Monkey’s Uncle

Once upon a time, long ago in a land far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far (well, you get my point) away, so far away in fact that it was actually close, there was a group of little grey hills, and on the little grey hills there sat a little house made of plywood, and standing outside the house (so it wouldn’t blow over on him) was a little man named Edwin. Edwin was so boring that I cannot bring myself to describe him to you, all I can say is that he was extremely poor, he had no friends, and he had only one relation: his brother. His brother lived two hills away from Edwin but they hadn’t seen one another for thirty-three years and the last time they had seen each other it was by accident. It wasn’t that they had any reason to be upset, they just had no reason to visit (and besides, they had both forgotten each other’s names).

As I mentioned earlier, Edwin was very poor; he had no money, no food, no bed, and no clothes (this last one was the only one that bothered him a bit for he had to wear a barrel around his waist). His house blew over so much that he finally decided to live beside it rather than in it. He had once been a famous banker, but he had been fired right away so he switched to the idea of settling down with his wife and having many children. He had no wife though, (this presented a problem) and the only woman in that country had warts all over her face and was already married to his brother. Edwin then decided that he should become a farmer, so he bought seeds and planted them in every place he could find; he bought twenty cows as well. All he ended up growing were weeds (which are not very good for anything) and all his cows disappeared one morning.

There was one thing that lived on the hill with Edwin, but he wasn’t friends or business-partners or anything else with it; a unicorn named George lived on the other side of the house and sometimes they saw one another. George was white with black spots and he had black eyes and a silver horn. He liked to sing at nights:

“Oh I live beside a plywood house.

Rum-te-tum

I have a silver horn.

(Bum-bum-bum)

My hooves are black and white

Rum-de-dum

And I eat a lot of corn.

Tum-tum-tum

That was how his song went (he was very proud of it) and every night he made up a different tune for it. And that is how they both lived every night and day for years and years till one day something very exciting happened to Edwin. (This next part will not make much sense to you if you do not know much about the land they lived in. Everything was grey because there were always grey clouds covering the sky, and only one person in history had claimed to see the sky ever in that part of the world.)

George was sleeping on his side of the house when he suddenly felt a tap on the shoulder. He woke to find Edwin standing excitedly over him.

“Hullo there,” George said sleepily.

“Hullo,” said Edwin.

“Well whatever-your-name-is? What could possibly important enough for you to wake me?” asked George irritably.

“I saw the sky!” whispered Edwin.

“You did not,” retorted George.

“I have so. Come and see if you won’t believe me,” said Edwin.

“Nonsense,” snorted the unicorn, “I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

“Very well,” said Edwin with his feelings rather hurt, “don’t then. But I did too see it and that’s more than you can ever say.”

Then he went back to his side of the house and the unicorn fell back asleep and forgot all about it. The next few weeks passed by without anything exciting at all happen, which didn’t seem unusual since that was what usually went on; then one day Edwin was woken up by an excited George.

“Hullo,” said Edwin.

“Hullo there,” said George.

“Well whatever-your name-is? What could possibly be important enough for you to wake me?” asked Edwin irritably.

“I saw the sky,” whickered George.

“You didn’t,” retorted Edwin.

“I have so! Come and see if you won’t believe me,” said George.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” snorted Edwin.

“Very well,” said George, “don’t then. But I did too see it and that’s more than you can ever say.”

“By Jove,” said Edwin, “that’s not fair. I’ve seen it too.”

“You never said,” George said in surprise.

“Well I have,” said Edwin triumphantly.

“Very well…then so’ve I,” trumpeted George.

And suddenly they both looked up to discover yet another blue patch of sky in the clouds.

“Climb up on my back,” said George, “and see if you can see touch it.” So Edwin did, and he discovered that he was only an arms-length away from it. But all he said was:

“I can’t reach it.” For he couldn’t.

Then George went back to his side of the house and they both fell asleep. Then life returned almost to normal; Edwin and George never felt inclined to look up at the sky anymore and they seldom saw one another. But every so often when they did happen to come upon each other they would sit for a minute or two and remember those days when something exciting happened.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.