Sitting on top of his roof, the smiling green man gazes with a tender expression at the sky. He allows his tongue to loll out from his mouth and tickle his dry, crackled lips.
Taking in a lungful of air, he begins to speak in a hoarse whisper. "The sky-ocean seems rather lonely today. It's barren of all the little white sheep that used to lick up all my precious floor sugar..."
His expression falls abruptly, hearing the soft, but frighteningly familiar buzz-sound. He looks down at his feet, which hang off the edge of the roof. A large wasp pokes itself out from one of the tiles between his legs and creeps towards him, it's transparent-black wings twitching on it's back.
Reaching a finger towards the insect, Salad Fingers begins to moan. The wasp's feelers tap away at his out-stretched finger, examining it briefly before crawling up the finger.
The man brings the finger to his eyes for a closer look.
The insect freezes, it's rear-end rising, quivering. Stinger poised for attack. But before the wasp can sting him, Salad Fingers shoves his finger into his right eye, violently digging into one corner so that the wasp gets trapped behind his eye-socket.
His face twitches, Salad Fingers mutters something about, "the worm who wiggles first breaks the net." His right eye immediately begins to burn, and tears start to run down his face.
Battling fiercely, the wasp repeatedly pierces the eye from the inside out, buzzing angrily, kicking out with it's legs. With every sting, Salad Fingers makes a soft "oh" sound, as if surprised, but his face is blank, showing no sign of agony. Eventually, the wasp is able to position itself half-out, it's head peeking out from the side of Salad's eye lid, it's little chewing-mouth-part clamping tightly over the iris of the man's eye, causing it to rip open and bleed.
With a patient movement, Salad Fingers brings a hand out in front of his eye, which has turned red and swollen, then brings it to the insect. Carefully grabbing it by the wings, he removes the wasp and proceeds to put it by his ear. Holding it inches from his ear-canal, Salad explains, "A nice, cozy apartment for you," he tells the bug, "S-so you wont have...leakage from the water-closet."
But something in the sky catches his attention, and he lets go of the struggling wasp. It flies away, unnoticed.
In the sky is a cloud. A small, grey whisp of solid water molecules, swimming across the ever-lasting ocean.
His eye beats with it's own pulse, bleeding out down his cheek. Frowning, Salad Fingers rubs the blood and looks at it. "Has the great war already started without me?" he questions himself.
Receiving no answer, the man shakes his head. "Well." he says at last. "We wont be having peanut butter again tonight, now shall we?"
Later in the same evening, Salad Fingers busies himself by running a broken comb down the wall in his bathroom. He watches the flecks of wood expand along the floor with every stroke, tilting his head to listen at every harsh scraping sound the comb makes.
"Aaah," he says happily. "What a lovely sing-tune you make with your throat muscles, Peter Rabbit!" He presses one side of his head against the wall, watching his hand robotically bring the comb up and down the wall. Flecks fall, and his eyes follow.
Taking a breath, he continues conversationally, "I should like to think that your good talents aren't going to waste in this wee wee shack." Salad looks over to the toilet-piping in the corner, since the toilet itself is missing. Comb stroking the wall, Salad squints his eyes at the piping, and notices for once how quiet the room is. A guilty look in his eyes, and they dart around frantically, searching for something unknown.
Meanwhile, his hand continues running the comb up and down.
With a sharp gasp, Salad slaps his hand away from the wall, crying, "Stop that nonsense before you wake the neighbors!"
His mouth slack, the green man raises his hand slowly and sees Hubert Cumberdale on the end of his finger, holding a tiny comb.
"I would expect such behavior from Mr. Fisher, but certainly not you, Hubert Cumberdale." Salad lowers his voice, his expression cold. "Now, if you want to sleep over tonight, that's all well and good, but I will need you to-..." Salad pauses, thinking. He brings the puppet to his mouth and whispers urgently, "...keep a sharp eye out for Hoarce Horsecollar. He hasn't eaten his apple bits today, so feed him those. I want him to be tasting red and delicious when he comes out of the ove- comes- comes to play with the ...butterfly baskets."