The Lion, The Shoe and the Jingle Bell Keys

A scruffy, tawny lion nestles in the open-air home of the golden slipper, waffleized with its floral pattern of holes, not big enough to smuggle the cowardly lion a heart or some piece of zebra, but small enough to let the Foot breathe, which the lion lives forever in fear of. He eyes the ceiling in despair. Such bengal-tiger behavior is unworthy of the Keys, which lay abandoned in the carpet valley far below, desecrated and probably haunted by the ghosts of its once-salty crew. The captain lives in the navy whistle. A purple gumball approaches. A mammoth bowling ball, rolling so slowly that nobody, neither the captain nor the lion, not even the Foot, can see it moving.