All around Frito was the sight and sound of gnashing boggie teeth, gasping boggie esophagi, and groaning, pulsating boggie bellies. The din of the gnawing and munching almost drowned out the national anthem of the Sty, which the hired orchestra was now more or less performing.
Frito wandered past the rows of tables, hoping to find the squat, familiar figure of Spam. “Gobble, gobble, gobble... he murmured to himself, but the words seemed strange. Why did he feel so alone amidst the merrymakers, why had he always thought himself an intruder in his own village? Frito stared at the phalanxes of grinding molars and foot-long forked tongues that lolled from a hundred mouths, pink and wet in the afternoon sun.
At that moment there was a commotion at the head table, where Frito should have been sitting as a guest of honor. Uncle Dildo was standing on his bench and making motions for quiet, wishing to make his after-dinner speech. After a flurry of jeers and the knocking together of a few heads, every fuzzy, pointed ear and glass eye strained to catch what Dildo had to say.
My fellow boggies, he said, my fellow Poops and Peristalts, Barrelgutts and Hangbellies, Needlepoints, Liverfiaps, and Nosethingers. (Nosefingers! corrected an irate drunk who, true to his family name, had it jammed into his nostril to the fourth joint.)
I hope you have all stuffed yourselves until you are about to be sick. This customary greeting was met with traditional volleys of farting and belching, signifying the guests’ approval of the fare.
I have lived in Boggietown, as you all know, most of my life, and I have developed opinions of you all, and before I leave you all for the last time, I want to let you all know what you have all meant to me. The crowd yelled approval, thinking that now was the time for Dildo to distribute the expected gifts among them. But what followed surprised even Frito, who looked at his uncle with shocked admiration. He had dropped his pants.
The riot that followed had best be left to the reader’s imagination, lame though it may be. But Dildo, having prepared by prearranged signal to touch off the fireworks, diverted the rage of the townsboggies. Suddenly there came a deafening roar and a blinding light. Bellowing with fright, the vengeful boggies hit the dirt as the cataclysmic tumult thundered and flashed around them. The noise died down, and the braver members of the lynch mob looked up in the hot wind that followed at the little hill where Dildo’s table had stood. It was not there any longer. Nor was Dildo.
“You should have seen their faces,” laughed Dildo to Goodgulf and Frito. Safely hidden back in his hole, the old boggie rocked with gleeful triumph. “They ran like spooked bunnies!”
“Bunnies or boggies, I told you to be careful,” said Goodgulf. “You may have hurt someone sorely.”
“No, no,” said Dildo, “all the shrapnel blew the other way. And it was a good way of getting a rise out of ’em before I left this burg for good.” Dildo stood up and began making a final check of his trunks, each carefully addressed “Riv’n’dell, Estrogen.” “Things are getting hot all over and it was a good way to start getting them off their obese duffs.”
“Hot all over?” asked Frito.
“Aye,” said Goodgulf. “Evil Ones are afoot in—”
“Not now,” interrupted Dildo impatiently. “Just tell Frito what you told me.”
“What your rude uncle means,” began the Wizard, “is that there have been many signs I have seen that bode ill for all, in the Sty and elsewhere.”
“Signs?” said Frito.
“Verily and forsooth,” replied Goodgulf darkly. “In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips.”
“But what do all these things mean?” gasped Frito.
“Beats me,” said Goodgulf with a shrug, “but I thought it made good copy. But there is more. My spies tell me of black musters gathering in the East, in the dead Lands of Fordor. Hordes of foul narcs and trolls have multiplied and every day red-eyed wraiths skulk even unto the borders of the Sty. Soon there will be much terror in the land from the black hand of Sorhed.”
“Sorhed!” cried Frito. “But Sorhed is no more.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear from the heralds,” said Dildo gravely. “It had been thought that Sorhed was forever destroyed at the Battle of Brylopad, but it appears this was just wishful thinking. Actually he and his Nine Nozdrul slipped out of the mopping-up cleverly disguised as a troupe of gypsy acrobatic dancers. Escaping through the Ngaio Marsh, they pushed their way into the suburbs of Fordor, where the property values dropped like a paralyzed falcon. From Fordor they have been renewing their strength ever since.”
“His Dark Carbuncle of Doom has swollen and soon will come to a head, covering the face of Lower Middle Earth with his ill humors. If we are to survive, the boil must be soundly lanced before Sorhed begins his own loathsome squeeze play.”
“But how can this be done?” said Frito.
“We must keep him from the one thing that can mean victory,” said Goodgulf. “We must keep from him the Great Ring!”
“And what is this ring?” said Frito, eyeing the possible exits from the hole.
“Cease thy eyeing of possible exits and I will tell thee,” Goodgulf reprimanded the frightened boggie. “Many ages ago, when boggies were yet wrestling with the chipmunks over hazel nuts, there were made Rings of Power in the Elven-Halls. Fashioned with a secret formula now known only to the makers of toothpastes, these fabulous Rings gave their wearers mickle powers. There were twenty in alclass="underline" six for mastery of the lands, five for rule of the seas, three for dominion of the air, and two for the conquering of bad breath. With these Rings the people of past ages, both mortals and elves, lived in peace and grandeur.”
“But that only makes sixteen,” observed Frito. “What were the other four?”
“Recalled for factory defects,” laughed Dildo. “They tended to short-circuit in the rain and fry one’s finger off.”
“Save the Great One,” intoned Goodgulf, “for the Great Ring masters all the others, hence is now the most sought by Sorhed. Its powers and charms are shrouded in legend, and many works are said to be given to its wearer. It is said that, according to his powers, the wearer can perform impossible deeds, control all creatures to his bidding, vanquish invincible armies, converse with fish and fowl, bend steel in his bare hands, leap tall parapets at a single bound, win friends and influence people, fix parking tickets—”