Thor is Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S...

Black boots, black pants, black sweatshirt, black stocking cap, black mittens--not gloves, but mittens, by personal preference--and Thor was set. He tiptoed down the hall, pausing at four second intervals to look and listen. With every stop he flung his arms out in front of him and lifted his left foot about seven inches off the floor. He then stuck his tongue out to taste the surrounding air. He was getting closer...

THUMP!

Thor froze. Someone was definitely onto him. He flattened himself against the wall and held his breath. He was so close. He could practically feel the rubbery banana in his hands, smell its intoxicating sweetness, and taste the yummy mush. With a burst of courage from deep inside his rumbling stomach, Thor ran forward and seized the banana hanging from the ceiling at the end of the hallway. He smashed it open against his forehead and then proceeded to massage the fruit into his scalp. Damn! Foiled again...and Thor was so very hungry.

Thor, Dear, Just Answer the Phone

"TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR! HOW I WONDER WHAT YOU ARE..."

Thor forced his index fingers deeper into his ears and shouted his favorite song at the top of his lungs, but it did little to drown out the malicious ringing of the cordless phone an inch from his face. Thor dared not move, even to chuck the offending article across the room, for fear of hitting the talk button. For nearly two minutes, Thor and the telephone had been sequestered under Thor's bed--hiding from Thor's mother on the other end of the ringing.

Just when Thor was about to expire from overexertion, the phone fell silent suddenly. Thor breathed a sigh of relief, withdrew his throbbing fingers from his ears, and picked up the phone at last. Just then there was a knock at the door. Thor started to cry.

All Thor Wants for Christmas is a Box of Benadryl

AAACHOOcoughcoughcoughAAACHOO!

"Ouch!" Thor exclaimed in pained frustration after giving her nightstand--formerly buried beneath a sizeable heap of soiled tissues until the latest round of sneezing, in which the precarious assembly caught a draft--an angry kick. As the Christmas season drew ever nearer, festivity was in the air, and Thor was allergic.

Deck the halls with jolly old Saint Nicholas away in a manger up on the housetop laughing all the way, let Earth receive her king and a happy new year. Blah, blah, blah. Go to hell in a handbag, Thor thought.

She stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the shower, full-blast hot, hoping the steam might provide the relief Vicky's offensive-smelling vapor rub had not, thus far. Steadying herself on the sink, Thor braved a glance in the looking glass and found a demented Christmasesquity looking back. The violent Rudolph-red nose between livid cheeks...nature's candy stripe. Then the green mucus practically flowing from the nostrils...

Disgusted, disheartened, and just generally depressed, Thor abandoned the shower idea and returned to bed, where she started right in on a new tissue mountain.

"Christmas blows," Thor muttered miserably, and for the million and oneth time, she blew her nose.

But Thor didn't die

Thor once told the story of how he almost died, and it was the scariest story we'd ever heard, so scary that after Mom had tucked us in bed, kissed our foreheads and flipped the switch, one of us would hiss "Don't take the eggs from the chicken!" to the other, and we'd both lie there, quivering, unable to fall asleep with the images that hovered over our beds: The trail of yellow slime dripping from Thor's mouth. A woman in a tattered blue bathrobe, a frying pan held high over her head. A squawking hen beating her wings, feathers flying everywhere. Thor had almost died!

Thor Needs a Helmet

Thor reclined on the crunchy, prickly yellow grass that hadn't seen moisture since 1842 b.c. A trickle of sweat slid along her jaw from the hairline on down. She wiped it off and licked her hand. Such a perfect day for relaxing by the water. Thor smiled at the muddy bed of the empty stream and whistled merrily. Overhead the blazing sun sent its scorching rays in Thor's direction, burning her scalp to a flaming crisp. Feeling a wee bit nostalgic, Thor decided to try to pick out shapes in the clouds, like she'd done as a child. On Thor's left was a cloud that resembled a cloud, and on her right was an even fluffier cloud that looked remarkably like a cloud. Thor was amused. She giggled and chucked a stone at a passing fly. Missed it by a mile. She gesticulated wildly and shouted after the fly, "You better keep walkin'!" Blame the heat or poor genetics...either way, Thor was...special.

Thor eats

Today was not a day of reflection, a moment to gaze at his graying and wrinkled family across the table and thank them for standing by him when he robbed the dollar store of five bottles of off-brand shampoo and a candle that smelled like a decaying coconut and the entire contents of the cash register, $11.17. Today was not a time to express gratitude that his mother kept quiet the morning Thor stumbled home naked, flowers in his hair, bacon grease slathered over his bruised body. Today was not about the clown whose ass he kicked at the neighborhood carnival, the one with the fat tear drawn on his cheek and those stupid rainbow pants that hung dangerously close to his butt crack. PULL UP YOUR PANTS, YOU PERVERT CLOWN! Today he wouldn't even mention the hostage situation with the weather man on the 6 o'clock news, the time he hogtied Dirk Storm and demanded that the abuse of the guinea pigs down at Bob's Exotic Animal Factory had to stop. FREE THE GUINEAS, DIRK! ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THE GUINEAS!

No, today was not about giving thanks, or Thanksgiving, or bail money. Today was good for just one thing.

Thor dipped his head into the bowl of gravy while his family looked away.

Thor Frost, Brother of Jack?

Chill coursed through Thor's veins, propelled by a pulsating heart-shaped block of ice wedged uncomfortably in his chest cavity. Thor would've welcomed the pain of an ordinary run-of-the-mill heart attack. Anything would be preferable to the excruciating cold. Worse than the bitter frigidity, though, was the sheer terror at this sudden affliction.

Thor winced as he rubbed his frostbitten hands together, trying to return them to a recognizable color and texture...but to no avail. He discovered soon after that his legs had become little more than fleshy popsicles, of no more use to him than a banjo, given the state of his hands.

Thor had always been a loving, caring individual, warm-hearted as they come. So many times his honesty and loyalty led to his getting a pretty raw deal, but Thor learned early on to just roll with the punches, and he somehow maintained his sunny demeanor through the years, in spite of receiving arguably more than his fair share of the hardships traditionally suffered by the more humane segment of humanity.

One day, though, Thor decided he'd had enough. He rolled up his welcome mat and begged for apathy. He got his wish, essentially, but with a catch. There's always a catch. With Thor's new detachment from emotion came detachment from life. Thor's body was icing over, slowly hardening into a glaciated corpse. He realized too late what was going on. This sick experiment of the gods had claimed his soul, and all he could do was watch himself die, choking on the frost that was rapidly consuming him.