Neither sleet nor hail nor automatic-weapons fire could slow Fernley's
progress home from the VFW the night he invented his masterpiece. He kicked
his door down in excitement and dumped two weeks of dirty dishes onto the
floor. The 50 or 60 napkins stuffed in his pocket bore detailed anno-
tations, allowing him to reconstruct the layout different pieces of his
schematic were originally in on the bartop. "Legs!" he shouted. "Legs!"
    Legs scuttled in from his lair and examined the kitchen table. "I can
tell this isn't my parabolic trampoline," he said. Legs' extra legs made
flat trampolines difficult.
    "There will be time for that later!" declared Fernley. "Cedric will
absolutely shit his pants when he sees this. Cedric's been in abeyance
since we conquered gravity, and this will be the death of him!"
    "Cedric has been busy with other things," said Legs diplomatically.
    "Cedric is a dilettante. His army of giant lemons could have been a
great accomplishment, but he lacked the will to follow through. I cannot
imagine him amounting to anything."
    "Cedric is President," said Legs.
    "CEDRIC IS AN ASS!" Fernley thundered.

    The rioting died out shortly after midnight, while the tapping of
Fernley's ballpoint pen continued. Legs had his bill buried in a book on
Joseph Cornell, looking for a short project he could pound out in the shop
before Fernley started work in earnest.
    "Can you see me?"
    Legs looked up from his book. "No. Are you invisible, or throwing your
voice?"
    "Neither!" bellowed a coffee cup.
    Legs quacked appreciatively.

    The FRF moved into place around dawn. Legs noticed them first and went
to find Fernley. "Fernley! Feds outside. Robot feds! Fernley?" Fernley
wasn't in bed, nor the workshop, nor the cupboard. Legs double-checked the
house's security measures. Nothing to do, he concluded, but wait.
    When Fernley appeared, he was human again, tan, and very calm. "Thank
goodness," said Legs; "that looks like the thing from last night. Cedric's
outside, armed for bear."
    "Fine," Fernley said, "just fine."
    "What's the secret weapon?" Legs indicated the ornate box the inventor
carried under one arm.
    Fernley beamed. "You just crawl inside this box, and it's exactly like
you're in Acapulco!"
    Dismay planted its flag on Legs' feathery features. "I thought we were
in this for world domination! I thought you had it all figured out. I
thought you were working on... you know... something threatening."
    "Not at all," said Fernley. He looked out the window at Cedric's red-
white-and-blue minions. "Now that you mention it, though, that would have
been a good idea."

written for Heather & Althea & Megan & Miguel at Meacham St. 9/29/01

I was at a party, talking excitedly about writing, when someone offered his laptop for immediate use. I couldn't say no (and more people talked to me while I was writing than would do so for the rest of the night after I stopped -- go figure). Elapsed time: 45 minutes. A little faster and this would indeed be a great party trick.

The final punchline falls flat, but overall this is the closest I've come to keeping a humorous tone for a whole page. That's probably because I was ripping off the spirit of Stephen Notley's Bob The Angry Flower. I don't think I larcenized any one Bob strip in particular; if you discover that I did, drop me a line.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

<< back to more fast custom fiction<<