Follow the Slightly Off White Brick Road

Once upon a time there was a little boy. He was a sweet little thing, always kind and helpful, and he grew up to be a sweet man. He would sing in the Church then go home and decorate his house. He liked things to look pretty, so he often caught butterflies and stapled them to his walls. His favourite past time was trying to inflict psychological damage on those around him ... and he was quite good at it too.

Okay, so he wasn’t really sweet and kind, I just said that because no one wants to read about a mean and nasty man ... but unfortunately that’s what this person was. He was bitter and twisted. I was telling the truth about the singing though ... almost. He often sang in the Church, a local bar, and he really does have the voice of an angel. Sadly though, when he isn’t singing he has a potty mouth.

Well I guess I should tell you a bit more about this man, make some kind of effort to make him sound like a half decent person. No ... that’s too harsh. He is a decent person, when it suits him. I mean he can’t be all that bad if he has thousands of people adore him and hang on his every word. Oh hang on ... look at Hitler. Now he was a nasty person yet millions adored him. I guess that just goes to show that you really don’t have to be a nice person to have people like you.

Oh, I’m digressing, aren’t I? Okay, well I’ll get back to it. So let me recap what we know. This man can be quite nasty when he wants to be. He is very good at scarring those he comes in contact with for life, causing them to do things like dress in fishnets and do strange things to their hair. He can sing beautifully, but swears a blue streak!

Okay, so none of that was new info. Its a great way to pad out a story though, make it seem longer than it really should be. So what else do you want to know? Oh yeah, I guess I should tell you his name, though I’m sure your all smart enough to figure out who I’m talking about. Hi name is Patch McSporrin (well considering I said he wasn’t a decent person I didn’t think I should use his real name) You could say that names have been changed to protect the innocent, in this case me!

Patch spent much of his twenties and early thirties hanging out with two of his friends, and I use that term VERY loosely! They had all sorts of stupid adventures. They really did some strange things, some of which I’ll tell you about in a bit.

But first let me introduce his friends ... again with the loose label. Oh well. First of all there was Toddy Furglebottom. He was tall, good looking (though not as sexy as he thought he was) and he had an affinity for women’s underwear and make up. The other is Ronaldo Fiddlerontheroof. He was quiet, shy, played the banjo and was a perfect target for Patch’s taunting. Despite all this he oozed sex appeal, winning people over with his ‘I’m a little lost puppy without a brain’ look. He was such a cutie pie!

So there you go, the three main figures in this little tale. As things move along you will learn all kinds of bizarre things that the three did and met (yes, they were things not people. It is NOT a mistake!) But not now. I’m tired and going to bed.

Oh wait! I bet you’re wondering about the title of the story - Follow The Slightly Off White Brick Road - well even if you aren’t you should be. It is pretty weird! Anyway ... obviously if you leave yellow painted bricks out in the sun long enough they fade, and these have been in the sun since the 1930s. And this, like the legendary Wizard of Oz is a tale, nay a journey of self discovery for the characters. Only by following the slightly off white brick road will the three brave troopers (or psycho loonies depending on which way you look at it) discover their true purpose in life (and in one case their true species!)

Now I really am going to bed. Bye!

Okay, so I wasn’t as tired as I thought *g*

We join our ... boys (heroes is definitely the wrong word here) as they first encounter the road. The road down which many adventures lie ahead ... at the end of which they would find their ... DESTINY.

"OW! What the hell is this?" Patch picked up what looked like a square rock.

"It looks like a pale yellow brick" Toddy said.

"No, that’s slightly off white" Ronaldo corrected.

"Shut up!" the other two said. Ronaldo looked hurt but didn’t say anything.

"Okay, so its a brick. What’s it doing here where any poor, unsuspecting person can trip over it?" Patch asked.

"Ah you’re just upset cos you’re clumsy" Toddy teased. Patch said nothing, just glared at him.

"Look guys, its the start of a road" Ronaldo pointed out. "Can we follow it? Can we? Can we? Huh?" he started jumping up and down. Toddy and Patch looked at each other.

"We might as well" Toddy said. "It’ll keep little Ronny happy for a bit."

"Yay yay!" Ronaldo sang. "We’re going to follow the slightly off white brick road."

"Hey" piped up Patch. "That’s a great title for a really crappy story!"

"Yeah," agreed Toddy as they headed off. "We could be the three main characters who all have little problems we have to solve along the way. Ronaldo has no brain, you have no heart and I have no ... EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKK a mouse!!! Get it away!" Toddy ran behind Patch.

"Ah ya gutless wimp" Patch said as he hit Toddy. "C’mon, we better catch up to Ronaldo, you know he always gets into trouble if we’re not there. I really think he stopped developing in the third grade."

"Hey, that’s something that you two have in common" Toddy said as he ran to catch up, going off the road to avoid the cute little mouse who, if you looked closely, appeared to be laughing.

"What are you talking about?" Patch asked.

"You and Ronald McDonald up there. His brain stopped developing, you just stopped growing!" Toddy laughed at his own (unoriginal) joke. He looked up. "Hey, don’t blame me for it being unoriginal, you’re the one who made me say it. OW!" Toddy yelled and fell to the ground as a result of the solid punch in the shoulder Patch had given him. "What’d ya do that for?" he asked as he picked himself up off the ground.

"You know damn well that I hate being picked on about being short. And maybe if you hadn’t been so bloody busy talking to the sky you’d have seen it coming."

"You still didn’t have to hit me ... I bruise easily."

"Hey guys, come on. Guuuuuys ... hurry up!" Ronaldo was running back towards them. "Come see what I’ve found."

Patch rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath about being surrounded by morons as he trudged off after Ronaldo. Toddy caught up with him and they walked in silence, except for the occasional "dickhead" or "asshole" and a couple of mutterings about talking to the sky.

"Hey" Ronaldo said as they reached him. He pointed towards a clearing just off the road. "Isn’t this great?"

"Yeah, great Ron. It’s a fucking house!" Patch glared at Ronaldo, amazed at his stupidity.

"Hey, I’m not stupid" Ronaldo shouted at the sky.

"Oh not you too. What is it with you and Furglebottom over there?"

"Hey?" Ronaldo said.

"Nothing."

"Okay, so what’s so great about a house?" Toddy asked.

"Well ... it looks nice" Ronaldo said.

"As long as it has a toilet I don’t care what it looks like." Patch walked up the path towards the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer so he hammered constantly on the door, making enough noise to wake the dead.

"Naaaah ... don’t be stupid. Dead people can’t wake up" Ronaldo said up to the sky.

"Aaaargh! What is it with you?" Patch glared at Ronaldo yet again. The he went back to hammering on the door.

"Hey Patch. There’s obviously no one here. Lets go" Toddy yelled.

"Hang on" Patch replied. He tried the door handle, found it unlocked and opened the door. He went inside, Toddy following.

"Ummm ... guys. Guys ... I don’t think we should go in there. It’s not our house ... its argh" Ronaldo’s complaints were cut off as Toddy yanked him in through the door by his arm. The three guys stood inside looking around at the room they had come into.

"Wow," said Toddy. "This is great use of space."

The room they were looking at was huge, as big as a football field (AFL, not that league crap). Toddy snickered.

"What’s so funny Furglebottom?" Patch demanded to know.

"Yeah ... league sucks!" Toddy said. Patch just shrugged and started up the stairs.

"Umm ... wasn’t this a one story cottage from the outside?" Ronaldo asked.

"Yeah, so?" For some reason Patch didn’t see a problem with this.

"So, it’s tiny from the inside but on the inside its a fucking mansion. Doesn’t anyone else find this strange? Even a little bit?" Ronaldo was frantic.

"Oh get over it and come on." Toddy pulled him up the stairs. They caught up with Patch as he found what looked like the bathroom. The three boys looked at the oddly designed bathroom.

"Umm ... why are there three toilets?" Ronaldo asked.

"Will you stop asking stupid questions?" Patch yelled. He went over to the nearest toilet but the bowl was as high as his chest.

"This one’s too big!" he said as he moved on to the next one. But this bowl only came up to his ankle.

"This one’s too small dammit!" Patch kicked the bowl then hopped around holding his toe and complaining about how much it hurt. He went over to the final toilet.

"Well finally a normal sized toilet." He looked at Toddy and Ronaldo. "Can I have a bit of bloody privacy?" The other two left the bathroom and stood outside the door.

"Geez, he’s grumpy today" Ronaldo said as he put his finger in his ear. Toddy was about to ask him what he was doing when a loud crash followed by a splash came from the bathroom. Ronaldo stifled a giggle as a dripping Patch opened the door.

"It broke".

"What hap..." Ronaldo started to ask.

"Shut up, I do not want to talk about it." Patch started back down the stairs with the other two following behind. "And wipe that fucking smirk off your face!" The three lads left the house quickly, hoping that no one would see them. Ronaldo took a look back.

"See guys. I told you it was smaller on the outside." The others turned around and looked. The house was indeed small ... and getting smaller. In front of their eyes it shrank to the size of a bus, then a car.

"I guess its a good thing we got out when we did" Ronaldo said. They kept watching as the house got smaller and smaller until it was the size of a bird. Then it suddenly sprouted wings and flew away.

"Well, there’s something you don’t see every day" Toddy said as they watched the house fly off into the distance.

"Can we keep going?" Patch asked, totally unaffected by seeing a house fly and still pissed off about the toilet incident. He stormed off up the road with the other two staggering behind him. Ronaldo got all excited again and ran off ahead of the other two hoping to find something as neat as the house. Shortly he came running back shouting madly.

"For crying out loud Fidlerontheroof, calm down" Toddy said. "Nothing is ever as good as you say it is."

"Hey, my name is Fiddlerontheroof not Fidlerontheroof, that’s a stupid name! Its Fiddler not Fidler. Get it?"

"Get over it shit for brains" sneered Patch.

Ronaldo looked up at the sky. "Why do you make them so mean to me ... OOOOWWW!" Patch delivered a solid kick to Ronaldo’s shin.

"That’s for actually thinking that the sky will ever answer back or is even remotely interested anything you have to say. Now what the hell were you so excited about when you came running back here like a school girl at a Tricky Dicky Ricky Martin concert?"

"Huh? Oh, that. You guys should see this!"

"See what?" Toddy asked.

"C’mon, it’s really cool, you have to see it!"

"SEE WHAT?" Toddy and Patch yelled.

"Oh, this." Ronaldo pulled out a piece of fruit from his pocket.

"You dipshit! It’s an apple!" Patch yelled.

"But look, it’s purple!" Ronaldo shoved the apple into Patch’s face. Now Patch is a reasonable man (well not really, but I can use a bit of artistic licence here ... lets just say that he’s prone to very violent and erratic mood swings) but this really pissed him off. He had just about had it, first the breaking toilet and now this dickhead and his fruit. He grabbed the apple and threw it to the ground.

POOF!

"I am not!" Ronaldo and Toddy both called out. Then they ran before Patch could deck them.

Okay, I’ll try again.

POOF!

There was a bang and a cloud of purple smoke.

"WHO HAS SUMMONED ME?" a deep voice said as a black figure stepped forward.

"OH SHIT!" The three chickens ... sorry ... boys turned and ran away.

"HALT!" The figure pointed at Toddy Patch and Ronaldo and they froze on the spot. Toddy even had icicles dripping off his nose.

"NOW I WILL HAVE SOME FUN" the strange person said as they pulled out one of the deadliest weapons known to man.

The figure in black reached into his pocket and pulled out ... a harmonica. Although Patch Toddy and Ronaldo were frozen, they still managed to scream. They tried to move, to run away but the ice held them fast.

"NOW YOU WILL LISTEN AND I WILL HAVE FUN" The thing in black started to play the harmonica ... quite badly I might add. The three boys squirmed in agony, as the noise was shocking. When the figure stopped he pointed at the boys again and the ice disappeared.

"PLEASE DO NOT RUN AWAY" it said. "I HAVE NO FRIENDS AND AM LONELY"

"I’m not bloody surprised the way that you play" Patch said under his breath.

"DID YOU CALL ME HERE TO PLAY WITH ME?"

"Look buddy," Toddy said, "no one called you here. We don’t even have a telephone!"

"BUT YOU DID. I LIVED IN THE APPLE AND WHEN IT BROKE I WAS CALLED FORTH. SOMEONE MUST HAVE CALLED ME!" Toddy and Ronaldo looked at Patch.

"What are you fucking well looking at me for? Ronaldo’s the one who found the apple?"

"Yeah, but you broke it ... kinda like the toilet!" Ronaldo started giggling at his cleverness ... until Patch again kicked him in the shins. Patch really was in a bad mood.

"YOU MEAN YOU DIDN’T WANT TO PLAY WITH ME?"

"Look, I have a big problem with this" Toddy said. "Why the hell does this guy get to speak in capital letters. He isn’t even a main character in this story. Why does he get to stand out so much?"

"BECAUSE IF I DON’T SPEAK IN CAPITALS I SOUnd like this!" His voice suddenly went high and squeaky.

Ronaldo burst out laughing. "You’re a freak!" he said.

"Who are you to talk? You’re the one wearing his underpants on the outside of his trousers!" The thing said in his now squeaky little voice.

"Naaaah ... I am not!" Ronaldo looked down. "Oh shit! Why the hell didn’t one of you say something?" He glared at Patch and Toddy.

"To be honest Ron, you look so fucking stupid anyway, we didn’t even notice" Patch said cruelly. Ronaldo burst into tears.

"Look, Ronny don’t cry. Patch didn’t mean it" Toddy tried to comfort Ronaldo.

"Yes he did, he’s always mean to me!"

"Sorry, I think he’s still a little scared. He gets like this sometimes. Maybe if you took that black hood off it would help him" Toddy said to the person all in black.

"Sure thing." The hood was lifted back to reveal a little man with a bald head, a funny hair (it can’t really be called a style, it was just one hair) and a pointy nose.

Ronaldo started to giggle again. "You look like a boiled egg with a face! What’s your name? Humpty?"

"You know, I can see why these two don’t like you. You are stupid! My name’s Fleecy. You three are too strange for me, I don’t want to play with you!" Fleecy waved his arms around a bit in an attempt to look dramatic, then disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

"Thank God!" Patch said. "That thing was just too weird!"

"Yeah" Ronaldo agreed as he rearranged his clothing as a normal person would wear it. Then he ran off again. "C’mon guys, lets see what else we can find. This is getting interesting!"

The other two followed along behind Ronaldo discussing the strange little boiled egg man. Unbeknownst to them they were being watched by ... oh shit. Sorry, this is my last piece of paper ... I’ll ...

Well ... sorry about that interruption. As I was saying ... the three guys central to this story - Patch McSporrin, Toddy Furglebottom and Ronaldo Fiddlerontheroof - have continued on their way along the slightly off white brick road after upsetting Fleecy, the strange boiled egg man and breaking a toilet in the house that flew away. They are now moving along the road oblivious to the serious threat hanging over their heads.

"WHAT?!!" Toddy screamed and ran under a nearby bush. Ronaldo was running around in circles screaming continuously and looking up at the sky.

"What threat?" Toddy yelled up at the sky. Patch just stared at them both with a bemused expression on his face.

"You two are crazy. What’s got into you?"

"Didn’t you hear?" Toddy called. "There’s a serious threat hanging over our heads!"

"We have to get out of here!" Ronaldo screamed, still running in circles.

"You morons. The only threat to either of you is me. If you don’t stop being stupid I’ll kill you myself! Now grow up and try acting like adults for a change." He stormed off up the road. Toddy crawled out from under his bush and followed and Ronaldo eventually stopped running in circles and did the same.

As the wandered on up the road a pair of eyes peered out from the bush that Toddy was hiding under. The creature watched Patch Toddy and Ronaldo until they were nearly out of sight, then began to follow them.

A bit later ...

"Tra la la di da ..." Ronaldo skipped down the road forgetting all about the T-H-R-E-A-T that I mentioned earlier.

"The what? What’s a threeeeat? Ronaldo asked. "Never mind" he said as he saw Patch clench his fist. Ronaldo went back to skipping along singing to himself.

"Ease on down, ease on down, ease on down the road."

Patch rolled his eyes at Toddy. "We never should have let him watch The Wiz!"

"Yeah, that movie gave me nightmares," Toddy said. "Michael Jackson in all that black makeup ... scary!"

Suddenly there was a noise behind the boys which caused them all to jump and turn around. One of them even let out a high pitched squeal, but to save them from utter humiliation I won’t say who. Let’s just say that Ronaldo and Toddy both stared at Patch in surprise.

"Oh, how cute. It’s a puppy!" Ronaldo went over to the little white dog, which had a black spot over one eye, and picked it up. The puppy looked at Ronaldo and then peed all over the front of his shirt.

"You bloody mongrel!" he yelled as he put the dog down, certain that he heard it laughing at him. Toddy bent down and looked at the collar on the dog.

"Why doesn’t this surprise me?" he said as he looked up. "It says ‘Hi! My name is Patch. I am the satanic spawn of the devil dog. Prepare to die!’"