From the Belly of the Beast

We had baths last night. I like to think of myself as clean; my hair has the nuances of green grass, clean sand and fresh herbs, so I've been told. People finger my hair and burrow their noses into my curls with no worry of offending their senses. Inigo is another story, I wonder if he was at the root of last nights bathing. Dung Bug's hygiene is always suspect; his tongue has shared space with dead animals and he sometimes poops wrappers. Mom claims to recall my own green glitter poop and some long ago incident with Easter chocolates and their foils, I doubt her potentially flawed memories as I don't share the same.

Beetle's smell is neutral most days but he does have a radar for refuse by which I mean; anything the universe is trying to throw away by means of noisome, noxious, decaying stink. Where I roll in sun glistened sands he rolls in the nearest stray crab leg. Where I taste the dew moistened grasses plucked from the rich earth, Inigo puts his polluted maw around sun baked shellfish and sucks out their rot. When Inigo Rolls in a meadow's grasses or feels the Beach's baked sands run through his hair it's because something foul lurks below his feet and he has urge to be part of it's foulness. I, on the other hand, smell of all that's carried on the air so when I race, my feet flying a little black blur of me, past those standing still, they wonder, is it Ricky or is it the wind.

Inigo's first bath was hilarious. I watched it all unfold from behind the bathroom door with both unabated glee of his situation and fear of my own possibilities. Make no mistake I was ready to run if Mom decided I needed washing too.

Mom plopped Beetle in the bath tub which is a big, old, chipped monster with a silver draining mouth that consumes all the water that flows inside. It's four dismembered clawed feet must have been gripping tight to iron balls when they were separated from their real legs and reattached Frankenstein style to the belly of the tub. While watching as Mom scrubbed Inigo soundly with peppermint soap I wondered what ever became of the rest of the animal that is now our bath tub. Did they use other parts of him like the teeth and stomach or just it's feet?

Each time Mom released one scrubbing hand from Inigo, he shot over the white curled lip of the bath, Mom with sure reflexes, would catch him midair and stuff him back into the baths chipped white belly. Desperate with wide eyed pent up energy he waited each moment to deploy those little springs and propel himself to freedom. I enjoyed the spectacle and snickered under my breath at his circumstances. However my attentions towards Beetle were my own misfortune; no sooner had Mom finished him when she plucked me off the floor with that same quickness of reflex she'd recently displayed and stuffed me into the tub. Consumed, I waited to be slathered with the soap. The hollow beast with it's gripping claws held fast to the linoleum as it sucked down the water it was being fed. I dared not move for fear of swirling into it's gaping mouth along with the peppermint soap and Inigo's dirt and fleas. I tried to adopt an expression of detached boredom as Dung Bug looked on; wet, smelling of bath, eyes wide like saucers unable to look away. No sooner had my bath begun when I was regurgitated from the belly of the beast, dried with a big fluffy towel and released to sweet freedom.

I shook the remaining water from my coat starting from my head and ending with my tail. Inigo grabbed my bare leg in his mouth like he was the tub beast. He may have spooked me a little, I turned quick and gave chase through all the rooms of the flat, barking to him that I was the great, white, chipped creature from the bathroom, ripped from the floor I was coming to get him with my great clawed feet, stuff him between my silver lips, chomp and swallow him in my belly and then burp up his peppermint bones. Inigo ran fast across the wood floors his feet a flurry of clicking nails and turned up paper and toys, to my delight.