Walter

RUMBLING BUMBLES

Walter wondered if he'd looked like that coyote in the Saturday morning cartoons, hovering midair for a second or two before falling down the cliff's side.

He looked up at the point where his feet had last felt the earth beneath them, a small tuft of grass was the only indication that the cliff was there. He was happy that the cliff itself hadn't been a thousand feet high with him falling down into a vast gorge and disappearing into a tiny dot as he fell, vanishing in a puff of smoke when he hit the ground.

He was glad that the initial drop was but a few feet and that instead of empty space to fall down into, it had been replaced with a slope of stones.

Now at the base of the slope and resting against his backpack, he regarded the uncomfortable tumbling down the slope as being much more enjoyable than what could surely have been a sudden splat at the end.

Wondering where he was, he let his head drop back to look at the world from a different perspective. His eyes unfolded themselves to look out over another sea, although from this angle the sea was the sky. The sea was a beautiful bright blue populated by the occasional white island that effortlessly floated by.

I wonder if this is how birds look at the world, he thought.

A vast blue ocean, shifted out from beneath him as far as he could see. His sky was shades of grey, populated by funny black and yellow beasts drifting along his vision.

He could tell that the beasts were actually dump trucks and loaders, but from this angle they looked more like large bumblebees and feeding wasps that were dancing around in his grey sky.

It looked as if there where more bumbles then there were wasps. Many travelled across the grey sky with empty bellies to disappear around a corner, only to reappear afterwards with full bellies.

The Feeding Wasps had long front pinchers that reached out and would grab parts of the sky. They would then turn to one of the waiting Bumbles and lower their arms under its belly to pour the load in.

He watched this happen again and again as he rested there. An empty Bumble would come from one direction and a full one would travel the other way. The Wasps would dance around the Bumbles, pouring pieces of the sky into them.

Another Feeder Wasp appeared and turned towards him, soon it had gotten so close that all Walter could see was its great wide mouth.

He quickly got up and moved out of the way as the loader plunged itself into where he'd been resting. He watched as it lifted the stones high above as it backed away from the slope and then turned towards him.

Not wanting to be trampled, he turned to escape but was confronted with one of the dump trucks that was backing up to the slope and blocking his exit.

A great shadow cast itself over him as he watched the loader make its way to the dump truck and dump its load of stones. Walter ran under the loader to avoid being crushed between the two.

The growls these two beasts made were almost more than he could handle. He covered his ears to help muffle the sound but it only made them sound like thunder.

When the loader started to move, he walked along with it. When it stopped, its body suddenly bent itself to one side. When it started to move again, he made sure he wouldn't be crushed under its large wheels.

Again it plunged into the slope and returned to the waiting truck to unload its cargo. He decided to stay under it for a while until he felt there was enough of a pause in the loader's activities to escape.

When the moment came he darted out from under it, only to almost get run over by another dump truck as it backed up. With limited options he chose to run up the slope of stones in an attempt to avoid being flattened.

Trying to climb up the stone slope wasn't as easy as he thought it might be. Now that the loader had removed a section of the slope, the slope itself was trying to refill the hole that had been made.

He hadn't made it up more that a few feet when the loader returned to claim another section of slope. This time it claimed Walter as it scooped him up with the stones. He fell to the back of the loader's bucket and watched as it backed away from the slope and turned to face the dump truck.

It raised him above the truck and tilted its bucket to dump him out. Walter attempted to stay in the bucket for as long as he could. If he fell out first he would surely be crushed by the stones. There was nothing to hold onto in the loader's bucket and when the last of the stones fell, he fell with them. He moved himself to the front of the dump truck to make sure he wouldn't be crushed should another load of stones be poured in.

Unprepared, he stumbled backwards when the truck started to move. Curious as to what was going on, Walter ventured to take a peek over the truck's edge. He watched as more dump trucks wandered around the grey landscape. Some empty, others with full bellies. There were more of them than the loaders and Walter watched as they danced around each other and the landscape.

When his ride came to a sudden stop, he was grateful his backpack had taken the brunt of the impact as he slammed against the truck's side.

He watched as they backed up towards an unknown destination. The truck started to lift itself up into the air and when the stones started to fall out the back, a horrible crushing sound could be heard.

A large funnel was catching the stones as they fell out the back. Two large drums lined with large blocked teeth were crushing the stones. Another set of smaller drums turned just below the larger ones and was crushing the stones to even smaller pieces.

He didn't like where this was going and he could no longer keep himself against the truck's wall. He was sliding down with the stones and he knew it would only be a few more moments before he and the stones would be one.

In an attempt to avoid being crushed, he ran out the back of the truck and jumped. He hoped he had gotten enough momentum to clear the funnel's edge.

As the last stones fell with him, he closed his eyes.