The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

- Chapter 28 -
Sneb's Story Begins

        Our group of misfits was stunned to silence by the light show from Egghead's brain, and none of us dared interrupt as he began to speak again. To tell you the truth, in spite of my stupid joke about Egghead talking Martian, I had never heard him make so much sense.
        "I have come to believe, gentlemen," he orated without further adieu, "and not by deduction and inference, but by unexplainable realization, that we are all fantastic fictional characters in a novel of unknown origin, being animated by the minds of readers, strangely and wondrously fleshed out by the active imaginations of living beings. These beings are themselves created, limited creatures, dwelling in a temporal universe created by a limitless and infinitely profound Author whose creativity beggars the antics of fictive characters and infinitely exceeds the greatest efforts of mortal humanity, including, of course, those of our own author."
        Well, sir, that took the cake. The cowboys and us Hootenannies didn't exactly know what to say. How could we call him crazy, when he made so much sense? How could we not call him crazy, when his idea was so far-fetched? Then again, how could we be sure of our position if we didn't know all of the facts? And how could we know all of the facts when were so obviously limited in our capabilities that we had trouble singing and chewing gum at the same time? I hoped that I didn't look as dumb as I felt. My biggest comfort in all of this was that if Egghead's theory was correct, he was just about as stupid as us.
        Right about now the existence of hot chow was made apparent to all of us dwellers in this temporal fictional universe by the entrance of another load of hot biscuits from Stumpy's wagon. This pleasant event ended the debate and helped us all to appreciate our author and readers, who were causing us to eat these things until we were happily sick and bloated like ticks on a chubby pooch. We crammed our cheeks full of biscuits and molasses until we all looked like a cluster of strange pelicans macerating our food on a pier somewhere. At least most of us looked like pelicans. Actually, Sneb looked kind of like the Brando character in the Godfather, except that he didn't speak Sicilian, and his family was more dangerous.
        After all of this excitement we settled down comfortably around the fire. Me and the boys were stretched out on the bedrolls that Zeb had been toting for us since we first struck out after Stinky when he was buried in quicksand. These were the same bedrolls that we had used a-way on back there at our first camp on the banks of the Little Flipper River.
        It seemed like it was years ago when we had sallied forth from our little camp with high hopes and empty heads. How much farther would this curious odyssey carry us? Would there be a flea circus? And if not, why? Not? My thoughts rose up in my brain like swarm of angry bees inside of a hollow hive. I pulled my bedroll closer to the fire in hopes that the smoke would put them all to sleep before they stung me.
        My brain cooled off a little there by the fire, but it still buzzed with busy brain-waves. Memories of our journey and speculations about the future competed for my attention, jumping around like schoolkids anxious to be recognized.
        As I leaned back and stared at the coals, and as some of cowpokes began to breathe softly and snore and snort and twitch, Sneb began to softly speak. He began to tell us Hootenannies the story of the Whopping Big C.