image [https://i.ibb.co/ZdwQ67m/EP-C02.jpg]
It grew suddenly dark, for Soda, Chunks, and Pucas were rushing through a thick musky sweat cloud that rolled around them in billows. Soda felt little drops of warm moisture striking her face and knew her clothing was getting damp and soggy and smelly. Here the mist assumed queer shapes. Some were like huge wobbegongs, some were like videotapes and VCRs, and others piled themselves into semblances of repulsive anteaters and misshapen goiters. The shapes shifted here and there continually and the voyagers began to be bewildered by the phantoms.
"I think we’re going down!" called Soda.
"Down where?" asked Pucas.
"Who knows?" said Chunks. "But we're dropping, all right."
It was a gradual descent. The thaumaturgic toilet plunger maintained a uniform speed, swift and unfaltering, but its path through the heavens was now in the shape of an arch, as a flying arrow falls. They exited the dark dank stinky cloud bank to find they were flying over a giant island floating in the sky.
"There’s land down there!" called Soda. Chunks said in a sing-songy voice:
“Piddily-Cum-a-Placenta, One side is turquoise and the other magenta!"
"We're going down on the turquoise part of the island," Soda said, "I can see turquoise sand, and cacti and now grass… and iguanas!”
“Hold tight, Soda! Hold tight, Pucas!” yelled Chunks, “I think we’re about to bump our butts!"
Pucas urped but did not throw up.
They were certainly dropping very quickly, now, and the rush of air made their eyes fill with water, so that they could not see much below them. The air around them felt thicker somehow, and gradually the sky around them took on a turquoise tint. Suddenly Chunks struck something with a loud thwump and knocked it to the ground, this was followed by a yell of anger and lots of writhing. Then down upon Chunks came Soda and Pucas, so that for a moment they were all tangled up with the toilet plunger’s intestine, each other, and a stranger.
"Get off of me! Get off of me, I say!" cried an excited voice. "What in sam hill do you think you’re doing, sitting on me in my own compound! Get off! Get off at once, you dunderheaded sidewinders!"
Chunks rolled over, did a somersault, and bound to her feet. Pucas and Soda also extricated themselves, and all three stared with all their might at the queer creature they had landed upon. He had a body like a featherless veiny ostrich, except instead of wings he had two gangly arms with long-fingered hands and instead of a bird head at the top of his long snake-like neck he had a tiny triangular head with bulging eyes and a tiny scowling mouth. His bare buttocks were voluptuous. Every inch of him was turquoise, even his teeth and the parts of his eyes that were supposed to be white.
He wore a finely tailored turquoise vest, turquoise iguanaboy boots, and a tiny turquoise iguanaboy hat, all with turquoise dusted diamonds glued to them. There was a shiny turquoise neckerchief tied around the base of his slithery turquoise neck.
If the turquoise man astonished the travelers they were no less surprised by his surroundings, for look where they might, everything they beheld was of the same turquoise color as the sky above. The cactuses were all turquoise, the sparse grass was turquoise, the sand and the rocks and the pebbles were turquoise. They stood in the middle of the courtyard of a huge turquoise compound, with three huge turquoise barns and a spectacularly huge turquoise ranch house in the middle. There were turquoise fences and turquoise benches. A tall turquoise wall surrounded the whole deal. A turquoise tumbleweed blew by. There was a lot of turquoise.
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But the angry inhabitant of this turquoise place, in his shiny fancy duds, would not permit them to look around them in peace, for he began dancing around in an excited way and saying very disrespectful things of his visitors. He shook his fist menacingly.
"You inbred cretins! You miserable lilylivered scalawags! You- You- stinkpots! How dare you come into my compound and fall on me and cause me pain and suffering and mental anguish? How dare you, I say? Don't you know you will be punished for your impudence? I can have you spliced for this insult, and I will! Behold in the personage you have injured Scrumpox! President of the Great Country of Viralvania on the Flying Island of Meningioma!" Here he strutted around in a very pompous manner and wagged his little head contemptuously at them.
“Sorry,” said Pucas flatly. He tightened his grip on his toilet plunger.
“Geez, calm down, it was an accident,” said Chunks.
“We didn’t even mean to come here,” said Soda. “We’ve never even heard of your island or Vira-vania--”
“VIRALvania!” shouted the president. “Where I have been the beloved president for two hundred years!”
"I think two hundred years is plenty long enough," said Chunks. "Give some one else a chance to rule. I wouldn't be surprised if the next president is a better one. Seems to me you're kind of a dork-butt."
"That," replied President Scrumpox, indignantly, "is a matter of opinion. I like myself very much, but I can't expect you to like me, because you're deformed and ignorant."
"We’re not!" cried Soda.
"Yes, you are. Your legs are too short and your neck is nothing at all.” He pointed at Chunks. “This one’s flesh is most peculiar, but except for this one spot on her cheek there isn't a shade of turquoise about any of you. Also, you are ignorant, because you know nothing of Meningioma Island, which is the center of the universe and the only place anyone would care to live."
"Don't listen to him, Soda," said Chunks; "he's an ignorant himself."
“Excuse us for landing on you,” said Soda, attempting to change the subject “but we didn’t know you were there!”
"I won't excuse you!" roared Scrumpox the President. "But I'll punish you. You may depend upon that."
"Seems to me," said Chunks, "you're acting rather impolite to strangers. If anyone comes to our country to visit us, we always treat them decent."
"Your country!" exclaimed Scrumpox, looking at them more carefully and seeming interested in their appearance. "Where in the sky did you come from, then, and where is your country located?"
"We live in Bonertania, when we're at home," replied the girl.
“And where, pray tell, is Bonertania?”
“Smack dab in the middle of Pus Continent.”
"Pus? Balderdash! I've heard of Pus, my child, but the whole thing was destroyed two-thousand years ago!" declared the raving president.
"You're wrong," said Pucas.
"You surely are," added Chunks.
"Millions of humanoids and yokai and robots live there," cried Soda.
"I don't believe it. I believe you are living in Viralvania on Meningioma Island, where you have no right to be, with your horrid not-turquoise skins. And you've intruded into the private compound of the ultimate president, which is a criminal offense; and you've fallen atop of me, which is a crime unparalleled in all the history of Viralvania! Aren't you sorry for yourselves?"
"I'm sorry for you," replied Chunks, "'cause you don't seem to know the proper way to treat visitors. But we won't stay long. We're going home."
"Not until you have been punished!" exclaimed the president, sternly. "You are my prisoners."
"Excuuuuuse me, your majesty," said Chunks, taking a threatening step towards him. “You may be the president of the Viralvanians, but you ain't even a weasel fart to us. Turquoise gives us the blues- right, Soda? I think its time for us to sail away."
"Sail away? How?" asked the president.
"With the thaumaturgic toilet plunger," said Soda, pointing to the plunger that Pucas was holding. Scumpox immediately snatched the toilet plunger out of Pucas’s tiny felt hand.
"Give that back!" said Pucas, making a grab for it. But the president jerked it away in an instant and held the toilet plunger behind him and laughed aloud.
"Now, then," said Scrumpox, "you can't get away until I say you can get away. You addle-headed nitwits are my prisoners."
image [https://i.ibb.co/NYrnmXf/EP-C02-416.jpg]