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Chapter Six
Sometimes when people are very, very upset, they become so upset that they can’t deal with being awake. They become so upset that they fall fast asleep.
Now you must know by now that Spikey the Werm was not Spikey the Human Being. I mean to say that he wasn’t a person. You knew that, right? Spikey wasn’t a person, but sometimes he acted very much like a person, just like you or your dad. Or your mom, but I don’t want to assume too much. In fact, I really don’t know if you are a human being, all I know is that sometimes when human beings panic, they fall fast asleep. And even though Spikey the Werm was not a human being, he fell fast asleep because being pregnant and being digested at the same time was just too much for him.
So Spikey the Werm fell fast asleep, just like I said. And when he fell asleep, he began to dream. Yes! Spikey the Werm had another dream, and this is what he dreamt:
As the man with the sharp face stood in the middle of the clearing, he was attacked by a faceless thing that wrapped itself around him and tried to tear him apart. The man barely had time to prepare for the attack, but he did the best he could, and he began to fight the faceless entity with all the strength he had. They wrestled, they threw each other this way and that, never letting go of the other, never being able to get out of the other’s grip.
For many hours they fought, until the man with the sharp face felt himself slipping far away from his body, far away into a darkness that he could not control. And in the darkness, he saw the fist, the fist from his dream. This fist was white and trembling, like it was about to explode. But it did not explode, it stayed clinched into itself and trembling, like it was holding back a whole ocean. Like it was a dam holding back a giant sea.
And speaking of the sea, way down below, it still churned and frothed and beat against the hill while the first man, Adam, drank it into his body. Adam drank and drank the sea, until he became strong. And when he was strong enough, he stood up, and looked up into the darkness above him, where he saw a pane of glass fall from the giant clouds. The pane of glass fell and fell, and Adam suddenly knew it was falling towards him, so he reached up to try and catch it. But by the time it reached him, it was falling too fast to be caught. It hit him hard, and splintered into a thousand pieces, sprinkling all over the hill, and cutting him here and there, because its pieces were the sharpest thing around.
Where Adam was cut by the splinters of glass, small drops of blood dripped out of him. Some of the drops fell on the ground, and some of the drops fell into the sea. Wherever the drops fell on the ground of the hill, small plants, like grass and trees and dewy ferns, sprouted up. And when the drops of blood fell into the sea, she turned red all through herself, a very pretty red, the red of a sunset.
She? The sea was a she? Yes, she was a she, and what a beautiful she she was! Adam called her Lillith, because whenever she lapped against the side of the hill, her waves would make the sound: lul, lthhh, lil, lthhh, lul, lthhh, lil…
Lillith and Adam had many conversations. She would tell him about the clouds and about the darkness and about all the things that might some day be. And he told her about his feelings and his thoughts and all the things he might one day see. They were very close, like family.
When Adam’s drops of blood fell into Lillith, she let out a big, crashing laugh. His blood tasted beautiful to her, and she wanted more, but Adam’s wounds healed quickly, and when she asked him for another drop, he said no. He said “No, I’m sorry, I do not want to give you any more blood, because I would have to cut myself, and that would be painful, and I don’t like pain, so no. No more blood for you.”
This made Lillith angry, so she reached down to the bottom of her bed, and she created from the mud there a fierce and angry creature who was so big that she named it Leviathan. Leviathan stretched out its long body, and rose to the surface of the sea. And when it saw Adam standing on his hill, among all the vegetation, it let go a tremendous roar and made its way towards him.
Adam saw Leviathan coming, but he didn’t know what to do. The creature looked too big to wrestle with, and too angry to calm down with words, so Adam looked up into the sky and called out for help. He couldn’t see the fist, because the clouds were in the way, but he called out into the darkness for something, anything, to help him.
And would you believe it, but the man who had a sharp face, who was lost in the darkness beyond the clouds, he heard Adam. He heard Adam loud and clear, and so he traveled through the clouds, past their rumbling thunders and colliding sands and white-hot thunderbolts to where Adam stood, on the hill, waiting for the Leviathan to attack.
The man who wished to build, he came upon Adam just in time, to find the Leviathan rearing ferocious and terrible over the first man on the first land. The man with the sharp face swooped down from the sky, as fast as he could, and grabbed the sea monster around the neck, and began to wrestle with the creature with all his strength. They contended with each other for hours, and then days, even though they fought in a place where there were no hours or days yet. They fought for an ever, before time had begun.
And after an ever or two past, the man looked up to his great-great-great-grandfather Adam and he asked for help.
“I can’t help you,” said Adam. “If I step into the sea, then she will swallow me, because she is angry at me for not giving her my blood. She is greedy for my blood, so I dare not touch her. But I’ll tell you something I have thought of. Ask the sea monster for a gift. It knows it cannot win just as much as it knows you cannot win, because your grip is so powerful and because its strength is equally powerful. Ask it for a gift, and say you will release it if it gives you the gift you want.”
So the man asked the Leviathan for a gift, in exchange for setting it free.
“What do you want from me?” asked Leviathan.
“I want to know how to build the most beautiful thing ever.”
“I cannot tell you how to do that, oh man,” said the beast. “You must ask the Lady in the Dress for knowledge. I cannot give you knowledge. But I can help you build it. Yes, if you know how to build it, then I will give you all the strength I have to help you build it.”
“That is fair,” said the man, still holding on to the beast. “But one more thing, before I let you go. Tell me, where can I find the Lady in the Dress?”
“You must call for her, and she will come.”
“What is her name?”
“Her name is the name of your daughter,” said the sea monster.
Now the man who had a sharp face, he didn’t have a daughter, but he knew that that didn’t matter so much. He thought of the name he would give his daughter when she was born, and he shouted it out. And when he shouted out this name, he found himself in the middle of the clearing of the blue forest. Before him stood a woman in a long dress. She had black, black hair that looked heavier that stone and brighter than gold. She was holding out and small silver ball to him that was in the shape of an egg.
He man reached out for the silver egg, but as his hand was half way to hers, he stopped, and he looked into the Lady’s eyes and he said to her “Go away. I will do this without you.” And then he thrust his hand into the dirt, and with all the strength of Leviathan, and all the sharpness of his face, and all the smartness of his mind, he began to build.
Chapter Seven
“Hey, hey boss,” said the muscle, nudging Spikey. “I just had an Idea.”
“Dude!” moaned Spikey. “Why didn’t you let me… I was right in the middle of a very engrossing tale!”
“But boss, boss,” insisted Spikey’s muscle, “I have an Idea how we can get out of here. I think it’s a full proof Idea, as it takes into account the laws of biological science.”
“Hey, be quiet, be quiet. I need to remember my dream before I forget it. I need you to listen to me so I can tell it to you, and then we can discuss your Idea, alright?”
“Okay, that’s fair,” said the muscle, who settled down snugly between Spikey’s toes to listen to Spikey’s dream.
When Spikey the Werm was done recounting his dream to his special muscle, the muscle admitted, “I sure wish I could have waited to wake you up. It sounds like something really cool or dreadful was about to happen in your dream.”
“Yeah, yeah,” agreed Spikey, “But what I’m wondering is: what does it mean?”
“I don’t know, boss,” said the muscle. “I don’t know what your dream means, but it sounds pretty important. I think that you are being told a story that might change the world.”
“I don’t know about that,” responded Spikey. “But tell me about your Idea, yo. Maybe it’ll help us out of our predicament.”
“It just might. Listen. This Banana Mama, she’s a slug, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I was thinking, slugs have a weakness, an allergy. There is something that can defeat them, no matter what, because it turns them into foam.”
“Foam, you say? How’s that?”
“I don’t know the details,” continued the muscle. “But if a slug encounters salt, that slug is in for it, because salt turns slugs into foam!”
“Into deadly foam?” questioned Spikey. “Tell me, tell me what kind of foam does salt turn slugs into?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You don’t know? Well, that’s not good enough. What if it turns them into magic foam, or shaving foam, or anti-Werm foam? I need to know what we’re dealing with here. I don’t want to get us out of one problem by making another! I need a full-proof-plan, one that will give us total victory, not prolonged defeat!”
“Spikey the Werm,” said the muscle, “you are truly a smart creature, I must say. Not only do you have a good vocabulary, you have some smart ways of thinking. I’m glad I have you as a boss, otherwise we’d be all brawn and no brain.”
“Think what you like, my faithful organ. I’m just a practical Werm, that’s all.”
Spikey’s muscle gazed at his boss with a look of admiration, then it got back to business.
“Well, I think salt would turn Banana Mama into Salty Banana Foam. Do you think Salty Banana Foam would cause us more trouble?”
“Hmm… Salty Banana Foam… I don’t think it would be that bad, as long as we don’t slip and throw one of my toes out of joint.”
“So you think that, if we’re careful, we might be able to win?”
“Maybe. But we need salt… ooh. My belly’s acting up again.”
“Yes, it looks swollen. It looks like you’re gonna pop.”
“Ooh… ooh…” Spikey groaned. He didn’t feel all that good. In fact, he began to feel massive amounts of pain radiate throughout his body. He began to sweat, and scream, and then tears started to pour out of his seventeen eyes. Before too long, a lump fell out of his body.
“Ooh… ooh…” Spikey moaned, “What just happened?”
“You just had a baby, boss.”
“A baby? A baby?! Let me have a look!”
And Spikey looked down, and saw that he did just have a baby, even if it was a very weird looking baby.
“Wow!” he shouted, his eyes tearing over with pride.
“What are you gonna name… your baby, boss?” asked the muscle.
“I will call my baby the Maybe Baby! Come here, Maybe Baby! Come and give your parent a warm snuggle! We’re a family unit now!”
Spikey stretched out his toes to give his child a hug, but before he could reach the Maybe Baby, his muscle shouted:
“Watch out, boss! You’re about to fall out of the floor! It’s turning all to foam!”
And indeed, the walls and the floors and everywhere Spikey’s tears had landed had begun to turn into foam.
“It tastes like Salty Banana Foam!” shouted Spikey. “I wonder how that happened!”
“It must have been your tears!” explained the muscle as it pulled Spikey and the Maybe Baby to safety. “It must have been the salt in your tears! Now we can escape from the clutches of Banana Mama’s digestive track!”
“But what about my Maybe Baby?” Spikey asked himself. “How will I keep my only child safe through the unknown dangers ahead? I must think fast!”
And so Spikey thought as fast as he could of the safest way to protect his darling child, and that is why he swallowed the Maybe Baby back into his belly before ordering his muscle to shove them through the foamy hole in the wall towards the unknown dangers ahead.
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