Moldering boldly
Muldered on September 28, 2025.
Being dead isn’t that bad. I was moldering away quite nicely and no end was in sight.
I’ve died before. And again. And again! And even more recently! I’ve done it too many times to count! I even died once when a beaver I was trying to skin got the upper hand (and got the knife away from me). It wasn’t that bad. I’ll probably die again if I get the chance.
I wondered how my pet kerfrumpt was doing. Who would stuff her eating snout with fried moose synapse, emu femurs, and cat skins? Perhaps she would start eating all the gnomes hiding in the wainscoting.
I also wondered how that deadly skeezle-wumpus who lives in my over-stove cabinetry would fare without me. Who would accidentally open those cabinets and get their jugular ripped out by its ferocious adamantium-plated claws? Perhaps it would start eating all the gnomes hiding in the wainscoting.
And what of Nurdlebutt? I had taught her to use a can opener but my supply of catfood wasn’t infinite! Once it ran out, would she try to skin my kerfrumpt—or would that scaly ol’ kerfrumpt skin her first? Perhaps she would start eating all the gnomes hiding in the wainscoting.
And those gnomes—would they simply turn to cannibalism to survive?
I continued moldering. My thoughts turned away from the eldritch creatures ensconced in my palatial abode (and my boring but amusingly yclept housecat). That grue that did me in—and Becasue—with us out of the picture, what would it eat now? What was it eating in the dark depths of that forest tonight? Would it turn on the wendigos and eat them? Would it eat the Langoliers? One thing was certain: I wanted to eat my big little redheaded huzzey-muffet right now.
But then an amusing pun involving all three of my nostrils distracted me. (And I forgot the pun, so don’t ask.)
“Oh, dunderpurple!” I cursed. “And plunderdurple!”
It suddenly struck me—I had no mouth and yet I cursed aloud like that. I wondered: Was this all some kind of dysplumbious dream? Had I been, in all actuality (not to mention pretentious pomposity), sitting perched atop my porcelain throne, when a sudden and explosive flatulential spree had gripped me, causing me to fall, hit my head, flail around on the floor like a gaffed carp, and then hallucinate the whole Nizgidge Ridge affair like I was some dollar-store A.I. bot? Could it be?
No. It could not be.
I went back to thinking—pensively, I might add—for my pompous pretentiosity knew no bounds (except when it got its pompous head bitten off by a hungry grue). My mind drifted back to when I was twelve and had a pet mouse. I named him Catfood. It turned out to be a prescient moniker.
Was I being nibbled to death by cats? Cats that go quack?
Nurdlebutt would definitely eat all those gnomes, I concluded. Once the cans of catfood ran out, and then the nurdles, and then she battled to the death with my scaly ol’ kerfrumpt, there would be nothing left for her to do but eat the gnomes—and their little fezzes, too.
I thought about the fact that each horsepower is equal to 131.2 duckpower, going by mass at least. Then I thought about, if you convert a duck into pure energy through the application of an anti-duck, according to E = mc2, how many horsepower is that? Would it be enough energy to feed a team of horses for a year? A decade? A league of centuries?
Then I thought about the bubal hartebeest—what a noble beast it was! At this very moment there could have been flocks of these hartebeesties roaming across the Sahara Desert—except they were all dead, too! (Like me.) And then I thought about the hearty booby-beast, the hearty-booby beast, and the hardy booby beast—also all elegant creatures in their own right.
Then I got distracted thinking about boobies and tits and other kinds of birds.
Then I thought about my collection of sour cream containers and coffee cans. Did I remember to put them in my will? All 105,103 of them? If I hadn’t… what would become of them? Would the gnomes just cart them all off to the dump like they were trash?! The horror! What a waste! The horror! The horror!!
Being dead isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now I want to be alive again!