The Battle and Its Aftermath

Loyal readers will have missed my extended absence from these pages. Rest assured that absence was not entirely intentional and that it was absolutely essential. You may recall that in my last entry I was mourning the fact that I was snowbound. That was only part of the tale.

Dear Reader, you know that I had been locked in a life and death struggle with the Boggler who had set ever more extreme and demented puzzles for me by building ziggurats of increasingly fiendish complexity.

You may wonder did I ever solve the mystery? Did I ever bring the monster to justice? Was reason and order restored to the universe?

Actually the answer to all of the above questions, sadly, is NO.

It was not from want of trying. Nor was the quest abandoned without a titanic struggle of such immense effort that it has laid me low these many days and months. Only now can the tale be told.

Well, the truth is the tale cannot be told because I’m not certain what really happened, or if anything happened at all.

It all ended several months ago in a battle fought at the edge of the bed. We rolled around for nearly an hour, he coming at me with all the diabolical fury he could muster and I answering in kind. Then we both hurtled downward in space for several feet until, alas, the Boggler disappeared and I found myself under the bed in the Cave of Dreams.

I have remained there incognito since that fateful day, lying low and plotting my re-emergence, pausing only to eat liver and cheese and snow peas and edamame and kibble as well as regular salmon and chicken freeze-dried treats generously provided at regular intervals by “Him” and “Her”. For which I am humbly and forever in their debt, I might add.

But now, I am ready to begin another adventure. Early this morning, at the stroke of 10, I was awakened by a gentle knocking…

Wait, wait, the resolution of that interview must be deferred to the next installment.