short story

As was his habit every afternoon in the sleepy little hamlet of Bloogerville, Little Billy was down by the pond. With the amber sun setting gently down in the shady vale, casting its light into soft hues that reflected off the mirror surface of the small pond, Billy sat on the shore contemplating the things he had brought. He had managed to get there with his cane pole, some worms, a hook, some line, something that used to be a sandwich in his back pocket, and a 50 gallon drum of confusion.

After some number of days of experimenting, Billy had managed to figure out that somehow the line AND the hook needed to be attached to the pole, but the exact order and sequence of these events was as uncertain to Billy as Shakespeare would be to his dog, and they both read at the same grade level. After some trial and error and a few painful hook extractions, Billy was pretty sure that the worm had to come next, but exactly how THAT was supposed to work was becoming frustrating. It seems that no matter how much Billy tried, he could not convince the worms to hang on to the hook.

"C'mon, yer dagummed dummy wurms!" He murmured between his teeth, which is how people murmur, unless they do not have teeth, like Billy's Uncle Tummy. "How do ya get anywhere's or hang onta anything when ya ain't gots no derned hands?"