Month: April 2009

In order to try and accommodate the large number of folks we already have in line (with more coming in each day), we’ll be changing the 24-hour rule slightly.

Continue Reading “New Rules for “Potato Moon”” →

“Oh, hello, Something,” he said.

“Hi, Jakob,” answered Something, Woeisme’s older sibling.  Something was only ten, but already he seemed to be older than his own mother. “Were you going down in the woods tonight?  I’d be careful if i were you; maybe even put on a disguise.”

“Why?” Jakob responded with his typical lightning-fast wit, “Are the teddy bears having a picnic?”

“No – werewolves are having a Howl.”

Werewolves!

Would his beloved Bela (or perhaps, that should be his beloved Woeisme and her mother, his formerly-beloved Bela) be safe?  Would Edwood protect them? Could Edwood protect them?

“I must discover if they are all right!” he exclaimed, dashing into the forest on his way to the Sullen place.

Remembering Something’s warning, he used a clever Native American technique he had learned in the Boy Scouts, disguising himself as a tree.  In the distance, he could hear the Howling werewolves at their Howl howling long frightening howls as they Howled.

Hoping that he could pass the werewolves without dicovery, he crept silently along through the forest, near the path that led past the old Same place on its way to Sullen Manor.

Sullen Manor – the name had rung in his mind when he was a little kid reading comic books.  The only other manor he’d heard of was Wayne Manor, in his comics.  He used to imagine that Sullen Manor was the home of a hero who disguised himself as a bat and fought good fights and righted wrongs under the cover of night.

How naive he had been!

Suddenly, he realised that he was about to come to the clearing where the werewolves were Howling; that there was no other way to go through the forest…  He froze in place, hoping to wait, hidden, until they finished what they were doing and went away.

Soon, indeed, they seemed to be satisfied that they had made sufficient noise that no-one for several miles around could be sleeping peacefully, and began to wander away, some transforming back to human form as they did.  It didn’t surprise him very much that the biggest and meanest-looking werewolf turned out to be the high-school principal – he’d always thought he was a mean son-of-a-bìŧçh.

But, suddenly, he saw that three of the wolves were pacing purposefully, their eyes full of purpose, directly toward him!

They were sniffing the air!

Had their keen noses penetrated his clever disguise?

He stood, still as he could, though his foliage occasionally rustled as if a wind were blowing, as the three werewolves walked right up to his roots.

Again, all three sniffed carefully of this new tree on the edge of their meeting place.

The three seemed to come to a joint decision.  He stood in terror, wondering what they meant to do to him.

And then, as one, all three raised one hind leg…

Jakob Blaq sat on his porch, contemplating the potato in his russet hand. He could hear the sounds of the baseball game his father was watching inside, and his father’s shouts over the TV.

The moon shone down upon him, casting shadows on the potato that caused it to resemble a girl.  A very certain girl.  This certain girl happened to be Bela to whom he was not speaking at the moment.

“Bela,” he hissed.

The potato had captured her face perfectly.  “Bela, would that I could devour you as easily as this potato.”  Jakob lifted the potato up in front of the moon.  It blocked out the hovering orb.  She was vaster than the moon, was this potato Bela.  He took a bite.

“Great,” he thought aloud, “there must be something deeply symbolic with me taking a bite out of a potato that looks like Bela.”   He threw the potato behind him. A crash resounded resoundingly as the potato shattered the window. His father shouted from within.

Continue Reading “Potato Moon: Part 1 by Ariel David (and her dad)” →