G. R. was dreaming if you could call it that. It was more of a nightmare. He knew he was a caterpillar. He could get around, but the immediate stages before left a lot to be desired. In his dream he was tied up by some bratty kid in a weird contraption slowly turning over and over: one side he’s up: a tiny egg stuck on some shitty leaf and then it flipped and he’s a pupa stuck inside his own shell. Talk about the mother of nightmares. And he’s a little runt to top it off. Oh, I’ll get even. Just wait until I wake up and come out of my cocoon. Tsetse flies will be considered chump change.  

He heard it again and again. “Hey, little guy, move over. What are you doing? Dreaming or something?” The larger caterpillar passed him, stopped, and then feeling sorry for being so mean, turned and told him, “They don’t tell you, but if you have nightmares, one way to wake up is to squeeze and open your eyes quickly.”

G. R. squinched all twelve of his eyes. Bugger this, I don’t care if it works, but something secretes and I wake up with sand in all my eyes. And again he vowed to get vengeance.

Every morning after waking up, he’d stretch. He stretched, stretched, and stretched again – once for each pair of legs under his thorax. He wiggled the prolegs on his abdominal sections, moving them to the sides so he could do three sets of crunches. I’ll show them, making fun of my size,  “G. R., you’re too small to even play the part of Hop-on-my-Thumb.”

He rolled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom, grumbling down the hall, “I’ll show them; wait you’ll see, call me an inchworm, I’ll show them!”

It was almost noon by the time he crawled his way up the mirror. “Just my luck – fogged over from my shower.”

Three times he wiped a clean spot on the mirror and stared intently into eyes which returned the honor – stare for stare. “Oh, I wish I were ten feet tall!”

“Ouch!” G. R.’s head hit the ceiling. “Ouch!” He stooped over and looked in the mirror. This time twelve big eyes, bloodshot and slightly crossed, looked back at him.

He challenged the image. “Who are you and what are you doing in my bathroom!”

“Well, I ain’t Father Christmas in case you’re wondering.”

Inch never had any patience and lashed out, “Christmas? Well, bah humbug to you!”

The image countered, “You’re the last person should be saying ‘humbug.’ Just look at yourself in the mirror.”

G. R. swallowed. A little light began to flash and it wasn’t the one over the mirror.

“You mean, you’re me?”

“You got it in one. How’s that for a Christmas present?”

“I’ve got to think about this. I mean, how many leaves do you imagine I’d have to eat every day?”

“That’s nothing. Wait until you’re a moth.”

“Is that what happens after I pupate?”

“You’ll be a mighty big moth.”

“And what happens when I become a moth?” He thought for a minute. “I guess there won’t be many birds that will try to eat me. And just let a wasp get too close – pow, right in the kisser!”

G. R. flexed his muscles, thinking he could get used to being this big. The light was shining brightly, but just to be sure he asked again, “Hey, but what happens after I pupate?”

“Well, you’d be a mighty big moth.”

“Well then, I wish you a merry Christmas!”

G. R. went out into the backyard, crawled under an old canoe behind an even older shed where he wrapped himself up. By the time he broke out of his cocoon in the spring his plan was fully formed. He’d get his revenge. The first thing he did was to liberate a high intensity projection light, one capable of projecting images on a night sky. He positioned it on top of an abandoned factory.

He went back and got his cocoon. It was as he thought. Form follows function as they say. With little effort he was able to open it and manipulate the halves so that they resembled the profile of a humongous moth. No surprise there, seeing how it was my home for months.

G. R. next attached translucent ropes so that he could suspend it in front of his projection light. And then he went on a crime spree. He would strike randomly across Gotham City after projecting the image of a malevolent moth on the night sky.

Since it was Gotham City, newspapers quickly concluded that there was a mad moth flittering around on a crime spree. The police commissioner pulled out the bat sign from storage and by the end of the first week it was operational. Alas, no batman responded to the bat in the sky and the crimes continued. The wire services soon carried articles about the giant moth. People were afraid to go out at night. Fine woolen apparel was wrapped, sprinkled with camphor flakes, and locked in secured storage facilities.

G. R. became more audacious and collected rotten cabbages from a farm on the outskirts of Gotham City. He dropped them under the football stands of Gotham College where a commencement was scheduled the following week. The weather cooperated; it was unseasonably hot, temperatures in the 90s four days in a row. The cabbages fermented and the smell spread throughout the city.

The fire department hosed the stinking heaps of cabbage down the sewers but this resulted in smells belching up through the grates for blocks around. People were warned not to strike matches or smoke for fear of igniting the ripe gasses.

That night G. R. flashed a picture of a grinning moth in the sky and posted a letter to the Gotham Daily News (GDN) threatening to continue similar acts of urban guerilla warfare unless the city commissioned a ten-foot sculpture of an inchworm and promised to display it in the central square in front of the Courthouse. They were to publish a statement in the GDN by the weekend and he sent them the text of a plaque that was to be installed at the foot of the statue.

The mayor, P. Ignatius Weakley, immediately formed a committee of law enforcement agents and scientists from Gotham College. But after an agonizing night of soul searching, he capitulated and submitted a statement to the press agreeing to the moth’s conditions.

But the committee had come up with a plan. They would unveil the statue that Saturday after dark. Friday night, a twelve-foot crate was hauled in on a flatbed truck, the kind used for construction equipment, and was temporarily secured in place. At first light workers arrived, tented the base of the crate for secrecy, and spent the next two hours hammering and drilling. Before they left, a cherry-picker drove across the square and the heavy canvas covering the statue was hooked to it.

Twenty feet east of the statue an area was roped off around an Olympic-sized bowl on an ornate base. The rim of the bowl was twelve feet above the ground. A fifty-foot circle was roped off around the bowl.

The unveiling was announced for 9:25 PM, an hour after sunset.

A small marching band struck up a Sousa march, waiting for the mayor and invited dignitaries to exit their limousines. The band paused at the bowl for the mayor to light a fire in it. Chemicals had been added so that the initial flames were red, white, and blue. Two minutes later everyone was in place in the viewing stand to the left of the statue.

The mayor approached the lectern and nodded, a signal to turn on the floodlights surrounding the bowl. It was bright enough to read the small print in a rental contract.

Suddenly from atop the Courthouse, G. R. swooped down into the flames. He was consumed in an instant.

Mayor Weakley read a brief statement to the effect that once again law and order had returned to Gotham City, concluding with, “Gotham City will not be blackmailed!”

The Department of Natural Sciences took credit for the victory saying, “It is a well-known fact that moths are always attracted to a flame and a big moth just needs a big flame.”

Sunday morning the twelve-foot crate was removed. At noon the mayor returned with a reporter and photographer to show them the plaque that had been installed by workmen the previous day. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence.

The Mayor untied the rope from the fence and removed the canvas covering the plaque.

We are all important!

A reporter leaned over and whispered in the Mayor’s ear, “Gee, P. I., after a bonfire like that I don’t think G. R. Inch will be forgotten any time soon!”

– Kenneth Kapp

Author’s Note: When I’m in a rut writing only “serious” stories, I try to take a break and write something that’s fun. This was my take on How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. The Grinch had it right: we are all important!