With a smirk, Walter Mitty leaned against the wall with crossed arms, and closed his eyes with an exasperated sigh as he awaited his fate – a resigned prey anticipating locked jaws. The gunmen positioned their fingers on the triggers of their rifles, focusing their gaze intently on their target. Walter Mitty, the Undefeated, was to be taken out once and for all, snuffed out ingloriously like water on a smoldering campfire.

“ONE-TWO-THREE FIRE!”, yelled the head marksman, and the marksmen pulls the in perverse harmony.

BLURP-GLOB-GLOB. Pieces of wood chips and soil blend together and the resulting mud starts oozing out of the muzzles of each marksmen’s rifles making a sickening vomit of failure. Confused, the gunmen looked at each other with baffled stares and each marksman pulled their triggers once more. GLOB-GLURBLE-PLOOP, as more muck spews and trickles onto the ground. A sly smile crept onto Walter Mitty’s face and he licked his lips. Indeed, Walter Mitty had earlier escaped and loaded the marksmen’s rifles with the mud in the rain earlier that afternoon. In disorderly fashion, the marksmen gave a few swift whacks of the stock of their rifles on their knees, readjusted their rifles under their arms, and pulled the triggers once more. GLOOP-GLURP-BLOP. Pandemonium bubbled over the marksmen like a witches’ brew.

“What do we do!” yelled one of the marksmen, “It’s jammed!” ….

“Walter! Are you listening? I said it’s jammed!”, grumbled Mrs. Mitty as she attempted to open the yellow umbrella with the fury of a chipmunk dealing with a stubborn nut.

“What’s jammed?” mumbled Walter Mitty, gazing at a sodden puddle in a ditch hole near the sidewalk. He slovenly dragged his feet lightly across the drenched pavement with sullen ambivalence. He focused his attention on the stinging bullets of raindrops punishing the top of his head, trickling down his forehead and onto his eyelashes.

“For goodness sake Walter, I said this darn umbrella is jammed” repeated Mrs. Mitty, “Can you fix this old thing?”.

She passed the yellow umbrella to him and hurried off towards the car in the distance, clutching steadfastly to her prized bags of the day’s triumphant shopping rampage. Walter Mitty takes out the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, only to discover that each cigarette was soggy, wilted in the rainwater like his own posture.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes” he muttered barely audible to his wife.

She loaded the trunk up with the shopping bags, forcing them in like stubborn corpses. Walter Mitty hurried with quick, obedient steps, making splashes on his back leg pants. Each step towards the convenience store situated at the near end at the corner of the street seemed pulled by an invisible string emanating from his wife.

A dog from behind came suddenly sprinting towards Walter Mitty with a red leash flowing behind it, barking aggressively. Walter Mitty holds out the crippled yellow umbrella, prepared to ward off this ferocious dog, but the dog runs by him, chasing a cat instead that was perched on top of a small tree near the pavement. “Jack! You get back right here now!”, yelled a woman’s voice from behind. Walter Mitty turns around to see an attractive woman, carrying an exquisite, delicate umbrella that looked rather rakishly at odds with the murkiness of the day as she hurriedly ran after her dog in distraught. Walter Mitty, hastily, wheeled around into the convenience store, pushing the doors inward as a bell above the doors jingled like an antiquated telephone.

… The rain only persisted to baptize and purify all of the stench of sin that exists as long as the Great Beast was alive in the wilderness of the Grandness Forest. Walter Mitty, the most daring adventurer of all time, was alone in the darkest recess of the Grandness Forest, where no one dared enter. The spindly tree branches knotted the paths, like a twine strangling a tree, burying the trails.

Walter Mitty leapt over each fallen branch and mud hole, treading carefully as if any step were a foot on a lethal spear that could end his journey. A roar echoed in the distance, followed by a high pitched scream, piercing through the thickset forest.

It was obvious from the anticipation of the air that The Great Beast was near, something Walter Mitty has been expecting to confront all his life. Walter Mitty surged through the pathways, swinging from branch to branch like an experienced acrobat, ceasing every odd minute to judge the distance of the Great Beast’s roar. From nowhere, a shadow sprung from its own shadow and a ferocious roar followed from behind it, sending a vibrating shiver through the Grandness Forest. The whimpers of a lady were muffled but audible from behind the Beast. The raindrops tumbled harder with angry determination.  Shrugging off the extra burden of weight carried on his shoulders by the heavy collecting rain, Walter Mitty shifted his back discreetly yet with nonchalant disregard and charged directly towards the infamous savage beast of the forest.

The Great Beast snarled and darted down the path but Walter Mitty spotted a skeleton of a previous daring adventurer who was unfortunately gobbled up by the Great Beast. Noticing a yellow spear still clinging in the befallen adventurer’s hands, Walter sprinted towards the yellow spear and promptly grasped ahold of it. He launched the yellow spear into the heart of the Beast with a seemliness flick of the wrist, fatally stabbing the Great Beast of the Grandness Forest. Walter Mitty dashes towards the lady, holding a dainty umbrella, as rocks start tumbling down the hill. He clutched the lady’s waist and leaped off the edge of the hill, falling towards the rocky grounds. The umbrella opened up like a parachute, and they both landed with the grace of gliding swans.

“Oh my!” exclaimed the blushing beauty before him, visibly in awe of his heroics.

Walter Mitty could best conceal his obvious pride by removing a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He took out a single cigarette and placed it in between his teeth.

“Wait until they hear about it back home”, he said, lighting the cigarette and staring into the vast emptiness of the exorcized forest.