Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 21:35:36 -0600

From: m 

Subject: Story:  People Crackers





                        People Crackers



     The elderly man left the toy store with the yoyos for his

grandchildren.  Joe Barnhill did not like big, noisy, fancy schmancy

malls, and he did not like all the high tech gimickry that passed for

children's toys nowadays.  He preferred things simple, and he had come

to call this "Galleria" mall, simply the "Glitzeria."

     Where are the Five and Dimes when you need them, Joe thought as his

75-year-old frame shuffled out of the store.

     Joe couldn't believe some of the things he saw as he leaned on his

cane and made his way through the throng of people in the mall.  He slid

his thick glasses up his nose as he strained to get a better view. There

were posters of scantily clad young women in the store display windows,

television sets at an electronics store blasted cinema profanity at

passersby, and one store actually sold sexually explicit board games!

     Just when Joe thought he had seen everything, he remembered his

more innocent discover from the toy store.  On the floor of the store,

he had found an unopened box of cookies.  The box was bright red,

attractively packaged, and had the title "People Crackers" emblazoned in

its side.  This kind of cookie Joe had never seen.

     Oh well, he thought.  The grandkids might like them.



     It was important for Joe to impress his grandkids today.  After a

miserable arthritic weekend with three preschool age grandkids' screams

coming from all sides, Joe's temper was unleashed on them the night

before.  

     "You little monsters need to shut up!" he had thundered from the

easy chair in the living room.  

     He had then proceeded to explain to Marcie, Samuel, and Tanya how 

he would sell them off to the circus if they continued to make such a

racket.  This, of course, coming from the stern, angry, pasty-faced man

had simply turned their squeals of merriment into screams of terror.

     Joe had never been fond of his grandkids. (STEPgrandchildren, he

continually reminded himself.)  

     When his estranged son had married the widow with the three babies,

Joe had no idea that he would ever have to meet, let alone live, with

this raucus family.  He was no family man.  Never had been, and never

intended to be.

     Thinking back to his own short-lived marriage and fatherhood, Joe

remembered how his son would constantly do things to annoy him.  He

would cry at all hours of the night and spill his milk.

     Yeah, he deserved the spankings and scoldings, he thought as he

rode in his old Plymouth Valiant toward the suburbs.  His son, Leon, had

met him back at the car and was driving.

     The scoldings, however, had been too much for his now-deceased

wife, who also was a victim of his verbal abuse.  She had moved out with

her son, and Joe never saw her again.

     Joe didn't see his son for forty-plus years, until he woke up in

the hospital, the victim of a mild heart attack.  Leon had insisted that

Joe live with his family and was intent on establishing a relationship

with his stranger father.  Joe couldn't take care of himself and

reluctantly had accepted.

     Things had not gone well, however.  The "Three Terrors," as Joe

thought of them and often referred to them under his breath, brought out

the same impatience in him that his own son had, only intensified

threefold.

     Once Leon's wife, Sue, had found Joe in the process of spanking the

three-year-old.  She immediately told Leon that she wanted him out of

the house.  Leon had managed to calm her down, and together they let old

Joe know that he had one more chance to play loving grandfather with the

kids.

     "It's easy for you,"  Joe had insisted.  "You're young!  Youth and

health fades quickly, then you're like me...old and useless, with false

teeth and failing eyesight!"

     The family had tolerated mean old miserable Joe for another couple

of weeks until the previous night's incident.  Threatening to sell the

kids off to the circus did not sit well with Sue, who believed that they

might be emotionally damaged because of the threat.

     Realizing that he had nowhere to go if he was evicted, Joe had

convinced Leon to give him a chance to patch things up with the kids.  

     So, here he was, coming home from the mall with a few yoyos and a

strange box of cookies.  Joe never was a big spender.



     The three tiny figures marched reluctantly through the hallway to

their stepgrandfather's room.  To them, it was a forbidden place, almost

like the haunted house on the corner: "Enter if you dare."

     Their father the peacekeeper, however, had insisted.

     "Your granddad just wants to give you some presents," he perked

their collective interest with the promise.  But they still felt

trepidation.

     Marcie, the oldest at five-and-a-half, was the first to timidly

enter the stale room.  It smelled like the thrift shop her mother had

donated clothes to the other day.

     "Hello, granddaddy," she whispered as she played with one of her

dark pigtails nervously.

     "Hello, sweetheart," he answered, forcing the foreign words from

his lips.

     Samuel and Tanya were soon in the room, trying desperately to see

what their scary grandfather had bought for them.

     When Joe saw their excitement, he produced the three yoyos from

behind his back.  

     "What's that?" Marcie had asked as three-year-old Tanya grabbed one

of the yoyo strings.

     "They're yoyos!" Joe responded.  "When I was your age this was my

favorite toy."

     Samuel rubbed his long black hair, grabbed his shiny red yoyo, and

looked at it quizzically.

     "This is how they work," Joe was trying to be patient with these

ignorant children (he could tell they didn't have his genes), and had to

keep reminding himself that his future might ride on his performance

with the kids.  He made a muddled attempt at trying to do a basic yoyo

maneuver.

     Upon seeing this, little Tanya innocently threw her yoyo with great

force.  It spun through the air and landed with great impact...squarely

between Joe's eyes, breaking his glasses, and bruising his forehead.

     Something snapped in Joe's brain.

     "YOU LITTLE MONSTERS!  You're spoiled rotten!  You don't deserve

any of this!"  he shook with anger as he tossed the box of People

Crackers at Marcie's feet.  "I REALLY ought to sell you to the circus!"

     Samuel and Tanya, tears streaming down their faces, were picked up

and carried out by an eavesdropping Leon, who had burst into the room at

the first sound of trouble.

     "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he softly said.  "You never

have been a father to me, and it was stupid for me to think you had

changed."

     Marcie didn't cry, though.  She just looked curiously at the old,

withered man, picked up the colorful box at her feet, and walked

carefully out of the room.

     Joe lay in his bed, muttering quietly to himself about the IQ of

"those kids," then became quiet as he soberly realized that he was about

to be without a bed, shelter, or free meal ticket.  He considered his

options.

     

     Two hours later, Joe stealthily approached the door to Marcie's

room.  Her parents were arguing in their bedroom a few doors down.  Sue

was apparently angry that they had given him another chance.

     Joe reached for the doorknob.  He HAD to somehow convince Marcie

that he wasn't such a bad old guy.  She was the oldest and had the most

sense, he reasoned.  Plus, she had gazed at him with a hint of

compassion when he had lost his temper.  He could never make a case with

Leon and Sue for him to stay, but if one of the KIDS would speak on his

behalf, then he might have a reprieve.  This, he figured, was his only

chance.

     He slowly turned the knob, peered through the slightly opened door,

and inwardly gasped at what he saw.

     Marcie was lying on her pink "My Little Pony" bed eating the

cookies that he had thrown at her.  The cookies seemed to be shaped like

people, which didn't surprise him.  What did surprise him, however, were

the changes.

     A different little girl, probably Chinese, he thought, lay there in

Marcie's powder blue dress.  Then she chewed up another cookie,

swallowed, and her body contorted.  Her body got taller and muscles

popped out of the little blue dress.  The little black pigtails seemed

to retract into her head along with the rest of her hair.  The two

bright blue ribbons from the pigtails fell to the carpet.  A ripping

sound softly permeated the room as the dress ripped from skirt to

neckline.  Hard features developed in Marcie's face, which included a

scar on her cheek. Joe gasped as he saw male genitals pop out of the

dress as it made it's final rip.  Finally, a tall, burly, muscular man

with a crewcut lay in Marcie's bed, completely nude.  She had her eyes

closed, recovering from this extreme transformation.

     Joe looked at the figure, then glanced down at the box of cookies

on the bed.  The gears in his brain spun wildly.

     Did what I think happen just happen, or am I finally senile? his

mind raced.  It's those cookies!  They caused the change!

     Dreams of living another lifetime suddenly filled Joe's head, and

rather than continue the daydream, he lunged as fast as his

septegenarian body would allow him to lunge toward the People Crackers.

He clutched the cookies and hobbled out of the room, leaving stunned

Marcie in a fetal position on her bed, hugging her huge biceps.

     Joe flung his door closed and looked at the cookies.  He could see

that the cookies inside were in all different sizes and shapes.  He

reached for his glasses, then realized they were broken.

     "Damn!" he muttered as he strained his eyes to see the cookie

selection better.

     Just then he heard a door down the hall shut.  

     That has to be Leon and Sue, he frantically thought.  Come to send

me away.  I can't give them a chance to discover the power of these

cookies.  They'll see Marcie, then take them away from me before I have

a chance to use them!

     As the footsteps approached, Joe held a cookie in front of his

face.  It was a child.  It was a fuzzy sight, but definitely a child.

     Yes!  That's what I want!  A chance to start over in life!

     He raced to retrieve his false teeth from the cup of Efferdent, but

only succeeded in knocking it over, his false teeth falling behind his

bed.

     The footsteps got closer.

     No time to chew, he thought.

     He snapped off a piece of the cookie, thrust it into his mouth, and

gulped it down.

     Immediately Joe felt a change.  He felt faint and his mind whirled.

He dropped the rest of the cookie as he felt his face begin to contort.

He felt hair grow down onto his neck, and suddenly he realized that his

vision was clear.  He turned and gazed toward the dusty mirror hanging

on the wall.

     What he saw shocked him.  Staring back at him was a little girl,

China doll-like face, with long curly blonde hair to his shoulders, and

porcelain skin.  His head could have belonged to Shirley Temple's

sister. But his body remained old, male, and decrepid.

     He immediately came to his senses and overcame his aching arthritis

to lean down to retrieve the rest of the cookie.

     As he looked around, his curls bobbing around on the back of his

neck, two big bare feet stepped into his line of sight.

     Joe slowly peered upward, his big blue eyes cute as a button.  His

eyes slowly rested on Marcie's grinning Schwarzeneggerian features. She

had a "My Little Pony" bedsheet wrapped around her hulking body.

     "Looking for this?"  the accent was all childlike innocence, but

the pitch was deep bass.

     She held the box of cookies in one hand, and a headless little girl

cookie in the other.

     "Give me that...you've got to give me those cookies!" Joe pleaded,

shocked at his "Good Ship Lollypop" voice.  He reached out with his age

spotted, wrinkled hands.  The fresh faced girl's head was a freakish

match to the hunched over ancient, male body.

     Marcie reached out, grabbed Joe in a powerful headlock, and carted

him out of his room, and out of the house.



     The next morning Marcie awoke later than normal.  She rubbed her

innocent, delicate face and thought about her strange dream.  She

giggled.

     Leon and Sue poked their heads into her room.  

     "Marcie, we've got something to tell you.  Your grandfather's gone.

He must have felt badly about mistreating you, and was so sorry that he

left last night.  We want you to pray that he's okay, wherever he is."

     Marcie reached up to play with her pigtails, which had somehow

become undone.  She considered that maybe her dream actually happened.

     Nahh, she thought.  How silly.



     A mile away at the State Fairgrounds, Joe was pondering his new

life as "The World's Oldest Gender Reversed Child."  At least he had a

bed, shelter, and free meal ticket,... and the circus had a new

attraction on the midway.



     Meanwhile, the box of cookies rested near the circus behind some

bushes where Marcie had eaten her last one.  They had mysteriously

become resealed.

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