What is an Effelump?

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What is an Effelump?

I had a dream and out popped the Effelumps, and I realized that they had no real bearing on reality whatsoever. I figured they must be practically human in form, for they had two legs, two arms, and one head. They were rotund figures—neither slim nor obese, just rotund, like pot bellies in the middle—with commonplace necks, heads, arms, and legs. They had ruddy complexions; neither brown nor dark, neither suntanned nor "other," just ruddy and red, but not unsightly.

I confess that until this day I have never read The Hunting of the Snark, but upon reading such a delectable masterpiece, I realize that upon nonsense, stories do indeed grow—and grow they must. For if it’s not told a thousand times until we are old, then it’s a story neither heard nor told. So, as in the Snark, what is, was, and will be, no one will ever know. I encourage my reader to go forth and read the Snark, for it’s indeed what it’s meant to be, and so is my book.

Well, what does it mean? Nothing conclusive, and nothing exclusive or inclusive. It means what it’s meant to mean. So, away with the prologue, the epilogue, and all "logs," and on with the story.

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Mr. and Mrs. Effelump live in a house; it’s a large old house, a crooked old house with many rooms. Mrs. Effelump has brown hair, a rotund figure, red ruddy cheeks, the brightest smile, and the happiest manner.

Mr. Effelump is tall and lean, with brown-to-grey hair that looks very curly. He looks like his wife, only one of his eyes is as red as the poppy in a picture in Mrs. Effelump's hallway—a picture that someone painted of a field called Flanders Field, filled with poppies and wheat and stories of sad days.

As far as we know, they have no children. Instead, they have lots and lots of Effelents. Not Elephants, because why would an Elephant want to live in a house—a rather crooked house? Even if it is a very large house, no Elephant would wish to live there.

No, these are by definition Effelents, and they live with Mr. and Mrs. Effelump in the crooked house, somewhere of no apparent name or place. Except to say that in the distance, there are lots of hills and mountains.

Mountains and hills that Mrs. Effelump put there one day, much as we might put our washing on a line. Well, Mrs. Effelump wanted hills and mountains, so she put them there. A place for "Fed Up" Effelents to go and live—or so she said.

Not that Mrs. Effelump says much at all; she just is what she is, and she likes to keep house and cook. We know she cooks because we have seen her kitchen—such a dainty little space. How she fits in there with her giantess rotund figure and all those Effelents, we will never know, but she cooks quite happily, although we never know what she is cooking or what they eat.

If you asked, "Are they human?" well, Mr. and Mrs. Effelump look very much human, but if they are, we do not know. I never knew a human who could draw hills outside their window for Effelents to live in. I never knew a human that had eleven Effelents living in their house, or someone who lived in a house that someone else had drawn—a house so big its roof was in the clouds and looked over the hills and mountains.

What do Effelents do, what colour are they, and what do they look like? Well, we have very little knowledge of what they do, except that when they are FED UP doing what they do all day, they leave Mr. and Mrs. Effelump and go into the hills and mountains. Legend has it that when an Effelent leaves, it travels with a dog to the mountains and becomes like Mr. Effelump: a man-type being that cares for itself and its dog.

We think it’s true, because if you look out of the window at the mountains Mrs. Effelump has drawn, you can see a small dot of a dog on the uppermost peak. This is Geizt, and if you call to Geizt, he will call back with a loud, barking howl to say hello. Why he is called Geizt, we do not know.

The last Effelent to get FED UP was a white one. When he got fed up, he was the last Effelent in the house. You would think that Mr. and Mrs. Effelump would be upset to see the last Effelent leave, but that was the day the Boy arrived.

A young boy with bright red cheeks, thickset and very strong, and he went to live in the uppermost part of the house where the clouds are, and he lived up there instead of the Effelents. He stayed up there for many, many days. There is no time here in this place where Mrs. Effelump draws the mountains and someone else draws the house they live in.

The boy helped to keep the house tidy and clean. He visited the parlour, and it was much the same as it had always been. The same red and cream leather sofa, the same wallpaper, the same carpet, the same everything.

This parlour was very much like the parlour from the days of old—the one that, in human times, was kept for Grandma's Saturday visit. It smelled and looked like the room she would visit. The one where Grandfather died; the one room where I was born. This room that the Boy visited was very much the same as our parlour, our grand sitting room.

The rest of the house was familiar to us. Its bedroom, where the Effelents had lived, had the same childish wallpaper that we remembered: colourful cows eating colourful flowers. That was our room, our bedroom, where the Effelents lived.

The boy instead lived up in the clouds, and although he was content, he was becoming lonely. He thought of his life before this one and couldn't quite remember everything, but some things were still painfully familiar.

Sometime later, a new boy arrived—a thin and weedy youngster—and the first boy took great pity on him. Especially when the new boy was carrying pails of milk up the hill and fell so hard his face was cut and bruised. The first boy took the boy to the uppermost part of the house and fathered him.

The young boy was pleased to have a father, but he missed his previous life so much, and yet he couldn't remember much about it. His father introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Effelump and told him about the Effelents. No one knew if there were any more Effelents around, because they did nothing in particular until they were FED UP and then they moved out to the hills.

So his father couldn't really tell him much at all, but he let him share his swing. The swing looked over the world and seemed to reach into the clouds. On the swing were two carved girls, made from sewing bobbins, wool, and pipe cleaners. They were the father’s daughters; how he longed for a little girl of his very own.

The little boy asked him out loud for all to hear, "Do you have a wife? Do I have a mother?"

His father answered sadly, "I did have a wife, in another place. I was an adult then. Here I am a boy," he added, and smiled at his son. They were sitting on the swing, dressed up as jesters in a very childlike fashion.

He still longed to be a man and to have a little girl with long blonde curly hair, fairest skin, and bluest eyes. Perhaps wherever the Effelumps live, things just happen in their own time.

One day the boy, now a man, was walking along a cobbled street that someone else must have drawn, and the little girl he longed for walked alongside him. She wore a pretty tangerine-coloured dress with white polka dots upon it. He was singing a song that all human children might know one day:

"Three little ducklings went swimming one day, over the hills and far away. Mother duck said, 'Quack, quack, come back,' but only two little ducks came swimming back."

He sang it again until there were no ducklings left to come back. His daughter called in a loud voice, "Quack, quack, come back!"

And lo! Three ducklings and their mother came out from behind a wooden shed.

There ends our tale of the Effelumps and Effelents, and boys who become fathers and wish for children with blonde hair, and little girls who sing nursery rhymes. Who knows if they will be back in another story? For that really is another story to be told.

One day, a little girl of his very own arrived, and he loved her dearly.