Little Red Riding Craig

It was 5:43 AM, and Craig's alarm clock went off, just like it did every morning. He had a unique alarm clock that sounded like five fat guys stomping in bowls of pudding. The other tenants in his apartment building hated it.

"Same time tomorrow, guys?" Craig said in that voice of his. The five fat guys shuffled out of his bedroom, each of them muttering under their breath about how much they hated Craig.

"Yawn!" Craig screeched. "It's a beeeeyooootiful day! Time to take a slice of room-temperature pizza to my brother-in-law."

He thrashed his way out of bed. This took twenty minutes because he could not figure out which end of the bed was the foot and which the head. He spent a good amount of time covered with blankets and yelling. The other tenants in his apartment building hated this too.

Finally extricating himself from his distressingly crinkly sheets, Craig pranced to his closet and opened the doors.

"I need something light and stylish, but good for travel by foot," he said aloud to himself because he was the only one who could bear to listen to him. "Aha!" he said unnecessarily, selecting his favorite traveling apparel: a big dopey red sweater with donkeys on it. "The same one I always select!" he tittered, invalidating all the time he spent picking it out.

Garbed in his riding sweater and carrying the pizza in a picnic basket, Craig set out. All the yelling and honking of horns and the subsequent return to his apartment to put on pants only slightly dampened his spirits.

"I shall go through the woods, because it is much harder to travel through them because of the sticks and creatures," Craig explained, entering the woods.

As soon as the trees closed in around him, the dense forest canopy darkening his path, he was accosted by the Big Bad Wombat.

"Hi, Craig," said the Big Bad Wombat.

"Oh no!" squealed Craig. "A wolf!"

"What?"

"My, what big haunches you have!" said Craig, poking the Big Bad Wombat with one of his terrible fingers.

"All the better to...hold on. What?"

"My, what big molars you have!" said Craig, poking the Big Bad Wombat in the eye.

"Goddammit!"

"My, what, like, four feet you have!" said Craig, poking the Big Bad Wombat in each foot.

"Aw, that does it!" shouted the Big Bad Wombat, running back into the forest fastness from whence he'd come.

"Hey! Aren't you supposed to threaten to eat me or steal my porridge or something?" Craig called after him.

"Eat yourself!" came the Big Bad Wombat's muffled reply from the underbrush.

"Ow!" Craig said.

After three hours of relatively unimpeded travel, Craig arrived at the front door of his brother-in-law's house. "Ding dong!" he squealed, poking the door knocker.

"Why, hello Craig," said the brother-in-law, suppressing his gag reflex.

"I brung you some pizza!" Craig said, holding up his picnic basket.

"Why are your arms all chewed up?" asked the brother-in-law.

"Oh, that? The Big Bad Wombat told me to do that," Craig said matter-of-factly, shrugging his chewed-up shoulders.

The brother-in-law sighed. "That's your excuse for everything. Well, you'd better come in so we can put some ointment on those bite marks."

"Oh boy! Oiiiiinnnntment!" Craig screeched.

The brother-in-law put the pizza down the garbage disposal and consoled his wife while Craig drank all the ointment he wanted. They all lived happily ever after!