"Some children are utterly charming, a joy to be around and many children are mostly tolerable, but Balfour Balon was neither of those. He was a brat, plain and simple, and you didn’t have to squint your eyes to see the colossal bully he was sure to become, it was right there in front of you. So perhaps it wasn’t as unfortunate as one might think that Balfour happened upon a slightly evil djinn when prying the cork out of what he thought was a bottle of treacle he found in his father’s study. After making a grand entrance in an enormous puff of lavender smoke, the djinn busied himself rummaging around office looking for items of value to pilfer. “Hey!” yelled Balfour, unnecessarily, “you’re supposed to give me everything I ask for, aren’t you?” The djinn yawned expansively and scratched his ear with a letter opener. “I suppose so. What do you want?” Balfour decided to start small. Out of the window, he could see his father returning from the doctor with Balfour’s detested baby sister, who was happily clutching a balloon in her dimpled little fist. He could pop hers and then taunt her with the one in his possession! “A balloon!” Balfour demanded. “Absolutely not,” drawled the djinn, now laconically cleaning his fingernails: “That is a stupid wish.” Well, as you might imagine, Balfour’s face became so red and swollen it looked as though it might pop and he had a seismic tantrum, which culminated in an earsplitting “YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME A BALLOON RIGHT NOW!!!” And so the djinn did, as you can see.
Nowadays, Balfour tends to keep to himself in the town cemetery, his only companion a stuttering raven named Neville who says only “N-n-n-n-n…never mind.”
This original artwork and story are copyright Ramona Szczerba 2009.
I love this. This 30 days of play thing is seriously awesome. Thank you for bringing this to people.
ReplyDeleteIt was this or a particularly sadistic strain of cold virus. You're welcome, America.
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