© 2024 by Cedric Williams

“Butterflies!” she exclaimed with delight as he entered the garden.

“It most certainly does not!” he retorted, thinking himself quite clever. But as he turned to face her, he was immediately struck in the jaw by a flying stick of butter.

“Ha ha! Out-clevered you again,” said Cloaca Duckbottom, tenderly dabbing the butter from her fiancee’s face.

“Yes, and a jolly good throw as well,” conceded Remington McFruitstain.

Theirs was an unusual romance. Of course, Cloaca was an unusual girl. Some might even call her eccentric. Remington himself might have described her as eccentric, had it not been for his practice of avoiding words he couldn’t remember how to spell.

—

They met at a SciFiCon. Not a science fiction convention, mind you, but a science fiction concert. Remington had never heard of the genre known as science fiction music. He was working as an Uber rickshaw driver and was simply there to pick up a passenger. That passenger was Cloaca Duckbottom. When Remington arrived, Cloaca was just finishing up her set. He fell in love the moment he laid eggs eyes on her. So, during the long drive to her home in the Mallard Creek neighborhood, he struck up a conversation. He began by asking what defined science fiction music.

“Well,” said Cloaca, “there are actually two main styles that each claim that label. The first consists of songs with lyrics about science fiction…”

“You mean,” Remington interjected, “like that song by The Who? ‘You Boba, You Boba, You Fett’”?

“Precisely,” she replied. “But my band, Sentient Feces, plays the real science fiction music. Y’see, we exclusively play instruments that are found only in alternate universes. And the pan flute.”

“That explains the harpsiccordian”, said Remington, despite having no idea how to spell it. Wishing to avoid speaking of any other musical instruments he couldn’t spell, he quickly asked whether she enjoyed any other styles of music.

“I’ve always loved Devo,” she replied

Remington demonstrated his appreciation by quoting a line from his favorite Devo song, saying, “Are we not men?”

With a twinkle in her eye, Cloaca answered, “Not both of us.”

At the end of the drive, Remington asked if he might see her again some time.

“I’m not thinking of becoming invisible any time soon,” she said with a wink, “so…of course!”

—

It wasn’t long before the two became inseparable, and were even finishing each others’ sentences. But Cloaca took things a bit further. Whenever Remington made a remark he thought was clever, she would improvise a fake news story based on (and usually more clever than) his clever remark, a process she called “bullshitting”. Remington’s favorite was the frog story. They were enjoying a romantic stroll along Mallard Creek on an evening when the frogs were especially vocal. So much so, that Remmy and Cloey (as they were calling one another by this point) couldn’t hear one another. After their walk, they settled into the relative quiet of Cloaca’s drawing room.

“Why do you suppose the frogs make that horrendous noise?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” joked Remington, “their pants are too tight.”

“Ah, yes,” she began, “I can just imagine a little ‘investigative reporter’ frog covering the story on FNN (the Froggie News Network). It seems there is a shortage of the material that frog pants are made from, but rather than risk upsetting their customers by raising prices, the major manufacturers of frog pants decided to conserve materials by simply making the pants smaller. Our intrepid frog reporter’s investigation revealed that there have been at least two reported deaths. Apparently, some of the pants were so tight, they suffocated the wearers. The reporter reached out to Amphibious L. Strauss, CEO of Worldwide Frog Pants, for comment. Mr. Strauss responded by saying, ‘This is by far the stupidest news story you’ve ever come up with.’ And he was right.”

—

Soon they were married. But Cloaca would have nothing to do with a normal, run-of-the-mill wedding ceremony. She decided on a costume party wedding, with the theme being “Beauty and the Beast”. Cloaca showed up for her wedding dressed as the most beautiful thing she could think of: the Rocky Mountains. Yes, all of them. Remington was correspondingly dressed as the Beast – the world’s longest wooden roller coaster. They wrote their own wedding vows, which consisted of just three words: No Butt Stuff.

Following the ceremony, they went on a two-week honeymoon in East Saint Louis. While there, they each purchased new pants. Sadly, the pants were far too tight, and they both died from suffocation.

THE END