For the next year Jome was convinced that the fly was still inside of him. He tried to explain it to Miss Julie, who thought maybe he was thinking of a popular children’s book titled “There was an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly.” She immediately fetched it for Jome who unfortunately did not understand that the book was a work of fiction. He reasonably thought that Miss Julie was presenting himself with a text on “What to do if you have swallowed a fly.” Not reading ahead past the first page, Jome reluctantly swallowed a spider he found in the library bathroom.
He felt only a brief moment of peace before he began to think about that spider crawling around inside him and filling him with webs. Sure, he wanted the fly caught, but what about everything else he ate? Would the spider catch that also? Would it know to wrap up the fly and carry it back out of Jome’s body and leave everything else where it was? How did spiders know how to do this? Was it instinctual? Was he supposed to have trained the spider before eating it? He went back to the book for answers to these questions and was horrified to find that the spiders were indeed considered to be unreliable, and that it was recommended that you send in a bird after the spider, just to make sure the spider doesn’t run amok.
Jome spent a long afternoon trying to capture the smallest pigeon he could find. It was the only kind of bird in the city, and though it appeared to be larger than the bird pictured in the book, he managed to force it down. The impulse to chew was strong, but he knew that if he chewed too hard, the bird might not survive to battle the spider.
But Jome found out very, very quickly that having a live pigeon inside of you is not a pleasant experience. He ran to the bathroom and threw the pigeon back up which, obviously disoriented, promptly flew into the glass of a closed window Frustratingly, the autopsy didn’t show that the spider OR fly had been captured by the pigeon, so he was essentially back to square one...
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With Roald Dahl storytelling told at Seth MacFarlane pacing, The Adventures of Jome series will find kindred spirits in fans of The Simpsons, Teen Titians Go, and Adventure Time.In this volume, Jome's homeless-man orbit is fixated around the public library and the small network of relationships that have formed there. (Plus it's a great place to hide weapons, forge documents, and study up on cow-conspiracies.)
Love Jome stories? Look for the "The Original Adventures of Jome" and "The Next Adventures of Jome"!
