Dark murk penetrated by slowly diffusing light. In the depths of memory, it budded, amoeba-like, and began to flash, floating in the ether. In the same way that slightly tipsy fairies might do, the buds gently bounced off each other gaining gradually in substance; incandescent blobs growing briefly then, once the critical mass of over-ripeness was achieved, exploding with a silent puff into a cascade of multicoloured sparks whose gentle fall through space was accompanied by the resonance of comforting soft, wet farting.
Hormones were sloshing around with increasing virulence and sinews strengthened from the soft yield of childfall to the steel potential of manrise. Movement became more intense and it was obvious that a primordial battle was under way.
Child watched wide-eyed as he realised that something was up. It was as if he was being left behind, his innocence battered and pummelled; not yet down and out but bewildered and tearful, almost forgotten. He watched as the being, temporarily known, he was soon to discover, as Ado, fought its way out of the now sticky, gooey, greasy slop that had formed around the child-man body. Volatile liquid evaporated from his freshly warped skin leaving sticky puddles around hollow eyes. Fight-exhaustion clouded his senses and he flopped, in a semi-sitting position, to the ground, back bowed, shoulders drooping forward, muscles feeble as if after the type of exertion necessary for twelve defensive rounds with Fat Horace. His mouth was slightly open, splodge dripping unnoticed from one corner as his eyes gazed down unseeing in the general direction of the terrified child that we can now safely identify as Fefe.
The last of the sparks died in his eyes, the last sloppy fart echoed into the distance, and he looked in wonder at the shape of his hands, the dirt behind his nails almost alive with what could easily have passed for the essence of the origins of life. Realization dawned as it might for a hedgehog turning and finding a fifty-tonne lorry three metres from converting him into the envelope-contents of oblivion, and a thought morphed slowly and, judging from the beads of sweat that popped out on his forehead like rabbits being propelled from their holes by an energetic Victorian chimney sweep, painfully into shape.
“I’m ugly,” he whispered.
Tipping his head to one side as if listening carefully he became aware of thoughts tumbling in on top of one another, thoughts that increased in volume like echoes that had been pulled forcibly inside-out until they coalesced into his voice shouting to be heard amongst the general din of mayhem; each thought battling to line up, jumping the queue and passing from incandescent electrically charged fireflies to a raging crescendo of words of anguish:
“I’m skinny,”
“I’m thick,”
“I’ve got a big nose!”
“I’m fat!” he roared.
And the worst of all; a sentiment that started off by yelling as if from inside a vacuum at the bottom of a pile of two-week-old clodhopper manure but that gradually took on a force of its own as if the battle had injected it with an experience that only years can provide when bloated like a Globungian skinnyhop bag being slowly inflated by a bicycle pump-wielding mad scientist whose silver hair blew unkempt in the noxious wind of insane scientific discovery and whose cackles of ragged laughter ricocheted around inside the newly spawned Ado’s head,
“I’ve got a small willy….”
This last gasped in ice-cold syllables of despair.
And when all the exasperation of metamorphism had passed, calm slowly seemed to descend on Ado and, taking a cue from the extended silence, Fefe risked a frank appraisal by plucking up enough courage to satisfy his natural childish curiosity. Instead of peeking at the sticky transmogrification through fingers clasped tightly over his eyes, he lowered his hands and in a small voice he whispered, “Who are you?”
Apart from a strangled fart, the thing called Ado didn’t respond at first. Then, gradually he lifted his head and muttered, as if to a point focused many kilometres from his physical being, “I think I’m called Ado.”
He appeared to be listening again, “I’m you, except not,” he said lazily wiping away a residual gelatinous tear that fell from the corner of his eye.
Above them, the sky took on the hue of what could have been approaching dawn, a thick greyish purple in which Fefe could see lumps that looked like sickly bander-spewing clouds.
Glamorgonia lazily uncurled a shapely finger and lowered her shapely arm, extended a shapely, sharply pointed fingernail and scratched Ado gently behind the ear.