De_Le_Chozo
Smash Apprentice
Mr. Fortune cookie says . . . "Your love for vegetables will grow even further after reading this story."
PART ONE: BEFORE
Joan Fairbury had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. Maybe it was because Jackie Boy was dead. Or at least he had to be, the way he maintained his apartment. It wasn’t a very good apartment if all the stairs creaked, did it? And it didn’t help that Jackie Boy’s ghost could still be hanging around.
The old man at the desk with a heavy accent -Joan couldn’t tell which accent- told her, “You vill be scharing yourr apartmint vith Henry Horovitz. At faive-Zee. Got Zat?” Joan was confused at this, but she didn’t really want to ask the old man for clarification. He had a strange musk about him that resembled the smell of Joan’s uncle after cleaning the toilet while eating raw onions.
After Joan got her share of the scenery, she had the urge to turn tail and make a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Jackie Boy was dead, and so was his apartment. The tenants were probably dusty old men who smelled, right? What was the point in living here? But then again, Jackie Boy was the only place she could afford on a librarian’s salary.
Eventually Joan knocked on a door, hoping that it wouldn’t break apart. A voice inside replied, “What does the sign say, genius?” It sounded like it was in a bathroom.
She replied, “Well. . . Half of it’s broken off, so I can’t really tell.”
“Ugh. Fine. Are you Joan Fairbury?”
When Joan came in, she was surprised to see that the apartment wasn’t as dirty as the ceiling outside. There were only a few books out of place in the gargantuan bookshelf that reached higher than Joan’s head. From what she could tell, many of them said PS as if they were from a library. There was a
desk at the corner, decorated with papers like a Christmas tree. Stacks of them stood beside each other, shifting around due to an open window. To the desk’s left, a TV sat, a brick embedded in it.
One of the books fell off the bookshelf, and Joan made catlike recoil, but it was interrupted when she heard a flush and a man came out of the bathroom, zipping up his corduroy pants with a face of satisfaction. The man went to the refrigerator, got some water out, but didn’t quite close it. His glasses almost fell off as he did this, but he nudged them up and said, “Some advice, roomie: You don’t want to go in the bathroom right now.”
He was wearing pink slippers, and made a forward moonwalk towards his PC. He literally shuffled, because he always had to shuffle when he was wearing those slippers. There was a certain impulse in the soles that said, “Tommy Girl” that surged through his feet.
As he shuffled, his shin hit Joan’s bag.
“Ouch! Geez, what do you carry in that bag, Joan? A ton of bricks?”
“Um, no, but it seems like you do. Why do you have a brick in your TV?”
“I was addicted to Desperate Housewives. My favorite used to be Bree. You ever heard of that show?”
Joan shook her head.
“Well, I was addicted to it, but then I learned I had better stuff to do. Wanna gummi bear? I’m addicted to these, too, but they don’t distract me as much as Susan Myer and her never-ending quest for commitment. . .”
“No thanks. What kind of stuff did you have to do?”
“Lemme show you,”
Henry took a seat at his desk, adjusting his seat upwards first, then downwards, then slightly upwards. He then shoved his stacks of paper over, revealing a monitor and a PC. One of the stacks shifted a bit, so Henry paid special attention to that as he turned on the computer. He also grabbed a few gummy bears, picking out all the green ones.
At this point, Joan still had the book from the floor. She stopped paying attention to return it to its home in the bookshelf. It was The Elements of Style and there was a BOOK SALE label on it. Dewey Decimal labeled its binding, which was severely worn out. The cold air from the window made Joan sneeze and the book practically fell apart in her hands. A dead book in a dead apartment.
Henry got his computer to the right site and said, “Oh no! My book, it dropped in ranking on Amazon.com!” he put his hands to his cheeks in a surprised gesture, Hold on, lemme Refresh the page, maybe the rankings’ll change!”
“Wow shouldn’t you be proud of yourself? What kind of book was it?”
“What? It dropped further???”
“So you’re like an author?”
With gritted teeth, he said, “Not until I actually rise in ranking! But enough about that,” he said, “it was called Vegetables: Our Answers to the Stars. I basically assign different personalities according to a vegetable.”
“Vegetable?” Joan scrunched up her nose and tilted her head. She was a rabbit, a cute, confused rabbit.
“George Bush Jr? He is totally a zucchini. Harry Potter? Either celery or cabbage, I’m not really sure. But I’m sure it starts with a ‘c’ Mohandas Gandhi? An onion if ever I saw one!”
At that point, a noise came from the apartment above theirs. It reminded Joan of the noise that the ships in Star Trek made when they fired their lasers. Joan made another catlike recoil and dropped the book she was holding. Henry made a rush toward the book as if it was the president and he was its bodyguard.
Joan was about to sneeze again, but then Henry got up; he thumbed through his bookshelf, looked at the book’s label and muttered, “That’s the thing about books you buy from the library. Not only are they cheap, they’re already organized for you. . .”
At that, Joan hunched her shoulders together, a scared rabbit this time, pointed at the ceiling and asked, “What was that noise upstairs?”
“That? Don’t worry about it, it’s just Old man Gale.”
Joan asked who Old man Gale was.
“Well, his full name is Neil Gale, but who’s gonna call him ‘Old man Neil Gale’? It just doesn’t work. He likes making all types of gadgets. Like Nick Szalinski. You remember him? You ever watch that movie, uh. . . I can’t quite remember its name, but he’s a lot like Nick Szalinski.
"You know, one time, Old Man Gale successfully created a hybrid between a penguin and a dog. We called it a doguin and I named him Manny.
"It’s too bad though, Manny couldn’t handle the climate here in Jackie Boy Meadows. He shed like crazy, even Sasquatch would’ve been jealous. But he was real obedient, he was such a good doguin. . .”
Henry’s voice trailed out as Old man Gale emerged into the room. He had large, thick glasses of many layers, so that he could magnify whatever he wanted. Many of his teeth were missing, so his mouth looked like a turtle’s. With his large, thick glasses, Old man Gale looked at Henry and Joan. He took
something out of his backpack, which was at least two times larger than he himself. It looked like a Super Soaker.
Henry said, “Oh hey Gale. Wanna gummi bear? Sorry I took all the green ones.”
Old man Gale shook his head, so Henry asked, “Experiment?” With what teeth he had left, Old man Gale made a grin and nodded.
“Then fire away, my wrinkly friend.”
And then Joan heard the noise that Star Trek ships made when they fired their lasers. Except it was much louder.
PART TWO: AFTER
Joan Fairbury found herself in the same room. With the same broken “bricken” TV. With the same paper-cluttered Christmas desk. With the same bookshelf that was taller than she. Except it was much taller this time around. She was about to ask Henry what was going on, but then he asked her, “You ever hear those stories about those squids with thirty-five tentacles? Or those squids that are as long as a Navy sub? Or something about squids being real abnormal – you get my point? Some people claim they really exist, but the thing is, you can never prove it or disprove it, you know?”
She nodded.
“That’s the thing about Old man Gale. You say he can’t make a shrinking ray, but then he busts out a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”
Joan’s eyes grew wide enough to stuff a half-dollar coin in there. There it was again, the urge to leave, creeping up on her, pulling her at one shoulder and then moving on to the next. Jackie Boy was dead, and not even a shrink ray could change that. She had to get out, but then how could she carry her bags down the creaky stairs with the microscopic arms of hers? Joan pursed her lips. At her size, she could only follow Henry Horowitz and see what happened next.
He was headed towards the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite closed.
“Hold on Henry! What about me?”
“Well, you can help me write my next book,” and then he took out his index fingers and panned it across the space in front of him, like he was picturing the perfect camera angle, “think about it Joan - Vegetables: The Sequel. By Horowitz et al. (but mainly Horowitz).
Oh, and it’ll probably take more than one person to close the refrigerator. You need to help me.”
In their journey to the refrigerator, Henry and Joan encountered an ant, an ant that didn’t face the effects of Old man Gale’s shrink ray. Attracted to Henry’s abundance of gummi bears, it thrust itself on the two. Deftly, Henry tossed his bag of gummi bears to it, and it became tame. Henry told Joan that he bought the bears in bulk, “I had plenty to spare.”
From that point, Henry named the ant Manny: the Sequel, and rode him the same way the Lone Star rode Silver.
Joan grinned, just a little. It was because she pictured Henry saying, “Hi ho Silver away!” on top of an ant. Was this the same Jackie Boy she knew, the lifeless Jackie Boy?
Riding Manny: The Sequel, Joan wasn’t sure of where they were going. And then Henry turned to her and asked, “You remember that idiom, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?’” Joan was about to respond but then they stopped at the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite closed.
Henry rubbed his stomach and made some growling sounds. After grabbing some cheese, he became terrified. Air from the window closed the refrigerator door, darkening it into a cave.
“Welcome.”
The voice broke through the darkness. It was deep and raspy, as if it was processed through a headphone and then into a cheese grater. The voice bellowed throughout, as if it came from the four corners of the refrigerator. Joan wasn’t sure where the voice was, and shifted her head in the darkness, occasionally smacking it for her pupils to adjust. What she couldn’t see, she heard. It was a leader’s voice, a voice that commanded authority.
A brown glow penetrated the cave, revealing a cut of beef as small as a car key, a triangle of bread that seemed to move an inch closer, and a piece of celery that created a strange brown radiance. They all seemed to march towards Joan and Henry and they all had fuzz on them that denied their edible nature.
Then the three charged in their direction. Joan immediately turned her head away and covered it in her hands, bracing for the impact, but Henry did nothing. He simply stood there, stiff as a man on viagra. It was because the three were charging at what was behind the two: a cluster of white grapes and a few shreds of lettuce. The grapes still had dew on them from their first rinsing, and the lettuce looked like it was just picked off its head.
They fought in the brown glow of the celery. Henry provided commentary.
“You see the group led by the piece of beef there? Except it’s not really beef if it takes that color. . . but anyways, that guy’s Beef Who Hath No Name. He’s the leader of the funguscites, he has an awesome voice. It’s like whatever he says, I’ll always believe him. . .
“Anyways you see the piece of celery that’s providing the lightshow? He’s Celerus of the Night. No one can explain why the mold on him has that glow, but then again, no one’s done any labs on him.
“And you see the piece of bread there? Keeps to himself a lot, so I never figured out his name. Call him Wheaty-O.”
Joan made a face. Without moving a lip, it said, “I come into this apartment, looking for some place to live, and then you drag me to all this crap? How do you manage to live in a place even as danky as Jackie Boy? Do you even get steady pay? Do you even have a career? What are you trying, staring at vegetables fight each other? Where’s the future in this?”
Harry was about to name the other fighting foodstuffs, but then he saw Joan’s face. If he was a tomato, that face struck him to the seeds. Sure, Jackie Boy was a cheap apartment, but did Henry have a steady job? When was the last time he’d gotten a paycheck? How long could he ride on Vegetables: Our Answers to the Stars? What was he getting at, watching the edibles duke it out?
They watched each other, and then at the brawl. It was over. At opposite ends of the refrigerator, the clashing cuisine panted and put their hands on their knees. They all wore a grin under their fuzz or dew.
Was this even possible? Could cuts of beef learn to smile? Could pieces of celery radiate with warmth of heart? Could triangles of bread put on a happy face?
In Jackie Boy, they could.
And a grin grew on her face. If you can’t find fighting, glowing vegetables in Jackie Boy Meadows, where could you find them? The place certainly had flair to it, and you couldn’t get that kind anywhere else.
Joan saw this, tilted her head and said, “Why are they happy?”
Henry looked to his hands. They were getting bigger, so he hauled *** out of the refrigerator. He said, “The funguscites push for control over here every month or so. They always fail, but they always try over and over again.”
Joan asked why.
“It makes them alive. Wouldn’t you feel dead if you sat there, covered in brown and black fuzz? Wouldn’t it fight off the decay if you began to want something, and then fight for it?”
They were out of the refrigerator. Henry was done talking. Oh wait, maybe not.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to check on my rank in Amazon and then chew through my writer’s block.”
Sarah O wasn't so successful.
I tried to go in another direction this time style-wise. Tell me if it worked?
Thanks a bunch.
Jackie Boy Meadows, or, When Glowing Vegetables Attack!
PART ONE: BEFORE
Joan Fairbury had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. Maybe it was because Jackie Boy was dead. Or at least he had to be, the way he maintained his apartment. It wasn’t a very good apartment if all the stairs creaked, did it? And it didn’t help that Jackie Boy’s ghost could still be hanging around.
The old man at the desk with a heavy accent -Joan couldn’t tell which accent- told her, “You vill be scharing yourr apartmint vith Henry Horovitz. At faive-Zee. Got Zat?” Joan was confused at this, but she didn’t really want to ask the old man for clarification. He had a strange musk about him that resembled the smell of Joan’s uncle after cleaning the toilet while eating raw onions.
After Joan got her share of the scenery, she had the urge to turn tail and make a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Jackie Boy was dead, and so was his apartment. The tenants were probably dusty old men who smelled, right? What was the point in living here? But then again, Jackie Boy was the only place she could afford on a librarian’s salary.
Eventually Joan knocked on a door, hoping that it wouldn’t break apart. A voice inside replied, “What does the sign say, genius?” It sounded like it was in a bathroom.
She replied, “Well. . . Half of it’s broken off, so I can’t really tell.”
“Ugh. Fine. Are you Joan Fairbury?”
When Joan came in, she was surprised to see that the apartment wasn’t as dirty as the ceiling outside. There were only a few books out of place in the gargantuan bookshelf that reached higher than Joan’s head. From what she could tell, many of them said PS as if they were from a library. There was a
desk at the corner, decorated with papers like a Christmas tree. Stacks of them stood beside each other, shifting around due to an open window. To the desk’s left, a TV sat, a brick embedded in it.
One of the books fell off the bookshelf, and Joan made catlike recoil, but it was interrupted when she heard a flush and a man came out of the bathroom, zipping up his corduroy pants with a face of satisfaction. The man went to the refrigerator, got some water out, but didn’t quite close it. His glasses almost fell off as he did this, but he nudged them up and said, “Some advice, roomie: You don’t want to go in the bathroom right now.”
He was wearing pink slippers, and made a forward moonwalk towards his PC. He literally shuffled, because he always had to shuffle when he was wearing those slippers. There was a certain impulse in the soles that said, “Tommy Girl” that surged through his feet.
As he shuffled, his shin hit Joan’s bag.
“Ouch! Geez, what do you carry in that bag, Joan? A ton of bricks?”
“Um, no, but it seems like you do. Why do you have a brick in your TV?”
“I was addicted to Desperate Housewives. My favorite used to be Bree. You ever heard of that show?”
Joan shook her head.
“Well, I was addicted to it, but then I learned I had better stuff to do. Wanna gummi bear? I’m addicted to these, too, but they don’t distract me as much as Susan Myer and her never-ending quest for commitment. . .”
“No thanks. What kind of stuff did you have to do?”
“Lemme show you,”
Henry took a seat at his desk, adjusting his seat upwards first, then downwards, then slightly upwards. He then shoved his stacks of paper over, revealing a monitor and a PC. One of the stacks shifted a bit, so Henry paid special attention to that as he turned on the computer. He also grabbed a few gummy bears, picking out all the green ones.
At this point, Joan still had the book from the floor. She stopped paying attention to return it to its home in the bookshelf. It was The Elements of Style and there was a BOOK SALE label on it. Dewey Decimal labeled its binding, which was severely worn out. The cold air from the window made Joan sneeze and the book practically fell apart in her hands. A dead book in a dead apartment.
Henry got his computer to the right site and said, “Oh no! My book, it dropped in ranking on Amazon.com!” he put his hands to his cheeks in a surprised gesture, Hold on, lemme Refresh the page, maybe the rankings’ll change!”
“Wow shouldn’t you be proud of yourself? What kind of book was it?”
“What? It dropped further???”
“So you’re like an author?”
With gritted teeth, he said, “Not until I actually rise in ranking! But enough about that,” he said, “it was called Vegetables: Our Answers to the Stars. I basically assign different personalities according to a vegetable.”
“Vegetable?” Joan scrunched up her nose and tilted her head. She was a rabbit, a cute, confused rabbit.
“George Bush Jr? He is totally a zucchini. Harry Potter? Either celery or cabbage, I’m not really sure. But I’m sure it starts with a ‘c’ Mohandas Gandhi? An onion if ever I saw one!”
At that point, a noise came from the apartment above theirs. It reminded Joan of the noise that the ships in Star Trek made when they fired their lasers. Joan made another catlike recoil and dropped the book she was holding. Henry made a rush toward the book as if it was the president and he was its bodyguard.
Joan was about to sneeze again, but then Henry got up; he thumbed through his bookshelf, looked at the book’s label and muttered, “That’s the thing about books you buy from the library. Not only are they cheap, they’re already organized for you. . .”
At that, Joan hunched her shoulders together, a scared rabbit this time, pointed at the ceiling and asked, “What was that noise upstairs?”
“That? Don’t worry about it, it’s just Old man Gale.”
Joan asked who Old man Gale was.
“Well, his full name is Neil Gale, but who’s gonna call him ‘Old man Neil Gale’? It just doesn’t work. He likes making all types of gadgets. Like Nick Szalinski. You remember him? You ever watch that movie, uh. . . I can’t quite remember its name, but he’s a lot like Nick Szalinski.
"You know, one time, Old Man Gale successfully created a hybrid between a penguin and a dog. We called it a doguin and I named him Manny.
"It’s too bad though, Manny couldn’t handle the climate here in Jackie Boy Meadows. He shed like crazy, even Sasquatch would’ve been jealous. But he was real obedient, he was such a good doguin. . .”
Henry’s voice trailed out as Old man Gale emerged into the room. He had large, thick glasses of many layers, so that he could magnify whatever he wanted. Many of his teeth were missing, so his mouth looked like a turtle’s. With his large, thick glasses, Old man Gale looked at Henry and Joan. He took
something out of his backpack, which was at least two times larger than he himself. It looked like a Super Soaker.
Henry said, “Oh hey Gale. Wanna gummi bear? Sorry I took all the green ones.”
Old man Gale shook his head, so Henry asked, “Experiment?” With what teeth he had left, Old man Gale made a grin and nodded.
“Then fire away, my wrinkly friend.”
And then Joan heard the noise that Star Trek ships made when they fired their lasers. Except it was much louder.
PART TWO: AFTER
Joan Fairbury found herself in the same room. With the same broken “bricken” TV. With the same paper-cluttered Christmas desk. With the same bookshelf that was taller than she. Except it was much taller this time around. She was about to ask Henry what was going on, but then he asked her, “You ever hear those stories about those squids with thirty-five tentacles? Or those squids that are as long as a Navy sub? Or something about squids being real abnormal – you get my point? Some people claim they really exist, but the thing is, you can never prove it or disprove it, you know?”
She nodded.
“That’s the thing about Old man Gale. You say he can’t make a shrinking ray, but then he busts out a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.”
Joan’s eyes grew wide enough to stuff a half-dollar coin in there. There it was again, the urge to leave, creeping up on her, pulling her at one shoulder and then moving on to the next. Jackie Boy was dead, and not even a shrink ray could change that. She had to get out, but then how could she carry her bags down the creaky stairs with the microscopic arms of hers? Joan pursed her lips. At her size, she could only follow Henry Horowitz and see what happened next.
He was headed towards the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite closed.
“Hold on Henry! What about me?”
“Well, you can help me write my next book,” and then he took out his index fingers and panned it across the space in front of him, like he was picturing the perfect camera angle, “think about it Joan - Vegetables: The Sequel. By Horowitz et al. (but mainly Horowitz).
Oh, and it’ll probably take more than one person to close the refrigerator. You need to help me.”
In their journey to the refrigerator, Henry and Joan encountered an ant, an ant that didn’t face the effects of Old man Gale’s shrink ray. Attracted to Henry’s abundance of gummi bears, it thrust itself on the two. Deftly, Henry tossed his bag of gummi bears to it, and it became tame. Henry told Joan that he bought the bears in bulk, “I had plenty to spare.”
From that point, Henry named the ant Manny: the Sequel, and rode him the same way the Lone Star rode Silver.
Joan grinned, just a little. It was because she pictured Henry saying, “Hi ho Silver away!” on top of an ant. Was this the same Jackie Boy she knew, the lifeless Jackie Boy?
Riding Manny: The Sequel, Joan wasn’t sure of where they were going. And then Henry turned to her and asked, “You remember that idiom, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?’” Joan was about to respond but then they stopped at the refrigerator. It wasn’t quite closed.
Henry rubbed his stomach and made some growling sounds. After grabbing some cheese, he became terrified. Air from the window closed the refrigerator door, darkening it into a cave.
“Welcome.”
The voice broke through the darkness. It was deep and raspy, as if it was processed through a headphone and then into a cheese grater. The voice bellowed throughout, as if it came from the four corners of the refrigerator. Joan wasn’t sure where the voice was, and shifted her head in the darkness, occasionally smacking it for her pupils to adjust. What she couldn’t see, she heard. It was a leader’s voice, a voice that commanded authority.
A brown glow penetrated the cave, revealing a cut of beef as small as a car key, a triangle of bread that seemed to move an inch closer, and a piece of celery that created a strange brown radiance. They all seemed to march towards Joan and Henry and they all had fuzz on them that denied their edible nature.
Then the three charged in their direction. Joan immediately turned her head away and covered it in her hands, bracing for the impact, but Henry did nothing. He simply stood there, stiff as a man on viagra. It was because the three were charging at what was behind the two: a cluster of white grapes and a few shreds of lettuce. The grapes still had dew on them from their first rinsing, and the lettuce looked like it was just picked off its head.
They fought in the brown glow of the celery. Henry provided commentary.
“You see the group led by the piece of beef there? Except it’s not really beef if it takes that color. . . but anyways, that guy’s Beef Who Hath No Name. He’s the leader of the funguscites, he has an awesome voice. It’s like whatever he says, I’ll always believe him. . .
“Anyways you see the piece of celery that’s providing the lightshow? He’s Celerus of the Night. No one can explain why the mold on him has that glow, but then again, no one’s done any labs on him.
“And you see the piece of bread there? Keeps to himself a lot, so I never figured out his name. Call him Wheaty-O.”
Joan made a face. Without moving a lip, it said, “I come into this apartment, looking for some place to live, and then you drag me to all this crap? How do you manage to live in a place even as danky as Jackie Boy? Do you even get steady pay? Do you even have a career? What are you trying, staring at vegetables fight each other? Where’s the future in this?”
Harry was about to name the other fighting foodstuffs, but then he saw Joan’s face. If he was a tomato, that face struck him to the seeds. Sure, Jackie Boy was a cheap apartment, but did Henry have a steady job? When was the last time he’d gotten a paycheck? How long could he ride on Vegetables: Our Answers to the Stars? What was he getting at, watching the edibles duke it out?
They watched each other, and then at the brawl. It was over. At opposite ends of the refrigerator, the clashing cuisine panted and put their hands on their knees. They all wore a grin under their fuzz or dew.
Was this even possible? Could cuts of beef learn to smile? Could pieces of celery radiate with warmth of heart? Could triangles of bread put on a happy face?
In Jackie Boy, they could.
And a grin grew on her face. If you can’t find fighting, glowing vegetables in Jackie Boy Meadows, where could you find them? The place certainly had flair to it, and you couldn’t get that kind anywhere else.
Joan saw this, tilted her head and said, “Why are they happy?”
Henry looked to his hands. They were getting bigger, so he hauled *** out of the refrigerator. He said, “The funguscites push for control over here every month or so. They always fail, but they always try over and over again.”
Joan asked why.
“It makes them alive. Wouldn’t you feel dead if you sat there, covered in brown and black fuzz? Wouldn’t it fight off the decay if you began to want something, and then fight for it?”
They were out of the refrigerator. Henry was done talking. Oh wait, maybe not.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to check on my rank in Amazon and then chew through my writer’s block.”
Sarah O wasn't so successful.
I tried to go in another direction this time style-wise. Tell me if it worked?
Thanks a bunch.
