Not even the door-lamp was on when Ozar stepped afoot the welcome mat of his home at 7:34 P.M. Weird, since he’d switched it on before he went out. He’d left the T.V. on too, but, when he pressed his ear to the door, he couldn’t hear it on.

He inserted his key, clicked the lock open, then stepped carefully into the pitch black. A cold plank groaned like an old man under his heel, the sound dissipating across the house to the flattening of his toes.

All a sudden, Ozar was very afraid. He wondered how and why everything had gotten so gloomy while he was away.

He slowly slid his hand to the light switch with the carefulness of an aeronautics engineer. He flicked the lights on.

There was a flash, and the living room appeared with an assortment of colors, shapes, sizes, and figures. So many furries wearing spotted conical hats, nibbling on curled whistles, they braced before setting loose several zoos of ruckus at once:

“SURPRISE!”

Bewildered and pale, Ozar looked about the living room. A lot of his friends were there gathered; and on the big living room table were platters of cheesy/bready appetizers, and bowls of chips and dip and macaroni. And on the coffee table and on the picture shelves were red cups full of fizzy drinks, and paper plates of foodstuff: particularly pizza.

Now, up, up! Scrawled across a sky blue banner that went from corner to corner of the ceiling, were words still dripping in rainbow paint.

“HAPPY BURPDAY OZAR.”

Sini thought that that play on words was the cleverest shit. He snickered at the orange alien drake’s shock, then bounded out of a side-room a little late to the party.

“Surprise!”

It was the latest echo ever. From Sini’s paws trailed paint all along the hardwood, which Ozar seemed not to notice. His face was a freeze-frame, as bright as a firework. His tail began to speak, but then Sini and friends ushered him along to the kitchen counter.

One of them handed him a paper plate, plus utensils. But Ozar did not seem to see this. Aweing at all of the pizza boxes, bowls of varied macaroni, and platter of chocolate red velvet cake, he did not even hear his friend ask him if he’d like to sit down and have for him a plate fixed.

Then Sini, who’d just washed his hands, came forward. “Get outta here with that! Plate! Pshh!”

He snagged up a crust, and his paw holding a piece of pizza launched into the orange drake’s mouth. It pulled out with a slobbery squelch, and a deadly recoil to its ricochet, which we’ll recount hereafter:

“Mnngf!” The pizza offering landed Ozar into the seat of a plush sofa. His feet kicked up and, as if from a kick of recoil, a second “mmf” came out of him, much more cozy-sounding than the first. Much like a placated babe he began sucking down the pizza gulp by gulp. His eyes cartwheeled.

Contented grunting and grumbling there came; and like this, the feeding of the pizza went on; and once Sini (or, rather, Ozar) had left the first box but crumbs and cardboard, and that fat wafer-colored gut was out to HERE (look at my paws, now, way past my torso), Sini looked at the clock. The little hand ticked to eight.

Sini said, “Well time sure flies, gaw’donnit! You’ll never be full before bed at this rate! Let’s load ‘er up,” a clap-clap to the fatass’ stomach, “and double-time now! Nyah!”

As though the world depended on his hastiness, he then lifted an entire pizza out of its box and folded it, as if it were a taco. And he came back Ozar’s way; and before Ozar could so much as bleat “wait,” his mouth was dilated to fit one end of the pizza. Down it was rammed, like a subway down a station tunnel. Just the way a train was meant to depart the station for the place it was bound, so it was with that pizza departing its box.

Pizza, macaroni, grape soda, orange soda, chocolate red velvet cake with vanilla ice cream and, on the side, banana pudding: Sini and friends fed it all to the birthday dragon. The couch sunk lower and lower beneath the weight of the bloating orange drake. Groans and complaints came from his stomach, which everyone seemed to ignore, just the way everyone ignores that annoying young cousin at family reunions.

So they just kept filling him, and filling him, and finally he couldn’t get his paws around his gut anymore. It was large. It was spherical. It was half as wide as a small water mill wheel—yet most anthros would be lucky to have a gut an eighth of one, had they stuffed themselves sufficiently. It took up half the sofa.

A testament to his peer-pressured gluttony, through the night he got gassier and gassier.

HrrRrrk!
Bl-UU-AARP.
BllllrwrwruurAAACK!
URr-r-r-r-r-RRAA-A-ALP!
GRGglRGluUUu-U-U-U-Ulrr-r-rRr—
—RRAAAAAA-A-A-A-AaAaAAAAAA—
—AAAaAAA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAACKH!

There was a spicy one! A greasy one! A fizzy, thick one! One that was so fat and so full and so wet, it could’ve been mistaken for Ozar if only Ozar had jumped in the pool before this. And so a portrait on the wall fell and shattered; and delicate vases and pots everyone had wondered why Ozar had had fell and did the same; and even people, people in the fat bastard’s vicinity, started to wobble over and to the floor in some queer mimicry of dominoes.

Even Sini, the 13,200-pound, 13’2” dragon at last went flying to his butt onto Ozar’s fine wooly rug. He clonked his head on the way down, and if I were to place that last belch on a seismograph, I’d put that last one at whatever number is enough to knock out a 13,200-pound dragon, verily.

And by the time that last belch was done, it seemed as though everyone had taken a Tylenol P.M., or as though everyone had taken a molly, or perhaps as though everyone was pretending to be a rug. I am not so sure what these things would look like, but I imagine they’d look like people scattered, sprawled all about the floor asleep, as so they were.

And with the food coma kicking in, Ozarbios gradually fell asleep with his tummy glorping and gurgling. That night he’d have dreams of rubbing a great big beach ball, though it’d really be just his gut.

Lemme tell ya—it was a Burpday party to remember.

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I'll be frank: this is a very last-minute gift for  Ozarbios. But hey, the best surprises are the ones that you surprise yourself with. Amirite?