Short Fiction

How Elephants Became Gray: A Children's Creation Story

By Rebecca St. Martin on caffeine

Do YOU know why the elephant is gray? I'll tell you! Long before humans knew of elephants, they existed very much as they do now, except they were solid black! They wandered the deserts of Africa great distances with very little to do. As a result, many of them developed nasty crack habits and began gambling to fund their next fix.

Tony Phontorino, the biggest, baddest elephant was a walking casino. He was the only elephant that could fit all the chips, decks and dice in his trunk. He was also the bank, and packed what seemed like a mountain of cocaine bags up his… never mind.

Tony never slept – or at least he never seemed to – no one saw him looking weary or closing his eyes. Some suspected that caffeine was his drug if choice and it did seem like a reasonable suspicion when a cappuccino machine fell out of his “cavity” when he had to produce the crack bags for those evening's festivities.

“This is going nowhere,” he said, looking up at the sky that night with all of the elephant junkies lying around with broken needles and eyes rolling back into their heads. It was no fun having to baby-sit this bunch, Tony thought to himself.