Mini-Stories #7

Mini-Stories #7

    One day little Wojzciehyk was playing in the street of his hometown of Vancouver when a gang of television sets ran towards him, huffing and puffing and waving their tail-like power cords. Following not too far behind them was another gang, but of puffins. Up hill and down hill they ran, left and right, here and there, now and then, black and white. Occasionally the TVs would stop and flash special programming at the puffins, but since they were old sets, it was only black and white, and nobody has been afraid of black and white TV programming, special or not, since the 1950s. Just then, a cake truck came along and the TVs hopped aboard. Ever since the Great Truce of '79, cake trucks and TV sets have had a firm though uneasy understanding.

    Soon everybody was back at the cake truck compound on the outskirts of town, partying and playing cards, whistling and carving, jumping and crying. It was just like the old days, although which old days and where, nobody can say.

    "I can say! I can say! I know where and which and when and why!" cried a sad old deflated party balloon.

    The TV sets and cake trucks thought of flushing the old balloon down the toilet, but they were drunk and happy and lazy and just a little mentally defective. So they let him speak.

    "It all happened about a hundred years ago," he began, relishing the moment."Old King Bafart pronounced one day that these were indeed the Good Old Days. A smart aleck piped up from the crowd that since these days were new, how could they be old? The crowd laughed and slowly closed in on the miscreant, suffocating him with their asses. The party celebrating this new age went on for years! Ah, I still remember the wine, the women, the song, and especially the drunk women singing bad opera! The decorations, the clothing, the freshly-scrubbed sidewalks and toilets...those were the good old days.

    "Then one day a dark cloud descended on the land. Well, it was more of a light grey cloud, but it was not welcome! The King sent out his army, his finest soldiers, to deal with this awful thing. They shot flaming arrows at it, and flaming bullets, and even flaming retards, all to no avail. The ominous cloud fell lower and lower upon the land, until it surrounded every man, woman, and child, and even the man-childs. Their eyes rolled madly around their heads as they struggled to understand what was happening. Had God forsaken them? Was the King really just a man and not a god? Was sexually abusing snails really such a good idea? The cloud fell lower and lower until it finally just sunk into the ground. The people sighed in relief and went back to molesting snails. Another twenty years of parties and drunk women singing went by, until one day a giant hand appeared from behind the sun, wielding a giant pin, and popped every one of us. I was one of the lucky few who blew away with the horrible cold wind that sprang up. I landed in your land about fifty years ago, and here I have lived among you, keeping my secret until now. That is my sad story." The old balloon shuffled around in the dirt, and sighed.

    The cake trucks and TV sets stared at him. They kept staring until one of them spoke.

    "Wait a second. Let me get this straight. Your entire land was made up of...balloon people? Balloons walking around like they were actual people? That's ridiculous!"

    The assembled crowd murmured, and shouts sprang up in anger.

    "Yes! Ridiculous!"

    "Outlandish!"

    "Not even a little bit funny!"

    "Snails, eh?"

    Well, the short of it was that after they got over their disbelief at such a stupid story, the cake trucks and TV sets collected as many snails as they could and began an orgy of snail abuse that has lasted to this day.

    Little Wojzciehyk got drunk on wine and eventually died a lonely, bitter old man. Well, first he became mayor, then he got drunk, then he died. Something like that.