their own wallets, they must overthrow the fraudulent system. This they did. Wallace Walrus was killed one night while he was visiting the land of dreams, by a tusk driven into his skull. The walruses took back their fish, chucked the sticks and shells back into the sea, and decided nevermore to let themselves be misled like this.

Also, sorry for now writing any Bouffon Stories in a long time, but you can blame lovetodo22  for that, who came up with this prompt that I just couldn’t get my head around:

Spicy beef needs to factor in somewhere here, as well as Sam aversion to being called McGruff and pinkbellies. Oh and also, the lengthwise cucumber equation. 42. That is all.

The fact that Sam from Sam & Max has to be in there pushes this well into fan fiction territory, and that’s something I’m not really interested in, but sometimes you just have to write things you don’t really want to, and that time has come now. Hopefully with this weight off my shoulders I will be able to produce made-to-measure stories at a slightly quicker pace.

An apology

Dear reader,

I am sorry for not writing to you in a long time, but… hold on, there’s a knock at the door.

Five minutes pass.

You won’t believe this! It’s McGruff, at my door! Wait, he’s saying something…

“I’m not McGruff, you dodo! Such insolence can only be awarded with a single punishment… I shall throw spicy beef at your window until it breaks!”

I must admit, dear reader, I thought my final hour had arrived, but the dog detective had not reckoned with the spicy beef’s elasticity. It bounced back off my window, slamming straight into Sam’s torso, giving him a pink belly. Immediately, he ran off, screaming in agony for some reason or another.

Now, where was I… oh yes, I was apologizing. In fact, I am three times… no… 42 times sorry for the lurch I have left you in! Really and truly! To make it up to you, I shall write a joke for you.

lovetodo22 and Haggis were walking in the park one fine morning. Suddenly, lovetodo22 reached into his pocket and produced a cucumber.

“My word,” said Haggis, adjusting his monocle, “what is the meaning of this?”

“My good sir,” lovetodo22 replied, “there is no need whatsoever for you to be alarmed. I am not threatening you with this here cucumber, I was merely hoping to pose to you a little mathematical puzzle. Suppose I were to slice it into 42 equal parts, what would the diameter of each be?”

For a few moment, Haggis stood there, stunned. Then his face lit up like the morning sun. “Why, my good chap,” he said, “this problem of yours can be easily resolved.”

“How?”

“By cutting the cucumber lengthwise!”

Actually, dear reader, I was lying. That wasn’t a joke, it was something that truly happened. Like everything in life, this event taught me something: having a cucumber forcibly connect with one’s skull is not a pleasant sensation.

Still, it’s the punishment I deserve for being so tardy with my writings.

Sincerely,

Your writer, also known as Haggis

Slave Trade
Bald tattooed woman
Snake

One thing you have to include is that the snake is part of the Slave traders death.
(Preferable not by a bite, but it’s entirely your choice).

And this is what I came up with:

The Charmer Snake

On the west coast of Africa, a cry was heard as a baby girl was born. Her mother instantly took a liking to her. She looked at her daughter and at once knew her name: Adisa. Adisa looked up at her mother and smiled, she smiled back. It was, however, not returned by her father. Upon seeing his child, the only thing that came up in his mind was that he must run, and so he did. Adisa would never see her father again. She was an albino, forever destined to be an outcast in her village.

Her only friends were the black-necked spitting cobras her mother raised on the farm. The Western explorers used their venom to make medicine, Adisa’s mother had explained to her. She didn’t really understand, but she liked the little reptiles. At least they didn’t make fun of her.

The other children in the village did. Her mother had shaved Adisa’s head and covered her body in ornate tattoos, so as to disguise her whiteness, but it only seemed to aggravate matters. Perhaps the other kids were jealous of her unique beauty. In any case, the situation couldn’t be maintained much longer. As she and the children grew up, the bullying turned to violence, and Adisa feared for her life. When the slave trader from the Americas had come to pick her up, it seemed more like an escape than an abduction. She did not have time to kiss her mother goodbye, but she did manage to take one egg with her on the boat.

The journey across the Atlantic was arduous… for Adisa’s former schoolmates. The slave trader himself showed her unusual consideration, sharing his food with her, allowing her to sleep in a rather spacious cabin. Perhaps now her life was about to change for the better. Yes, yes, the tables were being turned, she was sure of that as she saw her former tormentors packed like sardines in the ship’s hull.

In America, her life under the slave trader continued to be pleasant. She made tea and breakfast for her master and his wife, which she was allowed to eat with them. They would talk for hours about life in Africa and how different it was from the puritan American way of life. Adisa’s knowledge of English and of the American way of life grew very rapidly. As did her only real  passion: the pet cobra she had brought along with her. It was a companion to her throughout the years, a little something to remind her of where she had come from. The cobra was always there for her, in good and bad times.

And times would soon take a very bad turn. After the slave trader’s wife had unexpectedly died, he started regarding Adisa in a different manner. She would soon know the true meaning of the word “slavery”. As she lay helplessly at his mercy each night, she often thought about her home. This wasn’t her true home any longer. Africa was always her home. She tried to concentrate on her youth in order not to feel the pain. One image always flashed before her eyes. She had long ago learnt to “switch off” when her master came to her for what he called “quality time”, and the one image that increasingly appeared in her mind as she did so, was that of her mother telling her about the snake farm. One night, the image was especially vivid, and she remembered everything her mother had said. It was as if she was sitting there by the side of the bed, encouraging her not to give up hope.

The next morning, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. When the time came to bring her master his tea, she picked up her cobra companion, stroking it gently, trying to feel what it was like at home. Suddenly, without warning, the animal attacked. But it did not attack her. It seemed to just squirt its venom into a random point in the air. Adisa quickly put the animal aside and took the tea to the slave trader.

“You’re trembling, my dear,” he said as she came in with the tray.

Adisa said nothing, but looked at the ground.

“Ah well, suit yourself if you won’t answer. My tea won’t taste any worse for it.”

But hardly had he spoken these words and taken a couple of swigs from the cup, when he started gasping. Pleadingly, he stretched out his hands to Adisa, who stood completely paralyzed, unable to understand what was going on. The slave trader turned purple, fell off his chair, and then slowly all the colour disappeared from his face, until he was even whiter than Adisa herself. Still she did not understand what had just happened.

Only when her pet cobra came crawling up to the body, then to her, did she realize the snake hadn’t sprayed its venom randomly, but deliberately.

“Thank you,” she whispered, before retreating to her room to pack her bags.

It’s funny, but actually holding that book in my hands makes me feel a whole lot more like an author, as you can see:

Oh, and the e-book version is still $ 1.50 on Smashwords, but only for a few more days, so you’ll have to hurry !

A hard-boiled detective story.

An affair.
A dirty cop.
A thrill killer.
A half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey.
An unloaded revolver.
A corpse.
A treacherous blonde or brunette.
A guy that wears a trench coat and a fedora.
People mysteriously following other people.
A big boss with gun toting servants.
San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles.

That’s quite a list of elements, but when I decided upon an overarching theme (the jack of spades playing card), everything started falling into place. I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much I enjoyed working on it. I just hope I managed to appropriate that typical noir  writing style.

Jack of Spades

Between the window blinds, the dark, rain-beaten streets of Chicago spread out before me, like the strings of a spider web. I was as lost in my thoughts as a kid in a forest from some French fairy tale, when there was a knock on the door. Through the frosted glass, I could make out the silhouette of a goddess. Before my mind could react, my hand had already opened the door, revealing a perfect platinum blonde bombshell. Her hair was the only thing I noticed, until she began to speak, when her lips parted like two ketchup-drained buns to reveal the hot dog of my dreams.

In a voice so husky you could grate cheese with it, she asked me for help. Some crazed ex-lover of hers had been secretly following her all over town.

“How do you know it’s him?” I asked, my eyes glued to her lips as if they were two flies caught by a chameleon’s tongue.

“Because,” she said, hammering every word through the back of my skull, “he leaves playing cards everywhere. He’s careful never to show himself outright, but I find those tokens by which I know it’s him everywhere.”

“But any dodo can leave playing cards lying around, can’t they?”

“Not this one. It’s always the same. The jack of spades. It’s him. Jack. He works as a waiter at Spade’s, the nightclub where I used to be a dancer. We met there, we fell in love, and we fell out. I left the club. He could never get over it.”

I nodded, carefully avoiding her gaze, as if expecting to turn to stone if I looked at her. “I’ll check it out,” I replied with an effort, “but I can’t promise anything.”

“Good,” was all she said. She left a greasy card with the nightclub’s address on my desk, and with a sway of her hips, which seemed all the more round for the tight red dress she was wearing, she walked out.

In a daze, I reached for the half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey that was furnishing my desk. I brought it to my lips, but at the last moment I decided not to intoxicate myself any further. After all, the prettiest cats sometimes have the sharpest claws, and I needed to have my wits about me for this case. I left, grabbing my raincoat and fedora, the only protection against the cold, dark world outside. Well, apart from my trusty .38 Special.

I arrived at the address the lady had given me, where I was greeted by a flickering neon sign that was supposed to make the run-down joint in this seedy alleyway look attractive to potential patrons. The actual effect it had was that of a powdered wig on a bulldog.

I stepped inside. The place was like a graveyard, in more ways than one. For one, it was unusually quiet. And then there was the corpse. Standing over it was a cop. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but I instantly saw him for what he was by the ignorant look on his face.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“See for yourself,” he replied.

I shot him a suspicious glance, but took his advice anyway. In a puddle of blood, a man with a pencil moustache lay grinning stupidly at the ceiling. In his hand, he had a royal flush in spades. In his forehead, he had a bullet hole. Next to him lay another jack of spades and an unloaded revolver. I looked at the cop.

“So, what do you make of all this?”

He shrugged. “It’s an open and shut case. Thrill killer, by the look of it. Victim didn’t have a chance. And look,” he said, picking up the playing card, “our perpetrator left a little souvenir for us. Figure it’s this Jack fellow working here?”

I didn’t reply, fixing my gaze on the revolver. “Aren’t you gonna analyze that?” I asked.

The cop gave me a look as dirty as he himself was and ordered his flatfeet to round up the waiter. “This case is now closed,” he said to me with all the punch of a Rob Roy drained in one swig as he left.

The whole thing was a bit too convenient for me, and I decided to discreetly follow in his tracks. I knew I had hit the jackpot when I saw him leaving the police station in the direction of the docks. He entered an abandoned warehouse. A minute later, I stepped inside, as quiet as the raindrops that fell on the brim of my hat, decorating its edge with a string of pearls. I hid behind a stack of crates and listened to the ensuing conversation.

“Have you got the dough?” I heard the cop say.

The percussionists in the orchestra of my heart stopped playing when I heard the answer. “Did you arrest him?”

It was her. The next moments passed by me like a runaway freight train, and I only awoke from my waking coma when I heard her say: “Here’s your reward, Johnny,” followed by the sound of the cop’s raincoat dropping to the floor. I sneaked a peek, just at the moment she was undoing her suspenders. My mind wanted to look away, but the flesh was weak. I watched as she kissed him with those lips that had asked me for help, and fondled him with the hand that had pulled the trigger at Spade’s just hours before. The cop had a look of pure bliss on his face, which looked all the more ugly for it, but it turned really nasty when the devious dame plunged a knife into his back and threw done a jack of spades. Then she started to laugh like an hyena with bronchitis.

Roused by the shock, I jumped out from my hiding place into the line of sight of her two gun-toting goons. With a quick shot I disposed of one of them. The other thug’s gun misfired, giving me some time to maneuver. I threw myself upon his feet, tackling him. A fight ensued in which he punched me in the jaw. I thought I was done for when he pointed his gun at me again, but I saw I had managed to undo his shoelace. Not hesitating for one moment, I pulled at it with all my strength. The sucker fell over like a hamster in a wheel tumbling down the Rockies.

“This is the end of the line, baby,” I said, looking into her eyes for the first time. Pretty they were, like the first rays of the sun on Bubbly Creek. But there was something missing. Her eyes, her face, her whole body seemed stripped of all the life that had once given it its beauty. She looked at me like a stray dog in a dump yard: longing for love, but not daring to ask for it.

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” I said, trying to persuade her to put down the knife.

She smiled, and I thought I had her, but then she lifted up the knife and held it to her throat. Her voice trembling like warm notes from a saxophone, she asked: “Surely you wouldn’t allow something so beautiful to kill itself?”

She backed away slowly. I hesitated. I looked down at the jack of spades on the floor, thinking of something to say in reply. Suddenly another card was thrown on top of it, face down. I looked up. The lady had disappeared. I bent down to pick up the card. It was a queen of hearts. I put it in my pocket and walked home, through the dark, rain-beaten streets that spread out from the warehouse, like the strings of a spider web.

And of course my short story collection  Bouffon Stories 2011 is free, as always.

Bronies
High explosives
Odd reference to Will Wright
Must be kept serious.

I especially like the last point. The first three items are easy to throw into a pot, stir a bit, and let it simmer to end up with a nice bit of comedy. But adding that last ingredient means I’ll have to think outside the box…

Bronies

Shaun sat at home, utterly bored. He never thought he would ever miss Afghanistan, but he did. The one thing that kept him from losing his mind were his friends. Not the lads he went drinking beer with, but his real  friends, from the My Little Pony fan forum he frequented. He’d met several of them in real life, and though they were all different (both from each other and from the rest of the world), there was a common factor that bound them together, something Shaun couldn’t put his finger on, but it was there all right. It was the typical brony feeling. He hadn’t been too sure about it all at first, but when Deanna, aka “The Brony Mistress”, had presented him with a fabulous Rainbow Dash shirt, he knew it: he was a brony.

He never felt it as strongly as when the time came for his weekly pony fix. That day he would always wear the shirt he got from Deanna, building up his emotions to that climactic moment when the pastel-coloured fillies and pegasi would come galloping through the screen into his living room. It was a religious moment for him, the weekly Mass of the Brony Church, a time to reflect on his life and the childhood that he could never return to, but also a time to escape from everyday life or half an hour, to surround himself with warmth, protecting him from the cold, cold world outside. Like wearing a thin cloak in the snow, it didn’t offer any real protection, but the placebo effect sure was nice.

It was after one of these episodes that Shaun got the shock of his life. Rather than switching off the TV set at once, he surfed a bit from channel to channel. The remote dropped from his hand as he reached Fox News. One look at the news ticker stopped his heart for an instant. A gathering of bronies, in his home town, had gone horribly awry. In a daze, he listened to the reporter rattling off the facts. Building permits should never have been given, these innocent children should never have been allowed to gather there, and the rescue operation was deemed too risky. The building where the brony party took place, had partially collapsed after an explosion in a neighbouring building, where high explosives were stored illegally.

Very slowly recovering from the initial shock, Shaun started to watch the news broadcast more intently. An expert was contacted, who quickly assured the anxious viewers that there were no children in the building. What’s more, this was no ordinary gathering of innocent individuals, the expert vowed. “See, these ‘bronies’, as they call themselves, are typically grown men of 18 to 35, or sometimes even older, who hang out in a place called ’4chan’. Now, I can imagine you good people at home have no idea what it is. Well, let me tell you, it’s basically a place on the internet for paedophiles and child molesters to exchange pictures and tips to commit their heinous acts. Now, I’m not saying the people at this party are like that, but that’s where the brony phenomenon developed, presumably as a tactic to mislead innocent children. Grown men wearing pink shirts and watching a children’s show, I’m not sure about you, but I get a queasy feeling thinking about it.”

“Yes,” the female newsreader agreed, “that does sound nasty. Still, let’s hope the people in that collapsed building will be saved, so the police can deal with them afterwards. Speaking of which, let’s go to the situation at hand. On site is our reporter Joe Camanamanarama. Joe, what can you tell us about the situation?”

“Shelly, things aren’t looking very good here. Because of the weather,” the reporter said, indicating the sky (which remained firmly off-camera) with the piece of paper he held in his hand (a grocery list), “rescue teams have no way to reach the disaster site. Right now we can only hope and pray that these people will come out alive.”

“Thanks, Joe. Now, joining us is Professor LeCestia, an expert on sexual deformations. Professor, could you tell us something more about what brings these, um, ‘bronies’ to their devious thoughts and deeds?”

“Yes, Shelly I can.”

Shaun couldn’t take any more of this bollocks. He turned off the TV and decided there was only one thing left for him to do: rescue these bronies themselves. Fortunately, he had recognized the street where the brony party had developed so unfortunately. He rushed over there in his Jeep and ran past the reporter into the building. Pretty soon, a young lady came running out.

“Help! Help us!” she screamed into the camera.

“Young lady, can you please answer some questions for Fox News?”

“What? Oh. I guess.”

“We heard this was a gathering of bronies. What were you doing in the company of those despicable men?”

The young woman blinked. “I… I’m not sure I follow…”

“Uh,” the reporter said, shooting a sidelong glance at the camera, barely noticeably rolling his eyes, “moving on to the next question. Can you tell us something about the people inside?”

“Well, there’s Mark, Deanna, John, and me. Mark and John were able to scramble out themselves, but I don’t know where they are now. Possibly at the back of the building. You must send police, an ambulance, whatever!”

“So your friend Deanna is the only one in there now?”

“Yeah, but she’s in pretty bad shape. I told her to write her will wright now. It’s on this piece of paper… I…”

She broke down and started crying. Joe was about to announce a return to the studio, when behind him Shaun was desperately trying to resuscitate Deanna.

“Wait,” said Joe, “I think that man is molesting that woman. And he’s wearing one of those pony shirts as well. Let’s take a look.”

He beckoned to the cameraman, who followed him over to the scene of Deanna’s revival, which was fortunately more successful than Shaun could have imagined in his wildest dreams. That EMT course he took in the army, so useless against blown-up IED victims, finally paid off.

When Deanna woke up, the reporter asked: “What was this horrid man doing to you? I saw him touching your breast and kissing your lips while you were unconscious.”

“That man…” Deanna said, feebly, “just saved my life. He is a US Marine, a Christian, and a brony. And you, sir, are a waste of space.”

Joe Camanamanarama fell silent as an ambulance came racing into the street, its lights and sirens blinding and deafening the Fox News pundits and regular viewers. For a day, at least.

Situation: Alien invasion
Premise: How Earth’s stupidity completely averts and obliterates an alien invasion
The aliens are immune to Earth’s diseases

Okay, let’s GO GO GO!!!

“Take me to your leader”

Splork had been dreaming of the moment he would invade another planet ever since he was a hatchling. His parents always told him he’d never be able to get in the Invasion Force, he just had to take a job as a waiter or something. After all, to become an Invader, you’d have to have the physical appearance of another species in the universe. Parents on the planet Flistoxon watched on in suspense as their egg hatched, like a child opening a Kinder Surprise egg, rejoicing when they found a creature that might pass as a tentacled Monolorg from the planet Soopsteev, or a bejingled graigengracker from Norf. But Splork looked… weird. He had two legs, two arms, and a bulging thing on his face with two holes in the bottom of it. Splork was an outcast.

He kept trying and trying however, eventually becoming the apprentice of Professor Zlipatoop, who researched planets that other scholars considered unlikely to exist at best, and mythological at worst. But the professor persisted in his research, and after many years of research, aided by his trusted assistant Splork, he discovered Earth. Splork was over the moon… no… he was over all of Flistoxon’s 23 moons, when he saw the appearance of the strange creatures inhabiting this mysterious planet. They looked just like him!

Splork immediately rushed off to apply for placement in the Invasion Force, armed with Zlipatoop’s findings. The Invasion Commanders had no choice but to send Splork on his mission: he was to scout out the planet Earth and report back with his findings, after which the Flistoxonians would invade it. After months of rigorous training with Zlipatoop and some of Flistoxon’s top philologists, as well as genetic engineering to prevent him from contracting any of Earth’s diseases, Splork was ready to go. With a tear in his eye, he said goodbye to his father, who wiped his left ear with a handkerchief, and his mother, who buried one of her three heads in her paw.

Thanks to the professor’s calculations, Splork’s journey to Earth went very smoothly. He decided to land in the garden of a particularly stately looking 19th-century manor, assuming it to be some kind of seat of power. He spoke to a shabby-looking man who was hanging around in the garden, finally getting the chance to utter the phrase that had been burning on his lips for so long.

“Take me to your leader.”

“Eh? Huh? Hey? What?” the man replied, strange tics making his head shake between each word.

Ah, thought Splork, so that is how they communicate here.

“Take,” he began, jerking his head from side to side, “me,” jerk, “to,” shake, “your,” tic, “leader!”

“Aha. Aha. Aha. You… you… you mean Napoleon. There he is.”

The man pointed in the direction of a small woman, who constantly held a hand against her stomach, as if she was in continuous abdominal agony.

“Hello,” began Splork, peppering his replies with the necessary tics, “I am Splork. From the planet Flistoxon.

The woman looked at him from top to bottom. “I am Napoleon. I am the boss around here.”

“Pleased to meet you.  I have come to invade your planet.”

“WHAT?!” she burst out. “GUARDS! GUARDS! GUARDS!”

Out of the manor, two men in white coats came running at the source of this commotion. Seeing the new arrival, they hesitated. “What are you doing here?”

“I,” tic, “come,” shake, “to invade,” gurgle, “your,” twitch, “planet!”

“Mad as a doorknob,” one of the men whispered to the other.

“Fine,” the other continued, “but before doing so, you’ll have to come with us first, if you please.”

Splork followed the two men inside, where he was promptly attacked by another man in a similarly white uniform who was holding a syringe. Splork tried to put up a struggle, but he wasn’t quite as dexterous with his limbs as the men in the white coats. They put Splork in a straitjacket, and locked him up. Every day doctors would visit him, study his behaviour, listen to his ramblings about the planet Flistoxon. They wrote research paper after research paper about this elaborate figment of the imagination, triggered by a mental affliction they hadn’t encountered ever before.

And back on Flistoxon, every day Splork’s mother looked out the window, hoping for a sign that her son would return.