I think I should tell this story from the beginning. Lately I’ve been starting all of my stories in medias res, which of course is Latin for “in the newpaper’s ethnicity”, so they mostly start out with something like, “I wasn’t allowed to eat at the diner because there was a sign in the window that said ‘No halfies allowed.’ What’s up with that?” The newspaper is black and white, and hence a “mulatto”. So I guess I’ll tell you all about my day.
It started out innocently enough. I rose from my slumber as the rising sun’s rays filled my room. The plant I keep on the windowsill sighed like a laser printer, feeling the warmth cover its leaves. I slid onto the floor and walked with bare feet into the bathroom, where I pissed for about half of Good Morning America (I installed a TV on the wall for just such times). After a couple shitty guests and several flushes, I left the bathroom and sat down at my spot at the table, which was lovingly set by Charles. My mulatto newspaper was waiting for me, and a hot omelette was slid onto my plate. “Just the way you like it,” Charles said, his compassionate smile whetting my appetite. I dug into the food and guzzled my coffee as I read the classifieds. Usually I read them in the morning because I like to look for deals, and occasionally I find them. Today, it found me: there was an ad taken out for “EASY MONEY FAST”, and I was captivated. The ad ran over several pages, and since I had started reading mid-chew and I was so enthralled by the ad, my mouth hung open and the partially-masticated eggs dripped slowly to the plate. Charles didn’t notice for a few minutes, as he was cooking his own food. As he sat down to eat it, making a huge ceremony of preparing to eat (as always – the prick), he looked up and saw that I was, as he said later, “being gross.” With a blatant disgusted sigh he rose from the table and stormed out of the room, his shoes clicking on the hardwood.
I was there for about 20 minutes before I finished reading the ad, at which point I got incredibly upset at having finished it. I wanted it to continue, but the ad had other plans. I rescanned the ad and found no address, just this command: “Apply Within.”
I was on the verge of tears for nearly a week, feeling lost, empty, and anxious. I paced the halls, boring intense grooves into the floorboards and wearing away the print on the tile (I was wearing golf shoes at the time). I couldn’t stop thinking about how the ad patiently led me on for several pages, and then decided to be on its own and do its own thing. It just stopped! Abruptly! And I could not, for the life of me, figure out what I had done wrong.
I took it upon myself to call the newspaper’s Classifieds department and sort this whole mess out. The guy I talked to was very helpful. He explained that the advertiser had rambled for hours, hung up mid-sentence, and paid in full. He said there was nothing he could do. Wait a minute, come to think of it, that dickhead was completely unhelpful! I have a right mind to go in there and start shredding up newspapers until the floor is covered. The sheer volume of newsprint on the floor would cause all of the dogs in the county to raid the offices and start shitting and pissing everywhere. The people that are allergic to dogs would leave in a hurry, and the dogs would take over their jobs. For the first couple of weeks everything would be fine – the dogs would keep up correspondence with everyone and investigate events in order to write compelling articles. Then a news story would break – the scoop of a lifetime – about the new cat president abolishing dogs from the press, and though the story was completely unconfirmed and was in fact planted in the office to create dissent, the dogs would drive that newspaper into the ground.
Once I realized that it would be nearly impossible to co-ordinate the efforts of more than 2 dogs, I decided to solve the riddle of this newspaper myself. “Apply Within”. Wait a minute, I thought, what if it means… no, there’s no way it could… that’s impossible! But what if… I have to see! At this point I ran to my TV and turned it on. After about 30 minutes of channel surfing, I was satisfied that “Charles In Charge” could not possibly be on the air. Then I went back to thinking about the paper. It says “Apply Within”, so maybe it means I have to get inside the paper! I walked into the kitchen and smoothed the paper out on the table – it was open to the ad. Holding my nose, I jumped into the paper!
I fell for about five seconds, and I landed in a rolling field where the sun was shining. I could hear a bubbling creek nearby. I saw trees, and I heard birds talking amongst themselves within the branches. I was startled by all of the beauty, but I was hit by an overwhelming thirst. I decided to find the bubbling creek.
When I surveyed the area, I found a small clump of tall trees that were apparently shrouding the creek, since the sound came from that direction and there was no creek to be seen. I walked over there and stopped right at the edge of the grove of trees. They stared at me. They stared right into me. I shivered like a goat reaching ecstasy. Obviously these trees did not want me finding the bubbling creek that was hiding within their web of branches – they were meshed together like an organic chain-link fence, keeping out livestock, cattle rustlers, and me – the leaves and the needles insuring that no eyes could peer through the barrier. So I put my hands in my pockets, leaned forward, and began chewing.
After a few minutes, I had gnawed a me-sized hole through the foliage. as I snapped the very last twig with my incisors, the door-shaped piece I had just chewed out fell to the ground with a rustling “WHAP” and I swear I heard the trees booing me.
And there it was.
I saw a small hole in the ground bubbling up with running water. I knew that this had to be a secret. As I walked forward towards the water, the trees definitely said, “NOOOO!” I got on my knees and put my lips to the organic water fountain. The cool water touched my lips. And I drank it in.
The water was sweet. Sweet like the first day of spring or the satisfying tang of revenge. I was ripshit. “SWEET WATER?! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?!” I stomped my boots into the waterhole again and again, covering it up with mud and dirt. I set the grove on fire and walked out as the trees squealed like lobsters getting dropped into a pot of boiling urine. The fucker burned to the ground as I walked purposefully back to where I dropped into this world. I jumped into the air.
I plunked back into my seat at the kitchen table and nearly fell backwards. I got up and puked everywhere. Charles walked in with his empty breakfast plate and left immediately. I heard him retching in the upstairs bathroom moments later.