Rhysop's Return

By Rhys Hughes

More unhelpful and irresponsible fables from the mind of the cult writer who brought you Rhysop's Fables... Join an absurd host of aardvarks, ghosts, pirates, flying jellyfish, hospitals made of lemon jelly, yetis, rhino cops, slobbery kisses and many more entities in the continuing quest to learn absolutely nothing truthful about life or why we are here! Includes a bonus fable in verse at the end in a botched attempt to imitate the incomparable Jean de la Fontaine!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rhys Hughes
• Release date: Feb 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465764898

Rhys Hughes

RHYS HUGHES was born in Wales but has lived in many different countries and currently lives in India. He began writing at an early age and his first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995. Since that time he has published more than fifty other books and his work has been translated into ten languages. He recently completed an ambitious project that involved writing exactly 1000 linked short stories. He is currently working on a novel and several new collections of prose and verse.

Book preview

Rhysop’s Return

57 Varieties of Daftness

by

Rhys Hughes

Published By Gloomy Seahorse Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Rhys Hughes

Discover other Rhys Hughes titles at Smashwords.com

Including (among others):

The Tellmenow Isitsöornot

A bumper collection of exactly 100 tales for only $4.99

(and if you buy that ebook, you get Rhysop’s Fables for free)

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Foreword

THE FABLES

Appendix

Foreword

This little ebook is a direct sequel to Rhysop’s Fables, also available from Smashwords, and it features exactly 57 fables. That might seem an arbitrary number, which is lucky, because it is! No it’s not. The truth of the matter is that in the summer of the year 2011 I was given a collection of Aesop’s Fables by a friend, a Penguin Classics edition. That edition contained 207 fables and when I decided to write my own fables, I thought it best to also write exactly 207. I like symmetry, I adore it, I want to kiss and marry it. I hope it wants to kiss and marry me too!

Only joking, I just want it as a mistress. Anyway… I began writing my fables but when I reached 150, I thought to myself, Why do I have to be so strict about the numbers? Am I suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder or something? So I decided to settle for 150 only, to prove that I’m not. But as the weeks went by, I started to feel uncomfortable, as if I had somehow betrayed the original spirit of my endeavour. And then one day I suddenly found myself writing a brand new fable! I surrendered to the urge and kept writing them. And so…

The addition of another 57 fables to the 150 of my other book makes a total of 207. What I learned recently, unfortunately, is that Penguin have now published an updated version of Aesop that contains 300 or so fables. But I’m not tempted by that increased quantity. I mean, we all have to draw a line somewhere. I feel sorry for Ptolemy the geographer who drew all the latitude and longitude lines of the Earth by hand, allegedly. Imagine how long that must have taken! No time at all; because it never happened. But I bet you knew that all along, didn’t you?

It’s fairly well-known that I intend to write precisely 1000 tales before giving up writing fiction altogether, and that all these tales will be linked into one massive story-cycle. People have asked me if each separate fable counts as one of those tales. The answer is no. All 150 fables of Rhysop’s Fables count as just one unit in my grand scheme; and the 57 fables of Rhysop’s Return count as one more unit. So two tales in total. Tales are allowed to be made up of smaller parts, you see. But you knew that all along too. You’re just humouring me now.

How the heck did our roles get reversed like that?

THE FABLES

1

DUCK IN DISGUISE

A curious duck disguised itself as a human and went off to the big city to see what life was like there. He nodded politely at everyone he passed in the street and said, Good morning. And the people always responded to him as if he was a real human being.

The duck knew that his disguise was effective and he felt pleased with himself. In the afternoon he went to the park to feed the ducks, which was very ironic and thus amusing. Then in the early evening he visited a pub and drank several pints of strong beer.

Pretending to be human is easy. No one suspects the truth! he said to himself in glee as he waddled out of the pub. Next he went to the nearest fashionable theatre, bought a ticket and saw a play. The play was about a goat that was stuck at the top of a cliff.

The actor who played the goat was