At his reveal, he was mocked. "How adorable!" whimpered the whimpering women. "Is it a hedgehog?" the men said derisively. He said nothing. He knew they were not the true judges of his character.
Settled into their stalls, the other entries eyed him cautiously. The ladybug trembled in fear, her spots dangerously close to falling off. An amorphous blob, obviously designed for speed and not beauty, reeked of fumes of axle lubricant. The banana split, three slots down, sat in a pool of melted fake whip cream.
But the garden gnome, catty-corner, was his true rival. It stared blankly, straight above. Was it running through mental exercises? Preparing for the competition to come? Or was it afraid even to turn its head.
The first heat was the harbinger of things to come. The helicopter took an early lead; the purple, glitter-covered race car pulling ahead of the police car at the last moment.
Our hero skidded to a stop, two feet from the finish line.
The door handle won the next heat, easily out-pacing the snowman, the garden gnome and the pink, glitter-covered race car.
Our hero stilled himself a foot from the finish.
The third race was the same. The red and white rocket zoomed ahead, barely behind the strange orange racer. And the fourth heat--despite cheers of encouragement from the formerly insulting crowd--still, our hero ended before the line.
Some say his axles were out of alignment. Or that his wheels rubbed against his wooden body. But he knows the truth. It was fear. The other cars took one look at his visage, his eyes carefully shielded by goggles, and fled before him. Their terror-induced sweat flew back, coating his track with a sticky, putrid slime that stopped him in his tracks.
He'll take that. It's better to be feared than fast.
And he absolutely cleaned up the design contest.
He turned that gnome into mulch.
Because he is...
THE FLAMING PORCUPINE OF DEATH AND FEAR!
Posts
