PANTS BALLOONS

     Ah, the cruel world of the comics.     

     Chet and Sally were in love. But they lived in separate panels of a comic strip, and were forever separated by whatever the hell you call that area between panels. It was just a little strip of newspaper (or online pixels), but it might as well have been an ocean of broken beer bottles and maggots.

     Making matters worse, they had no word balloons to speak their love. The sadistic cartoonist who created their little comic world was a big fan of the old Henry strip, featuring the bald boy who communicated in pantomime. The cartoonist thought Henry was hilarious. (He was not alone. There was one other guy who felt that way.) They didn't even have thought balloons, and were forced to think their love below the neckline. Luckily, that's not a bad place to think love.

     They had to settle for communicating their feelings for each other through mime. Chet would point to himself, then close his eyes and smile a smile of love, then point to Sally. Whatever else he was doing with his hands was outside of his panel, and nobody's business, he thought. On occasion, Sally also appeared to be doing something "outside panel," and newspaper editors would receive angry letters from concerned parents.

     But Chet wished that he could express his love not only in thought balloons and word balloons, but also, frankly, in pants balloons.

     When his frustrations reached the boiling point, Chet began giving the cartoonist the finger. Readers assumed he was giving it to them, and one by one newspaper editors began dropping the strip from their comics pages.

     On the final day of syndication, the cartoonist relented and allowed the lovebirds to not only speak their love, but consummate it in one giant panel, on the familiar grass background under the warming, cartoon sun.

     Now they are in that big newspaper in the sky, where all comic strip characters go  when they die. 

     Chet and Sally, happy at last.

     And when Chet isn't screwing Sally's brains out, he's beating the piss out of Henry.