ALL A-QUIVER: WALKING THE STRAIGHT ’N ARROW

Indie author shout out: Indie author (and my good friend and editor) David Gilmore has published a short horror story with a bonus flash piece, The Dead Should Stay Dead, now available on Kindle for only 99 cents. Go, read, and enjoy! Please support this indie author. You'll be glad you did. 

Word of the week: behest \bi-ˈhest, bē-\ - (hear it!) - noun – 1 : an authoritative order : command; 2 : an urgent prompting - (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Slug Fears and Smelly Depths: Chapter Nine From My Humorous Middle Grade Novel, It Happened on Tarantula Island

A little something I've been writing with my son . . . for five years. Background info? Sure! This is chapter nine, after all.

Fourth cousin fourth removed from the fourth family of Forths, ten-year-old Christopher Forth has traveled the sea on the back of a beluga whale at the behest of his crazy cousin, the loopy scientist, Gerald Passion, to a small isle named Tarantula Island to become Passion's perfect personal scientific assistant. But pirates are coming, and Passion has decided that slugs are scary, and making sticky potions and tea is the best way to solve that problem.

Bob or Jeff?

Oh yes, and Bob and Jeff are cabin-sized talking tarantulas.

* ahem *

Please note: This is in very rough draft form, and it's quite the deviation from my usual dark writing. Enjoy!

Slug Fears and Smelly Depths

“What!”

Christopher gaped at Passion. Passion gave him a nervous grin.

“I said, we need to make more potions,” he replied. “It's the only logical thing to do. Well, that and make tea, of course. You wouldn't happen to want some, would you?” He picked up his kettle.

“Are you crazy?”

“No, no, no.” Passion waggled his finger. “Never say crazy. I don't like that word. Tea?”

“But, Gerry, pirates might be coming.” 

“Yes . . . well, maybe. Tea?” He filled his kettle to the brim and hung it on the hook over the fire. Christopher shook his head, bewildered.

“Tea? Now?”

“No time like the present. Personally, I like the future, but it's so hard to see what's coming—”

“Pirates!”

“Where? Where?” Passion ducked.

Christopher smacked his forehead. “No, pirates might be coming.”

“Oh, right.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“So what are you going to do?” asked Christopher.

“About the tea?” said Passion.

“No, about the pirates.”

“Oh, right, that. Yes, um . . .” The scientist tapped his finger against his lips. “I've thought about that little issue, and I've decided the best course of action would be, well . . . to do nothing.”

Christopher gawked. “Nothing?”

“Yes. Right. Nothing.” Passion gathered more ingredients from the floor and dumped them into a cracked beaker, which he stabbed into with the block of wood. Christopher snatched back his flashlight and shoved it into his rear pocket.

“Nothing, my foot,” he said. “I thought you said pirates were scary.”

“They are,” said Passion. “Sluggy, even.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So aren't you going to hide?”

“Oh . . .” Passion shrugged and poured some of the newly mixed potion into a fresh tube suspended over yet another orange-blue flame. “I suppose so, yes. Later. Maybe. Um . . . no. No, I don't think so.”

“But why not?”

“Well, you see,” said Passion. “I've never been fond of hiding, especially underground.” He uncorked the cotton-candy-pink liquid vial, dodged the itty-bitty puff of smoke, but coughed anyway. “Besides,” he added, “those annoying spiders will take care of everything, won't they? I mean, at least that's what Bob said.”

“Jeff. And what if they don't, what'll happen then?”

*  *  *

How cute is that?

To read on: Slug Fears and Smelly Depths, continued