the Chronicles of Bobo -- the First

The duck landed on my roof at 3:42am. It was a rather large duck, which is the only reason I woke up. By rather, I do mean rather. I woke up to the sound of crunching timbers, as the duck fell through the roof to land in the basement of my 5-story house. I walked over to the edge and peered down at it, and it didn't seem terribly happy about being there. It said...

"Ouch!" ...well, what else would you expect?

Well, actually, it said "Ouch!" and then muttered something in another language. It sounded like Latin. What a giant talking duck was doing knowing Latin, I hadn't a clue. Um... a giant angry talking duck, by the looks of it. I thought about asking it what I'd done wrong, but decided retreating would be a better option.

Unfortunately, I only got three steps before falling off a cliff. It was 42 feet high and directly below it was a cheese fermentorium. I fell through the skylight and landed in a vat of week-old Gouda. As I climbed out, I was accosted by a gibbering executive in a red-and-blue checkered suit who turned his face inside-out as he said...

"Hello! Oooh, nice linoleum. I come in peace with dancing water chestnuts! Err... wait, (qu)ACK! My dancing water chestnuts escaped!!! And they posess the silver key to the great Cavern Of Squishiness! We must find them!". It then proceeded to waddle around in circles until it got its head stuck in a small purple rubber sink plunger. Meanwhile, somewhere in the distance, a small unidentified gerbil sniffed the air. "Barbecue sauce....", it said, and scampered off in the direction of a dark, apparently abandoned, delapidated and generally gunked-up house....

The house then proceeded to get up and dance a jig.

"What?", it asked me. "See something green?"

I jumped immediately onboard a bus that had just happened to stop at that moment, and speeded away to I knew not where.

As it happened, the bus was traveling to Cuba. After a brief damp period, I got off in Havana and was promptly arrested by a bacterium of the revolutionary police. Not wishing to be shot, I kicked the cop in the cytoplasm and ran back into the ocean.

A shiiiiny sea anemone waved to me in sign language which seemed to make sense in absolutely no human language whatsoever. I, however, figured out that it could be deciphered by standing on my head and reading upside down.

"Hello!", it waved. "I like rice."

"What is your name?", I asked.

"Did I mention I like rice?", it waved back.

"Yes, I know you like rice."

"Yes, it's really quite good. Did I mention I like it?"

"YES, you did...", I said, and walked away. A clownfish swam up and quickly kissed me on the nose.

"The golden spork flies at midnight," it intoned in dulcet tones, and then disappeared into the sea again. I blinked a few times, but, unable to make sense of the words, continued on my way.

For whatever reason, I was able to move through the ocean without coming up for air, and I noticed that everything around me seemed to glow a curious green as I got deeper into the water. Then, suddenly, I realized -- it was not my surroundings that glowed so brightly. It was me.

After a while, I happened upon an underwater cave that was populated with schools of vaguely spork-shaped fish. When I entered, they formed into a giant sporkfish under me and conducted me deeper into the cave. There the King of the Sporkfish sat upon his herringskin throne. His eyes flew out of his head, adhered to my face for a minute, and returned. The Sporkfish King then said in the language of fish,

"What the devil is this?! I thought I gave the order for all traveling salesmen to be executed! WHY IS THIS ONE STILL ALIVE?"

The sporkfish remained silent and looked a bit confused. One of them in the corner eventually came up and said, in the language of fish, "This is not a travelling salesman, or we would be delivering you its eyeballs in a Tupperware container. We think it's the FnordEx man."

"Ah, very good, he comes to pick up the obelisk."

A button on the wall is pressed by one of the sporkfish, and a giant sparkly obeliskish thing that looks kind of like a Hoberman sphere filled with jelly falls from the ceiling, barely missing the king himself.

"Darnit, I must get that thing adjusted."

You will take this magical obelisk to Coral Gables and get the purple flaxseeds. If you need assistance, consult your right pinkie finger", a voice borks, as a school of sporkfish transports me and the obelisk out of the cavern. I pick it up, and for reasons absolutely mysterious, I am able to walk on the surface in the general direction of Key West.

I wonder vaguely why the world has suddenly switched to present tense, but that's not important; what is important is escaping the three giant sentient knives that are suddenly rushing towards me.

"YAAAAAAAARGH!!!" I remark, diving under the surf and narrowly avoiding being shish-kebabed. The knives titter amongst themselves, then speed off in the direction of Key West. I decide that maybe I don't want to go there after all. Of course, the question is where to go now...

I strike northwards for what seems like an eternity (but which I would later find out was only 1/42 of an eternity) until I am hauled onto a boat of some sort. My rescuer, a tall blonde man wearing sunglasses, thinks for a few seconds and stuffs me into an angled tube. Suddenly I'm flying in a ballistic arc toward land.

I crater in a clearing in some woods, surrounded by a pack of wolverine-people in the middle of some arcane ceremony. They point at me and begin uttering a strange chant sounding ominously like...

"Cunda astratta montose eargrets gutt nos veratoos canda amantos canda."

The Evil Dead arose and began coming after me.

"Groovy," I deadpanned.

The dead began to advance towards me. I knew I was a goner. But suddenly the sky was darkened. I looked up. An eclipse? Nope. An obelisk. Apparently the magical obelisk I was supposed to be delivering was catapulted after me. It hit the ground a mere 3 feet in front of me and slid, taking out all the evil dead!

The wolverine people looked upset I thought at the same time I thought about how I should get around to delivering the obelisk. The obelisk blew up. I was knocked into a ditch to the side by the explosion. The flames passed right over me! I was unharmed. The wolverine people however...well they died. Along with the obelisk. It appears both my lines of thought just came to an end...

There was, however, still the matter of the purple flaxseeds. I had been told by a mysterious voice in the sporkfish's cavern to secure the flaxseeds; however, I had no idea how to go about it without the obelisk, or even what I was supposed to do with them once I got them. Bring them back to the sporkfish? Sell them? Eat them? Play Parcheesi with them?

"If you need assistance," the voice had said, "consult your right pinkie finger." I had no idea what use that would be, but then again, I had nothing to lose.

I held up my right hand and addressed the finger in question with no small measure of self-conscious amusement. "Well, then, Pinky, what are we going to do now?"

My finger actually began to shine, which was rather alarming. But in seconds it didn't seem to matter. The giant duck I saw earlier was falling out of the sky...and he landed at my feet.

"OUCH....err...quack", it said. "Summoning me with the magic pinky, eh? Well if you wouldn't have flipped out and tried to run away from me in the first place you wouldn't have had to use the magic pinky now WOULD YOU!?" He seemed upset. I seemed confused. I was confused. Was this all connected somehow? All I wanted was a nap!!! "Get on my back. We'll get the flaxseeds." So I did...what else was there to do?

The duck began to fly, oddly enough, without flapping its wings. A trail of pixie dust streamed out behind. I reached down and picked some up, putting it in my pocket. Suddenly, inside my pocket, the pixie dust transmogrified into an actual pixie and demanded to be let out. It stood on my shoulder and whispered in my ear. "So, you're on a quest for the magical purple flaxseeds?", it said.

"Magical flaxseeds? They're magical?", I asked.

"Why, yes, of course. Upon planting them in the ground, a great stalk will grow which will help you ascend to the heights of sporkiness."

"Will that be the home of the Golden Spork?", I asked.

"Well, I, uHAAAAAaaaaack!".... The pixie is knocked off my shoulder by a flying herring, and begins to parachute down to the ground, far out of range of hearing. Suddenly, the duck gets hit by a random brickshot and spirals to the ground, leaving me on an oddly poofy cloud that tastes like strawberries....

I nibbled on the cloud happily, enjoying its delicious strawberry-y taste, until I realized that I was eating that very stuff which supported me. Thinner now, it was unable to support my weight, and I began plummeting toward the ground, thin streams of strawberry cumulus spinning past me like cotton candy. Figuring I might as well have one more bite of the tasty stuff before I died, I reached out to grab a handful, and instead touched...

...the duck. He was unconcious it seemed. And somehow I was falling faster than he. My only hope of survival was waking up that giant duck. I shook him. I shook him harder. He was not waking. He was leaking though. Leaking pixie dust! I grabbed another handful and sprinkled it on me. I figured that's when I needed my happy thouht. Just like in that movie about the kid in green tights. So I thought to myself how happy I would be if I didn't hit the ground. But nothing happened. Oh darn. I hugged the duck. At least I wouldn't die lonely.

Suddenly, I stopped just inches from the ground. Then, the duck fell on top of me, and sent me back into a free-fall. Of eight inches. *thud*. The duck reawakened and emitted even more pixie dust. "HEY! Stop that!", I shouted, nearly drowning in the sparkly substance. The duck quacked groggily and fell off, landing on the ground with a comic kettle-drum "Bwooonnngggg!". I looked around to figure out just where I was. The pixie's parachute failed far above and it landed on the duck, who quacked groggily and now even more annoyedly. QUACK!!! QUAAAACK!!!. I seemed to be at the bottom of a sinkhole, lined with lush vegetation, and complete with a waterfall that ran down into a very large cave shaped like a potato. Trying to climb the walls failed, so I walked on into the cave. Suddenly, the light behind me vanished, and with a giant flushing sound, I was hurled out the other end of the cave, into....

...a strange world where there didn't seem to be anything but white emptiness in all directions... and a window. And some french fries all over the ground.

And, oh dearie me, some penguins.

One penguin walked up to me and said, TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER!!!

"You take me to yours," I said in utter puzzlement.

A second penguin shrieked, WE WILL HAVE NO MORE OF YOUR INSOLENCE!! TASTE HOT LEAD ~~HOORAY~~!!!, and shot me.

As the bullet whistled towards me, I was tranfixed in horror... but all of a sudden three dozen fairies exploded from my head and did a fairy-dance around the bullet, which collapsed in a bundle of small purple and blue flowers. As I was recovering from having almost been shot (i.e. standing stupified making noises approximately represented by 'Gah...') the fairies methodically gathered the flowers and planted one on the head of each penguin. After giving time for the fairies to get clear, the penguins promptly exploded into large piles of orange goo.

"Those weren't real penguins!" I exclaimed. "They were made of..." I trailed off, examining the goo... looking, poking at it, sniffing it, and eventually tasting some... "marmalade!"

At this point a giant marble began to roll down a hill I hadn't spotted until one of the fairies bit me on the shoulder and made me look in the right direction.

It was just like an Indian Jones movie although I didn't have a whip. Or the cool hat. And I wasn't Harrison Ford (I would be at a later time in my life, but that's a whole other story). So yeah, I figured I was in a whole heap of trouble. I turned left. There was a wall. So I turned around and dashed to the right. Unfortunately there was a wall there too. BOOM!

When I woke up I was in some kind of cave. There were french fries on the floor. It was well lit by torch lite. And....and there were bars over the only way leaving my little corner of the cave. Oh dear. I don't know what happened. But the fairies were gone, apparently I did not get runned over by any large rocks, and I was a prisoner.

I began kicking bars, reasoning that there was always that one weak bar. Eventually I found one that yielded, which apparently supported most of the roof, which promptly collapsed on my head.

After a few hours of effort, I was able to climb out into the office building above, the basement of which the cave apparently formed. A sign on the wall read "Welcome to Coral Gables Chads, Inc."

I was forgetting something...

OH GOD! My car was three hundred thousand miles away. And I had locked my keys inside it!

...something else...

I collapsed into a tattered red chair in the waiting room of Coral Gables Chads, Inc., trying to remember just what exactly it was that I had forgotten. But I was distracted by a watering in my eyes; my throat seemed to swell slightly, and my nose began to itch horrendously --

Oh. Oh, no. Just as I fell to the floor in a convulsing heap, it all came back to me. My head was swimming from lack of oxygen, and all was going dark before my eyes, but I at least now knew why.

How on earth could I have forgotten, of all things, the fact that I was deathly allergic to chads?

As my eyesight faded, spectres danced on the edge of my vision... spectres made of *chads*, rising like great dripping swamp monsters out of the carpet, shedding chads across the floor, growing, approaching... I tried to scream, but no sound escaped me. I certainly hadn't the energy to lift myself off this chair, a chair that seemed not so much a rather battered, tatty red armchair but a gaping maw ready to swallow me whole...

The last thing I saw before consciousness left me entirely was a small purple fairy adjusting a chad on her head like a crown. In the hand with which she was not adjusting the chat, something golden glinted... and then darkness, for a long, cold time.

The world slowly came back to me. I was getting used to this whole being unconcious thing. I seemed to be doing it a lot lately. The world that slowly formed in my mind was not theone I was expecting. I vaguely remembered my allergies making me go boom. I was hoping I'd be waking up in a hospital of some sort. But I did not see a hospital. I was laying on a soft cushy blue surface. It almost looked like a cloud. The room was a rainbow of different colors and it was a BIG room. I was in the center of it. It almost looked like an ancient Roman arena. Only it was much more colorful. And I was in the middle of it. And...well I wasn't alone. There were fairies. None in the seating arena, but a dozen or so were surrounding me on the floor of the bright arena. One spoke to me. "Welcome", he said, "to the city of Coral Gable."

I stood up, my knees wobbling. Just as I'd begun to get my bearings I heard a disembodied voice proclaim, "Let the games begin!" Then something -completely- unexpected occurred.

I woke up.

And I wish I hadn't. The bright colored arena with fae folk was odd, yes, but it was better than this. Ever dream you were abducted by aliens? Or were you ever abducted? Well picture that. Yeah, I was strapped onto a metal table. There were some bizarre instruments on one side. A big monitor on the other. And I was surrounded by cows. I didn't see aliens. But I looked from left to right and I saw cows. Lots of cows.

To make matters worse, these weren't your run of the mill cows, these were upright cows, walking around on their hind legs and they had a charcoal grill smoking away in the corner.

Nightmare visions of being experimented on, vivisected, and barbequed by a herd of mad cattle flashed before my eyes. These were not helped by the fact I was absolutely freezing - the metal table must have been attached to some kind of refrigeration unit to manage these temperatures. I strained my eyes to try and make out some of the bizarre instruments. There was a guitar-like thing with the strings spiralling around the neck which was bent backwards at 45 degrees, half of a harp with the 'loose' strings held in place by some strange alien forcefield glowing electric blue along the top, and some drums with a regular pattern of holes in the drum-head.

It was only then that I noticed the cows were cyan, with mustard yellow areas (which would have looked perfectly normal if they were white cows with black areas). I'd obviously got too used to the utterly insane.

I knew I was doomed. Suddenly and without warning I heard a cry. "STEAK KNIFE!!!", echoed about the place. From out of nowhere a big green man came barging through the cows knocking them over left and right. What was even weirder was the giant flying rabbit attacking the cows with a meat grinder. And...and a woman dressed in a cow costume. And all three were chasing the cows away! The three picked up the bizarre instruments and played a very bizarre song...Birdhouses and souls? What?! They took the instruments with them as they chased after the cows. I didn't know it at the time, but those three would be a part of my life for a long time. Minus the bizarre outfits though. But the only thing in my mind then was getting free from the refridgeratd table.

A small green pixie suddenly popped up by my right elbow. "Hi!," he chirped happily. "I'm Davmar! How are you today?"

"Um... strapped to an ice-cold table. You?" I replied.

"Just great!" Davmar the pixie exclaimed, before beginning a dance on my solar plexus.

I sneezed conversationally.

What happened next...well...I'd rather not get into it. Most of it was rathe foggy and what I do remember was most unpleasant. I'd much rather tell you about the other three. The three in the funny costumes that chased the cows. Later in my life I got to meet them. At one time they were my greatest enemies. But later they became friends. It wasn't until we became friends that I learned they were the same three that saved my life that day. And it wasn't until we became friends that I learned of the adventure that they had.

The big guy in the green suit called himself Captain Steaksammich. He claimed to be nigh invunerable and liked jumping on buildings. A real Tick rip off, but don't tell him that. He gets pissed when someone says that. He had some freaky powers too. Some claimed he is/was a God. I don't know about that, but...the flying bunny was Becky. She didn't really have a super hero name. Said she didn't need one. She flew obviously. And she had some kinda pixie/fairy magical powers. The third was the oddest of all. The Cow Eating Cow. To this day I haven't been able to figure out whether she is powerless or the most powerful of all. She's a vetty stlange character.

But enough with the introductions. They chased the cows away from me that day. But that was not the end of their adventure.

Suddenly, the lights dimmed and went out, and the table dumped me unceremoniously on the floor. 'Stupid Korean-made implements of mad science!', I heard, in a moo-like voice. I got up, still rather weak from the chads, and ran for a giant toilet marked with an EXIT sign, pulling the handle as I dove into the bowl.

A few seconds later, I found I had been flushed cheerfully out onto the streets of Coral Gables, amid a great mass of cottage cheese. Yes, this toilet did not flush with water, it flushed with cottage cheese. It was rather cold cottage cheese, and it was full of blueberries and chunks of pineapple. And it seemed to be somehow quivering...and... coalescing into a great living form. It sucked a puddle of itself out from beneath me, with an echoing shout of "Hey, get off my flipper!". Just then, part of it began to swirl and turn black, and some of it remained white, and the blueberries and pineapple disappeared, and it developed eyes and a beak, and.....

"HELLO!!!!!", it said. I AM POKEY THE PENGUIN!!!!!!!!!! WOULD YOU LIKE SOME ARCTIC CIRCLE CANDY?". I fled for dear life towards the shimmering lights of an altogether oddly shimmering diner...

As the diner door jingled shut behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever I might encounter in here, it COULDN'T be any worse than being flushed out of a giant toilet in a mass of foodstuffs which had then coalesced into a demented penguin-thing.

Something popped directly to my left.

Suddenly frightened by the popping noise (and who wouldn't be, after all that?), I glanced quickly to my right, and jumped sideways to my left. As I bumped into the Giant Purple Worbling Everything-Eater That Goes Pop In The Night, I remembered that I was dyslexic. It was a little late to make little Ls and glance at my hands to figure out what was going on, though, because everything went dark as the top half of me went down the hoooooooooooooooooooooooole in the GPWEETGPITN and the bottom half wobbled around before comically falling over.

Apparently my top half got eaten. It kinda hurt to be separated from my bottom half. I was NOT pleased. But I was dropping down a hole. A BIG hole. The Purple Anything Eaters stomach apparently. I splashed down into some liquid. It was dark. Real dark. I hear another splash right next to me. I reached over...it was my bottom half! Thank god, cause I was starting to miss it. I put myself back together with the help of the duct tape in my pocket. And then I lit a match that I found in my other pocket. That purple beast had quite a cavernous stomach! I decided that I had to leave. A stomach is not a fun place to hang out.

Getting out of the stomach was an easy ordeal, thanks to the duct tape I had on me...and a little help from me lucky Kazoo (no thank you, I refuse to elaborate). Upon exiting the beast, I bid him/her/it farewell and thanked him for the wonderful dinette set he left for the wife, and made my way off into the nearby pub. Of course, I couldn't just walk in to the pub...I had to make a flashy entrance. With the greatest of ease, I climbed onto the rooftop, ignoring the fact that the local law enforcement agencies did not appreciate that ONE bit.. I peered in through skylight. Someone appeared to have strapped C-4 to their body and was threatening the pub! I had to do something! Screwdriver in hand, I readied my watermelon...

...and I ate it! The watermelon that is. And it was some good watermelon! You wouldn't believe how hard it is to cut a watermelon with a screwdriver. As I began to happily eat I began to get the feeling that I was forgeting something...and then I remembered. Lemonade! How can you eat watermelon without lemonade! 'I could get lemonade in the pub!', I thought. So I jumped through the sky light. And fell on the man with the C4. "You saved me!", said the bartender. And she kissed me! (the bartender was indeed a she. And she was quite an attractive she!) "Here take these." And she gave me flax seeds. Magical, purple ones.

At that point, I realized that I was not in a pub, as I originally planned, but appeared to have fallen onto the set of the highly acclaimed show, "Bozo the Clown". That in mind, the seeds all of a sudden made perfect sense. Them thanking me for killing off one of the actors most certainly did not. Must've been a union worker. I loaded the seeds into my Beretta and made my way offstage, whereupon I stepped on a floor tile that was concealing a trap door. Tricky.

The floor below was interesting. I particularly liked the man in the bunny suit who strapped the giant fish to my back. Then, I noticed that everyone in the room was wearing bunny suits (except for me, that is)....

A little man with a blue bow tie on his bunny suit came up to me. "Come along, come along, you're going to be late!," he exclaimed, nervously straightening his bow tie while ushering me towards a large purple door. "You've only got five minutes left! -- and stop playing around!," he added scoldingly, pulling the fish off my back. "Get into costume. Five minutes. The boss'll have my fluffy little cotton tail if you don't make it on in time!"

He then left to scold someone else, leaving me in a small room containing nothing but a mirror and a table with a bunny suit on it. Deciding this must have been the costume the man had been talking about, I quickly pulled it on, then wondered what I was supposed to do now.

That question was answered for me when a previously-unnoticed door in the wall swung open, leading into utter blackness. From the other side of the purple door, the little man was shrieking "Hurry, hurry, get OUT there!" Confused, I hurried through the second door into darkness.

A light came over me suddenly. I found myself on a stage, under a spotlight, wearing a bunny suit complete with poofy pink tail, in front of an audience composed of approximately six thousand reanimated corpses.

Music started up from somewhere to my left.

Note to self: For future references, Zombies don't like music.

Of course, the wonderful sound of Gene Wilder singing "Pure Imagination" (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) caused the un-mortified faces of death to stir uncontrollably and begin mauling the ushers. What was I to do? Suddenly, an idea! The seeds!

Covering the barrel of my Beretta with my finger, I pulled the trigger, jamming the seeds into the barrel. This had the adverse effect of making my gun act not unlike that of various arcade games. My power bar at full, I fired openly into the 6002.18 corpses that covered the inside of the auditorium. A few seconds later, I ran out of bullets. I fired offscreen to reload and continued as normal.

Upon completion of my job, I made my way out of the double doors of the auditorium-like object only to find myself in the employee cafeteria of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. I turned around to exit, only to discover (much to my surprise) that there was no door behind me. I ordered an ice cream sandwich from a nearby vending machine and sat down in a glowing, green chair.

Finally, a moment to relax. The stench of the decayed and stains of their pus rotten bodies upon me, the bunny suit is ruined. I wrinkled my nose in disgust, eyeing the ice cream sandwich with trepidation, could I hold it down amidst the foul odor and the memory of spraying guts and gore from moments ago?

Yeah, what the hell. I'll go for it.

But I hesitated, peering between my pink bunny legs to ensure the chair wasn't red, my last experience with a red chair left me convulsing in a heap gasping for air like a fish out of water.

I opened the ice cream sandwich slowing making sure there weren't any *chads* in it.

Other people started coming into the cafeteria wearing white lab coats with matching skull caps. They were speaking in Russian, a language I suddenly understood. I heard two guys saying,

"Hey Uri is that cow tongue?"

"da, Vladimir, it's my favorite, cooked in a tart tomato sauce with onions and peas."

"I don't know how you could eat that Uri..."

"ah, shut up Vladimir, eat the fish then..."

I started getting hot and the ice cream sandwich gave me little relief with its cold vanilla flavoring snaking its way through my guts. The conversations were mundane and uninteresting, so I pulled the bunny suits hood off, letting the ears dangle over my shoulders, enjoying the relief of drying sweat from my soaked head sooth me.

My attention fell back to the growing line of hungry lab coat clad workers. I tried to pick out more of their boring babble. But I didn't understand a damn thing! WFT! I looked around for Uri and Vladimir. They were sitting one table over chatting away, every syllable foreign to me.

The air conditioning vent above me suddenly kicked on. The cold blast of air sent shivers down my spine. I pulled my bunny hood back over my head for some relief. No sooner was it in place that I understood every word around me! No way! I screamed in my head. The ice cream sandwich long gone, my fingers sticky from its drippings, I pulled the bunny hood on and off to confirm my suspicions. And they were confirmed! The bunny suit or at least the hood and ears... were a universal translator!

Then unexpectedly I needed to take a leak.

So I went. No, not in the bunny suit. I found a urinal. It was in the men's room! I've always thought that the men's room is one hell of a place to keep a urinal. Whoever came up with the idea of putting them there should get a medal. I flushed the urinal. That's the typical thing to do after you're done using one, right? I always thought so at least. And right after I flushed I heard a rumbling.

I left the bathroom after zipping up my bunny suit and the whole place started shaking. Everyone was in a panic! Guys in lab coats were running, screaming (in Russian) everywhere! So I went went that whole saying 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'. In my case it was 'When in a really messed up place, do as the really messed up people do.' So I ran screaming. I opened a door, and all of a sudden I was outside! I ran away from the building just in time. A giant been stalk started growing. And I do mean giant. This sucker was like a football field wide and it was growing up. It uprooted the powerplant and that went up into the sky.

That's when I remembered...the purple flax seeds. I was supposed to plant them so a bean stalk would grow and I was supposed to climb it to find....the golden spork...

The only problem was the horde of Vikings suddenly swarming down the beanstalk and rushing in a furious mass towards me.

But then the police swept out of nowhere and arrested all the Vikings.

The police began frisking the Vikings, then handcuffing them and directing them into the vans that were parked nearby. An officer with a bushy red mustache held something out to me. "Is this yours, lad?", he asked. Numbly I took it from him and examined it.

It was the Golden Spork.

Finally I had it. Finally my quest was over. In my hands I held the golden spork. All the ducks, the exploding obelisks, the sea creatures...all of it, coming to an end. And it was all worth it. The golden spork was the most amazing thing I've ever held. I can't even put it into words.

From off to my side there was a commotion. The cops seemed like they were wrapping things up, but then they started shooting at something! I couldn't see what, it was too far away. Suddenly a giant green creature began flipping over police cars! And the he started coming right at me! I turned to ran, but before I knew it another, yet much smaller, green creature jumped at me from out of no where and snatched away the golden spork. I dropped to my knees as I watched the little goblin climb up the stalk. The ogre type larger thing sat at the base of the stalk. Seems like he was going to guard it.

I lost the spork.

It was time to reevaluate my situation. Did I really need the Golden Spork? Was it worth having after all the carnage and pain I had suffered?

My heart pounding with a mixture of fear, anger, and fatigue, I felt like a helpless pawn in some nightmarish game of imagination. If there was or is a God, he or it was one cruel jerk to toy with me like this.

But exhausted with the thought of having lived for naught I tore the bunny suit off. To possess the Golden Spork is my birth right! New determination growing like the melt down of a nuclear power plant spread throughout me. My resolve was absolute, that little green snot was going to pay for its theiving infamy!

The police vans began to depart with their Viking cargo. It seemed that they were unusually hurried. The giant at the base of the bean stock glared at them defiantly, low guttural rumblings issuing from its throat.

Then I heard them. Distant whooshing sounds like a swarm of locusts. I recognized the sound instantly. The giant scanned the sky searching for the source of the sound. It was confused as to its origin. I on the other hand looked for a place to duck for cover.

They swept out of the sky, using the sun to mask their approach. A squadron of MI-24 Russian helicopter gunships. Oh yeah! I thought as I dove into a near by ditch, this is going to be good!

The giant finally located the approaching swarm, he ripped a large strand of beanstalk off and prepared like a baseball player at the plate to begin swatting at the approaching helicopters. But to his surprise they seemed to hover. Before he could stand erect a rain of steel jacketed 20 mm cannon and rocket fire tore into his green body with no mercy. The sound was deafening as the giant was torn to shreds, his cries and moans lost in the hail of weapons fire. As he toppled sporting numerous geysers of blood, I saw my opportunity and seized it. Having taken the bunny suit off I sprinted for the beanstalk before the ground forces moved in to mop up - literally.

I began to quickly climb the beanstalk, but then I fell off, so I instead decided to aimlessly run and eventually ended up at the Salad Co. where they just happened to be testing what silverware would work best when the need to impale croutons arises.

Figuring I might pick up a couple of bucks working there, I seamlessly blended into a crowd of Salad Co. employees, filing into the building for another long day of silverwaretesting. So seamlessly, in fact, that they almost didn't notice that I had neither uniform, safety goggles, nor crouton-impaling implement. But the company security people were really nice guys, and they only interrogated me for two or three hours before deciding I wasn't actually a corporate spy sent by Side Dishes Ltd. Finally I found myself in the employee cafeteria, where I had been invited to have one free meal as compensation for that last hot-iron-poker session.

I had before me the difficult prospect of choosing between meatloaf, meatloaf and meatloaf. "Don't you have any more lunch selection?", I asked the hairnetted woman behind the counter.

"Oh, heavens, no, that would be bad business practice!" she replied cheerfully. Then she leaned forward. "We do, however, have the world's best selection of eating utensils..." she whispered, and winked at me.

My heart skipped a beat. Utensils... did that mean that they might -- no, it couldn't. Could it?

That they might have the Golden Spork here! How weird would that be?

I looked at the meatloaf considering a quick bite to eat, half expecting a hord of hungry Vikings to storm the place at any moment. Instead I spied long worm like creatures undulating and writhining beneath the meatloaf gravy. I suddenly felt sick and lost my appetite.

I got out of line and started for the exit when a voluptuous redhead beckoned me to her table.

Hmm... my right eyebrow arching in the possibilities... I looked her up and down, gorgeous women, save for the large bulge between her legs....

Should I go talk to her/him?

The question was answered by a sudden whooshing sensation two inches from my ear, and a sort of 'twang-ang-ang-aaang' sound to my left. I glanced casually over and beheld a fork, its tines embedded in the wall, bouncing rapidly up and down. "Now, how on earth did that -- "

Another fork suddenly appeared in the wall, jittering crazily. It was followed by a knife. I turned around and beheld several ninjas, all armed with utensils, all throwing them at me with deadly speed, if not with deadly accuracy.

I bolted. The redhead would have to wait.

Any brave man would've stayed to fight the utensil weilding ninjas. Any brave man would've died. I'm a smart man. I ran. I lived.

I knew I'd never be going back to that place. And I knew I'd miss it. I only worked there for half a day and I was never technically on the payroll, but me and the untensil testing guys had so much fun together!

I bursted out of the back door of the place only to see that a dozen ninjas were waiting for me! I was surrounded and had no choice! I was forced to fight. The fight didn't last long. I was no match for a dozen utensil weilding ninjas. I was quickly vanquished. It seemed like that was my time to die.

One ninja was down to his last utensil and threw it with an exquisitely aimed toss right at my forehead. Fortunately for me, he was cross-eyed and the utensil stuck in my upper arm.

I glanced at the wound to see how bad it was, only to find that the cross-eyed ninja was so bloody stupid that he had attacked me with the Golden Spork!

Noticing this, I pulled the spork out and ran with it as fast as I could. Bad Things seemed to have been happening to me lately whenever I even got close to the thing, and I wanted to hide under the nearest bed as soon as possible.

I ran, for who knows how long, through dark underground corridors, oozing with luminescent slime, which looked a lot like that gack which makes flatulent noises if you stick your fingers in it...

After a while, I glanced down at my arm, where I had been stabbed with the Golden Spork. The wound had magically healed, and I noticed the spork was glowing. Odd, really, I thought, a glowing spork... But then I thought I heard footsteps, so I kept on running. I climbed a small rickety metal spiral staircase and quietly snuck through a door at the top... Thinking I had made the perfect escape, I turned around to find, standing behind me, one of the scariest persons in the known universe, and without even thinking, grabbed the spork and lunged towards them, causing their body to mysteriously disintegrate into a putrid cloud at the points of the glowing utensil... On the opposite wall, there was a window, through which I defenestrated myself to escape from the gaseous remains of...

Janet Reno.

I expected to fall very rapidly and then crater on the ground below, broken and bloody, possibly stabbed by the Golden Spork. It would've been a pretty cruddy way to go, but at least there would presumably be no untensil-throwing ninjas or rotting undead monsters in the afterlife...

But as these thoughts were going through my head, my descent began to slow. Eventually I alighted on a soft, poofy cloud (one which smelled faintly of boysenberries), spork still clutched in one trembling hand, peering nervously into the darkness and wondering what, for the love of trout, was going to happen now.

I was utterly surprised when the King of the Sporkfish suddenly materialized before me.

The radiance of his aura made it hard for me to look at him straight on as he stood there on his own cloud. He carried a huge Golden bejeweled Spork trident, regally dressed, sporting a crown of intricately woven gold and silver sporks. I was taken aback by his awesome presence.

Then I realized I was barefoot, wiggling my toes in the softness of the cloud cotton kind of tickled and I smiled nonchalantly.

He mistook my reaction as entreated towards him and he smiled back, gleaming white ivory teeth framed with vampire like incisors, a chill ran down my spine to my toes.

The blue of what I perceived was the sky stretched to infinity or at least as far as I could see as he spoke.

"Brave soul, your quest is at an end. You have endured much. Your suffering has not been in vane." He was soft spoken and sounded just like Tom Arnold!

"Now given the freakin Golden Spork before I Spork your behind!!!"

Whoa!!!

I nearly fell off the cloud from that bellowing remark.

"Screw you dude!" I yelled back at him and leaped off the cloud Golden Spork in hand.

Strangely enough, there was another cloud five feet below the first one.

And, I discovered, another after that.

I peered over the edge and beheld, stretching for what seemed infinity below me, nothing but a succession of boysenberry-scented clouds. From above me came a low chuckling.

"Silly human," the King of the Sporkfish said, floating down to where I stood. "You cannot leave this place but by my will; and I shall never allow you to leave until you give me that which is mine. So..." He floated closer. "The Golden Spork, please."

I gazed at its radiant beauty, feeling helpless and confused. This morning I had been an ordinary person, with an ordinary life; now, here I was, standing on a cloud in a universe composed of nothing but clouds, held hostage by a talking fish who would not let me leave until I gave him this mystical object. And, I realized, this was the root of my problem; for I, too, wanted to possess the Golden Spork, more than almost anything else. I wanted to hold it and look upon its shining splendor forever.

But did I really value that more than my freedom?

I tried to put everything in perpspective. It may have seemed like an enternity ago, but less than 24 hours ago (as far as I could tell anyways) I had nothing. No real life. I lived alone and ate ramen noodles for three meals a day. I had no money, a dead end job, but most of all I had no golden spork. So if I gave him back the spork, I wasn't losing anything. I'd go back home after one heck of an adventure. And continue with my life. It was the toughest decision I ever had to make. I had a feeling that I hadn't even began to tap the powers of the spork. But I handed it back to the King of the Sporkfish. He smiled......

And I was back in my apartment. Then I smiled. It wasn't a fun, happy smile. If anyone had saw it they would have said it was an insane, evil smile. I gave him back the spork, yes. But I wasn't about to give up on it. Ramen noodles and video games might make for a good life, but without the Golden Spork I would never be complete again. I would get it back. Oh yes. Plans were already turning in my head. I would get it back. The King, the Sporkfish, and whoever else guarded it would one day find that nothing can stand between me and the Golden Spork.

I went to the closet, got some noodles, and started to plan....

FIN.

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