Pooh Bear And Friends In 'Special Delivery'

One day Pooh and Twitchlet were lounging in Pooh's hole when there came a ring of the doorbell far above.

"It's the mail man!" keened Twitchlet, overturning his overflowing hubcap of cigarette butts. "Don't touch the mail, it might be infected!"

"Nonsense," Pooh pooh-poohed with the genial detachment of a nebula. "There hasn't been any mail in aeons. It's probably just the wind."

There had been no wind in Pooh land for aeons either, since the Great Old Wind Machine constructed by the land's mythical and half-forgotten Creator broke down. The air had sat stale ever since, and was largely unbreathable.

"Go on up and see, Twitchlet," taunted Pooh with a dim flicker of muddy wit like a willo-the-wisp over some sour swamp. "See what it could be!"

Twitchlet did a complete somersault of anxiety in mid-air and fished through his overturned hubcap for an unsmoked bit of stub to ease his panic. Finally he mustered up the nerve to crawl through the tree roots and dirt to the door of their hole. A lone golden envelope sat by the doorbell. It was addressed to "The Master Of The House".

Overcome by curiosity, Pooh had compacted up behind him and now exited the hole with the satisfying plunk of a well formed stool. Pooh swiped up the envelope and opened it. "Why, it's from the Creator! He says I have won a lifetime's supply of <redacted>!"

"It's a trap," squealed Twitchlet, but Pooh swatted him away like a bothersome mayfly, and proceeded to do a little bobbling dance of happiness right there in the dirt outside their hole. "A lifetime's supply of <redacted>! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, this is better than honey or bacon, or anything I can think of, which is not much!" (This was true).

I have always wondered what happened to old hubcaps after the cars quit running.  Used to be you would see them hanging from the fence of an auto salvage yard. 

Will we ever find out what became of the lifetime supply of <redacted>?

Twitchlet is the kind of fellow who would go through a lifetimes supply of anything in about two weeks, and that is exactly what happened.

So do we ever find out what exactly was the lifetime supply of <redacted>?

I don’t know what REDACTED is either but I sure would like to try some of it.

Its shit.  A lifetimes supply of shit.

Pooh Bear and Friends in 'Gold From Outremer'

One day, Twitchlet was in his hole, crouched over the solid gold chamber pot that his grandfather purportedly brought home from the crusades, when a great tumult was heard outside.

Nearly overturning the pot in his agitation, Twitchlet shrieked "we're under attack!" But Pooh, who had been planted in the corner the whole while, was as unmoved as a week old cowpat.

"Nonsense, if we were under attack, somebody would have raised the alarums!"

Twitchlet could not fault this muddy display of logic, although he was prepared to give it a fighting try. But just then, the wall of the hole burst inward, spraying tree roots and unmentionables all over Pooh and Twitchlet (who squirmed like a blind otter being born into a tub of grease).

What was this hulking mass that had disturbed their home? Pooh and Twitchlet had never seen anything like it, with its great proboscis like a fat snake made up of thousands of yards of stitching, and its legs like massive tree trunks. The thing eyed them from the one side of its head that pushed through the gaping rent in their palace, before emitting a fearsome bellow. Its proboscis snaked out and fondled Twitchlet briefly, causing him to go into paroxysms of panic, before it, with a horrid grinding like a galleon caught in the grip of a typhoon, slowly righted itself and withdrew into the harsh daylight above.

It was only then that Pooh and Twitchlet realised that the tree-serpent, (for so they had mentally catalogued this monstrosity) had a rider attached. A red ferret from distant regions, some remote cousin to the regular ferrets who infested this stretch of the Great Old Woods.

Cursing and whipping his steed, the ferret demanded they hear the news that the Emperor was dead.

"The who?" Pooh enquired, a clot of thick brown squeezing through a rent in his hide made by one of the intruding tree-roots. Outside on the road, dozens more of the same beasts stampeded past, their riders whipping them into a foaming frenzy. Some rode aloft on elaborate palanquins like canopied thrones. About their feet scuttled more ferrets, and other creatures, unknown to Poohs' and Twitchlets' provincial eyes.

No answer was forthcoming, for the rider, as anxious as his comrades to press on ahead of time itself, like a fisherman outrunning a tsnumani of shit, had departed.

Pooh and Twitchlet were left to repair their hole as best they could, which was to say not very well at all, since both were constitutionally lazy. In the end they decamped to their young friend Christopher Robin's hole, and ate all his honey in an effort to calm themselves. Robin, who was very wise for a boy of 12, albeit an incorrigible liar and thief, imparted more news of the day's uproar that he had picked up around the way. Or perhaps he had just invented it out of whole cloth.

The Emperor, whom none of them had ever heard of, nor had the faintest inkling of their location within his dominions, had died some years before. Centuries, perhaps. This, apparently, was just the first of many waves fleeing the scene of that downfall like expanding ripples upon a pond struck by a falling collosus. How far away was the Imperial core, none could guess. Maybe it used to be closer. Or maybe they had been incorporated during one of Pooh Land's lost weekends, which nobody could ever seem to recall afterward.

I don’t know what REDACTED is either but I sure would like to try some of it.

The Emperor has apparently died and left us an endless supply of shit and tree serpents

An endless supply of trouble, more like.  Those ex-mercenaries do not pay for themselves.

Pooh Bear & Friends In 'The Curse Of The Shit Balloons'

One day, about 540 years after their recent kerfuffle had died down, Pooh was oozing down the lane beside the Great Old Wood, Twitchlet in tow, when the two spied a gaggle of dirigibles way out in the distance.

"What can those be," Pooh wondered out loud like a slow reader. "They look like balloons!"

"Run!" Twitchlet squealed. "They're probably invaders!"

"Nonsense," replied Pooh with the serenity of a week old cowpat. "There is nothing except the great old wood and the fields, there is nobody else in the whole universe (ED: not strictly accurate)."

The black balloons drifted ever closer to the pair on a light southerly breeze, in so far as direction meant anything in this place. Presently it became clear that they were not big balloons a long way off, but party sized balloons just a few dozen metres away.

One drifted right up to Pooh Bear and brushed his stiching-and-cotton coat, upon which it burst, dispersing a geyser of lits lifesblood all over the two.

"It's liquid shit!" Twitchlet keened, as if he hadn't been spending all his days walking the roads beside a cartoon bear made out of the same stuff (albeit a little more solidified, more of the consistency of Nutella).

What was even more disconcerting, the balloon's torn carcass appeared to be actual skin, and not the cotton and tarpaulin from which Pooh and his friends were stitched together. Could it be that these were living shit balloons, perhaps grown on the rancid surface of some fetid lake somewhere?

Pooh Bear and Friends in 'Eyeore's Funeral'

One day, deep into the fourth millennium, the half-life of Eyeore's charcoal carcass finally gave out its last. Towards the end, his dim complaining had constituted a sort of gentle background radiation, bathing the denziens of Pooh corner like a half-forgotten summer shower or a radio station from the far side of the moon.

Twitchlet immediately donned a black armband and forced the others to do so as well, except for Pooh who was too large for an armband to fit and so was given a black cape instead. The disorderly procession through Pooh corner and the road up by the Great Old Wood lasted for weeks, with gangs of the ferrets whipping themselves while a military band played the famous Funeral March of Eyeore, an experimental dirge penned by Eyeore back in the mists of time when the world was slightly younger.

During the third week of its progress, the funeral procession reached the general store, and Twitchlet, already screwed up to the hilt, saw that Rah-Bit was not wearing a black armband.

"Kill him! Kill the apostate!" squealed Twitchlet, and a motley rabble of ferrets, Tiggit, and some strike breakers from down at the mill broke ranks and descended on the hapless Rah-Bit, who quickly scurried into his hole like the yellow bellied creature that he was.

Pooh counselled restraint. "I'm sure poor old Rah-bit just didn't hear the news yet. News travels slow in these parts," he gurgled. This was not entirely untrue; the news of the Emperor's death had taken centuries to ripple out from the old imperial core, collapsing in upon itself like an apple consumed by worms. But Twitchlet was unconvinced, and did a somersault of panic in mid-air before clutching at the dry earth in an effort to hold on.

"We must show Eyeore the grandest sendoff ever, as it says in the plan! The Plan For Eyeore's Funeral that he made us all memorise one hundred times over!"

Pooh had quite forgotten The Plan For Eyeore's Funeral, supposing the last weeks of marching to have been a spontaneous celebration. Reluctantly, he put the whole contretemps out of his mind, and Twitchlet got down to the business of dragging Rah-bit out of his disgusting hole to face the rough justice of the mourning party.

Some years later, when they reached the Mausoleum, where the leopards already sat lapping from the chalices of blood, Pooh and the others were so tired out that they forgot all about Eyeore's remains, a load of coal most of which had fallen out along the way. They rested there a long while, eating honey and fishing in the dried up stream.

Pooh Bear & Friends In No More Apostrophes

Pooh and Twitchlet sat watching the buzzing sun machine stuck in its tracks like a scarab beetle, far above in the peeling Great Old Sky Dome. It hadnt rained for aeons, and the strike at the mill had gone on so long that everyone forgot what the mill was for.

Fluid leaked from Poohs worn old stitching, although he was oblivious to this as he was to most things.

There were no more apostrophes. They had died like a crop of mayflies. Twitchlet was more exercised over this than Pooh, burning through a hubcaps worth of smokes every few hours as they watched the Great Old Sun machine buzzing in its tracks, taking bets on when it might fall (it already had, long long ago, but had been repaired. in those days things still got repaired).

Presently Twitchlet spotted Rah-bit scurrying surreptitiously through the edges of the Great Old Wood, and his already heightened anxiety ratcheted up several notches.

Kill him, squealed Twitchlet. Kill the traitor!

Rah-bit was already gone, vanished back into the deep green shadows of the Wood like a spirit. Nobody ventured far into The Great Old Wood nowadays, since a Shadow had fallen upon it, and The Necromancer had taken up residence once more in His ancient stronghold. Rah-bit was undoubtedly one of His factotums now, busy with noisome errands and mischievous schemes.

Some (Twitchlet, for example) said that The Necromancer had stolen all the apostrophes, for purposes best known to Himself. Perhaps they were fashioned into parts for His infernal machines, which ground and bellowed in the depths like tormented beasts.

Pooh was agnostic on the subject. But on the matter of honey, he was more inclined to stake a position, and the present arrival of a fresh honey shipment from Outremer caused Twitchlets dark musings to waft from his mind like cigarette smoke on a windy night.

The great pod drooped from the ferret-drawn carriage like a ripe, pregnant belly. Pooh licked his chops and hauled his bulk up out of the dirt.