B is for Bunyip

"Lenny, baby. G’Day, mate. So good to hear from you. What can I do ya for?
What? You want to cancel the book gig? But that’s a sweet deal. I fought hard for–yes, I did tell you you’d have to pose for the illustrator of the book’s cover. What can I say? The guy’s a real stickler for reality. Well, what’s the world supposed to think? You crawl out of a billabong one week wearing a bear’s fur and fish scales, then the next you’re in a children’s book with a snake’s body and bat wings. What image? You look different every time someone ogles you in
some Outback watering hole.

"No, Lenny. I’m not upset. I just think that–movie? What m–oh yeah, I’m still hammering that one out. Oh yeah, a real classy horror picture. Same guys that did Mad Max. Yeah, you’ll be shot mostly at night. No, I haven’t seen a rough draft of the script yet, but they tell me it’s a doozie. Canberra. Yes, you’ll have your own trailer.

"Now listen, mate. Back to the book gig. I think that–I think you should–what? No,
please don’t eat anybody, especially womenfolk. Remember what I told you about good and bad publicity? Hello? Len? Damn overseas phone lines."

From A to Z, in the Ambergris Alphabet

And now for something a little different. This is a story I wrote a while back that I'd like to share with everyone here. It's of a type known as an abecedary story, in which each unrelated section begins with a letter of the alphabet. Each day for the next 26 (hopefully) days, I'll post a new section. I hope you enjoy it.

A is for Abracadabra

Abracadabra is the most powerful word in all of magic. Real magic, that is. M-a-g-i-c-k magic. But nothing happens when it is spoken. Like a granddaddy longlegs, supposedly the most venomous arachnid in the world–yet its mandibles are too small to bite–the word abracadabra is both all powerful and useless. The reason for this is that, over the years, it has become mispronounced. It was originally spoken thus: ‘a’ as in ‘ah’, the ‘b’ with a short ‘p’ as in ‘put’, rolling both ‘r’s, the second ‘a’ as in ‘as’, the c pronounced as an ‘s’ like ‘cephalopod’ and the remaining letters were ran together in a phlemy ‘h’ sound as in the Yiddish ‘chutzpah’ and ‘Chanukah’. If you can say that, you can do anything.