Purple Burp Machine
No one, not even the little freckled kid knew how long it had been there. Lumpy, spotted, itself, not unlike the freckled kid, and ineluctably sinking gutter-ward, off the sidewalk, where people would no longer pass and give it a further thought.
Now, however, perched on the cusp of the curb, not yet vanquished to the gutter in a slow melt to the drain with the label: Flows to Harbor, there was a certain majesty on display in the afternoon sun. A certain majesty that carried with it a stench that stopped nearly every passerby in their tracks to contemplate, and then hurry on, this... this... thing, on the sidewalk.
"It looks like butter."
"It isn't butter." Bob sounded seconds from tears. "It's definitely not butter. You idiot." Well, while the last bit of namecalling may have been uncalled for, it was certainly following truer words than had ever been spoken. Except perhaps the words Jimmy Symmes had spoken down at the playground that time about certain physical properties of girls jumping rope, which no one heard because Jimmy talked entirely too much about girls for a seven year old boy.
The freckled boy scuttled near the lumpy thing, and then scuttled back, when an adult, he wasn't sure which, yelled: "For the love of Gawd! Get away from that thing!"
He had been playing that game, because he saw it as a game, all afternoon, over the course of which the game only got more interesting, as the lumpy thing began to take on a peculiar odor, and shriveled ever so slightly more as the sun mounted in the sky, as if to take a better look at this odd thing making an appearance on the roadside. Being a young boy, he was nearly impervious to the smell which would later, as an adult, knock him on his backside. And he also held no fear that, should he poke this lumpy thing with a stick, the smell would worsen.
Which he did, and it did. Like some hermit crab with a stick, he scuttled forward again, intending to prod the lumpy thing to see if he couldn't get it to either fall into the gutter completely, or shift the thing off the curb and on to the sidewalk proper. Unfortunately, like a hermit crab, he was unable to master the right balance of force and sensitivity that would allow him to move the lumpy thing without breaking it, and with a loud BURP a little air whooshed out of the lumpy thing, and it became more pudd-u-lar in nature.
Taking on its liquid form did nothing for the stink, and, as the lumpy thing accelerated its slow crawl to the gutter and, eventually, the sea, it left behind a fetid snail trail of what looked like tapioca pudding.
"That's the reason," observed the school teacher, out walking with his dog, Poodles, "we invented five senses, instead of just the one."
The university labs, oddly enough, were not questioned about the incident, and when the lobsters from the harbor started appearing in a multitude of hues, no one mentioned it either. Most just rang Father and Son Movers to ask for a quote.
disclaimer:
So the Head Editor of Sane Magazine, this here magazine, flew this weekend that just went past.
Flew. Like a bird. A bird in a small glass cage, with wind being pumped through at incredible speeds.
More to come, perhaps next week.
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