Everything hurtling about the place startled the diss-oriented Snake awake. Auburn’s head was a clutter-bluster of dust, too sketchy to draw conclusions. He combed his mind for a strand of co-hair-ence.

Auburn’s Hissy-fit demeanour was meaner than a cranky, lanky viper demanding mouse-to mouth-resuscitation. A titanic Dragon enshrouded and infected him with chicken-snake. Hibernation morphed into Hyperventilation.

Where am I? Quaked Auburn Snake.

Ye’re on a Container ship on th’ North Atlantic Sea, said the Dragon draining a flagon of iced tea.

What? How? Auburn quivered.

What be th’ last thin’ ye remember?

Auburn Snake had in-bited Dolly, a sheepish Boa and Arrow clonetender, to feast at ‘Fang-tasy Islands’ in the stream of the Hississippi River. He forked tongue-twisted swagger to bag her scaly-skinned-posterior. But Dolly fed and shed her skinny asp elsewhere, without even a goodnight hiss. Sorrow saturated, he supped a swag of swollen swallows and slipped into a food coma. Then awoke here, draggin’ fear.

‘Never seen a sea-sick-snake so green ‘n spotty.’

‘I’m grrr aaargh eeeeen?’

A devoured swallow erupted and sang. Auburn Snake spluttered others who fluttered happy wings.

‘Ye grub don’t agree wit’ ye. ‘Tisn’t easy bein’ green but ye’re savin’ wildlife.’

‘I used to have a wild life. Who are you?’ Auburn Snake spake.

‘I be Doctor Hue.’

‘Who?’

‘Yes Hue’.

‘DOCTOR WHO?’

‘Yes, Doctor Hue’.

‘WHO ARE YOU!’

‘We be pirates ‘o th’ carob bean, ‘n who be ye?’

Auburn spotted a baby elephant walk-dancing the Tusker blues. Her jumbo voice trumpeting aloft can–tank-herous skirmishing seas. He shook his head in hisstrionic diss-belief, ‘We’re off to The Island of Dr Moron!’

‘Dr Hue, we must be off inside, we be off-course, th’ dials be wild. Ahoy thar, they moniker me Ella-phantastic,’ she chirped with a trunkful of sweet, aimed at Auburn Snake.

‘On Stranger Tides I haven’t be,’ said Doctor Hue eyeing the sea.

The storm demon-whipped the water, who whomped the boat out of whack, which walloped her passengers with Batman-and-Robin-thwacks. The triangle of Bermuda boat-boom-slingshot us skyward. Upheaval bellowed, uncivil and Adam-Ant. Expecting to face 20,000 weeds under the sea, everyone passed out. Everyone but Auburn Snake.

The swirling firmament, anything but firm, rivalled his spiralling contempt-lotion. He’d always slithered solo preferring his own space-ship to friendship. How had he indulged friends? The only way he’d help them out was to show them to the exit. Loved-up Feldspar and Ochre Centipede, who completed each others’ cent-in-says, bit all their wedding guests before drowning in the rain. His food-for-thought chums; stung by their generosity. Pork-Chop-Coral the tender-loon wordsmith driver and that tasty-looking cow. All dead. Alone at last. This was what he’d always wanted. Why did he feel so… bad? This was no morning to be mourning. Nostalgia gnawed, the whirligig thrashed, then everything went black.

‘Got any Marsh-mellows? The Martians are getting anxious.’

Auburn Snake blinked, ‘What is this, Gullible’s Travels?‘

‘The Princess of Mars is Antsy. They’ve run out of Anteater sand-witches’, said the overgrown herbage in which he’d landed.

‘Take me to your weeder!’ Auburn sniggered before …

“Am I dead?” Auburn said to the svelte swine beclouding him. ‘You look like, no you can’t be… giant bore who penned pig-tales, only crackling thin…that centipede wedding… they stung everybody dead…are you a Ghost-writer in the Sky?’

‘You can’t handle the truth,’ said the Dread-Pirate-Fuchsia.

Pork-Chop-Coral had survived. No centipede sting could pig-penetrate the top-to-toe body-shaper smoothing even her tucked-in-tail. It cured her body-fashioned anxiety and knuckled her pork belly-lardon under her clothes, socks and gloves. She’d die of embarrassment if anyone knew vanity had saved her bacon. She hocked the Porky Piglet for an epig transfatmation to the Sweet-and-sour raise-her-back boargeoning here today.

‘Th’ martians be comin’, Th’ martians be comin’,’ said Ella-phantastic, focusing her Elephant gun. A white-hot shaft of fear pierced through her, yet she stood defiant and strong.

Mars attacks.

Fang-toothed blob fish-butted yetis were prettier, but the battalion of battle-axes weren’t retreating. Dread-Pirate-Fuchsia raised her hand in surrender, but ubiquitous luminosity bombarded the Martians. Coral/Fuchsia gaped at her hands.

What magic be ’tis? said Doctor Hue as the Aurora Boar-ealalis blasted them through space.

‘Woo-hoo’, cried everyone.

Everyone but Auburn Snake, who sighed, ‘so much for being alone.’

This is chapter two of Coral’s last Pig-tale click above for chapter one. 😀

Click below for chapter 3