Pokemon! Snap

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 20
************************

As Geraldine went on checking out the numerous but altogether under-10-dollar items, Cal turned to Midnight to ask a few questions; for example, why she was a wanted woman, and why she didn’t seem to care.

Cal: “Why?” His brain short-circuited, and this was the whole result. Fortunately, Midnight was highly-skilled in translating such transmissions. Her good looks had attracted the kind of men who didn’t much care what part of the brain their words came from, as long as their brains got laid. Those men who did honestly intend to talk from a deeper place either scared themselves far away from Midnight, or transformed into the former types of men upon approach. Cal wouldn’t have placed himself in either category. Then again, few people do place themselves correctly.

Midnight: “I don’t know.”

Cal: “But you do know. You said you did, when she showed you your picture.”

Midnight: “I know that the police don’t want Rog or me buying food. This is about the eighth place we’ve tried, choosing random locations as we spiraled out from the center of town. I don’t know why we’re not allowed to eat. And I don’t seem to care because I’m not that hungry, and I’ve been having fun spiraling.

Cal: “You will be hungry, though. That’s how the human body works.”

Midnight: “Hooray! You’re sarcastic again.”

Cal: “I thought you didn’t like that.”

Midnight: “I don’t like when you overdo it. You were flooding the market, killing the price on sarcasm coming from you and everyone around you. It was worrying from an economic perspective.”

Cal: “And you are an economics major?”

Midnight: “Nope. You don’t have to go to school to learn the basic workings of society. You simply need to be aware of your environment. Smell the air and all that fun stuff.”

Cal realized that he did not get the “smell the air” saying. He also realized that he still knew next to nothing about his new cohorts. Did Midnight even go to school?

Midnight: “Although it doesn’t hurt if you’ve dated an economics major.”

Rog awoke from his depressed stasis to become an active image of despair. Remaining on the floor that had become a second home, his was a silent scream; nonetheless, its shrill tone still managed to tear at Cal’s soul. At least, that’s what Cal thought was going on.

Geraldine: “Excuse me, young man who reminds me of my husband.”

Cal: “Yes?” Midnight elbowed. “(Ahem) I mean… Yes, kindly lady?”

Geraldine: “Oh my! Everything is just about in order, and it is absolutely wonderful that it is. I’m not afraid to admit that my store has fallen on hard times as of late, what with all those men in suits running their own stores nowadays. They look quite handsome in suits, I’ll admit, but I wish they would be more polite. They don’t seem to care whether I’m here or not, and I never notice anything anyone would care about hanging over their doors.

“Anyway, were you going to buy this picture?” She held up the photo of Rog.

Cal: “Umm… no.” On second thought, it would have been medically irresponsible to risk sending Rog into an even darker state. Cal qualified his refusal. “I didn’t think it was for sale.”

Geraldine turned the picture over and looked at it herself. “Oh my! This is the picture from the police. I can’t believe I asked you that. I don’t even know if it’s legal to sell documents like this. I don’t think it can be. No, that wouldn’t make sense. And frankly, it would be kind of rude, in a regifting sort of way. Never mind that I asked. I meant to ask if you wanted this other picture, but, now that I think of it, I got this one from the police as well.”

It wasn’t the picture of Midnight, which, given the nature of men, would have been a steal at anything under ten dollars.

It was a picture of Cal. Obviously.

Grandpa

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 19
***************

Cal pushed his front foot a bit more forward. His chance to be the hero had re-arrived. Heroes say awesome things when they’re being heroic, and Cal, like any child of the modern age, knew this. He’d failed to say anything of worth after fending off a scorpion horde, yet maybe this low-key fiscal dilemma would serve as the perfect preparation for any future heroism. A witty one-liner rushed towards his mouth… “I can pay for ten dollars worth of this stuff.”

The witty one-liner hadn’t made it. Some amateur script from the middle of Cal’s brain had beaten it out.

Geraldine: “Oh my! You haven’t said anything that strikes me as polite, but I can tell by your generosity that you are a good boy. In fact, you remind me a bit of my husband – not so much in looks or personality, but in the way you carry yourself. Harry died in World War II. I hang that toy zeppelin over the door to remind myself of him every time I walk in and out the door; not that I would ever forget him – him being my wonderful husband and a marvelous man. It’s just good to have reminders like that, even if they pop up more frequently in people like you than they do in physical objects. I will accept your ten dollar bill, and I will check out these groceries.” She started to grab the sandwich Rog had not so politely slammed on the counter. “Remember: ‘Simply carrying yourself well is nothing if you don’t have anything on your back.’ That’s what Harry said to me, before he left. Then he gave me a kiss. Then I said to him, ‘Even though you’re going to war, remember to be polite. It means a lot to people.’ I never saw him again, but I got letters from some of his friends. They told me a lot of things, but they never mentioned whether or not Harry was polite. I think the letters themselves mean that he probably was.”

The story ended. Cal waited a moment, to ascertain this fact. Then he said to her: “Thank you, kindly lady.”

Geraldine: “Oh my!”

Gang Back Together

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 18
****************

Midnight: “Cal! You’re here!”

Rog groaned in the background, conveniently, since he had already been groaning.

Cal (stunned): “I am. Why are you?”

Midnight: “Don’t be so excited to see us. Whoops! It looks like I’m already picking up some of your trademark sarcasm. Meanwhile, you’ve made a turn for the worse, taking on an air of bitterness.”

Cal (snapping out of it): “No, no. I’m just confused again. I didn’t expect to see you so near my house. Do you live near here?”

Midnight: “Nope.”

Cal: “Then I guess I should ask if you’re stalking me.”

Midnight: “Nope.” Her voice then transformed into a faux-whisper. “Somebody is stalking me, though.”

Cal: “Who?”

Midnight made a triumphant gesture, presenting Rog.

Rog: “WHAT?!”

Cal: “Oh. I could’ve guessed that.”

Rog: “My sultana, surely you know that I simply bequest your company. It is you who picked up the phone this morning – you who are still in control.” The fact that he was using the word “sultana” revealed the weaknesses in Rog’s argument.

Midnight: “Calm down, Rog. I’m joking. Don’t be so touchy.”

Rog attempted to follow her instructions: “I’m sorry, madame. Everything is…”

Midnight (interrupting): “Nobody likes a touchy stalker.”

However Rog intended to end his sentence, he didn’t. He collapsed to the floor instead.

Geraldine (to Midnight): “Excuse me, miss.”

Midnight: “Yes, kindly lady?”

Geraldine: “Oh my. What a polite young woman. People your age are usually very rude customers. Why, don’t get me started on the young man with goggles I just had an encounter with. Where did he go, anyway?” A crushed shadow flickered somewhere below.

Geraldine (continuing): “Miss, you have been so nice to me in these past few moments. I have something I want to say to you.”

Midnight: “Yes, kindly lady?”

Geraldine: “Oh! There it is again! You really are polite, aren’t you?” Midnight simply smiled. “Anyway, I want to say that even though you seem like a wonderful person, you’d be better off looking for food at another store. I’m not supposed to sell you anything, either.” Geraldine held up a photo of Midnight.

Midnight kept smiling: “I know.”

A Pun Too Far

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 17
************

“Young man, I know this picture is of you. Look, you’re wearing the same goggles on your head. Do you like to swim?” The old lady was making her case in the calmest, sweetest manner possible. For whatever reason, Rog was not responding in kind.

Rog: “I know it’s me, but I’m hungry; I need food; and I have money to pay for it.”

Old Lady (aka Geraldine): “I was a lifeguard one summer, you know. I could do all the strokes. Let’s see… There’s the front stroke… the back stroke… the left stroke…”

Rog: “This is the food I want.” He slammed down a sandwich and chips. “This is my money.” He slammed down a credit card. “Please swipe it now.”

Geraldine (holding up the aforementioned picture): “I can’t help you, young man. The police gentlemen gave me this picture of you and told me not to give you anything.”

Rog: “You’re not giving me anything! We are making a fair exchange. This food, for the amount of money its worth.”

Geraldine: “Oh, no, no, no. How do I know this credit card isn’t a trick? I heard on the news that young people like to take advantage of old people, especially with credit cards. Those can even be used to break into buildings!”

Rog: “But you know that this card is mine! The name matches the one on that cop photo you have.”

Geraldine: “I didn’t steal it. The police gentlemen gave it to me, and I happen to know that police do not like it when people steal.”

Rog: “What are you talking about?!”

Geraldine: “You said that I copped this photograph. I did no such thing. Why would I steal a picture of you? We just met.”

Rog, like the unseen audience, was baffled and distraught.

Geraldine started to look at the picture again, reaching up to adjust her glasses… which weren’t there. “Oh ho! I almost forgot about my cataract surgery. I’m always doing that, trying to touch things that aren’t even there anymore. I suppose it’s a matter of habit. You’ll come to understand yourself in a matter of years, young man.”

Rog: “No, I won’t, because I won’t live that long, because nobody in this damn town is giving me any food.”

Geraldine: “Your goggles are almost like glasses, aren’t they? They make those, don’t they? Goggle-glasses?”

Whatever Rog had done to get himself on the police radar was about to get a lot worse. He was about to hit the kindest, oldest, and most stereotypical person in town. Cal, who had been watching long enough to grasp the situation but not long enough that his “idly standing by” act would seem weird, was ready to step in. His cold, hard (in a papery sense) cash seemed the perfect solution to this new age problem of metaphysical property and identity confusion.

The more-pointed feet of Midnight stepped in first.

Plastic Literature

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 16
*****************

Cal parked his bike outside his local grocer’s. It was a smaller, mom-and-pop store, with the mom actually being more of a grandmom and the pop being dead since World War II. Corporate owners had offered to buy the place out, as they do, but the old lady refused to sell. This place was all she had, except for the countless number of cats her sweaters revealed. The colors of the fur spread about the garment were too varied to come from one-to-three cats. Four-to-nine was more likely.

Cal knew all this information via his own mom. He didn’t really like small talk, nor did he take too much interest in what women over forty wore. Nor did he often go to the store, his mom taking care of that, too. Thank the gods she wasn’t dead.

Cal was adept enough to deduce on his own that the old lady’s name was Geraldine. The name of the store was Geraldine’s.

Reaching into his wallet, Calvin imagined he’d find the classical display of cobwebs. Instead, he found a bunch of old receipts and one ten-dollar bill. That would be enough to buy cereal and milk. And gum. And maybe a package of licorice for later.

By the time he finished shopping (about three minutes after he started), Cal had collected a small mess of stuff that, when grouped together, resulted in the most difficult carrying combination possible. A dry, square box. A wet, oval/rectangle plastic jug. A small, foil stick. A cheap, crackly bag. “I hate shopping,” he decided. At the same time, he decided that he loved shopping carts, some of which were on display at the front of the store. Cal had passed them up upon entering in a show of disinterest. His idiocy resounded.

Still, everything is relative. As he struggled to the counter, Cal recognized a young man arguing with an old lady. The old lady wore a sweater covered in cat fur. The young man wore goggles atop his head.

That is idiocy.

***********************

Milk jugs plus Baby Pals equals this.

A Break from the Action

We here at Six Lines hope you are enjoying those other things written here. I think there's another one today. Don't miss it. Whatever.

The important thing we have to announce is our sponsorship* of a new Nintendo DS game, due out early next year. It's called Baby Pals, and (giggle) it's all about you raising a baby! Tee hee!

Check out the totally awesome screens below! Burp!

Slight Expansion

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 15
**********************

There was no response.

“Mom?”

Silence.

Cal could think of only two possible explanations for the current situation. Either his mother had gone out, which she rarely did. Or she was dead, which she even more rarely did. In both cases, a rarity would again be responsible for disaster - Cal would remain hungry.

Also, in one of those cases, his mother would be dead.

“I hate the morning,” Cal thought. And with this thought, he realized another explanation. Under this third option, one of the other two would be proven wrong. The other would be proven right. Really, then, this new choice just rationalized one of the other two. It was not new at all.

What was it? It was the morning.

Cal’s mom always went out in the morning. Not usually being conscious during this timeframe, Cal discounted it from his universe. Thus, a reality in which his mom sometimes went out was distorted into one in which she did only now and again.

In every reality, Cal was still hungry. He was still tired. And he was now an idiot. After running into a door, dramatically opening an empty refrigerator, and questioning the pulse of a woman out on errands, a man needs no third party to ascertain his idiocy.

“Too much has happened.” This was what Cal said. The words sounded as if they were attempting to justify the occurred idiocy, giving the reason of cerebral workload. Maybe, by fooling himself into believing that he hadn’t acted like a fool, Cal could pick himself up and rejuvenate his weakening image.

In fact, they were words of surrender. “Too much has happened…” to be able to go back to sleep. This was what Cal meant. He started back to his room, awake, and aware of the path he had to take. He would put on some clothes, grab his jacket (an accessory to his clothes), and bike to the grocery store.

And he would do it all without running into a single door.

Forgotten Author

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 14
*****************

Interestingly, this note featured different handwriting than the others. Either Cal wasn’t dealing with the same author, or the original author had decided to make things even weirder by constantly changing his font.

The answer: It wasn’t the same author. Cal wrote it. It just took him a second to remember.

You know. The morning.

Closing his about-to-gape-in-awe jaw, Cal asked himself why he’d decided to imitate the “obviously.” Nothing that insightful sprung to mind. Oh well.

Whatever the case, the events of last night were revealed to be true, down to the final detail of Cal writing himself to ascertain that fact. After he’d decided that it all didn’t happen, he must have decided that it did. Or at least, he decided that it would have did, if the message he wrote himself were there, where it was, where he left it, on his door.

The time to use the bathroom and forget about this mess had come. With the sun at his back, Cal marched towards his destiny – a destiny he’d achieved many times before, and was due to achieve again. The greatest general of the greatest army couldn’t have lurched towards his goal more purposely than Cal did then.

The result: He achieved.

More than that, Cal had used his time achieving to map out the rest of his day. He was going to head downstairs. He was going to grab something to eat. He was going to go back upstairs. He was going back to sleep.

It was an infallible plan, so long as no more doors interrupted his progress. The bathroom door provided the first obstacle. Turning the handle he’d locked just seconds before, Cal easily overcame this obstruction. Invisible fans cheered.

Next was the staircase. No doors encased this terrain, and Cal easily slowed down the stairs in a yawning spectacle.

Gasp! A forgotten barrier laid waiting for him in the kitchen. The refrigerator containing the eggs he desired was closed, and Cal would need, in order to rectify this situation, to open its door. Muscles moved in tandem, synapses signaled that the plan had not been changed, and the battle begun.

Cal’s pointer finger led the way, wrapping itself around the icebox’s silvery arch. His middle finger followed in typical defiance, cursing the thought of an unopened door. Then his ring finger – barren of any display – shouted to the world that this was a free man with the power to do what he willed. Next the pinky. Who cares. And finally, the opposable thumb did its thing, proving to the world that man was indeed the highest species. The refrigerator had little choice but to surrender itself to the chain of events. It opened.

Gasp! It was barren.

Cal shouted: “Mom!”

The Next Days

Bad Guys Need Flowers - New Chapter, Pt. 13

****************

Cal awoke the next morning. The exact time was irrelevant. The fact that it was morning was astounding.

Exhausted from the sheer perplexity of the previous day, Cal had fallen asleep before midnight. Rare was the night he turned himself off before Conan, but rarities exist because they occur. Oftentimes, rarities are viewed as items of joy – a diamond of rare color, a horse of rare strength, a rapper of rare rhymnation. In the case at hand, rarity was a disaster.

What the hell was Cal going to do with a whole day?

He certainly wasn’t going to look for jobs – that was clear. He’d done that the last x number of days, and the banal literature categorized under the title “Job Postings” had driven him to the point of hallucination. Or so he’d decided the night before.

Surely none of that scorpion stuff was real. Who would spend the time to import so many desert creatures to the Midwest? Somebody who got up in the morning, maybe; still, even after Cal grasped this concept of “a full day’s work,” the possibility remained slim.

The “notes in the pockets” thing? A nice trick. Hardly feasible in the real world.

And that girl…

“Look. There’s my computer,” Cal thought. “All nice and not blown up. What more proof do I need that life is as it always was – static.”

Cal lurched towards his door, having come to a conclusion as to what to do: Use the bathroom. As he walked, the morning sun shot blinding darts of light at his eyes. This is what the sun is won to do, yes, but it usually only does so through certain windows at certain times of day. For some, those times do not exist. Consequently, things happen. Unaccustomed to the solar element, and unaccustomed to the act of morning walking in general, Cal lurched a bit too far. A thing happened. He slammed face first into the door. Stars swirled, shooting darts of their own metaphysical light. Fortunately for Cal, this light existed at no certain time in his visual spectrum. No further thing happened.

Recovering well enough to realize that his next step should be backwards, away from the door, Cal did so. The move proved prudent. There, staring him straight in the face, posted to the door, was a note:

It really happened. Obviously.

Even Odds

Bad Guys Need Flowers - Pt. 12
*********************

Cal looked at Midnight, who was still lingering. If a few more seconds had passed, one might have even said she was loitering.

There they went. She was loitering.

Cal (not noticing the breaking point): “Are you lingering?”

Midnight: “Maybe. I’m trying to figure you out.”

Cal: “How so?”

Midnight: “Well, at first I thought you were awkward and quiet. Then you got a bit snappy. Then you got sarcastic. Then you quieted down and took action. Then you got a little arrogant. And in the end you became sarcastic again.”

Cal: “I guess sarcastic wins then, eh?”

Midnight: “It’s not fair if you play it that way. Anyway, I’ll publish my ‘Theory of Cal’ later. It’d be boring if we knew it all straight away, eh?”

Cal noised his indifference: “Ehh.”

Midnight: “I do have one question, though. What was with that snappy bit? It’s the only section that doesn’t really meld with my early thesis.”

Cal: “Do you want a sarcastic response or a real response?”

Midnight: “Real. If you’re always sarcastic, you’ll bore me.”

Cal: “There wasn’t any reason to what was going on. That upset me. That’s my reason.”

Midnight: “Hmm. But you were snappy at the part when we were talking about my name, weren’t you?”

Cal: “Exactly.”

A brief standoff occurred, with Cal unsure of how Midnight would react to his latest answer. The standoff passed. She smiled.

Midnight: “Got it.”

Cal: “What did you get?”

Midnight: “Everything.”

The two shared another moment. To an outside observer, it would seem as if a trend was developing.

Midnight: “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Maybe there’ll be more reason than today.”

Cal (sarcastically): “That wouldn’t be the hardest thing to achieve.”

Midnight paused to analyze the comment: “Hmm. I suppose that, in its own way, your character can be considered charming. Just don’t lean on it too much. You’ll start to walk with a limp.”

Cal had no response.

Midnight: “Oh, and feel free to bring something tomorrow to lighten the place up. I think I’m gonna bring roses.

“Even bad guys need flowers.”