Sir Bob and the Sewer Rat
Once upon a time, there lived a brave but rather stupid knight named Sir Bob. Sir Henry Bob. One day, Sir Bob was walking in the forest when he spied a beuatiful young lady. She was walking at a distance, away from Sir Bob, and he ran to meet her. Immediatly, he noticed that she was rather short. And plump. In fact, she was fat. She had looked good from a distance, but now she looked pretty ugly to Sir Bob. Well, he wasn't interested anymore, so he turned away and was about to leave when the lady turned around (she had had her back turned the whole time and apparently hadn't even known Sir Bob was there) and Sir Bob saw that she had the most beuatiful face he had ever seen. He completely forgot about the rolls of fat and ran toward her. Then she--or it--took off her--or its--mask and Sir Bob saw that the "lady" was really a huge, fat, ugly sewer rat. And then Sir Bob realized that this sewer rat was the dreaded Buttaviaus. No other rat could possibly be so huge. Or fat and ugly, for that matter. Sir Bob then drew his great battle sword and was about to run the rat through when the rat took off another mask and underneath was the face of a beautiful lady. "Oh, no! You can't fool me twice!" said Sir Bob, and stabbed at the horrid thing. Amazingly, his giant sword simply bounced off the enormous rolls of fat on the sewer rat's body. Then Buttaviaus ran and when he did, the garments he wore came off, revealing ugly, matted fur with algae growing out of it in places. His mask also fell of and under it was a face even uglier than the first. This, thought Sir Bob, must be his real face. You can't get much uglier than that. Sir Bob didn't give chase, for although Buttaviaus had very lagre rolls of fat, he could run surprisingly fast, faster than Sir Bob, since he was used to riding horses and not running.
That night, Sir Bob heard a strange noise coming from....somewhere. Sir Bob's hearing wasn't so good. Then his bed jiggled. He looked under it. All his servants were huddled up under the bed. "It's Buttaviaus!" one of them whispered. "Well, why aren't you doing anything? Why are you hiding under the bed? What's wrong with you?" said Sir Bob. "We're scared. We don't want to go out there. We--" A toilet flush cut him off. "You fools! He's getting away! He's flushing whatever he's stolen down the toilet!" (flush) "There he goes again! Come, let's catch him before he makes away with all my stuff!" He led the way to the bathroom*, but when they got there, Buttaviaus was gone. The next day, Sir Bob went to the king's castle. Sir Bob knew that the king had made a Royal Decree saying that anybody who was stolen from by Buttaviaus the Sewer Rat could have all the stolen possesions replaced by the king, if .the person had wounded Buttaviaus. Now when Sir Bob had stabbed at Buttaviaus, he hadn't actually wounded him, but when he told his story to the king, the king said Sir Bob had acted rightly, and that was what really counted, so he replaced all of Sir Bob's stolen things. But the next night, the excact same thing happened and Buttaviaus had gotten clean away with over half of Sir Bob's possesions. So Sir Bob went to the king again and since Sir Bob was one of the king's favorite knights, the king replaced his stuff. Two nights later, the same thing happened, this time Buttavaius got away with about two thirds of the poor knight's treasures. So he went to the king again, and the king did replace what Buttaviaus had stolen, but warned that this was the last time he would do so. Sir Bob thanked him and went back to his home. A fortnight later, Buttaviaus stole all of Sir Bob's things, except for some money under Sir Bob's mattress. He went to the king again, but the king told him that the last time he had replaced the knight's stolen possesions was THE LAST TIME!! So poor Sir Bob bought a ticket on a ship heading to Hawaii, even though nobody in Europe knew about Hawaii at the time. Somehow, though, he got to Hawaii, (where there's a will, there's a way) and started selling pineapples and coconuts. He built a little store called Bob's Pineapples, Coconuts, and other Exotic Foods. It didn't make much sense to have a store like that in Hawaii, because you could just pick a pineapple, coconut, or any other exotic food off a tree whenever you wanted to. That was probably why it took Sir Bob, now just Bob, really, because there aren't any knights in Hawaii, anyway, it took Bob twenty years to hoard enough money (or actually, the shells of a certain sea creature, the hookadooka, which was what they used for money in Hawaii at that time) to buy a decent house. Before that, he had to sleep in his store, which was actually some large form of a demented lean-to, which changed shape every day, on account of the wind blowing it down at night and Bob rebuilding it in the morning into an even stranger-shaped structure. Anyway, he got enough money and bought a house. It even had a toilet. "Ahhh..." said Bob, sitting on the pot. "...this is the life. No Buttaviaus, no nothing." Just then, Buttaviaus jumped out of the toildet bowl and stabbed Bob to death. Poor Bob. Oh, well. At least it was over quickly.
The End
*Note: this takes place in the 1300s. We don't know how flushing toilets and bathrooms got into this. It doesn't really matter, anyway. Live with it.
