Rhysop’s Return
57 Varieties of Daftness
by
Rhys Hughes
Published By Gloomy Seahorse Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Rhys Hughes
Discover other Rhys Hughes titles at Smashwords.com
Including (among others):
A bumper collection of exactly 100 tales for only $4.99
(and if you buy that ebook, you get Rhysop’s Fables for free)
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
This little ebook is a direct sequel to Rhysop’s Fables, also available from Smashwords, and it features exactly 57 fables. That might seem an arbitrary number, which is lucky, because it is! No it’s not. The truth of the matter is that in the summer of the year 2011 I was given a collection of Aesop’s Fables by a friend, a Penguin Classics edition. That edition contained 207 fables and when I decided to write my own fables, I thought it best to also write exactly 207. I like symmetry, I adore it, I want to kiss and marry it. I hope it wants to kiss and marry me too!
Only joking, I just want it as a mistress. Anyway… I began writing my fables but when I reached 150, I thought to myself, “Why do I have to be so strict about the numbers? Am I suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder or something?” So I decided to settle for 150 only, to prove that I’m not. But as the weeks went by, I started to feel uncomfortable, as if I had somehow betrayed the original spirit of my endeavour. And then one day I suddenly found myself writing a brand new fable! I surrendered to the urge and kept writing them. And so…
The addition of another 57 fables to the 150 of my other book makes a total of 207. What I learned recently, unfortunately, is that Penguin have now published an updated version of Aesop that contains 300 or so fables. But I’m not tempted by that increased quantity. I mean, we all have to draw a line somewhere. I feel sorry for Ptolemy the geographer who drew all the latitude and longitude lines of the Earth by hand, allegedly. Imagine how long that must have taken! No time at all; because it never happened. But I bet you knew that all along, didn’t you?
It’s fairly well-known that I intend to write precisely 1000 tales before giving up writing fiction altogether, and that all these tales will be linked into one massive story-cycle. People have asked me if each separate fable counts as one of those tales. The answer is no. All 150 fables of Rhysop’s Fables count as just one unit in my grand scheme; and the 57 fables of Rhysop’s Return count as one more unit. So two tales in total. Tales are allowed to be made up of smaller parts, you see. But you knew that all along too. You’re just humouring me now.
How the heck did our roles get reversed like that?
1
DUCK IN DISGUISE
A curious duck disguised itself as a human and went off to the big city to see what life was like there. He nodded politely at everyone he passed in the street and said, “Good morning.” And the people always responded to him as if he was a real human being.
The duck knew that his disguise was effective and he felt pleased with himself. In the afternoon he went to the park to feed the ducks, which was very ironic and thus amusing. Then in the early evening he visited a pub and drank several pints of strong beer.
“Pretending to be human is easy. No one suspects the truth!” he said to himself in glee as he waddled out of the pub. Next he went to the nearest fashionable theatre, bought a ticket and saw a play. The play was about a goat that was stuck at the top of a cliff.
The actor who played the goat was a sheep and she wasn’t much good, so the duck left the theatre early and strolled casually down the alleyways of an area called the Red Light District.
But now when he called out a greeting to other pedestrians, they were embarrassed and looked away. In a shadowy doorway directly ahead was a woman wearing a very short skirt. Her legs were sheathed in stockings and her cleavage was brazenly exposed.
“What can I do for you, ducky?” she lisped at him.
The duck was so shocked he quacked.
It was now too late to keep up the pretence. So he turned and waddled away as fast as he could. “Of all of them in this vast metropolis,” he told himself, “only she is smart. But why?”
¶ Because she’s a whore unto herself. That’s my guess.
2
THE BOMB SCARE
A man wanted to go to his favourite coffee shop during his lunch hour but the police had sealed off the street.
“What’s going on?” he asked a nearby officer.
“There’s been a bomb scare!” came the reply.
The man tried to peer through the cordon to see for himself. “But how did that happen?” he asked nervously, because he realised that the bomb must be right outside his coffee shop.
The policeman answered, “The bomb was sauntering along innocently enough when suddenly a ghost jumped out from nowhere and frightened it. The poor thing’s a nervous wreck.”
The man stood on tiptoes and now he could see the bomb shaking and sobbing in the street. A man in a padded camouflage jacket was patting it gently and offering it a cup of sweet tea.
“Luckily the bomb squad got here quickly,” the policeman said, “and I am confident they’ll soon calm it down.”
The man snorted in anger. “What’s the world coming to? Those ghosts ought to be ashamed of themselves, scaring a harmless bomb like that for no reason. They should be locked up!”
“We tried that a few times, but they just float out through the walls. I blame the parents,” said the policeman.
“But do ghosts have parents?”
“The cadavers then. That’s who I blame!”
¶ Can ghosts understand body language? And if so, how?
3
THE FRUITY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE
A polecat decided to throw a party for all his friends. On the morning of the occasion he went into the forest and gathered as many kinds of fruit as he could, including apples, pears, plums, peaches, kumquats, bananas and pineapples. Then he chopped them up, threw them into an enormous bowl and poured in bottles of rum and brandy.
When the first guests arrived he ladled some of this brew into glasses for them. It was powerful stuff and they were soon rather tipsy. More and more guests arrived and everyone had a really enjoyable time. There was music and laughter and dancing, and even, for those who like that kind of thing, plenty of howling at the full moon.
But things got out of hand when one of the drunken squirrels snatched a lighted candelabrum and ran with it up a tree. The wax dripped down on the heads of some of the other animals. “Stop that!” cried the polecat who was the host, but the squirrel ignored him.
“Let me try!” suggested a bear, and he roared up at the squirrel: “What are you doing? You’ll set the tree on fire!”
But the squirrel gave an incomprehensible reply.
This made the bear angry. “Come down here at once or I’ll punch your lights out!” he bellowed in a fierce voice.