Here’s another story from my upcoming collection, The Snowman Three Doors Down. In “Gumball Gaffigan,” our protagonist goes to great lengths to procure and promote his favorite food. At a crossroads, he meets his old friends Gerhardt Goldicote, Gabby Gilfeather, and Hilarion Hachementier, all on quests of their own. Many things could go wrong. Here’s how it begins…

GUMBALL GAFFIGAN

Gumball Gaffigan awoke in a cheery mood.
“My, but it’s sunny out,” he yawned, tossing off the quilt and stretching his limbs. “I wonder what time it is.”
The clock cuckoo popped out to chirp, “It’s morning!”
“That’s not very specific,” Gumball observed.
“It’s good enough,” the little wooden bird retorted. “You have no appointments. You just wander around all day looking for gumballs.”
“A man must eat,” Gumball said.
“Well, bring back some wooden caterpillars if you think of it,” piped the cuckoo, retreating to its sanctum.
Gumball pulled on his shirt, pants, and sandals, and donned a cap to shade his nose, which was sensitive to the sun.
He locked his shed, and strolled out onto Main Street. There he met his friend Gary, who was leaving his shed too.
“Morning!” said Gary. “Out for gumballs?”
“You bet!” Gumball answered with an amiable smile.
Graziella Gottfitz approached from the other direction. She smiled coquettishly from under her twirling parasol.
“I know where you’re headed!” she simpered, pointing a soiled glove in mock accusation.
“My habits are predictable,” chuckled Gumball.
Gumball turned the corner onto Subsidiary Street, murmuring, “I’ll bet there’s a machine here.”
His grandmother, Granny Gaffigan, waddled out from her shed, and glared at him disapprovingly over her unifocals.
“And where might you be going, young man?” she asked sharply.
“I’m gumball bound,” said her grandson.
“What do you do with all that candy?” she asked.
“I make vegetable stock,” he explained.
“Gumballs aren’t vegetables,” the old woman protested.
“They’re made of plants,” Gumball said. “Sugar, dextrose, corn syrup, malic acid, glycerine, tapioca dextrin, carnauba wax: all nature’s bounty from the good green earth.”
“You need a more varied diet,” she said.
“The gumball is a sphere,” he replied, “like the earth that is our home, the sun that lights our days, the moon that guides our nights. Its center is in the middle, and its circumference equidistant around it.”
“My daughter didn’t raise you right,” grumbled his mother’s mother as she waddled back into her shed.
“Aha!” cried Gumball, as he sighted a machine. “Come to papa!”