Thung

Thung
By: Ryan Gorman

The Earth had completed another turn around the Sun, whirling slowly and silently as it always whirled. The east had experienced a record-breaking crop of yellow rice and yellow children, larger stockpiles of atomic weapons were accumulating in certain strategic centers, and the sages of the University of Chicago were uttering words of profound wisdom, when Thung reached down and picked up the Earth between his thumb and forefinger.
Thung had been sleeping. When he finally awoke and blinked his six opulent eyes at the blinding light (for the light of our stars when in thier totality is no thing of dimness) he had become uncomfortably aware of an empty feeling near the pit of his stomach. How long he had been sleeping even he did not know exactly, for in the mind of Thung time is a term of no significance. Although the ways of Thung scarcely conceivable by our thought; still-stating the matter roughly and in the language we know- the ways of Thung are this: When Thung is not asleep, he hungers.
After blinking his opulent eyes (in a specific consecutive order which had long been his habit) and streching forth a long arm to sweep aside the closer suns, Thung squinted into the deep. The riper planets were near the center and usualy could be recognized by surface texture; but frequently Thung had to thump them with his middle finger. It was some time until he found a piece that suited him. He picked it up with his right hand and shook off most of the adhering salty moisture. Other fingers scaled away thin flakes of bluish ice that had caked on opposite sides. Finally, he dried the ball completely by rubbing it on his chest.
He bit into it. It was soft and juicy, neither unpleasantly hot nor freezing to the tongue; and Thung, who always ate the entire planet, core and all, lay back contentedly, chewing slowly and permitting his thoughts to dwell idly on trivial matters, when he felt himself picked up suddenly by the back of the neck.
He was jerked upward and backward by an arm of tremendous bulk (and arm covered with greyish hair and exuding a foul odor). Then he was lowered even more rapidly. He looked down in time to see an enormous mouth-red and gaping and watering around the edges-then the blackness closed over him with a slurp like a clap of thunder.
For there are other gods than Thung.