Category: Poetry and Other Writing

Once Upon a Time there was a mon­ster called the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple. You might have heard of the mur­ple as a small roden­tic pet, this was not that kind of mur­ple. This beast was dis­tin­guished from the stan­dard house­hold mur­ple by its gigan­tic size and over­whelm­ing pur­ple­ness, and peo­ple feared it because of this. The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple meant no harm though. It was clum­sy and klutzy and unco­or­di­nat­ed like its brethren but its size made its nat­ur­al lack of agili­ty seem men­ac­ing and more dan­ger­ous than it was. Small chil­dren, emas­cu­lat­ing women, burly lum­ber­jacks, and peo­ple named Fred all fled when the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple approached. In fact, every­one ran from the crea­ture except for a smelly and greasy lit­tle girl called Cheese­feet.

Cheesfeet also scared just about every­one because her head was flat, she dressed in rot­ten ani­mal hides and had the unfor­tu­nate habit of not car­ing who was about when she had explo­sive flat­u­lence [which was pret­ty often]. The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple was near­sight­ed and did­n’t have a very good sense of smell so did­n’t mind Cheese­feet at all. In fact, they became the best of friends.

The Great Pur­ple Mur­ple often hurt itself because it was not-so-very adroit and Cheese­feet often found her­self work­ing strange and sin­is­ter jobs to pay for the care the Mur­ple need­ed. When the Mur­ple was con­sti­pat­ed Cheese­feet had to sell baby bot­tle nip­ples door-to-door; when the Mur­ple had the flu, Cheese­feet had to give hairy-backed men mas­sages with hap­py end­ings; when the Mur­ple broke its fore­leg Cheese­feet had enough. She left the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple at a cross­roads, say­ing

I have had enough O Great Pur­ple Mur­ple. Although I sac­ri­ficed the lit­tle dig­ni­ty I had for you, you have done noth­ing but not poop, sneeze on me and be a gen­er­al nui­sance. I find you insou­ciant, oblo­quious and rather scro­fu­lous. But no more. I just used you for the hot mon­key love any­way.

She hitched a ride with a pass­ing shrub­ber and went to Cas­tle-Town where she became the favorite masseuse of the King. Behind her, the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple let out a mourn­ful yawp and tripped over its own tail. It was prompt­ly shot by a small child named Fred who also had enough of being afraid and had come for some pay­back. The skin of the Great Pur­ple Mur­ple made a nice roof for his tree­house.