"Will you shut him up!"
Jon turned around. Bob, who had just spoken, stood up. In the three days Jon had known the old bug, Bob had been sitting in the same position, barely moving. Only now that he stood up did Jon realize just how enormous he was. At least three times his size - and Jon was no small flea - Bob stood over the two trembling fleas. His massive legs, at least as thick as the stalks of hair around them, were knobbled and hard from the long years. As the roar grew louder, the light faded. The dog's snout now snuffed out the sunlight that had been warming the old flea's back.
"What are you going to do?" Jon asked. There was a tremble in his voice now, he knew what Kyle had been screaming about and he felt a little like screaming himself.
"I do what needs to be done." Bob said, resolutely. "And when nothing needs to be done, I do nothing."
There was no time to question him on what he meant. He lowered himself in a spring, looked up into the sky where the leathery nose was now in clear view, closing in on them by the second, and sprang, like a world class pole vaulter, straight up.
As he flew he yelled to the two he left behind. "Fly, you fools." And he disappeared into the left nostril.
Kyle did not need a second exhortation. With all the speed his diminutive size could muster, he sprang clear of the mess of hair they had been hiding in and dove straight for the ground. Jon could hear him screaming all the way, only faded by the rapidly increasing distance between the two. In a moment, he was gone, never to be seen again.
Jon was alone and in shock. Even in the short time they had together he and Bob had become good friends. And now the old flea was gone, executing his own sentence of life - or death - within the bowels of their arch-enemy. Had he time to reflect a little more on the passing of his old friend, Jon would have found tears to shed for such an untimely death, but he had to act. Already in the neckline, just above where Jon stood, the dog was working feverishly with teeth and tongue, trying to root him out of hiding. He took this opportunity, with the dog's face in such close proximity, bent for just a moment, full at the knees, and bounded straight up. He charged through the air, feet first and landed a quick kick in the retina of the old dog's eyeball. The eyelid shut, a batting motion intended to trap Jon in a lash, but he was prepared for this and leapt out of the way, not a moment too soon. He landed on the tip of the leathery bit of the nose and thrust his face into the nib with all his might, biting with the ferocity of ten fleas. The tongue caught him on that one. Whipping unexpectedly over the canine horizon and catching him square in the face, it sent him flying, covered in a sort of incapacitating drool. He landed in a rather bare spot on the dog's hindquarters, in plain view with little freedom for escape.
The teeth loomed ever closer. In that last second of life, Jon remembered his old mum, the things she would say to him, her double baked cherry pie and the promises she told. "Be a good little pest," she would say, "and the world is yours." He thought of his sweetheart, and wondered where she was at that moment. Probably fooling around somewhere on the belly, having a time of it with some other flea, not caring about him at all.
"That's a little hard." he said aloud, imaging himself dying and her not caring one wit. The faint smile and thoughts of mum and dad were now replaced by these gloomy thoughts and a rather rummy frown. And then he remembered with alarm his impending doom.
The teeth loomed closer still, not more than an inch from his face. He was about to be bitten in two when the filthy dog yelped and reared his head back. Jon jumped, not caring where he was going, not knowing how he escaped this time. He simply knew he could not stay where he was. He landed some distance away on a sheet of paper and looked back to see if he could discover cause for the dog's sudden involuntary violence. The dog was licking his face incessantly, his nose was dripping with saliva, and his teeth were showing around the corners of his mouth. He yelped again, the thrashing of his body even more pronounced than before. He began scooting across the floor, his face buried in the area rug, trembling violently as if he had been shot. He yelped once more and fell to the ground exhausted as though he were very nearly dead. One final yelp and his head whipped into the air.
And at the crack of the whip, Jon heard another sound. A sort of woo-hooing from the left nostril. Bob was positively flying through the air, surely a record in the flea standards of jumping, clutching in his hind legs four slender nose hairs. He landed by Jon, threw the hairs down, and fell in a great heap by his friend. Jon gushed with affection at the bold move of this ancient specimen and meant to rush over and hug his savior when he noticed the particularly sticky quality of the paper he was standing on. He could not move. Though they were out of reach of the dog and in no immediate danger, the alarming realization of their present handicap sent Jon into hysterics.
"We can't move!" He screamed. "We can't move! What are we going to do?"
Bob lay with his back to Jon and as he was on the same strip of fly paper, he was unable to move as well. But Jon heard him sigh and after a while, the old flea spoke.
"I do what needs to be done." Bob said, resolutely, "And when nothing needs to be done, I do nothing."
THE END
