A/N: A kind of parody of Lewis Carroll's masterpiece. I did this a year or two or three ago… I think it's fun but I don't have all that much drive to do anything else with it at the moment. That could change.
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'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves that lived in our backyard wabe were gyring and gimbling, something that got on your nerves faster than you can say peas. I don't know why they think they can just sit there gyring and gimbling. It's like the dang things think they own the place. They're lucky my ol' pa doesn't take a blade to their thick heads. They've been gyring and gimbling so much lately that no one can even sleep, because they come out of the wabe into our yard, and some even come right up to our windows and just sit there like lawn ornaments and mumble to themselves. My little sister doesn't take lightly to that, either. Can you imagine how hard it would be for a six year old girl to try to go to sleep while there's a slithy tove staring at her through her bedroom window muttering to itself?
She's not used to it; none of us are. They've never done this before. They usually just mind themselves and stay pretty far back in the wabe. But just these past few days, they've been clustering into the village during the night. Out of the Wabe. And they gyre. And gimble.
It's enough to make me want to tear my hair out.
But not to actually tear it out. Just to want to. It seems odd to me how people grab their hair and proceed to want to tear it out when they're frustrated. That's not any kind of solution. Now, if I were my mom, I would walk out to the slithy toves and try to have a nice, pleasant chat with them and come to some kind of peace treaty. But obviously I'm not my mom. I'm her son. Can you say Oedipus complex. I bet you can.
The slithy toves weren't the only ones acting weird, either. Our borogoves, in the stables, were getting all mimsy. Borogoves are usually very calm and placid, but lately they've been absolutely loony. They've got the whole eyes-rolling to-back-of-head-and-frothing-at-the-mouth thing. I needn't go into details, I suspect. I hope it's not a virus.
While the slithy toves are the most disturbing and the borogoves the most worrisome, by far the most annoying oddity would be the outgrabes of the momeraths. You have no idea what a momerath outgrabe can do to your blood pressure. It's like a kakatu sliding down a black board, sharp claws screeching the whole way, while the bird itself lets loose with a shriek to wake the dead. I'm afraid for my poor old Grandma Groop. I'm not sure how she's going to take all these weird new noises.
Well. The real fun started when my dad sat me down to have one of those father-to-son chats. We had been harvesting the slort crop, and he leaned against his shovel and gave me one of those looks that meant he was about to plunge deeply into the world of philosophy and wonder.
"My son," said he, chewing thoughtfully on a bit of slort, "I don't think these slorts are ripe yet." He spit out the slort and there was one of those pauses that would have been awkward except I knew that he was thinking about something, therefore it wasn't awkward. I'm not sure I explained that entirely to my liking, but I don't feel like typing any more about it.
"My son," said he again, "You must be aware of certain dangers. Now is the time that I need to tell you about the things that lurk in dark, scary places."
"Like the neighbor's cat?"
"Yes, something like that." He had plucked another un-ripe slort from the ground and again chewed on it, looking wistful. I could hear the grains of sand in the dirt being crunched between his molars. He leaned forward and beckoned me closer. I took a step and he put his mouth by my ear and whispered,
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" He leaned back, looking around warily. What he had said sounded suspiciously like a verse from a poem, but darned if I payed attention in English class.
"What's a frumious Bandersnatch?"
"Why, no-one knows, of course. It's a creature of the wabe that makes itself elusive to the human eye, and impossible to catch. But if it wants to catch you, that's the end of it. It's like a wraith, but… yes, it's rather like a wraith."
"It lives out there?" I hissed, pointing to the wabe. My father nodded sagely, and said,
"Yes, but there are worse things still that dwell there."
"Like the Jubjub bird?"
"Yep. That's a sight you never want to see. The thing has teeth. Teeth! And this big ugly grin, like the Cheshire Cat's. When I was your age, I took a stroll through the woods every morning so my brother had to wash the sink. One day I happened to look up in a tree, and sittin' right dang fatang smack darnit there, not four feet from my face, was the biggest, ugliest, fattest bird, if you could call it that, that I'd ever seen, and would ever see. Just sittin' there grinning at me! I screamed the whole way home and havn't gone back alone since."
"And what's the Jabberwock?" At this, he gave me this look like he was scrutinizing if I was old enough to know or not. Looking back, I'd have probably thought the same thing, if I were him.
"Son, what do you see when you hear the word, 'Jabberwock'?"
"Um…"
"Think hard, now. Try to picture something."
Jabberwock. To me, it implied some huge freakish jabbering creature from myth that kind of shambled along with longish legs. It implied something… unspoken, something that doesn't associate itself with mankind. Something that belonged somewhere else, where shadows derived their earthly hosts and flickers of light were madness. Whispers were memories here, and pockets of anger and silence floated about like indistinguishable clouds. It was something that sent shivers down my back, and made me glance nervously back at the dark, mysterious wabe. Father was watching me. He leaned down so his face was level with mine.
"Got that picture?"
I nodded stiffly.
"That's a Jabberwock."
His harsh whispered statement rendered me speechless. I'll bet you would be speechless too if you had just found out that your worst nightmare was lurking around in your backyard wabe. It would have been nice if he would have told me that whatever any individual first pictures as the Jabberwock is what they will see when they encounter it. If he would have told me, I would have gone more for the soft pink fuzzies look. But with a name like 'Jabberwock', it's pretty hard to imagine anything less than a horror.
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So now we sit and see what happens.