It Ain't Easy Being Green

Sanjay stood outside the bathroom door, mixed with a feeling of awe and embarrassed disgust. The disgust was because he was standing at the closed bathroom door, listening to his beloved younger brother have a conversation with his excrement. The awe was because the excrement was talking back. He couldn’t make out most of the words, other than the occasional “Stay in there, you filthy pile of shit!” and “What comes around goes back around, putty cat!” and “I got your pot of gold right here!”


It was a truly strange conversation and even the embarrassment of eavesdropping at the bathroom door could not quite drive him away. Suddenly, the door opened. He found himself looking a slightly pallid yet annoyed Guri in the eye.

“Did you need something, Sanjay?” Guri asked in a carefully modulated, falsely polite tone.

“Are you alright in there? You didn’t look so well when you rushed from the breakfast table,” Sanjay said uncertainly.

“I am fine,” Guri replied with a shrug. “I ate something that didn’t agree with me is all.”

“Um, and… well, I heard…” Sanjay stuttered, not at all sure how to ask about the second voice. Guri shrugged again.

“It kept disagreeing with me even after I ate it.”

“So…” Sanjay said after a moment.

“I ate a mouthy leprechaun yesterday at the coffee shop,” Guri replied, apparently knowing what the next unspoken question would be.

“You ate a leprechaun,” Sanjay repeted slowly. “I knew Marissa offered smurfs as a snack for those who know to ask for it, but not leprechauns.”

“It wasn’t on the menu. Not even the secret menu,” Guri continued when Sanjay opened his mouth to ask. “It was a mouthy customer and was being very disrespectful to all who came near. When it started insulting me directly, I was forced to act.”

“So… you ate it,” Sanjay said slowly. Guri nodded and shrugged. “It was a foul tempered, immortal, highly magical creature and you ate it.” Guri nodded again and then grinned.

“It was magically delicious!”

*****

Seamus O’Shaughnessy had never been so humiliated in his whole life! Himself, a faithful son of Danu, eaten by a tiger! The shame of it! He’d never be able to show his face at the fairy mound again when word o’this got. And it would get out, he knew. That damned Purple Fairy was very good at sticking his nose in other people’s business. How the bloody hell he got the humans to dress up like a purple fairy, Seamus didn’t know. But it did mean that the real Purple Fairy could skulk around with impunity since no one thought he was real.

Not that any of that mattered at the moment. What mattered was that great spinning vortex of doom up ahead. He’d been floating through the sewer system for a good hour since the damned cat flushed him down the toilet. Mayhap he should not have been quite so obnoxious whilst traveling through the bugger’s gut, else the cat might o’ dumped him in the woods. But hindsight was twenty-twenty and if he was going to look back on things he should not have done, he’d have to start at the beginning and not have insulted the cat in the first place.

That also didn’t matter, in light of the messy end he was now headed to. Unless he missed his guess, that spinning vortex was a waste separator at the city sewer plant. It would not kill him to go through it, any more than being eaten by a wild animal had killed him. It would strew his carcass, what was left of it, all over hell and back. Then he’d have to roll around and collect his various bits from the slurry in order to make his escape. He didn’t welcome that experience at all.

But what to do? It was rushin’ up fast and a pile of poo had no arms with whitch to climb out of a pipe with.

Just then, he saw his salvation. A naked mole rat wearing coveralls and a bright yellow hard hat was standing on a ledge overlooking the waste separator.

“Help! Fer the love of Danu. Help me! I don’t want to die!” he screamed. He might have no arms, but he did still have lungs and a voice box to scream with, after all.






And because I know you want it, here's the lastest "sighting" of the Purple Fairy!