Thursday, May 22, 2008

Be careful, I am contagious

Hey folks so apparently I have been tagged with a virus. A blogger virus. Not only that but I have been tagged with it twice! Once from my friend Jillian and also from my husband Sean. This particular virus was engineered by Splotchy, whom until this moment I did not even know existed. Way to go internet interconnectedness!

Here's the story:

***
I had been shuffling around the house for a few hours and already felt tired. The doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw a figure striding away from the house, quickly and purposefully. I looked down and saw a bulky envelope. I picked it up. The handwriting was smudged and cramped, and I could only make out a few words.
***
"Interesting", I thought to myself, "I don't know anybody named Ted Kaczynski." Unless it's going to clear this damn sinus infection in my head, I'll have to open it later.I set it on the kitchen table, and prepared my tincture of herbal tea remedies.
***
As I watched the lengthy glossop of honey slather into my tea I heard a rustling noise behind me. Having spent my childhood in a rotating house (due to some awkward foundations) I am quite adept at craning my neck and utilized this skill in the current situation, looking behind myself like a six-foot-tall owl.
***
The envelope - so stationary seconds before - had started to move, an event that I found somewhat odd, given that I was four days away from celebrating a year of sobriety. I picked up the nearest implement of swatting size without thinking, and slowly approached the bubble-wrapped delivery.The envelope continued to shuffle and shake as I stood poised with the potato masher held in readiness over my head. A small bead of sweat edged down my temple, hitting the floor at the same time as a lump of congealed potato from my weapon. There was a tearing sound, and I froze, unable to move, as a disembodied hand broke through my mysterious delivery. I blinked, and the thumb and forefinger of the hand formed a mouth.
***
"Hey, dude, what's up?" The Hand/Mouth said. I just stared, perplexed and terrified. "You got any grub? I'm starving!"
At this point, my fear got the better of me and I swung the potato masher down fiercely, knocking the hand/mouth (still partially in the packaging) off the counter and onto the floor. Screaming at the top of my lungs, I ran to the kitchen stool and stood on top of it, still grasping the potato masher with white-knuckled terror.
"Not cool, man," said the thing.
***
I stood transfixed in horror. The hand now started to inch across the floor towards my stool.
Ring, ring! On the wall across the kitchen the telephone began to ring, breaking me free from the icy grip of fear.

I had been in the middle of moving into a new home, in a fairly clean neighborhood. Kids on bikes, 2 cars in every garage. This hand was not something I had expected to be dealing with.

Ring! The phone rang again.
Cautiously, I climbed onto the counter, stepping over boxes and the empty sink to answer. "Hello?" I shouted into the receiver, intently aware of the scrabbling fingers below me.

"Mr. Newman, I have a proposition to make."
***
"Wha- what do you want?" I babbled into the phone as I sat on the counter, knees to my chin, feet in the sink, phone tucked between my ear and shoulder, my potato masher still firmly clutched in my hand keeping the creature at bay as it attempted to climb the drawer handles to the counter.

"Nothing much Mr. Newman. Just the hand back."

I was just about to answer the man when I saw it. Inside the envelope, still wrapped around the hand things wrist, was a piece of paper. It was halfway out of the envelope, if I could only grab it.
***

Ok virus I know very few bloggers and unfortunately the two I know best got me first. So this virus goes onto Wil Wheaton because he is the one who got me started blogging and I read his stuff everyday. I know you are uber famous Wil, but I am hoping your blogger instincts will make this imperative to continue passing this deadly virus around.

2 comments:

Splotchy said...

Nicely done! I hope Mr. Wheaton continues the virus. I want to find what's on that piece of paper!

Thanks for being infected.

Jillian said...

We've been seriously outdone. Check out this storyline, from the same virus:
http://cowboythecat.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-spent-hours-on-this.html