My Nightmare, Part 5!!!!!

So the Egg, he left me alone in the empty treasure vault. Dark. Empty. Scary. All of my treasures taken - and some right from under my nose! It was actually really, really scary. The vault is so far underground that I could hear the spooky sounds of the earth groaning and grinding all around me. With no light and no watch and no clock and no clocktower and no radio and no television the time just C-R-A-W-L-E-D by.

In a half sleep I suddenly snapped awake when the gears that controlled the massive doors began to turn. The room (the vault) was FLOODED with bright white light and the Egg King was carried in on his portable throne. “I still don’t believe that this cave of your’s is going to be that special but I am willing to let you show it to me. But believe me, if I am disappointed you will pay!”

Now it was my turn to play this egg’s game. “Now that you mention it,” I said, “it’s probably no better than all of the millions of other caves you’ve visited. I mean you have visited millions of caves, right?” The egg shifted nervously on his throne. “Why of course you have, silly me,” I continued, “caves with fantastic stalagmites and stalactites, caves with underwater lakes and eyeless fish, caves with glowing walls and roofs, caves filled with incredible art on the walls drawn by artistic cave men and women, caves with buried pirate treasure hidden in them, caves full of forgotten Nazi gold, caves that have been mysteriously lost and found again and again over the years. I’m sure all of these things are just old hat for you old Egg boy.”

Rex Ovum Mundi sat in silence on his silly little throne. “Of course I have,” he said after a spell, “of course I’ve visited a million caves with all of those things. But actually,” he went on, “I haven’t quite visited one million caves. In fact, I am stuck at 999,999 and with just one more I will hit a million and be the most famous egg spelunker in history!”

“Really!,” I shouted, “then we really must go! I would love for MY cave to be the one millionth you’ve visited! Quick, untie me and let me lead the way!” The Egg was crafty. Rather than setting me free he had his troops lift my chair (with me in it!) and began to carry it out of the vault. It took ages. Eggs are very small.

They loaded me into their oddly egg-shaped ship of the sky and flew me the short distance to the clearing near the cave. The struggled to get me out of the small ship and onto the ground.

With much huffing and puffing the eggs finally reached the entrance to the cave. “Well,” I said to Rex, “this is awfully exciting! Your one millionth cave! Let’s go!”

Down, down, down we went. Down a long long shaft. Through long long caverns. Down steep steep tunnels. We reached the GOLDEN DOOR and I suddenly realized my mistake. “Wait a second,” I started to say, “you were trying to get me to bring you here all along! You rotten egg!”

Rex Ovum Mundi cackled like a crazed hen. “Oh my my my Andy Lam,” he said, “you are one dim bulb! Of course this was my goal. I’ve never said it wasn’t. In fact, I’ve said all along that I wanted to get into your cave to steal the Orange Egg of Supra Ovo Regno! Now open this door and let me at it!”

I was aghast and ashamed! I’d been fooled by an egg. Yes, it’s true that he was no mere egg but the Egg King of the World. But I’m ANDY LAM and that means something by gum! As the eggs stood staring at me with the tiny little torches I realized that I was at the end of my line. There was nothing I could do at this point but sit silently waiting to die. It make take years, I thought, but I am not going to let the egg win!

I thought this with a steadfast heart but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. At a word from their evil leader, the eggs began flinging themselves at me in a pelting storm of shells. As these warriors dashed themselves against me I was soon covered with their dripping whites and yokes. The horror was indescribable! I felt my resolve weakening. As the eggs continued to crack against me, I began to crack as well! I wouldn’t be responsible for this terrible and wanton loss of life.

“Stop!” I cried, “stop! I will let you in! You may have the Orange Egg just stop this useless carnage!” At a word from ROM, the eggs stopped the onslaught. I was untied and led to the golden door. I hesitated for a moment and as I did another egg smashed into the back of my skull. I could feel the still warm entrails run down by spine. I opened the door.

A cheer went up from the eggs and they surged past me into the tabernacle. Like the tide they came, wave after wave into the small room that held the Orange Egg. Rex Ovum Mundi reached out and grasped it in his tiny tiny hands. “MINE!” he shouted, “ALL MINE!”

Everything after that is a blur. Eggs screaming and dashing about in a frenzy. Torches blazing. A malevolent egg doctor looming toward me with a syringe dripping some awful green drug from its sharpened tip. The sudden jab of pain as he drove the needle into my skin. The room and cave spinning around me. Falling . . .

Falling . . .

    Falling . . .

And then it was daytime and I was laying between the cool white sheets of my infirmary. My medical team was there monitoring me from moment-to-moment. I was groggy. I was befuddled. I was confused. I was safe though and in my compound and there was not a single egg in sight. I started to speak. Nurse Dan put a finger to his lip and shushed me. “Not now, Mr. Lam, you need to rest.”

I didn’t argue with him. Instead I let myself drift back to sleep.

That was a week ago. I am finally starting to feel myself again. I know that all of my treasure is gone and that I will need to amass another gigantic fortune before I can undertake fresh adventures - and track down that awful awful egg! It will be done, however, it will be done!

With a festering egg-hate growing deep inside me, I am . . .

ANDY LAM!

My Nightmare, Part 4!!!!

The Cave!

Rex and the eggs left me alone in the dark and empty vault for what felt like hours! As I learned later, these miscreants were combing my compound looking for the Orange Egg of Supra Ovo Regno. They ransacked my rec room! They despoiled my den! They plundered my ponds! They scoured my silos! They searched my sun room! They ferreted through my foyer! They looted my loo! They probed my porches! They poked and peered and prodded and scoured and explored and scanned and rifled through every room in my palatial compound; but, of course, they found nothing!

Rex exploring - and ransacking - my compound!

The furious Egg King burst again into the empty treasure chamber and began screaming at me. “Where is it!” he thundered, “where is the holy egg relic which you have stolen!”

Rex Ovum Mundi turns red with rage!

His beady eyes narrowed. “It’s in the cave, I know it!” He had been looking for a map or a clue to find where the cave was located and how to get inside the cave to reach the treasure he believed he would find. Like you, Rex Ovum Mundi is a regular reader of my blog and so he was aware of two caves that I have explored. (These are the treasure cave he was looking for and the other the one I hid in to escape the EVIL.) He changed tactics and suddenly feigned indifference. “Oh well,” he said nonchalantly, “it’s no big deal if we can’t find the cave or the relic. I could hardly care less.”

I don’t know why, but I was convinced. In fact, I was more than convinced. I was suddenly upset that he wasn’t interested in my caves or my super secret and special treasure. “What just a gosh darn minute,” I said, “that cave is pretty darn cool and interesting!”

“Of course you would say that,” the Egg said, “it’s your cave so you have to say it’s cool and interesting. Meh. I’m starting to grow tired of this whole boring exercise.” Boring? Boring? How could anything remotely associated with me - ANDY LAM! - be boring? Impossible.

“Listen Egg,” I said, “I can show you the cave and you’ll see that it isn’t boring at all. In fact, it’s one of the most exciting caves on this planet! If you see it you’ll be amazed and flabbergasted by its wonders!” I was desperate for Rex Ovum Mundi to realize just how un-boring the cave was! “It’s not far from here,” I said, “it’s really no problem to bring you over.”

Rex Ovum Mundi stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I suppose,” he said, “if it’s not too far we could probably go over there some time for a little peek. I don’t know. I’ll have to sleep on it.”

And with that the Egg King turned off the lights in the treasure room and locked the door. Leaving me alone in the dark and wanting more than anything to convince this egg that my cave was really wonderful!

A view of my ruined treasure vault!

Frankly confused by my own behavior and motivation sometimes, I am . . .

ANDY LAM!

My Nightmare, Part 3!!!

Waking up with a hangover caused by being tricked into drinking the last two drops of cider made from the apple from the Garden of Eden and tied to a chair wasn’t the worst thing that happened to me that next day. Yes, my head was pounding like the minion blacksmiths of Vulcan (and his minion blacksmiths are nothing if not expert pounders!); no, the worst thing that next morning was to wake up in my treasure vaults and watching the eggs clear out all of my treasures!

I immediately regretted the fact that I had, inadvertently, disclosed the passcodes to all of the many locked and barred doors that protected my most valuable items, including the million pounds of gold - mostly gold bars but also some giant nuggets that I found when I was exploring some abandoned mines in South America once and the pile of rubies that is 10 feet tall and the pile of emeralds that is also 10 feet tall and all of the pearls in my fabled "pearl pit" which is like those really fun ball pits you see at amusement parks or fast food restaurant play areas; but instead of being filled with colorful plastic balls, this one is full of precious pearls and the mountain of Spanish doubloons that is so tall you need an oxygen mask to get to the top. I found these in a bunch of shipwrecks on the bottom of the ocean and the 1000 paintings by very famous painters, mostly they are on velvet which is such a wonderful material for really bringing art to life and the 10,000 suitcases full of money. All kinds of money (except doubloons, which I keep in a mountain) including French Francs, Deutsche Marks, Belgian Francs, Austrian Schillings, Maltese Lira, Greek Drachmas, Dutch Gulden, Cypriot Pounds, Irish Pounds, Portuguese Escudos, Estonian Kroons, Italian Liras, Slovak Korunas, Finnish Markkas, Latvian Lats, Slovenian Tolars, Lithuanian Litas, Spanish Pesetas and Luxembourgian Francs. This money alone is worth so much and the molten platinum in a vat and my collection of luxury fishing lures and my library of the most famous and rare books in the world and the very old food that is bound to be worth something and the very old clothing (mostly from the days of Ancient Egypt) that is bound to be worth something and my collection of vintage powerboats and my fleet of 20 747s (which the eggs had to disassemble to get out of the vault!), and the million bottles of the best wine in the world and the 99 bottles of beer on the wall (which they kept taking down, one by one, and passing around) and the gram of yslthayt (the rarest material in the universe. It hasn't been discovered by earth scientists yet and I had to promise not to show it to anyone for a super long time) and the other mountain of assorted gemstones. I don't know what they are but they are very shiny and very precious and every piece of mail I have ever received and copies of all of the mail I have ever sent, even all of my bills!

As I watch all of these treasure slowly drain away I noticed that Rex Ovum Mundi was becoming increasingly agitated. He was opening each bag of loot, each chest of treasure, each belt of money. I could tell he was searching for something - but what? What could this angry egg be after!?!?!

By dawn the following day, the vaults were bare. The room had been picked clean. There weren’t two coins left to rub together. Rex climbed to the top of a tall step ladder and attempted to loom over me (no small feat for an egg!). “Where is it, blast you,” he shrieked in his brittle little voice, “where is it,” he screamed again and again.

Not knowing what he was referring to I began to answer as best I could.

The Hudson Bay is in Canada. Mount Vesuvius is in Italy. The moon is in orbit around the earth. The goldfish are in the pond. The car is in the garage. The biscuits are in the oven. The children are in the playground. The cows are in the pasture. The passengers are on the platform. The police are at the station. The books are on the shelf. The cushions are on the couch. The pens are in the cup. The forks are in the drawer. The classes are in the main building. The spices are in the rack. The cars are in the garage. The airplanes are in the hanger. The fish are in the sea. The staples are in the drawer. The doilies are in the hutch. The rabbits are in the hutch (but not the same hutch as the doilies). The books are on the shelf. The music is on the stave. The smoke is in the chimney. The ball is in the glove. The frog is in the pond.

I went on and on like this from dawn to dusk, naming and placing some 45,000 items. None of them, however, was what Rex was looking for. He became red and angry again and I could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

“You know what I mean!” he finally shouted, “I’m not interested in your nonsense! Where is the Orange Egg of Supra Ovo Regno?!”

I pressed my lips together tightly and shook my head. The egg glared at me angrily. “Untie my hands,” I told him. The egg motioned to a few of his henchmen. They untied my right hand. I used it to zip my lips and I threw the invisible key far from my chair.

The egg was boiling mad! “You will crack,” he hissed, “you will crack.”

I just shook my head and sat in silence.

After a few hours Rex ran from the room and I was left king of my now stripped domain. Regardless of what this foolish egg might do to me, I was - and would remain and always will be . . .

ANDY LAM!

The #BeetTuesday posts will resume next week, I hope!

I AM IN A CAVE!

This is the CAVE I am in with my new and wonderful treasure.

I am in a cave. Right now. At this very moment. As I write these words I am deep, deep, deep beneath the ground. I am sure that right now, at this very moment, you are wondering why I am in a cave.

It is an excellent question.

I am in a cave - at this very moment - to protect a super wonderful treasure. I am sure you are thinking, right now, “why not store this treasure with all the rest of your treasure in your magnificent vaults?”

The answer is quite simple.

The treasure in this cave with me, right now, is so wonderful that it would make all of my other treasure pale in comparison. I love all of my treasure and don't want my current treasure to feel jealous.

So what is this wonderful treasure, you are probably wondering. So full of wonder!

I can't really say what it is; but I am allowed to provide clues. Hold on a moment, I need to double-check something - don't go anyplace!

Three clues. That's the max I can give you.

I am in this cave with a wonderful treasure and can give you three clues. Here's the first one:

• It is orange
• It is smaller than a lemon
• It weighs 5 ounces

There’s another clue I could give you but that would totally give it away. But there are some other things that aren’t clues that I can say. First of all, this wonderful treasure is something only a very small number of people on the earth have ever seen and most that do see it wish they hadn’t. When someone has this thing they are automatically given a prize and a special title that they keep as long as they have this thing.

While this thing has no moving parts it can be broken.

Sometimes - in the past - someone put this thing under a chicken to see if it would hatch. It didn’t, but the chicken was given a prize and a special title that it had for as a long as it was sitting on the egg. The nice thing about that chicken (and the reason it was chosen) was that it was not a bad or evil chicken. It was friendly and docile and always had a kind word for everyone it me.

One day, the chicken was out on a lake in a rowboat. It was a sunny summer afternoon and it spotted a small fish swimming under the water. The fish looked lost so the chicken stuck its head under the water and asked what was wrong. The fish told the chicken it was lost. The chicken told the fish that it had its phone and could look up directions. The fish gave the chicken the address and when the chicken punched it in it turns out it was right on the chicken,s way back to the dock. The fish and the chicken put some water into the boat (not enough to sink it of course) and the fish hopped right in Then the chicken started rowing again (which was harder with all of the water in the boat) until it was almost at the dock.

“Well, we’re here,” said the chicken, and pointed at the map on the phone. The fish smiled and said “thanks.”

“Before you go,” said the chicken, “I have a kind word for you. As ANDY LAM! said a few paragraphs ago, I have a kind word for everyone! You are the bravest and smartest fish I ever met!”

The fish blushed and jumped out of the boat and into the water. The chicken continued on to the dock, tied up and headed to its nest, where it found this small and wonderful orange treasure waiting to be sat on.

It’s that kind of wonderful and selfless thing that leads to this wonderful and mysterious treasure appearing in someone’s life - and now it has happened to me! It is just more evidence that I am among the most wonderful and special and mysterious and thoughtful and caring and kind and obedient and thrifty and brave and clean and reverent. There aren’t many people who can say that about themselves. I can. I have made it my life’s work to be one of “those” people, the kind of people everyone dreams of being - not just because I am smart and wealthy and attractive and witty and benevolent but because of the very nature of who I am.

Every fiber of my being is chuck full of wonderfulness and that is demonstrated again by my current presence in this cave, where I am right now - at this very moment - holding this most wonderful and mysterious treasure, one that makes even my own fabulous treasures pale in comparison.

Ever wonderful, I am . . .

ANDY LAM!

Look Out for EVIL!

The Bear, Before it Caught the EVIL! 

I have a dire warning for you all - there is this thing, this terrible, terrible thing called EVIL and it is out in the world and if you catch it it’s really really bad for you (and the people and things around you). Some people don’t believe in EVIL they say, “oh, that’s just a monkey throwing poop,” or “that’s just a clown,” or “killer bees aren’t really out to get you, even though you half remember a TV show from the 1970s that said something about Africanized bees and how they were going to be the scourge of America,” or “sure, the Nazis were not nice, but EVIL, c’mon!,” or “I didn’t mean to use the last sheet of toilet paper,” or “everyone makes a mistake sometimes,” or “it’s only lying if you get caught,” or “but everyone else is doing it!”

You see, there are several million excuses out in this big ol’ wide world of ours for doing bad things and a lot of them - in the millions - are totally valid. But there is something beyond bad behaviour and that is EVIL and it is something, as I said, that you can catch! I didn’t know you could catch it until I was sitting near a tree the other day, just watching a man cowering on a branch while a bear below him tried to shake the tree to shake the man out. Was the bear being a good bear or a bad bear? I decided to wait and watch to find out! The bear shook the tree but seemed to lose interest and began to amble away. Suddenly, I could see that something had happened to the bear!

It seemed to grow larger and its hair looked mean. Its eyes began glowing red and its teeth and claws grew extra long and sharp. Suddenly, the bear could speak! It raced back to the tree screaming that it had caught the “EVIL” and was going to eat that man in the tree right up! The man began screaming and sobbing. I tried to take notes of what he was saying but it was mostly incoherent gibberish. The bear stood on its hind legs and with a mighty roar toppled that tree right over and grabbed the man and ripped him to pieces - eating him just like he said he would!

Blood and fat and flesh were flying everywhere and the man’s pitiful screams were finally extinguished when the bear bit off his head with one great big bite. It was certainly something to see! I did feel bad for the man but I also felt bad for the bear. I think before it caught the EVIL it just wanted to play, like Winnie the Pooh! Once it got the EVIL it was more like that mean bear in that movie with that guy who was in that other movie about that boat that sank. (That boat was called the “Titanic” and it has a very sad story. It was sad, so sad, so sad when that great ship went down, down to the bottom of the sea. I hear that husbands and wives, tiny children lost their lives! It was sad when that great ship went down. A few years ago I was so moved by the story of that great ship sinking that I wrote a poem all about it. You can read it here if you are into history or poetry. It’s quite a beautiful poem if I do say so myself - and I do!)

So anyway, I watched as the EVIL bear finished its meal and began to walk back to my compound to digest what I’d seen (so to speak). But before I got there, I saw the EVIL zoom out of the bear (which started to cry when it realized what it had done!) and land right in a flower in a field. As soon as it got the EVIL the flower started to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. Soon it was like that plant in that story about a boy who sells a cow to get some magic seeds which he plants and it turns into a giant beanstalk that the boy can climb and when he does he hends up right up in the sky where he finds a giant’s  house filled with all kinds of treasures and he sees a bird that makes golden eggs and and steals the bird and climbs down the beanstalk as fast as he can because by now the giant has heard the bird chirping and he knows the boy is trying to steal the golden-egg-laying bird. The boy is too fast though and when he gets to the bottom of the beanstalk he puts a bunch of TNT around it and blows it up and the giang falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and lands on the ground so hard that he makes the Grand Canyon (and also dies).

“An EVIL flower?” I thought to myself, “This I have to see!” Fortunately, I had all of my mountaineering gear with me and in no time I was scurrying up the steep green sides of this giant flower. As the air got thinner I had to put on my oxygen mask in order to breathe! Up, up, up I went, up the side of the giant evil flower! When I got almost to the top I saw the flower open its giant mouth - full of fangs - and grab and airplane right out of the sky! It chomped up the airplane in just a few bites and the people on the airplane too (except for the ones that just fell out and fell and fell and fell. I didn’t see where they landed. I hope they were alright!) The flower’s fangs were all scratched up and there was blood on its lips. It was pretty scary to see so I started climbing down as fast I could!

When I got to the ground I was still scared! The flower was still up there and it was still EVIL and I was worried that it was going to bend over to eat me or some other people! Where was my darn TNT? It worked in that story that I mentioned above, the one about the Grand Canyon. I reached into my shirt pocket and found I had a bunch of TNT there so I put the TNT around the flower, lit the fuse and ran away as fast as I could.

There was a really big BOOM and the EVIL flower exploded into a million pieces. Uh oh! That was a big mistake! Each of those little pieces were like EVIL germs and I saw that everything they touched caught the EVIL (except me because I am different and special)! Birds, flies, bats, clouds, grass, coyotes, more bears, cars, water, a stick of gum, a dog, a cat, a mouse, a cow, a pig, a horse, a goat, a lamb, a road, a street light, a motorcycle, a mailbox, a flagpole, a diving board, a gas grill, a bird feeder, a can of water, some change, a cigarette butt, a bowling trophy, a can of RAID - all of these things - and many, many more - were suddenly sick with the EVIL.

I was still running - I knew my panic cave was near and if I could get there before any of the EVIL things caught me I would be safe. I saw the mouth of the cave! I saw an EVIL camel. It was heading right for me! I activated the jets on my ANDY LAM SUPERSHOES and zoomed right into the cave, slamming the boulder into place just before the EVIL camel crashed into it!

That was a few years ago I think and all I can hear from the outside world are terrible shrieks and screams! Things crashing and grinding and breaking! It sounds bad out there. I haven’t been able to raise anyone on the radio for a long time and I’m starting to worry that the EVIL is everywhere now. I feel bad about blowing up that flower, that’s for sure!

Anyway, if you are reading this maybe life is returning to normal. If it is, please email me at AndyLamSuperStar@gmail.com to let me know. I really do feel bad if the whole world got destroyed by EVIL because of my, but don’t worry, I think I have a good excuse!

The last good man standing, I am . . .

ANDY LAM!