The RumBums of Bumstickle — Part One

 Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you’ve had a good time doing . . . er . . . whatever you do on Valentine’s Day. Eating chocolate? Opening cards? I, for one, have been making heart-shaped red velvet cupcakes with old friends.

Enough chitchat, ladies! I wanted to share another story I did for IEW. It’s not my best writing, and it’s not serious (like, at all), but I had a lot of fun writing it and hope you’ll enjoy reading it, too. :)

     The RumbUms of Bumstickle

       Far, far away, nestled among the stars, is an astronomical object of great importance. If one squints at it for long enough, one will find that it is pale blue in color. If one knows enough about the astronomy, one will think that this object in the heavens is a star, burning and blazing at 100,000 fahrenheit . . . That it is, in fact, one of the hottest stars in existence, a star so hot that it is blue.

      But it is not so.

      The blue mystery among the stars is a planet, covered almost entirely in ocean. It is the planet Bumstickle, and it is where this story takes place.

      Tucked away in a fancy cabin in the stern of the mighty and fierce pirate ship Sea Mama was a boy named Belshaz.

      Belshaz was the Prince of the Pirates (under King Hoochewooche). He had been born upon the Sea Mama, lived upon the Sea Mama, and had never left the Sea Mama in all the fifteen years of his life. He had sea legs, a vast pirate vocabulary, and was prone to making rude bodily noises. But under all of his pirate-like swagger, Belshaz had a dream.

      The Prince of the Pirates, son of King Hoochewooche and Queen Bellafattia, wanted to be an architect. Coating the walls of his private cabin were drawings upon drawings of elaborate ships and huts on stilts and even frowning mosaic gates.

      Belshaz figured that a bard would be a good job, too. He could write poems about treacherous sea battles, or sing about sparkling booty discovered in the depths of monster-filled caves.

      Unfortunately, he was sure that his parents wouldn’t approve of his dream. They wanted him to be an infamous pirate warlord who ruled all of Bumstickle with an iron hook and left no survivors.

      He had locked himself up in his cabin so that he could draw architectural designs in peace. Belshaz was putting the finishing touches on the building plans for a maximum-security brig when something extremely heavy slammed into the cabin’s door.

      “Ahoy, Belshazarrrr!” shouted the thing that had rammed against the door. It was Belshaz’s own father, King Hoochewooche, Ruler of the Pirates. “Open up, son!” he bellowed.

      Belshaz quickly set a rusty metal plate on top of his drawing, to hide it from his father. Then he rushed over to the splintering wooden door and undid the lock. “Avast thar, ye salty sea monster o’ a dad!” he greeted in typical pirate speech, letting his father in.

      King Hoochewooche thundered into the room, his heavy footfalls making the deck quake. “Greetin’s, son! Dinner gunna be ready in a minute. Th’ crew gunna be singin’ songs ‘o betrayal ‘n battles, laddie, ‘n ye won’t want to miss tha’.” He slapped his son on the back so hard that Belshaz couldn’t breathe for a second.

      “Aye, Cap’n,” he wheezed when he’d gotten his breath back.

      King Hoochewooche burped, filling the air with the molasses-mixed-with-alcohol stench of rum. He stared at his son for a while, likely imagining Belshaz as a fearsome pirate, as infamous and savage as Blackbeard.

      Presently, someone aboard the ship hollered, “’Tis the hour for dinner! Where be th’ cap’n?”

      King Hoochewooche, Ruler of the Pirates, captain of the ship Sea Mama, patted Belshaz on the back once again and charged out of the cabin. “Let th’ feastin’ begin!” he announced as the sweaty crew crowded around him.

      “Yo-ho!” they cheered loudly (in the booming pirate fashion that they did everything in).

      Belshaz grinned at the crew’s jolliness, mussing his wild orange hair. His cry of “Yo-ho!” mixed with the sailors’ as he burst out of his room and joined the feast.

      While the pirates devoured tough hardtacks, sweet mead, and salted beef, a muscular man named McFarty (who had a serious B.O. problem) began to tell an elaborate story about how he had escaped the deadly grasp of the horrifying  Kraken. No one believed him, of course, but the tale was as entertaining as always.

      The pirates were about to begin a rocking dance across the deck, filled with stomps and burps and farts that were all in tune. Just before one of the scurvy sailors screamed “Yo-ho, let’s begin,” McFarty sidled up to Hoochewooche and asked, “Where’s that lass of yours, Cap’n? The Queen, the Sea Mama, the Beauty of Bumstickle? We’d all like to see her dance!”

      The king’s laugh was loud enough to rival even the most tenacious wave. “My lass is down below, gettin’ the rum!” He slammed his bare, hairy foot against the smooth wooden deck, calling, “Bellafattia, me queen, what’s taking ye so long? The men are thirsty for rum!”

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There will be more parts, of course, but that’s where I’m stopping for now. :)

My co-op class exchanged valentines on Friday. The valentines that I made had Grumpy Cat glued to them. XD I was told by several classmates that my hilarious valentines “made my day” and that I “give the best valentines.” Everything they said is true.