Elfquest

The day started uneventfully. That might have been a clue--you know what they say, that cheesy cliché: "It's quiet, too quiet." It was discovered later that he didn't even eat his breakfast, the poor bastard.

A friend betrayed him. Not at first. At first it was the usual hubbub, the coffee machine decanting and the sounds of the Elf's roommate showering. It wasn't until his roommate began shoving him into the tiny plastic and wire cage that he suddenly realized something was amiss. He yowled and struck out, landing a solid blow on his roommate's nose that his roommate wouldn't even notice had drawn a tiny bead of blood for hours. But he went in the cage, inevitably. And the cage moved, swung from one level to the next, into the caverns below where the bright green monster cowered silently in the darkness. He quivered in fear as they approached, his roommate consummating the treachery by prying open one of the green monster's maws to shove the cage inside.

The monster rumbled and roared. Our hero trembled inside its pale guts, too terrified to even look for a means of escape, too frightened and wounded by his roommate's nefarious acts to do more than occasionally call out. The strangest, most terrifying thing during this horrible interlude was the fact that over the rumble of the beast's innards and the roaring outside the beast's armored hide he could hear music, music playing inside the beast. What did he make of it? What could he make of it?

The cage was disgorged from the beast. But his heroic journey was not done, no. The hero must suffer, must be a martyr during the mid-point of his labors and this heroic quest was no different. The Elf was dragged into the chrome-decorated torture rooms where he was poked and humiliated. Much of the time he was left in a steel cage with only a bowl of water, to suffer in silence--or so he thought, thought he was suffering. He discovered it was worse when he was dragged from the cage to be poked and prodded. They stole his blood for their arcane rituals and injected him with the plagues that devastated so many of his race. They even studied his shit, as if there were some obscure signs to be divined through arduous copromancy, and took his urine for some dark rite.

The traitor returned that evening. He spoke to the Elf's captors in their strange tongue.

"Elvis looks really good," the lead torturer announced to the betrayer in their foul and clumsy language, "we gave him his three-year and we took some blood, which we should have back in a couple of days, we'll let you know if there's anything. Also, you've done a really good job with his weight, he's lost three pounds since we last saw him, I'm really pleased with that."

"It's that 'catkins' diet you recommended last year," the conniving roommate simpered. The Elf didn't understand a word of it. He stared out through the wires of his cage at the other prisoners, perhaps wondering if he could forge some alliance with the wounded and frightened inmates of the prison. He heard his roommate add, though he didn't understand a word, "Oh, she said something about a teeth-cleaning on the phone?"

"There's a little bit of tartar buildup," the torturer said, "and he's old enough for his first cleaning."

The Elf's heart soared with hope as he was finally taken outside the prison! But no! There was the green monster, lying in wait with its hunched back and black paws! The Elf was devoured again!

But strange: this time the journey ended not in some new place of horror, but a familiar one--the cave in which the green beast slumbered. The Elf began to push himself at the wires of the cage, searching for some weak point. And at last he found it! His cage was taken into the familiar lands of the Elf, his domain where he was the master, and suffered the treacherous roommate to take his meals and make his coffee and sleep on the Elf's vast bed! And here, at last (with no help from the still-treacherous roommate, who was obviously distracted and certainly didn't use his misshapen paws to unfasten the latches of the cage), the Elf pushed free and escaped the confines of his trap. Freedom! And revenge to follow. The hero, triumphant, returned to his homeland, the heroic quest complete!

Little could the Elf-cat realize he's going right back to the vet next Monday for that teeth-cleaning.

Our triumphant hero rests after his arduous journey through Hell and back.

Update 06-11-2008: Had a message from the vet when I got home. Nothing bad, quite the contrary: who has normal blood? Who has normal blood? Yes he does! Yes he does!