Splash the Giant
You must know about Splash, the rascal that he didn't consider himself a rascal at all. On the contrary, he was very pleased with himself. This time he was standing in front of the mirror, and to tell the truth, he couldn't discover anything imperfect.
"That dwarf is a rascal because of this, that dwarf is a rascal because of that. He is mean because of this, he is mean because of that…" he grumbled.
"They can go on like that all day long. But if they cared to, they could see how great I am. Not to mention anything else, they should just have a look at this strapping build of mine. Oh, these congenial features…" He began to be a little touched. "This glance glistening with cleverness." He suddenly stamped his feet. "But no, they only say I'm a rascal and I am mean and that the problem is always me, while it is obvious that the problem is never anything else than them! But I'll show that to them someday!"
He looked around pondering in his room chocked up with different caskets, boxes and tools.
"Let's say I'll build a big whatever… a huge… a thing even bigger than that. And then they'll get scared, and look up to me, and they will try so hard to apologize to me: Forgive me, my dear Splash, we didn't know you were this powerful!"
He quickly dragged a casket in front of his mirror and climbed onto it and straightened up, facing the mirror.
"And then I'll either forgive them or not. Because they do deserve not to be forgiven. Why would I, anyway? All they do is telling me things like 'go away, Splash! We don't play with you, Splash! What have you done again, Splash?' No, no, their begging will leave me unimpressed. I'll be ruthless!"
He practiced a bit how he could make a truly ruthless face. He just had to admit that he did that perfectly as well.
"And then I'll say to them I could maybe forgive them if they said: Have mercy, o great Splash!" He looked into the mirror defiantly, and his eyes were flashing with anger. Although he had to admit flashing with anger wasn't that perfect. More and more anger seethed in him, as he worked himself up into a frenzy about the plan of his sweet revenge. He only missed the outlines of the plan, which he couldn't figure out, and this fact only made him angrier.
And then the doorbell rang.
"Already?" Splash was stuck dumb. "They're coming already to apologize? I haven't even scared them yet… hmmm. Maybe I'll forgive them anyway."
He jumped off the casket and shoved it to the side, not letting them think he had been looking at himself in the mirror, standing on the top of a casket.
But anyways, he pondered "How the mulberry do they intrude into my little empire? They have their whole empire, why can't they be content with that? They don't let me into their territory, so why should I? Can't I be in peace without them - even here? Do I have to listen to 'O Splash, you shouldn't do this, you mustn't do that', 'Splash, what are you thinking!' 'What a horrible thing to do!' 'What have you done this time?' I won't listen to that in my home!"
He got all angry again.
"I didn't do anything. But I will, and then you can all just wonder! Wonder at the great Splash! You just wait…” He walked furiously to the door, or much rather he stumbled between the things laying on the floor but he had so much anger in him that he felt his stumbling as walking straight, even so, he felt it as Furiously Fast and Clean-Sweeping Run."
"As if I were a wild lion…" he guessed.
"No", he thought, "I must rather be an elephant gone wild, as it grabs the door handle with its trunk…"
He tore the door open so that it fell onto him. He had wanted to fix it a long time ago but somehow he always forgot about it. "This is also their fault," he said bitterly. "They just want to humiliate me more!" He freed himself from under the door and looked around eager to fight, but all he saw was a strange, unknown creature.
"Who are you?" Strange Chap asked his usual question. But in order to avoid hearing another impossibly long name, he quickly added:
"You're the mischievous dwarf, right?"
Splash frowned.
"What do you have to do with my name?" he answered in his usual suave tone.
Strange Chap got a bit embarrassed about this question, but he didn't want to leave with his task unsolved.
"Dear Whatdoyouhavetodo, I'm Strange Chap, and I make your wishes come true. What is your wish?"
"Go away!" Splash snapped at him.
"Be that as you wish, dear Whatdooyuhavetodo, and thank you for freeing me from the curse!" And then Strange Chap disappeared with a quickly fading alarm ring. Splash was standing in the doorway, slowly starting to realize how many things he could've wished that would have taught a lesson to the others, until they say: 'Have mercy, o great Splash!'
And here they were, coming, as if they only wanted to make fun of his error! Splash quickly turned around to run into the house and shut the door behind him, but considering the door was lying on the floor, this would've taken a very long time to effectively pull off.
At that moment, he felt a hand on his shoulder and he heard Kocian's voice: "This is something, Splash! Look how clever you are!" Splash turned around. He thought that either his vision or his hearing had gone wrong. Because he either heard his praise wrong, or he wasn't surrounded by the creatures he saw. They were all there. Kocian, Serena, Cerbi, Tiny and Scarlet. And Hocus, who was just saying:
"During my research on the funputer, I found out that third-breed wish generator or SC, that is, a certain Species of Creature…
"So that's where his name came from! SC as an abbreviation of Strange Chap!" yelled Kocian.
"That is a very clever idea, my young friend. Now, he was originally the alarm-clock of the great magician, Doctor Ineverypie - of course, a magical alarm-clock. The doctor had a weakness: he really liked to sleep."
"What do you mean weakness?" Tiny interrupted, feeling a little hurt.
"He was in a never-ending fight with the magical alarm-clock, which he himself had ordered at night to wake him up, but he told it off every morning, when it did the job. However, the alarm-clock had no choice but to fulfill his wishes persistently, until the doctor punished him with a curse: he had to fulfill everyone's wishes until he met someone who would specifically tell him to go away. People think he and all the silly wishes were behind many misfortunes in history. Empires collapsed…
"As it is written in other chapters of the Cerbengese Chronicles," Kocian finished the magician's lecture. He turned to Splash with the other humming in agreement:
"Let us thank you, Splash, for what you did."
Splash stamped about for a while, embarrassed.
"It wasn't a big deal," he finally murmured, his head hanging.
"How can you say it's no big deal! Only you could free us from the ghost before something really awful happened! That's right, Splash, you're huge, little as you are!"
Splash squinted at Kocian. Then he looked around the crowd and straightened up.
"Oh come on, that's an exaggeration. Let's just say I'm … big enough."