Michaelishious - Vol. 2020

Dec. 6th: Pink elephants and owls

Once upon a time there was an elephant living on the savanna. That might sound quite ordinary to you, but I assure you this particular elephant was one of a kind. He was special, he was pink, and his name was Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, Michael wasn't as happy as he deserved to be. Obviously, the color of his skin made him different from the others elephants, and we all know that being different in many cases leads to bullying and being pushed away. Though you'd believe it would be hard to push around such a large animal, it was surprisingly easy with Michael since he was so humble and polite. Even the smallest mice who lived in the neighborhood could be really mean to him, and he didn't do anything back. They even spread a rumor that Michael was a runaway lab elephant because of the rather unusual color, just like their mouse cousin who had babies with curly tails and long, woolen ears.

Of course Michael wasn't a mutant lab elephant. If anything, he would be the scientist in that lab, because he was ridiculously smart. Still, we all know what happens when elephants are in small areas with lots of windows, glass walls and laboratory glassware in general. Catastrophe! But in Michael's case, nothing happened at all. And do you know why? He was too busy keeping the glass clean with his trunk, because that's just how Michael was; a perfectionist.

Michael used to live with his family at the eastern part of the savanna, but was now just drifting along without really belonging anywhere. Nobody wanted to be seen with a pink elephant. And to make matters worse; the sound he made with his trunk wasn't the usual trumpeting, like normal elephants made. No, it always came out sounding like an 'ow', that either made other animals laugh or they'd get so startled that they blindly ran off in search of somewhere to hide.

So yeah, Michael kept to himself and tried to make as little sound as possible. And eventually he left the savanna to live alone in the jungle, just to keep from bothering anyone.

One night Michael was asleep, he dreamed of a future girlfriend. One who didn't mind that he was pink, and who would make him stop feeling so lonely and sad all the time. It felt so real that he thought he heard someone talking to him. He even tried to say a few words, which turned out to be a whole lot of embarrassing gibberish that made him blush in his sleep. And he blushed so hard that he illuminated the dark air around him as if he was a little moon. Yet the real, large one was dangling on the night sky above his head when he opened his eyes.

The dream faded away, and the familiar feeling of loneliness washed over him until he frowned. The voice he'd heard in his dreams was still there.

"Hello?" he asked quietly to no one, a bit scared to wake up whoever was sleeping nearby. He got no answer. Not right away, at least.

"Typical," he muttered and tried to go back to sleep. But then he felt something soft brushing past his leg and a sharp sting on one of his toes.

"Ow!" he exclaimed, and almost cursed for not being able to make any other sounds than just that. Then he yelped when he felt it the second time. It wasn't imagination. Something was really there, and it was pecking on his toes!

Michael was suddenly wide awake and jumped to the side, trying to get away from whatever monster that was trying to eat him. Then he tripped on his own trunk and crashed into a tree, before he fell over a couple of bushes.

"Hey! Find your own bed, ass-hat!"

"Are you insane?! Are you trying to kill my entire family?"

"I'm gonna tell your momma about this!"

"You stepped on my taaaaiiiil, buuu-hu-huu...!"

Those, and many more angry outbursts were what he heard as he tried to get back on his feet again, apologizing to all the meerkats, ants and snakes who all scurried away from him. Especially an antelope who was protecting her little calf. Trying to explain to a furious mother, who just managed to get her baby to sleep, that you didn't mean to hurt them by almost stepping on them, with all of your 5746 kilos...