THE TRAGIC ROMANCE OF MARY AND SLUGGO
Mary and Sluggo had never met. They knew not of each other. Entering the golden years of her life, Mary described herself as an eternal optimist. Sluggo, well into his golden years, thought of himself as....well-dressed. Besides his gray socks, there was other evidence of his being his own worst judge. Both were popular with their friends. Both had successful careers. Both were alone. Both had failed to find true love, the love that betters each day and seems to grow by what it feeds on. Mary wondered if such a love was possible in this world and if she would ever know it. Sluggo was sure it was possible but doubted he would ever find it.
The gods had been kind to Mary. She was tall, sensitive, spiritual and centered, and the years had little altered her youthful grace. She had a slim figure like a mythical princess. Moving she undulated like naiad billows on a sunlit sea. Her breasts were ripe and girlish, with nipples like citrus gumdrops, sweet and pink (a metaphor key in this account). Her hair was deep vermilion and untamed, her fair skin lucent and untanned. Sluggo was not so blessed with looks. He was thick and coarse of build, but strong and cheerful. He was gentle, had a good heart and a romantic nature aided by a superb command of his native tongue with which he hoped to woo the lady of his dreams, if he could ever find her out.
And then one day in October, as the galaxies whirled effortlessly in their silent spheres, they met.
As the eyes go reconnoitering
for what the heart desires, Sluggo knew at once he was in love. Mary thought
him coarse and ill-turned out in dress and manner. But Sluggo was nothing
if not true, undeterred, ready to risk all, and in a word, committed.
He turned the mighty cannons of his poetry on the stony fortress of Mary's
heart, and by persistence, given just the proper period for such a beauty
to withhold her favors, he won at last her love. And when Mary did finally
open the flood gates of her heart to Sluggo, the greatest power in the
universe, a woman's love, swamped both their tiny boats of personhood,
and they were one.
So it was one night that, at the peak of their love raptures, Mary moaned longingly in Sluggo's ear, "Now, now, my hero, my beloved...now hug me hard, as you have never hugged before...for I long to be crushed in your mightiest passion."
Ever the obedient lover, Sluggo hugged her hard and heard a shriek of surprise as suddenly, borne on a film of rarest lotion, she shot from his arms like a watermelon pip, caromed off the headboard of their bed, ricocheted across the ceiling and landed with a bump on the floor beside their love nest.
"My love, my dove, my fairest, are you harmed?" moaned Sluggo rushing to her side. The tear of injury that wet her cheek as she crept into his arms, rubbing gently the bruise on her lotioned bottom was more than he could stand. He healed the hurt with gentle massages and kisses four. But her tears could not be stemmed.
"The course of true love never does run smooth," she sobbed. "Oh, Sluggo, my heart, my love, whatever are we to do? For I absolutely cannot live unless you hug me hard."
"And I surely cannot live without your enchanted potions besmearing all our happy hours," mused Sluggo, warming to the tragic tone of this love-crisis. "But we cannot have this squirting about the room like an oiled love-torpedo...much too dangerous!"
"Tomorrow I will ask the goddesses what we must do," said Mary. "They will not abandon so true an acolyte of their sacred delights as myself," she said. "A little firmer with that massage, please. Mmmmmmm. Yes! "
The next evening, when Sluggo returned from a hard day's hero work, Mary greeted him with a happy kiss.
"The Goddess has indeed heard my prayers," she whispered. "Follow me, my heart." She took him by the hand and led him to the bedchamber. There Sluggo beheld a stranger sight than words could give it out. Along one wall beside the bed sat a long tube about the size of a large coffin.
"What is it? Where did it come from? What's it made of?" asked Sluggo, rapping it sharply with a knuckle. It was adamantine hard, of perfectly transparent plastic material.
"It's called a Love Cocoon. Diana the Huntress sent it. It's poly-propenol," said Mary.
"Love Cocoon? How does it work?"
"That's for me to know," whispered Mary, her voice suddenly husky with lust. "Just follow me, sweet one," and so saying she clicked a small latch on the side of the tube and the top swung open like a secret passage. In the same motion she dropped her robe and began to undo his buttons and bows. When he stood naked before her, she bade him climb into the Cocoon and lie still. Sluggo climbed in and closed his eyes in trusting anticipation. At once he felt his body being caressed in ointments and salves of the finest purity, natural or distilled he cared not. He knew Mary's sweet caress well enough. When he opened his eyes, she was busy anointing her own fine form with the same hurried strokes. She jumped lightly into the Cocoon astride him with a slippery embrace, lowering the lid behind her, which closed with a loud click.
"Are we locked in?" asked Sluggo a little nervously.
"Totally, my love, " she whispered. "And I alone possess the key of it. It is here on my lobe." And raising herself sweetly so he could see the golden pendant in her left ear, she dangled it in his face. Her earring was indeed a golden key. "It is the key to the Cocoon," she said, "the key to love, to my heart, to all our happiness... you great oiled flounder," she giggled, wriggling deliciously against him.
"What now, my love?" he said. She rose again and placed a pink gumdrop between his lips.
"Swirl it!" she commanded.
She shifted slightly and placed a second gumdrop between his lips.
"Twirl it!" she cooed.
"Now comes the acid test," she moaned, "or is it the lubrication test. HUG ME HARD!"
He hugged with all his heart and felt her start to squirt, like a wet love pippin, across his chest. "Boink!" went her head against the top of the Cocoon and back she slid into his glistening grasp.
"Boink, Boink, Boink, Boink," went her head, her feet, her back and her bottom as she squirted this way and that in his powerful embrace.
"It works! It works!" she squealed between boinks. "Our crisis is solved! Our love is saved. Hug me, hug me, hug me hard!" Boink, boink, boink, boink.
"What now," said Sluggo.
"Swirl me. Twirl me."
For seven heavenly nights they explored the joys of the Love Cocoon, studying carefully the users' manual the goddess had supplied. Both found special favor in the chapter titled "Fantasy Celebrity Tours." Sluggo preferred one called "Fatty Arbuckle and Madonna Do The Caribbean." He liked the extra shot of coconut oil needed to lubricate Fatty's imagined girth, as well as the detail that allowed Fatty himself to have his own gumdrops. On her side, Mary enjoyed the fantasy called "Superman Saves the Girl's Academy Field Trip," featuring the Man of Steel catching a school bus as it plunges from a cliff, in which Mary got to play 37 grateful teenagers. And so on.
But tragically, whom the gods would destroy they first send success, and jealous that two mere humans could be happier than the immortals, the gods had in store their usual tragic ending. In the seventh night of the Love Cocoon, as they spun lazily to a stop from an evening on "The Grecian Urn Magic Mystery Tour," ("More happy love! More happy, happy love!"), Sluggo heard Mary make a chirp of dismay.
"What's up, my cricket?" he inquired.
"You'll never forgive me for this," she moaned. "My earring...the golden key...I forgot to put it on. It's out there. I can see it on the table." Sluggo inspected her naked lobe, resisting the temptation to swirl it hungrily one more time, as the meaning of the thing slowly dawned.
"Does it mean we are locked in here forever? We can't get out?"
"It does, I fear," she confirmed.
"Then we must die?"
"Yes, my love."
"Dear me, indeed."
"What's to be done?" he asked. She raised herself on one glistening arm and fixed his gaze with hers. For one deathless minute they silently considered the many meanings of their doomed situation. Finally Mary broke the spell.
"Yes, my love?"
"Want a gumdrop?"
Days later when the bodies of the two lovers were taken away, the authorities happened upon the diaries that Sluggo had kept all his life, diaries detailing all the hurts and joys of his boyhood, youth and maturity, in which he honed carefully the delicate syllables of his mother tongue and its descriptive powers. Mary and Sluggo had died on the first anniversary of their meeting, but the diary pages for that whole year were empty. Only on the night before their fatal Cocoon trip did they find this single entry:
"Long have I kept this journal, and long have I taken pride in my capacity to catch in words the essences of life. More than anything, I had hoped here to record in words my first year with Mary, my one true love. In vain have I invoked language to express her ineffable beauty. But language failed me. In vain I struggled to tell the ineffable depths of me adoration. But my words were naught. Her ineffable warmth, her tenderness, her eyes, her smile, the fears and the delights she shared because her trust was whole and her heart unfettered... all this and more must pass forever silent because my words only nip at its heels like dumb curs. I had thought the poet's craft was exactly that...to eff the ineffable...but I am not a poet, I find. And so I close this diary for the last time. The world will never know. But what care I? Mary knows."
And when they took up the bodies from the Love Cocoon, the authorities noted a look of ineffable joy on the serene countenances of Mary and Sluggo. The end.