Dinner |
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Dinner |
"Cluck!", yelled the chicken.
"What??" asked the duck.
"CLOOK!!!" screamed the chicken as it gestured frantically
at the sky.
"CLUCK!!CLUCK!"
"Look. this isn't about the sky falling again is
it?" the duck was getting impatient.
"Cluck? cluck..cluck..duck? DUCK!!!"
"yesyes, what?"
"DUCK!"
*A suspiciously pear-shaped speckled green missile narrowly misses
the duck's butt feathers by nanometres*
The chicken peeked out from the edge of the water
trough.
Slightly singed, the duck gradually recovered...
"It's Christmas again isn't it..... and the Partridge's at it again, isn't
he...."
"Cluck.", said the chicken as it stepped out from
hiding, feeling quite vindicated.
"We *got* to stop this...i
can't take it anymore...tradition's tradition, but sooner or later, i'm
going to land up being a roast duck!!!"
The chicken pretended to ignore it, still slightly
miffed at the assault the partridge had set on them... "Hey, your
turn to solve the problem...i solved the last one, remember???" the duck
shoved the chicken with it's butt...trying to get the chicken to stop pecking
at the ground and pay attention to it.
The chicken gave a strangled cluck as it remembered
it's poor relative...dear little chicken licken...i mean, it wasn't malice
that spurred it into running around and panicking everyone about the sky,
it was just plain ignorance...it was young and well, while that wasn't
exactly a
good excuse or anything...it was...
"QUACK!!!" yelped the duck all of a sudden.
"What??? stop bugging me already..." spat the irritated
chicken.
"QUACK...QUACK...QUACK...QUAAAAAAAAACK!!!" (it is
to be noted that the duck did a tremendous job of leaping into the air
and flailing it's wings with each squawk).
"Five golden rings..." the chicken murmured in awe...there
was no turning back now...
"You think that's the end of it?" asked the duck,
ruffling it's feathers and rubbing the five sore spots on it's butt.
"ARE U STUPID OR WHAT???" the exasperated chicken
hopped in little circles about the duck, "You're such a bird-brain!" incidentally,
the chicken failed to notice the irony of such a statement.
"We'll have to face the Dancing Ladies now..."
And there they were.
Six of them, tripping the light fantastic. "Are those choppers they're
holding?" asked the duck, as it squinted across.
"RUN!" screamed the chicken, flapping its wings
to get out of the way.
"What comes next?" panted the duck, as it struggled
to keep up.
"Well, I think it was - "
"Eleven fatsos?" The
duck answered for the chicken, gaping disbelievingly as eleven eleven-ton
quarterbacks came charging towards them.
"Duck!" screamed the chicken.
"What..." yelled the duck.
A whizzing chopping came hurtling through the air,
narrowly missing the duck by a hair's breath. "A bit closer &
I'd be chop suey." the duck breathed.
A moment later, they found themselves cornered in
a pear grove. They were trapped! "We're minced meat!" cried the chicken.
"Not yet, we aren't. I still
have a secret weapon." With that, the duck whipped out his toy - a perched
small wooden bird.
"Looks like a sitting duck."
"No, silly, its a partridge."
With that, the duck wound
up the bird & set it on the branch of a tree. In a moment they saw
the mad ladies & the demented quarterbacks. However within 3 feet of
the tree, they started screaming in pain, & ran off.
"What happened?" asked the
chicken.
"The bird lets out a shrill
high-pitched noise which drives them crazy." replied the duck proudly.
"But why didn't we hear
anything?"
"Are you kidding? Birds
don't have ears."
At the bus-stop (which
was one of those dingy grey bus-stops that should be given euthanasia,
with nails sticking out through rotting seats and huge flaps of paint hanging
down from the roof) there were a fuschia raincoat with emerald stilettos
and a big black raincoat with big black fisherman boots. The fuschia
tossed her hair and waved manicured fingers at the rain with disdain.
The black stamped his boot and gestured violently, flinging raindrops about
the bus-stop. This went on for some time. No-one else was at
the bus-stop, and no buses stopped there. It was that kind of bus-stop.
It is also that kind of narrative. The two
people in raincoats may have been plotting fowl play. They may have
been formulating a recipe for mee goreng with rum. They may have
been lovers. They may really have been just raincoats and boots.
They may have been more interesting than this digression. They may
also have something to do with the tale of violence,
sex, blood and telephones coming up (in that order). I may have
been lying and all this may be a delusion. You may be a delusion.
My delusion.
Suddenly, the bus-stop
spontaneously combusted. Flame-broiled boots trudged out, proclaiming,
"That's the last time I use public transport." Suddenly, the boots realised
they weren't sentient and kept quiet before anyone noticed. However, there
wasn't anyone around to listen. Just the inferno, burning, charring, destroying...
for two hours it continued. A leaf fell and
hastily avoided the flame, but it realised the futility of that course
of action and proceeded to tickle the fire's nose.
The fire sneezed. A figure flew out. It
was a figure 6. It rolled over and lay still on its side. Wisps
of smoke rose slowly from the over-heated body of the said number.
The fire, having consumed a made-in-China bus, was feeling 
(literally six gods no master),
which implied that something in the bus did not agree with it.
Probably the tyres. The entire place had been left at sixes and sevens,
which could explain why the figure 6 had emerged, but in this case it did
not.
Unknown to most people, the bus had been carrying
a consignment of alphabet macaroni, with some numbers smuggled along.
What insidious plot was being hatched? The boots had a feeling they
knew, but being supposedly non-sentient, they deemed it wise to hold their
peace. For though the boots' tongues had wagged lyrically in the
past, such privileges were usually reserved for humans in this funny upside-down
world they were in now.
Anyway...enough of the
boots...their days were numbered, as slowly but surely, the numerical macaronis
reproduced and formed a strong alliance with the letters X, Y and Z. They
were the odd bunch, the rebels, who would realise the danger that lay ahead...that
one day they would be booted from existence by the passive and comfort-oriented
boots with cushioned sole and leather laces...
The numbers lined up. The triple sixes were at the
head, a symbol of the feared nebuchanezzar...devil incarnate. The exorcist
stood close by, lingering over the scent of death that was brewing as the
numbers and alphabets swirled around in a thick paste of tomato sauce,
just coming to a boil. Yum!
Suddenly the cook shouted, "Mama mia!" and tossed
the whole pot out the window. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and the second
cook followed, out the window and into the pool of split (pea) soup. And
the bus? The bus meanwhile was just dousing itself with water from a fire
hydrant. The mercedes parked in front of it had received a tickle and went
on its way.
Water splashed everywhere, some landing in the soup
pool and on top of the rejected chef. Rivers of red liquid flowed every
which way. It was the return of the killer tomato sauce!
The liquid mutated into a huge red blobby mass and
as the remaining bits simmered on the warm street surface, out from the
pool rose who else but, heh heh, SOUPERMAN! It had to happen, since Batman
was on long-term no-pay leave, and in any case this wasn't Gotham City.
His long red cape flowed behind him, flapping
proudly in the wind (and incidentally looking remarkably like tomatoes).
The loud yellow S on the cape, contrasting boldly with the crimson background,
was screaming for attention.
"Hey look at me I'm the S on SouperMan's cape!"
"Oh cut it out back there, won't you," mumbled
our mutant action hero.
"But I.."
"SHUT UP!" returned an exasperated Man as
he zoomed off towards the city at light speed.
Souperman rushed to
the city, where a terrible crime was taking place. Faster then a speeding
bullet, more powerful then a . . . hell , you know the drill. Anyhow, Souperman
had long since forgotten his basic physics 101, all that stuff about action
and reaction and things like that. Well, for the information of the reader,
Souperman coming to an instantaneous halt would generate enough heat from
friction to evaporate while banging into any structure at light speed would
result in him being spread out thinner then butter on bread in a third
rate cafeteria. At any rate, Souperman landed outside the city bank, with
his ham-sized fists at the ready to pound trouble into quivering pulp.
"Hands In the sky Souperman !"cried on of the amateur
bank robbers brandishing a lighter shaped like a gun, or was that a gun
shaped like a lighter? I forget. Anyhow, souperman thought that this would
be a dandy time to stomp on the floor and drop our intrepid villain into
the sewers. However the laws of physics, tired of giving superheroes diplomatic
immunity, gave up, and when Souperman stomped on the floor hard enough
to create a chasm all the way down main street, he shot up into orbit.
Would this be the end of our favourite souperhero
? . . .
As our intrepid superhero hurtled through the atmosphere faster than regurgitated clam chowder, he managed a feeble "oh oh, I am fucked". His whole life flashed before him. Dammit! Why didn't I study harder at science?
Look, mama, I always said I could fly Mama? Mama? Are you there? No Mama, no, don't hit me again. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Thoughts and visions swirled before his eyes. And like any other near-death/near-life experience, he saw visions of great figures in history Abraham Lincoln, Moses, Shaka Zulu and the like. Events and people were totally incongruent and unrelated. Disjointed.
From another camera angle, Souperman shot out into
space like a glob of snot from a taxi driver's left nostril after he has
pressed the right one shut. Because of the force with which he drove himself
to space, you, our gentle reader, would have thought that our hero would
have escaped earth's gravitational pull. But life's like patchwork quilt,
you never really end up
having what you plan. Souperman reconstituted himself and found himself
in a wildly elliptical orbit, with a minimum height of 300km and a maximum
of 36,000km. All this while, which in fact was only 56.70 seconds, he had
screamed his lungs out, but to no avail. Because, in space, no one can
hear you scream.
"Think! Minestrone brain! Think", Souperman castigated
himself. And he did. HE analogised his dire situation with that of being
on a runaway train. You undo the caboose and let the locomotive carry on
its destructive path. Nope, that wasn't going to help any. Alright, you
jump off the caboose. Yes, that's it! Get out of this orbit. Looking smug,
our hero waited until he got
into the nearest point to earth before kicking like a mad 100m butterfly
swimmer trying to avoid coming in last. Big mistake. The additional force
our hero placed was in the wrong direction, and with the strength of earth's
gravitational force, Souperman had actually catapulted himself in a slingshot
effect away from earth for good. 3 days later, he found himself hurtling
past the moon, getting caught momentarily in its orbit, but not stopping,
only changing his trajectory slightly, but putting him close enough to
the speed of light, at which point funny things do happen.
A halo appeared in front of him, and he seemed to be headed through the centre. He felt infinitesimally small. Suddenly all went glaringly white. Souperman went off-screen.
[we hear a voice saying] "My God, its full of stars!".
 The
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