All The Shiny Children

(post-titled by John)

Once upon a time there was a elf named Bob. He was the prince of his kind, and he liked shiny things. Unfortunately, he occasionally got in trouble remembering which shiny things were his, and which ones belonged to someone else. This was why he was fighting to escape a large and enraged mushroom.

His current, most valued acquisition was a red-jeweled necklace made from the red bead discharged by the mushroom as ruby spores, unfortunately the mobile form of alien fungus he was currently dodging, considered its beads as children and would protect them with all its spores. Cursing under his breath, and cursing the fungus and all of its shiny children, Bob ran from the mushroom. No time to cast a spell, but there was time for one thing. He did the next best thing. He stopped still, moving not a muscle. The mushroom, not to bright at the best of times, looked for a moving elf and totally missed seeing Bob. Bob's stillness was far too attractive to Ivy, a multi-tentacled, inter-dimensional, parasitic space patrol agent on vacation, who found Bob to be totally spastic, but much to her liking. She decided this was the day that she would actually help a human, so she took out her death ray and blasted the mushrooms into oblivion. She then looked at Bob and said, "Marry me." Bob ran off screaming. Feeling more than a little frustrated, she aimed her death ray at the nearest wall and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all, in fact. Bob was frozen in mid-flight, as was a nearby fly.

"Oh dear. I guess that was the wrong ray," she grumbled.

"Ohh well!" she ran over and kidnapped Bob. Then she forcibly married him until he used her death rays to kill her in her sleep. Then he lived happily ever after until the necklace made of all the mushroom's shiny children hatched and ate him alive. So he died.

The end!