Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The Maldabeast

I know what you're thinking. When I finally slew the Jabberwock, I was probably welcomed home with parades and carnivals and fatted calves, and everyone joined in with my father in exclaiming "Calloo! Callay!"

And that's more or less how it happened. Yet I was not satisfied. No. For there was one who let out neither a calloo nor a callay. My beloved, the woman who haunts my dreams and fills my waking hours.

She, of course, just went humph (oh, you have never heard a humph spoken with such elegance until you have heard it spoken by my lady love!) and said, "What good is a Jabberwock? Can you make a coat out of it? Or a stole? Would you ask that I wear that hideously scaly hide around my neck or across my shoulders? I say, nay!" (And not even a horse can infuse that one syllable, nay, with such magnificent disdain!)

So of course, in order to win my lady love's hand in marriage, I was required to set forth on yet another quest. The JubJub Bird? The Frumious Bandersnatch? I think not. No, for my lady love, there could be nothing but the Fungarian Maldabeast.

What? You have never heard of the Fungarian Maldabeast? It has eyes of fire, and cruel, poison-filled talons that are greater in breadth than the backside of a horse, measured length-wise. But it is not for the fiery eyes or the poison-filled talons that I sought the Maldabeast. Oh no! The Malda has the most elegant fur of any creature in the kingdom. It is said that a woman who wears even a simple scarf of Malda fur will become so beautiful that duels will be fought over her day and night. And if duels were already being fought over her day and night, entire kingdoms would go to war over her, and if entire kingdoms were already going to war over her, then the fabric of space-time would be torn, and the entire universe would melt away to nothingness out of shock at the sheer beauty of the thing.

And this was the beast I set out to slay for my lady love. I sought the Malda through valley and over craggy precipice; I slogged through bogs and traipsed through marshes. I trudged for days without food or drink, and survived by eating cactus thorns and drinking turtle spit.

At night I curled up next to grizzly bears for warmth and did not even cry out in pain when they started gnawing on my limbs.

I was fearless.

And at last I reached the lair of the dreaded Maldabeast. I crept into its dismal, dank cavern, shining the light of my torch into every crevice, until at last I was face to face with the evil Malda demon creature. Its eyes burned with fire, and its talons were filled with pois...

Oh, I guess I covered that part already.

Sorry.

Anyway, I took my vorpal sword in hand and snicker-snacked away. And after I'd finished snacking on the Snickers bar, I took the vorpal sword in hand again and slew the fiendish Malda.

Alas! No one had warned me how quickly decays the flesh of the dead Malda! I barely had time to remove the hide from the creature before it dissolved into a puddle of dust and bone fragments.

Alas! No one told me that without proper treatment the fur would drop from the skin in great ugly clumps, leaving hideous bald patches up and down the length of the hide!

Alas, Alas, and Alack! How can I ever ask my true love to wear this hideous thing across her shoulders? All my pain, all my hunger, all my missing limbs, all for nothing! Simply because nobody told me a method of preservation...for malda hide.

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