Spirituation

 

The god with the springy eyes, the bird on His head and the ridiculous gap-toothed grin looked at me from across the heaped plateful of jelly beans.

 

"Seriously?" I said.

 

"Every last one!" said He, with a ridiculous giggle, as one eye boinged out at me challengingly.

 

"But I don't even like them that much," I said.

 

"Like them yay or like them nay! The beans will prove your worth today!"

 

*giggle giggle boing boing*

 

Well I didn't expect that (the ridiculous rhyme, that is).

 

"Ridiculous yay or ridiculous nay! The beans will-"

 

"Okay I'll do it!"

 

And so I did.

 

***

 

I felt sick.

 

"Vomit out your sins!"

 

"I don't think I can-"

 

But I was wrong.

 

"Bleurgh!" I said, expecting a stream of multicoloured puke, and was thus highly surprised to find that my ejecta consisted entirely of polystyrene peanuts (you know, the sort that are used in packaging).

 

"Ooh that's concerning..." said the god, transforming instantly into a baffled beige boar, with a bobble hat and a bandana.

 

"Why?" I enquired, as I picked a polystyrene peanut out of my teeth.

 

"Ahem..." said the baffled beige boar. "See ye here or see ye there... The polystyrene gets everywhere..."

 

"Well I can see that," I said; "but what's the significance?"

 

"Come back to me next week and I'll tell you."

 

I wasn't having that.

 

"Tell me now, you brainless burk!" I cried, in an unexpected fit of rage. "Or so help me, I'll... I'll..."

 

"What?"

 

"Come back to me next week and I'll tell you!"

 

Hah! That told the brainless beige burk.

 

***

 

In the hiatus that followed, the god transformed into an emperor on a skateboard, a brick on a pogo stick and a one-eyed purple llama in a jellyfish hat.

 

"Why?" said I.

 

To which the god replied:

 

"Ask not the why, but the how and the when, and the why shall emerge frothing and spitting, like a broiled frog in a celebrity bake-off, to collapse in an enlightened spladge, like the reconstituted Muffin of Serenity."

 

"'spladge'?" I questioned.

 

"'splodge'," the god confirmed.

 

"That reminds me," I said, as I took the salad out of the microwave.