The Snargily-Bargillies

One of the less stressful problems I have is that sometimes, I’m possessed by the strangest urges to write something intentionally bad. I mean something that makes a reader stop every few sentences and ask, “Wait, is she serious?”

Like today, I had this idea to create a story about an invasion of ferocious fur-covered aliens, but the aliens were going to be called the Snargily-Bargillies. So every time they talked, the aliens would drain the tension right out of a scene.

This is an awful idea, but the muse has been giggling all day long, and she’s insistent that I need to write at least one scene to satisfy her masochistic urges. So, after the cut, a selected scene from the hopefully never-to-be-completed Invasion of the Snargily-Bargillies.

The terrified crowd cowered before the huge fur-covered beasts, beaten though the fight had only just started. The alien soldiers had many weapons, and the humans were unarmed spectators and curious tourists who had come out to see the landing.

The tallest of the nude creatures roared, and suddenly everything fell into silence. The humans stopped screaming, and the alien leader’s loyal troops froze on command. Their shaggy fur-covered heads swung around toward the leader, who raised what looked like a rifle above his head.

“Humans!” the leader shouted in a growling voice. “Surrender your world to me, or face the petrifying wrath of the Snargily-Bargillies!”

A gasp ran through the crowd, and then the humans began to exchange awkward smirks.

One of the men closest to the leader stood up, speaking for the others and echoing their thoughts when he said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Taken aback, the leader asked, “What?”

“The Snargily-Bargillies? Seriously?” The man snorted. “That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. To make anyone afraid of you, you’ practically have to eat one of us.”

The leader rubbed his rifle with a fur-covered thumb before he nodded. “All right, fair enough.”

Then he ate the man in one bite.

“Holy…he–” Another man stood up, waving to what was left of the hapless victim. “But you just–with the teeth! And the blood, and the grrrr, and the…and he doesn’t have a torso anymore!”

The leader aimed his rifle. “Stop talking, or I’ll shoot you with the full power of the snuggly-wuggly.”

From the back of the crowd, a man shouted, “Oh give me a fucking–”

The leader turned and fired, and a multi-colored stream of light ripped apart everyone caught in the path of the beam.

The exclamatory man shouted, “Holy jeez! You—with the lights, and the–”

The alien shot him, also taking out everyone behind him.

“Right, the next one of you who so much as titters will know the pain of Iddy-Piddums!”

And that’s how California vanished.

___

I’d apologize, but since this is intentionally trying to be bad, the apology wouldn’t be the least bit genuine. So instead, I’ll just say, “look on the bright side. Not all of my writing is this bad.”