“It was a little toddler. Just like you Toddles. In fact…”
“Don’t say it,” she requested while having another spurt. We had just finished up the 3rd game of pool after she sank the Homer ball — as we started to call it in game 1 — for the win. I retrieved the yellow sphere from the side pocket and placed it back in the center, along with all the others. Losers have to rack. I kept pondering while I did. Toddles was now about 5′ 10″, so not a toddler. I was wrong in that, a loser once more. 3 feet to start, then a little under 4 1/2 after the second, then this. How much would she grow? I thought back to broken Big Boy at the entrance to the abandoned and clearly haunted park with the baby holding a doll. This tall? I fairly easily made it between the legs, but clearly an error to enter.
“Continue your story,” she requested while bending over to break the triangle (*crack!*). 6 balls sunk right off the bat; odds are stacked way against him to begin. With height comes increased skills, seemingly. I decided to appease her.
“Kite flying Jimmy Jackson and fly fishing Johnny Jimson were down at the pier, absorbed in their pastimes and trying to ignore the stench of the bodies that had freshly washed up on the shore that morning.”
“‘Ahh, there’s our old friend Reader perusing the octopus book’, I said, peering around the pier more, ‘perhaps looking for a smell spell to end it all.'”
“Octopus? Where’s this going?” she asked. The 7 ball was sunk, then the 2, then the 6. Did she even have any left; had she already won once more? He checked: not the Homer ball this time, but the orange, the 5th. It seemed to smile at him, telling him she was the one, the only. Here was All Orange in the flesh. The pool stick lowered, aimed…
“… annnd *CUT*!”
Sunklands 