112 future now past

If I knew dating Brandon would have lead to this I would never have gone along with idea. I had my reservations from the start. He wasn't really witty, or confident, and he didn't have strong looking hands, I've always had a soft spot for gruff man-hands, his were so tiny. To top it off he didn't seem to be in a stable financial situation, not that I'm all about the Benjamin's, but a guy's at least got to try to keep his shit together and Brandon, I don't want to hate on the guy, but it seemed as if he'd lost his along the way. I'll give him this much, he had the stones to ask me out, and that tiny little detail was enough to turn me. It's been a while since I've been on a date (I'm really ashamed to say, I almost can't even write it, but this was the first time, Sally says it's because men are intimidated by me, but I think that's just her nice way of saying I'm fat a little on the chunky side. I don't exactly set the world on fire with my conversational skills either. I'm just a regular big-boned shy gal looking for Mr. Right), so I went easy on him and said yes. Big mistake.

Now we're here at this "top secret" training facility. Brandon's not though, he's missing in action. Typical. And Davis the half-insane, I hesitate to say lest I unwittingly become a part of his elaborate fantasy, "time-traveler" is out looking for him, either that or we're meant to be, I don't know, the instructions we were left with were kind of vague. My brothers in arms are the three-quarters insane zombie guy, who speaks only in grunts and groans and may one day murder us in our sleep, and to round things out we've got the completely-out-of-his-mind-bonkers, Erhard,  who is obsessed with dressing in hot colours and suffers from a personality delusion were he believes himself to be the pied piper of Hamlyn. I guess Napoleon and God were already taken. All that and he's really, really annoying.

I don't know how Davis managed to spirit us away to this place, but I can't wait to get out. He says that the eighties are coming for us. I don't know what that means, but he left a note on a white board on his way out: START TRAINING NOW! I'LL BE BACK. He also assured us at one point that space is unevenly distributed here, and that time functions slower than normal so we might just be able to pull this (whatever this is) off. Everyday we sit around and do nothing. Somehow, I don't think this is what he had in mind. This is crazy. We're here expected to go through an eighties style training montage, to prepare to stop the oncoming eighties onslaught, I find that ironic (in the Alanis Morisette way and not the real way). Where's our Mr. Miyagi? Where's Brandon? I want to go home. --what Melanie would have written in her diary if she'd brought it along.

105 an inconvenient truth

"Esteemed future potential saviours of the world. No pressure. They are mobilising right now. Who they are and how they operate is beyond the scope of our current intelligence. What I can tell you is this, that there has been a maximum security breach in the collective imagination of planet earth. Do sheep dream of unelectric androids? Worse, but today's predicament rests on no less disturbing premises. Entities strongly influenced by the decade that you know as the 1980's are closing in on your city just as quickly as its boundaries are expanding and the frogs are reproducing. We need the big guy?" said Davis

Melanie, Erhard, and Koopa/Daly looked around. No big guy. 

"Who, Brandon?" asked Melanie, looking perplexed.

"Yes. If you want to slow the progress of this movement, find him. I've tried, but I missed him when I picked you all up. He was supposed to be there. He wrote me and perhaps some of the miscreants that will inevitably cause a great deal of trouble for you. I am a sentinel of sanity and I would love to help, but I have my own problems to worry about, and my next appointment is in 15 minutes. Good luck and Goodbye."

097

Lets recap, because I'm at a loss to completely place you in any useful linear continuum. Some one remind me why we're here. Davis being a complete tool.

This is not a cheap excuse for exposition. Koopa weighs in

But what if it is? Me pretending to be an invisible author

We're saving ourselves from the eighties. That's Mel (she's big(ish))

Specifically you're saving us from the eighties and doing your best to ignore me. This is Erhard

OUAEURVGHE Daly speaks
Translation: What are you doing? That's a stupid totally irrelevant question.

092

Melanie bent over and threw up. That was possibly the best ride she'd ever been on. Erhard crossed his arms and sneered. It wasn't clear if he was still upset about being drowned out by the buzz of Davis' arrival or if he was disgusted by Melanie's latest outburst. Davis looked quietly pleased irrespective of the root cause of his new comrades melancholy (not that their disparate dispositions were necessarily related). And Koopa/Daly continued to wail his/her indefetigable groan.

"What was that you just did?" said Melanie, after she'd recovered.

Davis knelt in starter block postition beside her "A valid question. We needed to get to safety. There's no telling how many agents of the eighties have already crossed over. So, I warped us here to this previously prepared secure way station, where I will brief you on what exactly the hell is going on."

"Good, but can you make it quick, I need to get back to the future, present, past or where ever we were to take care of some urgent, business." said Erhard

"Lets hear it, I suppose." said Melanie, when she really meant to say this is insane.

"OUAGHGHAO" said Koopa/Daly

"Excellent, lets begin then."

83.

ribit, ribit

"If you don't mind I was here first, and as you can see the situation is dire. Now you've said your piece about the 80's, horrible decade, but we've got our own problems to deal with." said Erhard

"With all due respect sir, with a wardrobe like that, you look to be the least qualified to make any comments on what was or wasn't, is or isn't fashionable. The 80's had its short comings to be sure, but it's ready to make a comeback." said Davis

"OAUGHUEHHE" said Daly and Koopa.

Erhard snuck a glance at his outfit, it was bright yellow and red, of course he knew that already, but he wasn't used to being insulted by strangers that materialised in brilliant flashes of light, he found it to be rather rude; All the more so, because his reclamation of the proverbial talking stick was so short lived, he'd been disarmed by the cocky guest almost immediately. He tried again" "Who said anything about fashion?" was all he could come up with. After that he thought of a million other things that would have been a hundred times wittier.

Melanie was about to make a psychological breakthrough and disencumber a portion of her inner child before these two strange men appeared on the scene, although they were no less strange than the man she was already dealing with, perhaps they leaned a little closer to normality than this ever-groaning zombie guy and for that she was resentfully grateful. Here she was getting bailed out again, same old Mel. Between these freaks, the redundant, overly abundant frogs; and the worst date of her life (the only date), she couldn't see how an invasion from the eighties could make things any worse.

"Authors with bad ideas, the return of the 80's, I don't understand." she said.

It looked like Erhard's attempts at heroism were marginally interesting at best to these people. They obviously couldn't be bothered with anything he had to say. Sometimes he didn't know what the point was in trying.

"All will be explained, friends." pronounced Davis, which was a rather forward relational label given that none of the group knew anyone else's name.

A ball of light surrounded them and shrank in on itself until they all disappeared. That's when Brandon showed up (and died).

78.

"If I may, I have been instructed to share this important message... Ahem, Dear Author, there exists a place where ideas go that nobody wants. Ever written a story before? Ever submitted it to a publisher? I know you have. Your walls are decorated with rejection slips. All unaccepted ideas wait in meme purgatory until they find a home or forever. There's simply no other way to deal with them." said Davis.

Melanie looked on quizzically. "Are you one of those ideas?"

Davis stood there for a very long time, then answered: "Yes."

68.

Davis arrived with a real live flash, the kind that reminds you of lightning striking within death's distance and knocks you on your posterior disavowing you of the gratitude of being spared due to your being really quite sore. Yes, exactly like that. The dead feel no pain. Getting there though that's the hard part.

He walked out of his crater, strutting like he'd just got the digits of the hottest girl on earth. There was definitely some overtly audacious pizazz in that chipper prance of his, the kind that made you sit up and say damn that boy can walk. Some where between the transition from crawling to walking there's an art form under appreciated by society at large, Davis was a walking Rembrandt. Even the frogs weren't an impediment, he simply squashed any that lay in his way.

He saw a mini assembly of fellow humans and moseyed on over.

"Greetings beings of planet of earth. I'm here to save you from the eighties."

Melanie looked him up and down. "You're too late."

62.

Melanie had seen and heard all that she could stand so she leaped into the air, borrowing athleticism from the ether. She landed accessorized with a shiny thigh band, formerly the jaws of her would be captor, it made her feel like an amazon or Xena or one of the 'vixens' from the WWE. She'd need every confidence that she could contrive after walking into a real life horror film, the zombie-like creature's droning seemed to increase as the distance between them closed . No more would be saviours, no more tardy teachers, she was in this on her own, the architect of her own destiny. She clenched her fists, bracing for the final confrontation.

"Ahem, excuse me. Sir, Maam, I need a hand please." said a man dressed in bright red & yellow.

61.

This is what it must have felt like to be John Hurt playing an idiot savant in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. As far as Daly could tell no one could understand a word he was saying, mostly because he was speaking in low pitched groans. The woman he was accosting had leaped in response to his uninviting incomprehensible babble directly out of the rubbish bin she had been frequenting, retaining only the upper rim of its cylinder which adorned her thigh like an unattractive garter.

That's a good look, said Koopa without a hint of sarcasm

Like you'd have any sense of fashion. said Daly

It's always facinated me really.

Really? Please go on...Daly didn't really know what to say, Koopa could do the rest of the talking. The idea of a reptilian fashion maven trapped in his head only intensified his personal diagnosis of clinical insanity in the affrimative.

Well, to be honest I've always felt like a cow trapped in a bulls body.(were male reptiles even called bulls!?). This whole experience it's like I'm a beautiful butterfly breaking free from the restraints of my cacoon and my past life as a cataerpillar.

Now Koopa was the female consciousness of a male komodo dragon trapped in a man's body. That's progress.

55.

Brandon had run, in total, three blocks away from Melanie, which for him was the equivalent of running the New York marathon. After the mini heart attack, retracing those blocks was like circumnavigating the world in 80 days, in an hot air balloon that was constantly running out of gas, Melanie was in for a long wait.

52.

As Daly approached the large woman caught in an urban bear trap, his mind was locked in a continuous loop. What was this thing in his head? He'd been knocked out for a while, was hearing voices a common symptom of concussion? He tried to think back to psychology class. Credit misattribution? 'Illusory reversal of action & effect'? Could this be Schizophrenia?

I can hear you, do you think if you were crazy that you'd know it? The loop was broken, possibly he was just experiencing a strong case of confabulation. Maybe talking to another human would help.

"Ouaughhh."

This did little to put the woman at ease.

Koopa, WTF have you done to me?

47.

Daly made his way down the street, moving as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to walk or crawl. If anyone were in his immediate vicinity they would have no doubt been thoroughly disturbed; to compliment his unsightly spasmodic dance, he groaned incessantly in a harsh brogue befitting a mule immediately after castration.

The only person who could have noticed was Melanie, but she was thoroughly distracted by the rubbish bin which had inconveniently swallowed her left leg. She was beginning to chaff and not in a good way. Then it burst upon her, surprising, like a freshly opened deep anal fissure that you would never have noticed if not for the change of water colour during your post number two observations. The unsettling noise reveberating from Daly's vocal chords beat out the pain in her leg (mainly because it was starting to numb), she looked around. First a flying man now this, it looked like a zombie was headed right for her.

42.

Brandon entertained only a few ideas, he was mostly distracted by the thought of his impending death. His selfish quest had left Melanie stranded in an undignified position and possibly at the mercy of the incoming frogs. The frogs, the frogs, were they real or just a hallucination excited by the chemical imbalances of a dying brain? In a brief moment of insanity (this is what he told himself) he visualised surfing in on a wave of frogs taking Melanie up into his arms and doing unspeakable things to her. Before he got too excited there was still the small issue of his heart attack to consider. He had once taken a first aide course for CPR. What use was that type of knowledge if you couldn't use it to save yourself? The Answer to The Question didn't matter all that much right now. He wheezed, he choked, he stood up and he started stumbling back to Westminster Boulevard, the frogs edging ever closer as he went.

32.

At the age of 5 on one of her first days at school Melanie managed to get her self stuck in the nook of a wish bone branch in a birch tree. The bell sounded signalling the end of recess, another little girl whom she'd only just met told Melanie that she'd go and get a teacher to help out. Perhaps an hour later her own teacher came to the rescue, with the rest of her classmates on hand to witness the event. She didn't feel annoyed or even angry as she waited longingly for some one to save her from the clutches of that malevolent tree, but inspite of the minor emotional viscitudes that occured during her stay there this particular memory stood out as one of the most vivid of her childhood. She couldn't remember the name of the girl who failed to live up to her well meaning commitment or the teacher who after an hour finally noticed that she was missing, but she remembered the name of that damn tree. The birch tree. For Melanie details were often memorable, people were not.

9.

When you accidentally squeeze your hot dog out of its bun, there's no going back from that. Sure you can try to apply the two second rule, but good luck with those sticky condiments, there's bound to be hair and all sorts of undesirables once you get to the thing. Best to just walk away, dig grudgingly into your pockets and buy another.

Simon wasn't a hot dog, neither was his house a bun, and there wasn't a ready replacement if you chose to give up on him and find another. There was only one Simon and right now he was flying like a rocket across the night sky.

Brandon had been walking two a breast with his blind date, Melanie. With their considerable dimensions they obtruded all on coming foot traffic, who were forced to drop on the road to get around. This made Brandon smile, tonight he wasn't moving for anyone, or so he thought until what looked like a shooting star came hurtling towards them. Melanie was left with her leg trapped in a public garbage bin and screaming about the worst date she'd ever been on. Brandon had always had a certain way with women, tonight he though things would be different. Who was that flying man with the rocket up his rectum? Brandon had to know.