Ain't Never Dun It!

a short story
by Beth Webb

'What d'ye mean you never dun it before???' The glutinous eyed Slagbelly rolled back on his hindquarters and roared with laughter. Slagbellies enjoy a laugh, especially at the expense of Chrysaloids like me. Not yet full blown Slagbellies but way beyond the Nymphic-Worm stages.

We're supposed to know nothing and be nothing. Shut up and know our places. Heck! how's a Chrysaloid gonna get places if we're not allowed to crawl around a bit and stick our noses in here and there? Trouble is, once a Slagbelly spots us, we get trodden on and kicked about for a bit of a laugh, but not one of them takes us aside and says, 'Look here, kid. This is how it is...' Not even to be kind. But then 'Slagbelly' and 'kind' don't really go in the same sentence, do they?

I stared across the bar and nodded to the Bovinadary who was serving to fill up my glass. She waddled over kindly and put her udder on the table and spread out her selection. 'Whadda' ya have sonny?'

I stared at the labels on her different coloured teats and longed to tweak them and run away like I used to do when I was just a Nymph-Worm. But I was trying to be cool. She, at least, was acting like a lady. I pointed to the green one and said, 'Same again,' as casually as I could. The heady liquor squirted into the glass and I gulped. I was only just of an age to drink legally, and I was finding it pretty hard work keeping myself on an even slime trail. But I wasn't going to let the Slagbelly know that. Uh huh, NO way. It was bad enough having him poke fun about... well, not ever having ... you know what.

I had to keep my tentacles up. I had to look as if I was almost a Slagbelly at least. I downed the Bovinadary's green glupe and eyed my tormentor up and down. I willed at least a few of my eyes to focus as the walls of the bar slid around my head, and everything seemed to melt into a swirling mess.

I could feel my tongue rasping in my main oral cavity. I longed to grate the odious creature's skin away from his smug jaws and crawl all over his breathing spiracles and block them all up with my blackest viscous fluid. That'd larn him! Then I'd pick his scales off his gleaming back, one by one, and use them as toothpicks as I slapped my abdominal segments across his eyes so he'd be helpless and have to call me 'sir!' Oh, I could see it all now ... ! Just let me at him!

But then, I wondered, just how long it would take me to squirm across to his side of the room in my rather tightly segmented skin. A lot longer than he would take to trail out of the door on his nice smooth slagfoot. He could move at least twice as fast as I could, even though he was six times my size and a lot less compact.

He grinned back at me with one of his mouths while another burped and a third puffed at the tube of a highly illegal smoke-pot.

My blood boiled! I may be a kid, but I was a sentient being-of sorts, and I deserved to be treated with respect. One day I was going to be a Slagbelly too, and a lot cooler one than this lime-green lump of gelatinous spewage in front of me.

With a little effort I pulled my segments together and made the room stay more or less upright. I was sober and in control and I was going to prove it! I was going to make a statement about equality for all life forms and especially pre-Slagbelly life stages. I would be a hero. I would start the anti-anti-Chrysaloidist movement. Me! I was going to do it all by myself! No mucous-trailing, three mouthed non-segmented Slagbelly was going to mess with this Chrysaloid!

I puffed myself up to the full stretch that my segments would take, and immediately regretted it. I felt sick. I let the air out of my spiracles rather too fast and huge, bright blue slime bubbles popped noisily all along my laterals. To say that this is a faux pas in polite society is an understatement. Even the Bovinadary looked shocked. She blushed a rather delicate shade of puce and started polishing glasses very hard.

But worst of all, the Slagbelly was sniggering, as were a group of Grotworzals playing a shifty game of 'hock-a-loogy' in the corner.

The Bovinadary put the glasses she was polishing away, and waddled across to where I was standing. 'If you can't behave, sonny, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm very sorry, but it clearly says up there, "No bubble blowing".' She pointed to a notice written in six intergalactic languages slung by rather rusty hooks above the bar. I had noticed it, but so what? One doesn't exactly expect to start blowing off just like that. I did have some cool after all, I wasn't ignorant like ... well, them.

I apologised, and covered up the popping noise of a small unexploded bubble with a discrete cough. 'Sorry ma'am.' I pushed a half rotten cabbage leaf across the counter and nodded in the direction of the Slagbelly. 'I'll have what he's having. Keep the change.'

The Bovinadary raised a dark eyebrow and mooed. 'Are you sure? That's one hell of a drink for a youngster.'

'I'm sure,' I managed to direct all three sets of eyes at the bar tender's kindly face.

She shook her horns and put a purple teat on the bar top. 'Hold that glass still, sonny. It'll burn right through the titanium surface if it spills.'

I gulped, closed my eyes, and poured the liquid over my rasp-tongue.

The next thing I remember was waking up outside on the green sand with the two suns shining down from the orange sky above. The suns were swimming around rather fast in all sorts of directions at once. My head hurt and I was very sick from all three primary orifices. The Bovinadary was standing over me, and once the stuff had stopped coming out, she tutted and started squirting a pale golden slime from one of her teats into a glass.

'Get that down you sonny,' she said, putting it on the ground next to me. 'You can pay me for it later.'

'It's awake!' roared a nearby voice. I tried to focus a few eyes and wondered why the Slimebellies seemed so bendy and wobbly in the middle and why the ground was going up and down ... up and down ... up and ... I threw up again, and another Slagbelly laughed and slapped me on the back. 'Get up sonny, then go back to you egg chamber and your Mummy. You're too young to be out alone. You ought to stick to hive-jelly for a bit yet I think.'

I blinked first one set of eyes, then another. Things seemed to be settling down a bit. The ground stayed where it was supposed to, and the suns went back into the sky. I began to be able to breathe again. I let my tentacles sprawl in the sand as I tried to think clearly. I decided to get up slowly -- just in case I fell over. Dignity might just be maintained that way. I lifted my eyes and scanned the sand. I didn't want to roll in my own puke! Then my aortic pumping mechanisms began to falter--Slimebellies everywhere! I was surrounded by hundreds of them! And I didn't have a friend anywhere. Even the kindly Bovinadary was walking back inside to tend her bar, her udders swaying as she loped across the sand.

'Cummon sonny!' one of them dribbled. 'Your Mummy will be wondering where you are. We don't want her to know her cutsy-wootsie little Chrysaloid's been under-age drinking, do we?'

Suddenly I was really angry. I'd show those wretched Slimebellies who was a Chysaloid and who was a Nymph-Worm. They'd see! I wriggled upright, and rasped the slime drool from around my spiracles. I breathed as deeply as my tight skin would allow, then I flexed my tentacles, not caring whether my slime popped-bubbled or not.

This was war!

But it was then it happened. Suddenly there was the most awful splitting sound you could ever imagine and I found I could flex my body and move like I had never moved before. It was like slime-blading. It was cool. I mean really cool. Suddenly I was on top one of the wretched creatures, with alacrity I had never guessed possible. And as for flexibility... It was unbelievable. I could really bend and wriggle. Within seconds, I was twisted around the wobbly flesh of the Slagbelly and had my rasp fixed on his middle tentacle in a fearsome grasp that threatened to skin him in one lick.

I had him beat!

But instead of fighting back--he was laughing and spewing slime in every direction, popping bubbles like crazy. They all were! The wretches!

'How dare you!' I yelled, 'Come on then, if you think you're all so clever, I'll see to the lot of you at once if I have to!'

'Well done!' my enemy yelled from under my twisted tentacles. 'You've done it! Congratulations! Come and have a drink.'

'Yeah! Well done!' they all joined in. 'We'll all buy you one! You'll be seeing twenty suns before the day's out!'

I lowered my head and tightened my grasp. I did not like being mocked. But at the same time, I swung a few eyes this way and that to see if I could work out what they were taking about.

'You've split your skin chum. You're a Slagbelly!'

I peered down and saw a smooth expanse of delicate purple scales with a fine luminous green mucous glimmering on the surface. I could hardly believe it. Just behind me was a yellowy, papery-looking pile of old skin. I must have puffed myself up so much, it actually happened! I'd become a proper Slagbelly. I was one of them!

I slid from my prey, in a rather embarrassed way and tried to laugh too. But I didn't feel like it. I wanted to crawl back into my egg-chamber and find my Mummy. Not that she had been there since the day she had laid me and my several thousand brothers and sisters. But it didn't stop me wanting.

'Come on chum, lighten up!' the first Slagbelly slapped a tentacle across my thoracic laterals. 'If we hadn't made you really angry you'd have never split your skin. You're one of us now! You're a Slagbelly! Now, let's see what that gorgeous Bovinadary has in her other teats. There's a nice little one she has hidden on one of her back udders, it knocks your slime into a puce pink like you'd never believe!' and he wrapped a second friendly tentacle around my dorsa and slithered back into the bar with me.

On the way we passed a small Chrysaloid wriggling alone with its segments all covered in green sand. 'Oi, grow up and get some slime, Nymph-Worm!' we jeered.

The pathetic little creature rattled its rasps at me and puffed itself up, but its skin wasn't at all tight yet.

'Yah boo!' I jeered. 'You ain't never dun it!'

Elsewhere on the web:

• Beth Webb at Amazon (US) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).
• Find out all about Beth and her work at www.bethwebb.co.uk.