PodCastle 212: Squonk and the Lake Monster
Show Notes
Rated G
Squonk and the Lake Monster
by P.M. Butler
Sometimes, you don’t realize how bad a bad idea _really_ is until your best friend is suddenly plummeting head over ringtail to his certain death.
Squonk and Slowfingers had been playing catch–well, _trying_ to play catch. You see, Squonk was a dragon, and his best friend Slowfingers was a raccoon. They were both apprentices to a wizard named Wendel. They liked hanging around each other, but there wasn’t a lot they could _do_ together. Unlike most of Squonk’s other friends, Slowfingers didn’t have wings; and unlike Slowfingers’ other friends, Squonk had to be very careful to not step on him.
But according to Wendel, being a wizard didn’t mean you ran away and hid from problems; it meant grabbing your problems and showing those problems who’s boss. So Squonk had come up with the idea of playing a nice game of catch.
It worked like this: Slowfingers would pick an acorn, and throw it as hard as he could–from the top of a tall tree, since his throws needed the head start. Squonk would try to watch the teeny tiny acorn as it bounced off leaves and branches and stick out his paw where he thought it would land. After inspecting his paw carefully to confirm he’d missed, Squonk would set another acorn in his paw and use a talon on his other paw to flick it at Slowfingers. If he was lucky, he’d get it somewhere near the tree Slowfingers was in, and Slowfingers could watch it go by.
This was every bit as frustrating and not-fun as it sounds.
About the Author
Pete M. Butler
Pete M. Butler is a writer from Pittsburgh. He penned the popular Squonk stories that began on Escape Pod and found their way to PodCastle.
About the Narrator
Wilson Fowlie
Wilson Fowlie lives in a suburb of Vancouver, Canada, and has been reading stories out loud since the age of four. He credits any talent he has in this area to his parents, who are both excellent at reading aloud. He started narrating stories for more than just his own family in late 2008, when he answered a call for readers on the PodCastle forum. Since then, he has gone on to read dozens of stories for PodCastle, as well as all of the other Escape Artists ’casts, and many other fiction podcasts all over the web. He does all this narrating when not reading copy for corporate videos, and acting in local theatre productions.
