Symmetry Novels

One day, Lena (pronounced “lay-na”) went out to play in the woods. Why did her mommy and daddy let her go out and play in the woods by herself? No one is really quite sure. But play in the woods alone she did. She played with the flowers, the rocks, and the trees. She played with the butterflies and the squirrels and the snakes and the bees. Lena played and played until she was very, very tired.

Lena sat on a rock by a pond to rest. She took off her shoes. Then she pulled off her socks. She dangled her short chubby toes in the water. She leaned over the bank of the pond to look at her pretty face in the water’s reflection. She smiled at herself and then daydreamed about being a princess.

Lena was suddenly startled by a big, ugly face staring back at her in the reflection. She held her breath in fright. The face was not only big and not only ugly, but it was right behind her. “Ugga!” the face blurted.

“Uuuggg!” Lena howled back as she jumped to her bare feet and turned around at the same time, almost stumbling into the pond. Now facing the face, she gaped at a slumped, wretched man with a tattered coat and patched-up pants. His scowling mouth graced the air with cavities and slime. He waved something in his hand. Something long and tan and made of wood. A bat. You know, the kind they use for baseball. Only the man didn’t look as though he wanted to play a game. Instead, he held up the bat over his grotesque head as if he was going to pound it on her sweet little noggin. “UGGA!” he squawked again. “UGGA SLUGGA BUGGA RUGGA!” It was a terrifying, strange sort of language. “Ugga slugga bugga rugga...and EEEDA!”

“Mommmmy,” Lena yelped as she lept for the bushes. She felt the prickly thorns scratch her arms and her tiny naked feet. She didn’t care. The terrible man was right behind her, swinging the bat wildly in the air, all the time screaming those horribly insane words. “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga! And eeeda!”

Faster and faster, she ran. She twisted her body sideways around a corner in what seemed to be a trail ahead. “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga! And eeeda!”. Thrusting forward at a frightening speed, she ducked a branch and lept over a log. The hideous man was catching up. “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga! And eeeda!”

Morbid curiosity made Lena want to glance back as she ran. The man had been so ugly, so horrid looking, that she just had to peek one more time. There he was, three footsteps behind, with bulging eyeballs and whiskers on his forehead, his scabbed nose bubbling with pimples and warts. And he just kept saying those stupid, rhyming words, “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga...”. Lena pushed her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear the rest. But the words came through loud and clear “...and eeeda!”

It must have been a rock or a lump or a frog. Whatever it was, Lena tripped. After a triple somersault or maybe two, she found herself dazed on the ground not far from a worn-down cabin, a baseball bat twirling uncontrollably in the air above her. “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga! And eeeda!” She covered her eyes, sure that her short puny life was ending at this very moment. No more candy. No more toys. No more playing alone.

But something happened. Or should I say NOTHING happened. That’s right, no pain nor bat nor sore little noggin. The man moved close to her face until she opened an eye. He whispered to her with his bad chili breath, “Ugga. Slugga bugga rugga...”. He nodded and grinned. “...And eeeda.”

“What’s that!?” Lena asked as she pushed herself away from the stink in his mouth. “What’s that you say? I don’t know what you mean.”. She picked herself up, and the man pressed the bat firmly into her hands. “Ugga!”. He became strangely excited as he pushed her towards the door of his cabin. “Slugga bugga rugga!”. He grinned again, the gap between his two front teeth quite wide with some stain in between. “And eeeda!”

Lena was even more confused as she gripped the baseball bat. It was wet and greasy where the man had been holding it. He kept nudging her towards the door of his broken-down home. She now stood over the rotting doormat and peered inside.

A quivering finger pointed past her, and the words gestured nervously, “Ugga! Slugga bugga rugga! And eeeda!”. She looked down towards the floor where the finger directed. “Ooooooooh! I see!” Lena squiggled, as she now understood while lifting the bat in her hand. High it went, with hands holding tight. She let fly the wooden club to the torn, dirty rug.

Oh, what a noise, the sounds that she heard! A SQUISH and a SPLAT and a THUD! You see, Lena had swung hard to squash a bug on the rug.

That’s right. In the middle of the ugly brown rug had been the most enormous and horrifying beetle never before seen on the entire earth. But no more. Not like it was. Now it was pieces and juice and a bit of green blood.

Lena smiled and then chortled and then turned to the man. “Uugggg! I see what you mean. You needed someone brave like me to slug that bug on the rug.”

The man’s deformed eyes came alive as he galloped on in, carefully tiptoeing past the flat bug on the rug. He grabbed some things from a drawer and ran back with his face even closer to hers. He smiled, and a wormy tooth showed through. “Ugga. Slugga bugga rugga,” he respectfully said.

The words were clear to her now; the language not quite so strange. But wait a minute! That wasn’t all. What was that final word the man had said? What was it? Lena couldn’t quite place it. “And EEEDA!” the man squirted out as he raised a crusty, stained spatula to the front of her nose.

“What?” Lena thought, not believing the words. But yes, the man raced over to the rug and used a spatula to scrape up the bug onto the plate. All the pieces and juice and a bit of green blood. He pushed the disagreeable plate at her and squealed again with delight. “Eeeda!” he said to his new friend who had hunted the food. “Eeeda!”

Lena turned green and then purple and then weakly said, “No, thank you, please.” The hungry man was surprised at her polite sudden illness as he stepped back to the rug. He shrugged...then smiled, using his long, hairy tongue to lick a spiny leg off the plate, fluids and all. He turned back to the door. But Lena was gone.

She ran. Back to the pond to get her shoes and her socks. Back to her house to be with her mom and her dad. Safe at last. Lena would never again go play in the woods all alone.

So remember. Don’t take off your shoes and socks and turn your back to the woods. But if you do, and a stranger comes up behind you speaking in a weird sort of way, whatever you do, don’t go with him and slug the bug on his rug. Or you just may have to...EEEDA!