Archive for the ‘The Gnome Series’ Category
Always Invite The Gnome
Monday, March 31st, 2008
The garden gnome couldn’t sleep. The thumpa-thumpa coming from the neighbour’s house made the windows vibrate. Albert turned on his side and stuffed the tip of his red cap into his ear. Nothing. He could still hear the sound of people having fun without him.
Why hadn’t he been invited? He was a nice gnome, polite and respectful. He mostly kept to himself, sitting on that tuft of moss in the back yard. He hardly ever crept up on anybody using magic and it had been a whole month since the last time he’d spied on the neighbour while she was dressing.
Albert dressed and went out to the garden. The grass didn’t tease him about not being invited to the party. The lawn could be sarcastic, but for once, it kept quiet. That almost made it worse; he must be pitiful if even the grass had decided to put on its tact gloves for him.
The lawn transmitted minute vibrations originating a couple yards away. A party goer must be trespassing. The nerve! He’d show ’em!
Albert tiptoed closer to the source of the grassy disturbance. A figure silhouetted against the moon, murmuring under its breath. There was a shovel in its hand.
“Ehem” Albert coughed . The creature jumped and turned around, clutching a sack.
“I won’t give it to you!,” shouted the leprechaun.
Leprechauns always thought you were after their stash of gold and they were capable of anything to protect it.
“This is private property,” said Albert. His eyes widened; he had an idea. It was evil and twisted. It was perfect.
Without hesitation, he reached for the leprechaun’s stash and chucked it over the wall into the neighbour’s yard.
“You! You!,” shouted the enraged leprechaun. The creature darted off, tearing through the brick divider as if it were styrofoam and crashing the party with, well, a crash.
From the other side of the wall, came shouts and the sound of broken glass. A symphony of havoc. Albert smiled. He’d sleep well tonight.
We Are Siamese If You Don’t Please
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
“Ooooh prettty,” the leprechaun sighed. The garden gnome hushed him
and reasserted his grip on the leprechaun’s arm. The bar was noisy,
there was a chance Pandora hadn’t heard but if the other one kept this
up someone was bound to notice.
The tie of invisibility was knotted around both their necks. As long
as they stayed bound together nobody could see them. Albert felt like
the smart sibling of a pair of Siamese twins, being dragged around by the
leprechaun. It had been the leprechaun’s idea to come to the bar to
stare up girls’ minis and the gnome had agreed thanks to a few glasses
of whisky. Besides, there had to be some advantage to being a
foot tall.
Albert was terrified of being caught. It wasn’t like him to go off on
some undignified panty quest and the leprechaun gave new meaning to
the term ADHD. Disaster was imminent and the gnome wished he were
outta here, preferably with his reputation intact.
“Preeety.” The leprechaun looked blatantly up Pandora’s legs. The girl
took a step back and stared at the floor in their general direction.
For a second, Albert wondered whether she could see them, but her
pupils scanned the space in front of them without focusing and the
gnome relaxed.
Pandora’s confused look turned into a smile that made the gnome feel
like ice-cubes clinking down his back. She opened her purse and
extracted a pearl, twirled it around her fingers and tossed it on the
floor.
The leprechaun gasped and the pearl erupted into a lily, which
blossomed and morphed into a white rose.
“Oh!” The leprechaun shouted and leaped off, yanking the tie away from
Albert and leaving him exposed.
“Sorry Miss.” The gnome blushed, tipped his red cap at her and ran.
Three blocks away, he turned around to look. All that was left of the
bar was a mushroom cloud, red with white dots on the top, a typical
Amanita. From where he was, he could still hear Pandora’s mad cackle.