Bedtime Story #3

Once upon a time, in a swamp polluted with radioactive matter, lived a bunyip. The bunyip, due to this environment, sustained a few developmental deformities. Because of his odd appearance, he could never get a date with any girl bunyips, and all the boy bunyips mocked him and chose him last to be on their sports teams.

The bunyip had another, not as immediately identifiable, deformity. Instead of the nasty behaviours normally indulged in by other bunyips, such as eating children, scaring old people, and generally wreaking havoc among the human population, this bunyip preferred to be gentle and kind. For this reason, primarily, he was a pariah.

One day, as the bunyip was strolling along in the public gardens, picking flowers, he met a beautiful girl with long black hair. She was so pretty, he tried to talk to her, and give her the flowers he had picked. But because he was a scary-looking bunyip, she freaked out, and ran away. He threw the flowers to the ground and walked home despondently.

The following day, he was picking flowers as usual. The pretty girl with black hair came strolling along the path. This time, he gave the flowers to her first, then proceeded to strike up a conversation.

As the two of them talked, they realised they had very much in common. The girl realised that her preconceptions about bunyips were false generalisations. She would have liked to stay longer to talk to him, but she was meeting a few friends for coffee. She asked if the bunyip would like to join them, and he nervously agreed.

As her friends approached, his heart beat faster and faster. The humans immediately assumed the bunyip was attacking the girl, and converged upon him, bashing him relentlessly.

"Stop! STOP!" screamed the girl. "He's nice! He's a nice bunyip!"

The humans did not believe that a bunyip could be nice, so they continued to beat the crap out of him. The girl ran into the fray and pulled the humans off her new friend. She explained that the bunyip was kind and gentle, and her friends came to believe this.

As they were walking towards the cafe, a group of nasty bunyips confronted them. The nasty bunyips taunted the kind and gentle bunyip for associating with human beings. The nasty bunyips gave the kind and gentle bunyip a further beating.

The bunyip, fortunately, survived the beatings with very few lasting injuries. Over coffee, the bunyip told his new human friends about how he could never ask a lady bunyip out on a date, because he was too kind and gentle, and never did things like scaring old people and eating babies.

One of the pretty girl's friends informed the bunyip that he had recently met a kind and gentle lady bunyip, who was not nasty because she had been dropped on her head as a baby. The friend introduced the two kind and gentle bunyips to each other.

After a series of dates, the two bunyips realised that they were really rather fond of each other. They moved into a non-radioactive swamp so their babies would not have developmental disorders. They had twelve babies, and raised them all to be kind and gentle.