This fanciful dribble-drabble was done in response to a prompt, aka the title. All comments welcome!
(psst. I'm a bit of a grammar klutz, but don't tell anyone.)
A Perturbed Blue Crocodile
His yellowed eyes were slits, rising above the shallow water like suns. They flicked to the murky sky down to the mud that surrounded his pool. He slithered through the swamp, ready to survey the opposite side of his premises.
He eyed a squirrel, who sat bushy tailed in a tree, clicking his nails into the damp bark. Loneliness and hunger competed for his attention. He had no regrets about what he had done, he didn’t even think about it much. His brain was a flaccid reptilian thing that curved all his thoughts to a dark predatory cast. He was a crocodile in exile, his blue exterior casting him away from his green skinned comrades. He slid over the mud, his indigo underbelly softly hanging into the thick murk, leaving an aquatic trail behind him. The air smelled like rottenness and heat, such a luxurious sultry fragrance to his slit nostrils. He didn’t think about what had happened, but something strange had occurred. His cat eyes were more melancholy, dimmed. His jaw felt less like a wound trap. His teeth, sharp as knives, felt like enemies in his own mouth. Something, perhaps his heart, ached just under his blue exterior.
His name was Blue, and he lived in the Everglades. He’d once eaten the finger off of a child, squelchy and metallic. He’d been stabbed once; he’d watched the red streamer flow behind him as he flew through the murk. It was a fisherman in beige clothing. He hated that pallid color.
From there he’d come to this abandoned area. He could smell those foreign particles coming closer- the exhaust. The two legged things were moving in. Paradise was being worn away, his water that swathed him like a cloak, like liquid chocolate. Where he was king, a sad king in blue.
Her name had been Sylvester. She’d been blue, like him. She shouted “Sylvester!” to the sky. She also said “Hello, baby cheeks!” to him every morning. She was as colorful as him, and she had confided that she had escaped from her golden prison. Now she could fly. She slept in the tree on the edge of the swamp.
He wanted to eat her, but she kept her distance. They talked and talked, about lots of things. She spoke about golden cages, and he talked about the sweetness of mud. Like sugar, she said. He had never heard of sugar.
“Do you taste like sugar?” he asked.
“Sure, sure,” she replied.
“Can I taste?” He snapped his jaws, even as he laid a loving eye on her feathered form, her scaled feet wrapped around a twig. She bobbed her head back and forth, no, no. Her eyes were round, like moons.
Then the creatures in beige came. “Look, dad!” one shouted. It pulled out a stick, grey and heavy. The shot cracked through the air, just as the crocodile Blue began to sink below the water. It barely missed Sylvester, but in her alarm, she flew straight for Blue. The crocodile snapped its jaws, and he felt the feathers slide down his throat. The men in beige shouldn’t have made her come so close to him. The men in beige had killed Sylvester, his only friend.
Just before she faded out of his memory, he wondered if she tasted like sugar. It was a sad taste.
