Friday, August 13, 2010

A Modern Fable

Today’s posting is a story about a snail named Sammy:


Once upon a time there was a snail named Sammy. He was the star of a series of children’s picture books with names like Sammy Saves a Sandwich and Sammy Slimes the Soil. The books were very popular and Sammy made good money. But as he became wealthy and famous, Sammy succumbed to the lifestyle. He began snorting Ortho and betting on aphid fights. He dated an exotic murex snail with expensive tastes, and he had a custom salt pillar built just so he could mock death. The money ran like water, but his books kept it coming in. He showed up late to art sessions, but he was so popular the editors let it slide.


Funding Sammy's vices

Then one day it all came crashing down. Book sales had fallen off, and the publisher decided to go with disabled otter to capture a new market base. Sammy was crushed but knew he would bounce back. Unfortunately, no one wanted him. Other publishers knew how difficult he was and, besides that, alliterations were dead. The only animals getting work had multicultural names or clever meaningful names that made children stop and think.


The dark underworld of aphid fighting

Sammy grew depressed and blew through the rest of his money. The murex snail left him, his Ortho dealer stopped coming by, and his slug bookie sent two hornet thugs who threatened to break his shell if he didn’t pay up on his bets. Sammy turned to fermented apples to block out the pain. At his lowest, he tried to end it all by climbing into the bucket of an escargot collector, but he was too slow to get in. He eventually moved to a pick-your-own strawberry field where he spent his days eating the leaves and defecating on the strawberries.

Sammy knew that if he could work his way into a real life narrative that taught him a lesson, but without being heavy-handed and moralistic, he could turn it into a memoir and make a roaring comeback. When a school bus full of kids on a fieldtrip showed up at his strawberry field, he knew it was his big chance. He oozed his way across the field toward the bus, looking for anyway to involve himself. He was pretty slow, as snails tend to be, and barely made it ten feet before the kids had finished up their picking and clambered back onto the bus.

The sad snail turned back to his plant. He had failed, and might as well accept the fact that living in the field and getting his kicks watching people eat the strawberries he had just pooped was how the rest of his life was going to run, when something caught his eyestalk. A little boy was lying in one of the furrows, and he looked like he was knocked out. Sammy saw the bus getting ready to leave and knew he had to do something. He started back towards the bus as quickly as he could, but it was still a pretty pathetic pace.


A lost cause


He knew he had no chance at getting to the bus in time when a deus ex machina appeared in the form of the two thug hornets who were out searching for him. Sammy begged them to help and promised to get them their money plus the vig with the sales from the story. The hornets picked him up and flew him to the school bus just as the driver was closing the door. The sight of two hornets carrying a snail was bizarre enough to capture the attention of everyone onboard. Sammy had learned to read from back in his literary days, and slimed out a message about the injured boy.

The teacher was extremely grateful to Sammy, particularly since she was already on a final warning for negligence after leaving a child in the stingray tank on an aquarium fieldtrip. She agreed to substantiate his story with the publisher as long as he left names out. The book was a huge hit and Sammy was back on top. His success even brought alliterations back in the picture book market. Now that Sammy was flush, his Ortho dealer showed up at his doorstep, but Sammy pushed him into the street which was freshly coated with salt and oozed back inside to his new wife, a simple apple snail.



The End

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