The Brilliantly Rainbowed Adventure

        "Here, fishy, fishy, fishy," crooned Frogstick imploringly; "come fish, come fish," he clucked, like a farmer calling his biddies. I picked up my eyeballs and chucked them over in his direction. Scoping out his location, I saw that he was sitting on the top of a steep bank that butted hard against the Little Flipper River.
        Crystal clear water flowed in sparkling, shimmering, multicolored abandon past the small, grassy peninsula where Frogstick was perched. He leaned against a massive live oak that had long ago sent mighty branches towering upwards into the sky as its roots built a foundation that had stubbornly withstood the gentle tug of the current.
        The centuries had rolled past the ancient oak like the river itself, jostling one another like so many pesky tumbleweeds as they passed. The old oak had resolutely remained at its post and spread its sweet oasis of shade upon the ground below throughout the changing years, enduring like a faithful marine who refused to desert, ignoring the unrelenting onslaught of time.
        Now, however, the old oak overshadowed somewhat stranger earth than it had hitherto been forced to shade, for Frogstick Gutchins sat beneath the gnarly old tree. A long grass stem hung out of his big gobby mouth, and below his feet, in the clear, clean water, a stringer of bluegills was immersed in the current that flowed at the foot of his grassy perch.
        Frogstick was desperately trying to lure some more chubby pan fish onto his hook. I spoke up.
        "Still jerkin' 'em by the lips, eh, Froggy?" I progued, eliciting a response that reeked like a whole pot full of sarcasm.
        "No, Hooter, I'm curing the common cold," honked Frogstick.
        "Look out, Frogstick!" I rejoined. "There's a snake beside you!"
        "Yeah, sure," hooted 'Stick, "that trick's as old as the hills."
        As I walked away upon the lush grass that covered the river bank, I looked over toward our camp. Blue smoke slowly drifted upward in a thin plume that rose from the embers of the campfire. The smoke ascended through a large gap in the trees and from there went up into the clear blue sky.
        Looking past the camp, I saw a distant, familiar figure approaching through the woods. Like a cut-out video image his silhouette went from solid black to full living color, then back to black again as he walked through the shaded areas and into the brightly-lit clearings. It was Zeb. He drew nigh and strolled on up to me.
        "The purple sky sent beams to kiss the summer wind or insects trapped in amber time," he rapped. "Soon the gentle ground will hide the heavy, beaming groover from our laughing eyes. Tiny frogs will seek fame and exquisital hipness by leaping backwards onto our frog-bound gigs. Can you dig a nightsome canoe-like cruise to cop some leggy green or lightly-breaded lunch or dinner bits?"
        "I can dig it," I replied.
        Suddenly an ear-splitting scream split the laid-back forest sonata asunder. Birds, squirrels, et al. ceased their happy ruckus. We turned to the source of this scream in time to see a hairy blur dart down the riverbank and plunge into the water. It was none other than that bold fisherman himself, Frogstick Gutchins.
        "I warned him about that snake," I said to Zebbie, "but I guess he wasn't listening."
        "Slippery lightning-like ball of furry panic blew black powder sparklers through the musket of my mind," rapped Zeb. "Greasy shooting country-western fur-ball star," he continued. "Dixie drumbo was groovingly saddled with fear-like woe," he ebulliently spouted, "did you see those trails?" Zeb, who was as sober as the rest of us, still knew how to appreciate a good visual effect.
        Soon the gentle ground shielded the heavy, beaming groover from our eyes. In other words, it was night.
        Not too long after dark, Zeb, Egghead, and yours truly pulled out into the river in our big aluminum canoe. We followed the river's whispering flow into Big Wannadoo Lake.
        The lake was flat and black under the moonless sky. Rippling waves reflected the faintest of glimmers into our night-adjusted eyes.
        Softly the waves lapped at our canoe as we silently paddled along the northern edge of the vast, darkened body of water. With a keen thrill I drank in the fresh air and savored the brooding mysterious beauty of this magnificent, sprawling creation.
        We paddled on through the cattails in the darkness, heading for a big cove just south of where we had entered the lake's waters. Thousands of frogs sang in concert in the shallows that bordered the eastern shore of the wild lake, their eerily united chirpings building to crescendos and ebbing in perfect unison, as if some unseen conductor were directing the performance. A paddle banged against our canoe, causing a sudden silence, and a bull gator growled his husky greeting into the still night air.
        "HUUUFF!" he growled, "HUUUFF! HUUUFF!"
        Now I became aware of a dull thumping noise in the distance that was rapidly getting louder. I could tell by their rigid silhouettes that Zeb and Egghead had heard it, too.
        "Shhh...," hissed Zeb softly.
        The thumping got louder. The cattails began to sway in an aimless breeze that seemed to have sprung up of its own accord. I wondered greatly at the meaning of this strangely incongruous sound, it seemed at once familiar and yet alien to me: I just couldn't place it.
        With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach I spied a massive black shape hurtling towards us through the star-splashed sky. Suddenly, an impossibly bright and searing light painfully pierced our eyes.
        "Look out!" I cried.
        A jagged explosion of pain and light scorched across my field of vision.
        My entire universe rang like a great, tolling bell.
        I was falling... falling... down, down, down into the etheric maelstrom of a dark and swirling abyss. Unable to awake, unconscious and undone, I drifted into the bodacious blackness of a deep, dark, and soundless sleep.