Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

the explanation of why this is all in lower case will come in time. it’s not just another typographic quirk of the pda i used to use to do these bon mots.

when the dragon finally showed up, princess moon-sabrique was primping in front of the mirror, perseid was scouting around and i was looking for something to read. there was actually a pretty decent library in the place, albeit with books i had never heard of [in a way, that was only to be expected, but i had some reason to expect the opposite. i digress].

perseid swooped in and yelled dragon dragon. we spruced ourselves up, i got the token out of my pocket and we went down to meet him.

the dragon--fablidar's his name--was coming from out of the sun so we didn't get a good look at him, but he was obviously big and scaly and red. by this time i wasn't even scared to meet him. i was all, yeah, whatever, we've been here all week, if you want to kill us just try to make it a little interesting. anyway, he landed about fifty feet from the cave and started to shimmer and shift.

by the time he got close to us he had changed his shape into that of a human being. it was james redburn. 'oh crap,' i said.

he looked at me. 'i remember you,' he said. 'you were in the audience a few weeks ago.' now there's a good memory for you. 'so this has been going on for longer than i thought,' he concluded.

perseid drew herself up to take off and redburn waved his hand.

a field of heatless red flames surrounded and immobilized us. 'i'll keep this short,' he said. 'it's still my intention to marry this girl. i have many ambitions and a schedule to meet, and i can't afford to have minor details like you two cluttering up my plans. alakazam incomprehensible boogedyboogedy.'

then there was a white flash, and everything was dark.

i felt weird. 'perseid' i said [no question mark, damn. and no exclamation point. it will be very hard for me to properly express my feelings here. perhaps if i typed qm for a question mark and xp for an exclamation point].

'perseid qm' i said.

'dennis qm' she said. 'you sound strange. where are we qm'

'i don't know. it smells like our world though.'

then our eyes started to adjust and we got a good look at ourselves and each other. 'oh my god xp' perseid cried.

'hells bells and clam chowder xp' i said.

redburn had worked some kind of a spell to turn perseid into a cat and me into a cockroach. we were in the basement of a bar or something back in our world; i could tell by the beer cases and loserlike telepathic emanations from above.

we spent a few minutes panicking. i had never been transmogrified into a cockroach before, and i daresay the whole thing was a new experience for perseid too.

this was a few days ago. since then we've been hiding in this basement and scavenging food and trying to come to grips with the sitch. we don't know what to do next, and we keep getting these animal thoughts that throw off our ability to make plans. perseid's tried to kill and eat me a couple of times.

i said the other day, 'this reminds me of something. being turned into a roach. something i read.'

'kafka,' perseid said.

'no,' i told her. 'i mean, yeah, there's kafka, but i'm thinking of something else. something where there's a guy who's turned into a cockroach and a cat who's like cleopatra or some crap. it's on the tip of my brain.'

she curled up and went to sleep. she does a lot of that these days. anyway, i found the boss's computer in an adjoining office. it has a net connection and he leaves it on all the time, so i can post this stuff by bouncing from key to key. i just can't hold down the shift key, that's all. it's kind of annoying but i'm not so dedicated to my art that i'm willing to make two trips to the caps lock key for each capital letter.