What Became of Tom Thumb?

By Arlen Lawson

Would five dollars get your attention, ladies? Well, how about ten? 354-9374

Old Lady Serenity, of the blue and yellow hair, screamed. She was very upset with us for stealing her brand new puppy. She had no proof that we had stolen her brand new puppy, had no proof that we had taken it to Derek’s house, where it would receive the kind of love that it could never have received at Old Lady Serenity’s house. But somehow, she knew. She’s like this, heartless old Bitch, who doesn’t even care about this little dog. Yeah, I said it before and I will continue to say it. That little puppy, which we named Lovable, on account of how lovable it was, could never have received anything but withered love from that withered old woman. I always suspected that and it was proved to me when I asked her if we could give her puppy a better home than a dried up old hag could and and and she said no. So, yeah we stole her puppy. And I am not ashamed. But she didn’t have to scream like that.

Lights Down Lights Up

We took yellow candles. We lit their wicks and poured them out, drip by drip onto the fire hydrant. We sculpted. We burned ourselves a bit, but only pleasantly, only the burn of hot candlewax falling onto fingers like mine. It took us a solid month to finish and about a million candles, but in the end, we’d sculpted ourselves a midget, entirely out of candlewax.

How we got the candles:

There was the three of us, Derek, Cheech and me. Cheech’s real name is Addam Barret Chance. He got his nickname Cheech when in Junior High he spent an entire unfortunate day singing that he was “Born in East LA” and that “Kawasaki Ninjas” were coming to “save the day.” Derek’s real name is Derek. So, it was the three of us, Derek, Cheech and Me, and we all went into Wal-Mart together, shoved a candle each down our pants and came out making small talk about our massive erections. Then we’d throw the candles in the back of Derek’s car and head immediately back in for more candles. We did that nonstop for seven hours.

Lights Down Lights Up

What we did with the candles:

Built a midget out of a fire hydrant over the course of a month.

But I already told you about that.

THEN! Then, we splashed the bottom of Old Lady Serenity’s house with as much gasoline as we could fit into three iced tea pitchers, and she peered out at us as we did it, same as she’d peered out at us as we’d built the wax midget, with her eyes so big, lit a yellow candle and flung it at the house, and when the fire trucks came around and hooked up their hose, it looked for all the world as though Serenity’s house was being peed on by a ridiculously well hung yellow midget.

And Derek, Cheech and I sat in folding chairs in the middle of the street, watching the yellow and the red and the burn of it all. And lovable was there, scampering about on the asphalt, and we’d each take turns petting the little puppy, who would, of course, lick at our fingers.

One more thing that happened was that an upstairs window opened. And I saw Old Lady Serenity of the Blue and Yellow hair up there, on fire. And, you know, she didn’t even seem to care. And I picked Lovable up and I showed her to him, and I said to him, “Now, do you really think somebody who doesn’t even care that she’s on fire could ever have given you the love you deserved and Lovable made a little bark at the fire, as though he were saying, “Burn, you heartless old crone, burn!”

And I gave Lovable a high five.