The Dustman

Wirth looked up from the soldering. 

            “This isn’t working,” he said slowly.  Lana regarded him with her head downward, she was gnawing at the corner of her mouth. 

            “This is not right.”

            “Lana..,” Trell growled.  He was getting impatient with her House Derrigen airs.  “Spare us the bullshit would you.  No one planned on crashing.  Sometimes you get screwed that way.  Live with it.”  Trell was a large man; the figure he cut was heavy but solid, like concrete that had settled.  His long black coat was pulled tightly about him against the cold of the damaged climate control on the bridge.  The pulse rifle rested comfortably against his shoulder, as it had for years.  Trell’s shaven head glistened somewhat in the deep red emergency lighting. 

            Wirth rubbed the sweat off of his naked brow with a patchwork-gloved hand.  He was sitting cross-legged before the butchered console.  The fire had toasted the instrument panel and more importantly all of the vid-sensors.  Wirth had gutted the computers generously, and was in the process of making sense of the ocean of red, blue, and yellow insulated wires.  Lana would not take off her cloak.  The insignia on it marked her as an important emissary of one of Rinlon’s noble households, and her white slip jacket was of real satin.  Trell regarded her and scratched at his bristly chin. 

            “You know we may need to use that shirt of yours later for rags, if we have to go outside…  Dusty you know.”

            “Funny.”  She turned on him with eyes flashing.  “I do not see you trying to help the doctor fix it.”

            “You don’t even know what it is…” He spat on the floor and plucked a cigarette from his side pocket.  She crossed her arms and sneered at him.  “Oh and what would you care to tell me about the Core Senate Overview… or, or maybe the AMIDE project?” 

He spat again.

            “Look honey, don’t go bringing your political importance bullshit in here…  Look around and,”

            “Do you realize what will happen at that synod if I don’t make it?!”  She shrieked at him.  The Regents will see it as an insult.  After all the bloody sanctions… after all the…”

Trell could take no more.

            “Listen bitch,” he clenched his teeth, the veins stood out in his forehead.  “We are the only three people left alive on this piece of crap you call a prio-transport.  We are marooned on a pretty damn filthy planet with nothing but prison colonies and a history of having its atmosphere blasted as an armament test site.  The clouds are jamming transmissions, the god damn pods are underneath about 100 tons of metal, we have jack for food, and then you wanna go ahead and pressure us to get you the hell out of here.  Let me tell you something.”  She was backing away from him clutching the black leather flight register to her chest.  He looked at the floor, letting another small capsule of spit slowly disengage and careen toward the ash-glazed floor.  She stopped moving away and tossed her ivory white hair defiantly.  The clarity of her swimming blue eyes irritated him.  Trell turned away, dropping the rifle carelessly and lighting the cigarette.

            “Oh to hell with me, what is it now?!”  Wirth ripped a yellow wire out of one of the crystal panels in frustration.  “That should have worked.”  He looked up helplessly.  “Its too damn spooky how all the bloody sensors went out.  The dust clouds aren’t that thick.”

            “Spooky?”  Trell laughed.  “What the hell is spooky about it?  Have you ever landed on the dust rock they call Terseus before?”  He took a straining drag off his smoke.  “If they ain’t crushed underneath us they are clogged, every panel on the damn ship has got to be caked in the shit by now.”

            “Ok.”  Wirth took off his small round glasses and began wiping them, his brows knitted as though the care of his spectacles was a more challenging task than the resurrection of the ship’s online sensor system.  “So we’re screwed.”

            Trell smiled.  Lana leaned against the back of the co-pilot’s chair and gazed at nothing in particular, her small mouth seemed to Trell even smaller when her pretty lips were clenched together in bitterness.  The marine crouched and retrieved the rifle.

            “Naa.  We’ll be fine.  We’ll have to go out though.”

            “What?!”  She blanched.

            “Lana honey we have to forage.  This planet’s a damn graveyard…  there’s gotta be enough garbage lying around to build a whole ship.  We need to scavenge.”  He pulled his chin back and raised his eyebrows at her.

            “Trell, sir, mercenary, hired gun, etc.  Please do not call me honey.  My father hired you to protect me, he is paying you a small fortune, all I ask is for you to do your job.”

            “Whatever you like.”  He bowed deeply, not attempting to hide his slight smirk.  “Honey.”  Lana breathed in quickly and flushed as though stung.

            “Do your job!”  Her screaming words startled him, made him jump.  Trell was annoyed at himself for letting her scare him, but the irritation quickly switched its focus to the ship.

            “Lana, we have to work together to get out of this.  I mean, god dammit should I even need to say that?  What the hell do you propose we do?”  There was a thud.  It came from above them.  Something had landed… seemingly on the water-hatch.  Instantly Trell’s rifle was trained on the hatch cover, his finger to his lips.  Lana puffed her cheeks out slightly as she backed toward the pilot's chair.  Wirth stood quickly, his small shape easing slowly away from the hatch. 

            They waited.  Trell scratched at his upper lip with his teeth.  His eyes were focused on the lock handle.  Lana sat in the chair, her head tilted back.  Her mouth was clamped shut as she regulated steady, silent breathing through her nose.  Wirth was standing behind the larger man, a small las-pistol clutched in each hand.  Trell circled around the hatch, never losing sight of the handle.  A sound.  No.  He frowned.  There was nothing.  The sudden click of the pulse rifle startled her as it powered down.  Lana rested a hand on her chest and let out a long breath.  Wirth pursed his mouth and continued to stare at the hatch cover. 

            “What do you think it was?”  She said quietly. 

            “A rock.  Maybe a panel finally coming lose.”  Trell did not look at her as he spoke.  He shouldered his rifle. 

            “Maybe a dustman,” Wirth said, still looking at the hatch.  Trell turned and looked at him as he pulled another cigarette from his pack. 

            “What are you trying to do?”

            “Are the dustmen real?”  Lana’s eyes widened with a sort of distracted wonder.  Trell continued to glare at Wirth. 

            “No.  The dustman legend is bullshit.”

            “Why?”  She looked at him.

            “Because no human can survive out there for long, nevermind make a living at it.”

            “Maybe they aren’t human.”

            “What then?  Chaos?!  On one of the Core worlds?  Not possible.  The Emperor would be here himself to exterminate them, we can’t be but 200,000 clicks from the Core itself!”

            “It’s true.”  They both looked at Wirth.  He was again working the lenses of his spectacles with the material of his gray robe.  He breathed on the lenses without looking up.  “My battalion commander saw one… it saved his life.”  Trell shook his head slowly.

            “God damn you Wirth.  No help.  Ok bud?  That is ZERO help.  Dustmen are horseshit.”  He slammed the butt of the rifle against the floor for emphasis.  “There aren't any! You’d need to change your damn masks every week out there… the heat?!  The dust is… listen.  We are all three going cut the crap right now.  We are going to find whatever masks we can salvage in here, and then we are going to cut up her shirt, wrap it over our heads, go the hell out there and see if we can’t forage some decent panels.  Once we get the damn sensors back on the ship can start helping us out.”

            “I will not go out there.”  Lana said promptly.  Trell regarded her for a few moments. 

            “She’s right… If we can’t get her back we might as well hang ourselves out here.”  Wirth nodded gravely as he spoke.  There was a faint explosion… or something like an explosion, far away.  Wirth grinned at the wall and began shaking his head.  “See?  Don’t you hear them?  Trell they are out there.  All your marine training is worthless here.  We can’t fight them… there is no point.”

            Trell kicked the vest locker beside Wirth’s arm, making him jump. 

            “God dammit!  The dustmen are a myth!  There is no life here!  Nothing can live on a god damn dirt world like this… not outside of one of the bloody prisons, you think they pick this world as the dungeon planet by accident?!  All the plasma and fallout that has poisoned this place would be enough to kill a damn…  a damn Arcromancer!”  Wirth stood with his head down, brooding.  Trell took a deep breath.  “Look.  We don’t have to scream at each other.  The dustmen are a priest’s myth to scare the faithful, and the priest’s who tell that story work in the damn prisons and do it to keep the slaves obedient.  Anyway… even if they were real they would have killed each other by now right?  Isn’t that supposed to be all they are capable of, killing?”  The three were silent for a few moments.

            “Right.”  Trell obviously took the silence as a sign of victory.  “Lana you can stay here, but gods know I mean it we are going to need the silk in that jacket for the masks, those mask filters are just not designed for this shit, they’ll disintegrate.”

            “Then what good are they?”  She rolled her eyes. 

            “Ok my lady, call it a hunch?  I been around.  Now if you please, take off the jacket so I can cut it up.” 

            “There’s only two of you, why do you need all of it, just take a sleeve.”  Trell stared at her.  He looked weary.  Finally she shrugged and turned her back to them, pulling the jacket over her head.  The smooth skin of her back was nice to look at.  Covering herself she tossed the jacket to him and walked quickly to the vest locker, pulling a heavy plashield vest from one of the hooks.  She put it on in one awkward motion, then puffed her hair out the back and crossed her arms.  Trell blinked, suddenly aware of the fact that he had been just standing there watching her.  Wirth leaned against the wall with his shoulder.  He rubbed his eyes. 

            Within moments the two men were garbed head to toe in enviro gear and helmeted in host-env masks.  Wirth was surprised at how prepared they were… the air itself looked to be perfectly still.  It seemed that all the dust they had kicked up upon crashing had settled.  Trell began picking his way across the soft red dirt of the plateau toward a low hill of red and black rock.  Wirth looked around and smiled behind the hot mask.  The sky was bright orange, and the stars were beautiful.  The dust plains and small crouching mountains dotted and splayed about the landscape as far as he could see in every direction.  Trell was at the top of the hill in a flash; he had scaled the boulder wall in record time back at the Core Defense base, and it felt good to rush from hand to footholds again… it made the whole situation feel a lot more like a game.  At the peak of the small hill his heart sank.  Nothing but dust, as far as he could see.  No scattered husks of ships, nor even a probe or pod husk anywhere.

            “Don’t this just beat all,”  he breathed to himself.  Wirth was not far behind now, having given up his reverie to catch up to his companion.  As Trell turned toward him and opened his mouth to speak Wirth saw a sudden movement behind him.  The figure had simply come out of nowhere.  Trell glared at Wirth and raised his shoulders.  All Wirth could muster was a limp gesture with his right arm.  Trell caught the message and spun with his rifle suddenly powered up and itching to fire.  There was indeed a figure there.  Trell thought it looked human, with an imposing, muscular frame and a completely shaven scalp.  All he could make out, however, was a very rough outline before he fired.  The figure moved, either by leaping or sliding, clear off the side of the small precipice- to land on the plateau between them and the ship.  Trell gasped as he readjusted his aim.  The figure had been in front of him when he pulled the trigger, but had moved before the rifle could react.  It most definitely looked human.  It looked like a human man.  Trell was clenching his teeth hard enough to break them.  He hated himself now.  But more importantly, he hated Wirth and he hated that little bitch Lana.  The dustman stood silently, watching them.  It was enormously muscle-bound, with shredded rags constituting leggings and what appeared to be old fashioned bandoleer straps crossing its chest.  Hanging from the belt were what looked like a carbine automatic, short nosed, and an old fashioned pump shotgun.  Its eyes were dead white, and pupiless.  Trell stole himself and tensed his muscles.  Wirth backed away from him slowly.  The mercenary screamed and fired.  Again, with a most preternatural speed, the figure slid sideways, or jumped.  It was impossible to tell how exactly it moved.  The shot hit the side of the ship  with a small hissing sound. 

            “Don’t you’ll hit the ship.”  Wirth grabbed his arm as the figure watched.  Trell growled audibly and jerked his arms away, pulling Wirth off balance.  Wirth toppled to the ground and felt Trell’s foot on his chest.  The barrel of the rifle was pressed up against his mask.  Wirth moaned and relaxed.  Trell glared at him with the fire of madness in his eyes.

            “I’m not going to die first,” he snarled.  Wirth did not see the dustman draw its carbine, and only noticed after it had thumped off three rounds, aiming from the hip.  The shots caught Trell full in the skull and all three hit him before he could fall, the carbine drops exploding in tiny bursts of energy as they penetrated and exited from his face.  Behind a spewing trail of debris and smoke Trell sailed several yards before meeting the ground.  The momentum carried his body into a roll and it flopped and crashed down the other side of the hill to land suddenly in the red plain below, creating dust waves that parted in every direction.  Wirth did not even try to stand.  With a blur of movement the dustman was upon him.  The barrel of the carbine prodded against his helmet, then suddenly smashed through the front of it.  Wirth squinted his eyes shut and found himself resisting hot tears.  He was jerked to his feet like a doll.  He could feel the dustman’s rough fingers inside the helmet.  There was a snap of the neck clasp, and the helmet was ripped free- mask and all.  Wirth swallowed and went limp as the dustman hurled the headgear over the side of the hill.  It jolted him with both hands and leveled a dead white gaze into his eyes.  Wirth would see two glistening and rounded reflections of himself in those eyes.  A slight smirk played across the dustman’s face.  Wirth held his breath as long as he could, but in a few short moments he gave in to the round lung pains.  As he gasped and sputtered Wirth raised his eyebrows with a sort of questioning.  The dustman relaxed its hold on him.  He could breathe.       

The Prophets Shadow

In answer to the old man’s question I replied that certainly there were images… particular images that would never be lost to my memory.  He asked me about my past I told him it was the images of long ago that were the strongest.  I stood by the window, with one hand on the black stone mantle as I recall; I began to describe what I remembered.  He began to write as I spoke.

            “There was rain, and always with the rain the ground ran like slick mud between your footsteps.  The darkness was choking, but the torches that the raiders carried spewed a sort of fizzling, spattered light over everything.  I can remember impressions I had of that night; the chaotic frenzy in which they were taking people.  The whiteness of the flesh of the poor miserable peasants I can remember vividly.  White, pale flesh flecked with rain and grime.  It was the whiteness of their arms and faces; the faces wracked with pain and helplessness… the arms reaching and grasping for the children.  The raiders were taking the children.  This time it was the girls.  Village girls of all ages were torn from the hands and desperate embraces of their parents, and siblings.  I remember one very little girl, with hair a brilliant ashen blond, even against the rain and darkness.  She would be no more than knee high on me now.  She let out a startled squeal as the dark raider snatched her from her fleeing mother’s breast, but the little girl did not cry.  Instead there was a look of confusion on her face, as though she was waiting and expecting to be immediately returned.  My sister was taken then.  The clever beasts the raiders brought with them had found our hiding place for her, and when they took her from us I froze and could not help my father pull her.  Her hand was yanked from mine and it seemed that I was distanced from the situation by a sort of profound unbelief.  Something in me almost knew it could not be happening, that my sister’s brave face as it faded… that her quivering mouth as she held back her tears… were not real but only a dream, an illusion I would wake up from.  My mother, always a quiet woman, only clenched her mouth and swallowed as her eyes filled and gleamed.  My father fared worse as the raider who carried my sister under one arm turned and dashed him across the face, sending the old man tumbling to the slippery ground, where he only lay and moaned. 

            Looking back now I realize that it was not disbelief that kept me from melting into pathetic childish tears at that moment… it was not disbelief that allowed me to lead the rest of my family back to our hovel in safety.  No.  It was instead the fact that we had known inside that there was nothing to do but let her go.  The sad state of helplessness, and especially when it is understood as such, can do much to destroy motivation and quell all hope.  These things I understand perfectly now of course…  The helplessness, the utter impotence in the face of something that would come to destroy us, take what it wished, and then leave us to our fate.  Yes, it was this, this desperate and measurable weakness on our part that lead to the birth of my hate.  It was as if I saw across a span of time, with thousands of generations of people, like us, all of them picked through by the raiders every ten years like so many insects.  The decade ended and again they came, again they took, and the cycle repeated.  It was as unchanging as the darkness that covered the sky.  The rage inside me grew.  Why should it be so miserably precise… was nothing ever to happen to upset this course?  I was a young foolish boy filled with hate… not such a hard thing to find now.

            My hate grew, and with it my courage.  I relived that night, the night of the rain and the raiders, every time I closed my eyes.  I saw my sister biting her lip and trying not to cry, even as the black armored abomination bared her off to some unfathomable destination in a slaver dome who knows… perhaps to add her body to the great bone wall, or to set her dancing before the arena masses of Dostaur.  She was gone, and with her our friendship.  Her stories burned inside me, aching for the dwelling of my thoughts upon them.  The things she had heard, the things she would do, even now I cannot forget… the sun, she said it was a bright light in the sky shaped like a ball… an enchanted forest where the powers of the prophets were destroyed, she would delve into the ground and create a wonderful city, a great city beneath the forest where there were no raiders, no starvation, no fire rain.  Her fantasies I could not bring myself to forget.”

            The old man shook me from my reverie, telling me that the prisoners were dressed for their execution.  He spoke softly, saying that he had another question.  He wanted to know how I had discovered the darkness, how I had embraced it and started down the path to the dread power, as he called it.  I smiled from beneath my black hood at him and put a clawed finger to my lips.  “Every child has the ability to attract the attention of the old ones,” I said.  “My hate and fury grew until it inspired them to tempt my soul with promises of power…  I saw the end of the days of hunger and fear for my people.  I saw visions even of myself tearing the raiders limb from limb.”  I summoned a crackle of energy to the tips of my fingers and dismissed it.  Turning my attention back out the window to the blackened iron of the courtyard below, I said softly, “Now the last of Carsupel’s raiders has been slowly burned.  Carsupel himself, in all his corpulent grotesqueness awaits my order for his demise.  My revenge is complete.”  The old scholar thought for a moment, his acid scarred forehead was wrinkled in consternation.  I smiled, showing him the length of my venomous fangs, fangs which many a raider had admitted into its throat, face, or head quite readily, and with wonderful struggling.  I breathed a tense sigh at the thought of all the joy their continued torment brought me.  The chain I had made of their teeth jingled at my belt as I turned from the window and strode back into the welcoming darkness of my audience chamber.  The old man followed me.  I smiled at the thought of his visit, and how he would etch all that I said in something he called a book.  Again he quietly asked if he might ask one final question.  His growing discomfort in my presence amused me.  I turned quickly, looking down upon him and letting him see enough of my face perhaps to catch a glimpse of the glow emanating from my eyes.  I bade him speak.  My sister.  He wanted to know if I had ever found her.  “Yes,” I replied.  “she was indeed sold into slavery, but blessedly near to my citadel.  She was in a spore mining colony, serving there as entertainment for the wretched unhappy workers of the tunnel.  I had them all burned for looking on her without my permission.  She was still radiant and lovely.  A jewel of a human child.  Her beauty had not faded in the last fifteen years, instead she had flowered fully into womanhood.  I soon overlooked the impediment of her disbelief.  She cannot accept me now as the brother she knew so many years ago.  All she will do now is yield to me as a prophet, and her master, as though she is my personal slave.  She knows her place well, but my love for her prevents me from doing her harm.  She is kept in the south tower, at the top in a comfortable room I have arranged for her.  No one speaks to her, and no one will ever harm her again.  If my mother and father still lived I would have brought her to them.”  I dropped my shoulders and gazed about the room.  “Alas she grows sick, and her beauty fades.  She wishes to be free but does not understand that for me to free her she would be subject to harm.  She is furnished with things I have covered with the flayed skin of the raider who took her.”  I was filled with triumph, and grinned at him.  The old man seemed to grimace.  He boldly asked if I thought that perhaps my treatment of her was as harsh as that of her slavers.  I was silent.  At that question something had stirred.  It was as if deadened emotions within me were reawakening.  I could feel the hollow pang of my dark masters urging me to quell my emotion, to pull my thoughts from the weak ideals of mercy and kindness.  The battle within me I found somewhat amusing to be honest, and I stood fascinated with the depth of myself and did not answer the old man’s next question.  The darker half of me prevailed, and the turmoil vanished from my soul just as it had begun.  “I will never be separated from her,” I told him.  “and before she dies I will devour her, that I may cradle her soul within mine for as long as I live.”  The old man visibly quailed at my statement, but even as I hailed my dark masters in my thought, offering them incessant praise and worship for the awesome powers they had bestowed upon me, my left hand fetched out of my robe a single, brass key, which I handed to the man.  His face was grave, but he seemed to understand after a moment.  Clasping my hands together I returned to the window and numbed myself to his presence, crushing the incident into unreality in my own memory.  After a few moments he scuttled from the room.  I willed the garrison of my great citadel into inaction and focused my attention on the obese form of the whimpering Carsupel, who was even now being dragged on an enormous rolling platform out into the center of the courtyard.  Instead of killing him outright I decided I would torture his bloated carcass; perhaps for decades.  I clenched my jaws, he would be to the tower by now.  They would escape unmolested, and I would tear it from my memory forever.       

Almost one hundred years later I sit and slide my claws down the page of the tome that an old wandering man once left with me.  What I read within brings back memories that are better suppressed.  The darkness outside the window is thick, it boils in the sky in pendulous masses and hides us from the light that I now know lies beyond it.  I cannot help but wonder now of what the dark cultists and sages have to say about the angry light… the light of the past, of the time before.  I wonder too about the great forest that the Emperor has surrounded with a wall of blackened iron.  No prophet can enter, lest his abilities be drained from him by unseen forces.  Then, as if directed by an unknown presence, my thoughts return to her… to her whom I had forgotten.  I find myself in the odd state of wondering about that forest, and about what lies beneath it.  It pains me to ponder, and I recoil from the conclusion as a creature of darkness recoils from the light.  The whispers are based in truth, something deep within me betrays it.  There is a great city… a city with no raiders, no starvation, no fire rain.  What power would authorize such a thing I knew not… but somehow, she had done it.

Carsupel finally succumbed to my tortures, and the miserable creature has died.  My enemies are gone, and I am left with emptiness.  With a heavy sigh I slide my hand beneath the cover, and close the book.

Sally's New Pony

(a children's story)

Sally’s eyes opened with a POP.  She sat up in her lace nighty-whitey and stretched her little arms.  Her blond curls spilled over her shoulders and almost to the floor as she clenched her tiny hands into tiny fists and let out a yawn as big as her whole head!

            “It’s my birthday!!!” Sally cried as her twinkling blue eyes widened to impossible size with childish enthusiasm.  The pink-hearts satin curtains were blowing in a light breeze as the happy morning sunlight crept into the room reflecting off of hundreds of feet of glossy colored banners pinned on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the furniture.  In two hundred different languages the ecstatic blue, red, and yellow ribbons proclaimed proudly to the waking world:

            HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE SALLY SWEETEST

            Sally threw off her swan-down blanket cozy and leapt into her Betty Bunny Puffy slip-ons.  The blanket floated in the air for a few moments before settling to the ground.  Muffing gleefully to the arch-style doorway, her blond tresses dragging behind like a king’s royal cloak, Sally pushed timidly on the smooth white paint of the door- itself saturated with birthday trappings. 

            “It’s just like I dreamed it would be!”  Sally squeaked with delight, pressing her little hands together until her face turned bright pink.  The living room’s white carpet was bedecked in glittering ribbons and confetti.  The walls were covered with gargantuan portraits of Sally enjoying her previous six birthdays… each and every one very, very special.  Around the corner of the staircase she came to the massive dining table, and piled at the end of it was an enormous mountain of colored boxes.  The presents were stacked so high that they were taller than the tallest mountain little Sally had every seen!  Ignoring the squealing children decked out in pretty pinks and blues, Sally bounced into the air like a rubber ball and rocketed toward the presents.  One of them was almost four times her height, but the glossy red wrapping paper was no match for her prying little fingers and snapping teeth.  Suddenly all the parents of the other happy little children were gathered around, and Sally could scarcely see for all the camera flashes!

            “Come on everyone, Sally is opening the big present!”  Someone yelled.

            “Oho, not the big one!”  Someone replied.

            “Yes indeed the LARGE one.”

            “Oooh the GREAT BIG one.”

            “Yes that is EXACTLY the one!”

            “Everyone shush and watch!”  Someone cried.  Cameras kept clicking and flashing.  Sally was tearing at the paper ravenously, and it crumpled to the floor in big   heaps, red on the outside and white on the inside.  Gradually little Sally was exposing a great big something!  It looked like a HUGE brown plastic box with holes in the top.  As the last piece of paper was ripped away and flung to the floor Sally’s tiny hands naturally began scratching at the box.  She scratched at one end of the box, but she could not get it open.  She tried the side of the box, her tiny hands moving rapidly, but she could not get it open.  Frantically Sally scampered onto the top of the box.  She giggled as her tiny fingers tore at the holes in the box, her little form whizzing about like a happy whirlwind of birthday greed.  Poor Sally was beginning to get flustered and tiny drops of sweat were forming on her brow.  The camera flashes were beginning to make Sally dizzy too!  Suddenly Sally realized what to do.  She jumped off of the box and hit the floor with a thud, a huge smile on her bright little face.  Putting two fingers in her mouth she made a loud whistle!  There was a scratching, scampering noise and in came Sally’s dear little puppy, Silly!  Silly was all white and fuzzy except for a huge black spot under one ear, but she wore a gigantic pink ribbon over it so everyone thought Silly didn’t have any spots!  Immediately Silly knew what to do.  She dragged her pink ribbon quickly to the other end of the cage- the end that Sally had forgotten to check.  There was a door on that side, and with a simple coat hanger and a piece of gum Silly was able to jimmy the lock in no time at all!  As the big plastic door began to open Sally and Silly waited in awe, their big blue eyes bulging impossibly wide.  Sally’s little birthday fingers twitched…  then the present just walked out of the box! 

            “A PONY!  A brand new PONY!”  Sally cried and she spun around.  She spun so fast that she would have flown into the air had not Silly grabbed her Bunny Puffy slippers.  It was indeed a new pony. 

            “It’s Sally’s new pony!”  Someone cried.

            “It is oooh oooh it IS Sally’s new pony!”  Someone replied.

            “That’s right it sure is a PONY.”

            “Oh a beautiful HAPPY PONY!”

“That’s an awfully HIGH MAINTENANCE animal.”

And so everyone was delighted to see Sally’s new pony.  Sally gleefully named it Minuponi, after the name her mother’s pony had once had.  Within moments everyone had moved outside to see Sally’s first ride on her new pony.  They all tied a huge pink ribbon around its neck.  She galloped and trotted, and pranced and cantered.  Everyone was so happy.  After a while Sally’s pony shook the huge ribbon they had given it right off!  Then suddenly it just galloped into the woods with Sally still in the saddle!  The last thing everyone heard her say was “Weeeeeeee!” 

Sally’s birthdays just weren't the same without her.