A Really Great Story

[reasonably_crazy]

This was a short story written for the County Fair... I won five bucks and the Judge's Choice award with it!

---

Introduction

Writer’s block: the cliché but fitting term is the bane of authors everywhere; and is not the exception with this one- me, actually. As the present tense annoys me even as I use it now, I’ll refer to myself in the third person and stick it in the past… it will be less confusing in the long run anyway.

*****

And now, the “story.”<br>
~1~

The Author cast about for a plot idea, as she had been for the past- she checked her watch- twenty minutes now. And similarly to the past twenty minutes, a plot stubbornly refused to surface. Annoyed and bored to the extreme, she decided to whip up a few characters. First there would be… a guy. After a few moments of experimentation and probably with less thought than there should have been, the sarcastic nineteen-year-old that was Mark was produced.
Mark’s first moment of business was to mess up his dark hair, then, completely ignoring the Author, he milled about the page and feigned disinterest.
It would be a girl this time, the Author decided as she worked to produce her second protagonist. After fooling around for a couple minutes, she had created the bright, chipper, and annoying Kate, a tall brunette ditz that was sure to be the bane of the other characters… or, at least, Mark.
The newly created Kate immediately jumped up and danced about on the page, spinning about letters and mixing up sentences. “Look at me!” She crowed. “I’m two-dimensional!”<br> Hush, the Author told her as Mark looked at her in dismay. Now, you two are protagonists.
Kate clapped her hands and spun around, sending her long curly hair into Mark’s face, to his displeasure. “Me? A protagonist? Excellent! I always knew I was meant for stardom!”<br> Mark snorted. “That’s unimpressive, considering your “always” has been all of thirty seconds.”<br> Kate stuck her tongue out at Mark, who rolled his eyes.
“Great!” Kate said brightly, ignoring Mark and getting back on topic in the same moment, “so we’re protagonists. Now what?”<br> “We discover that you’re actually the antagonist and I don’t have to deal with you?” Mark said hopefully. Kate stuck out her tongue again, and the Author gave him a reproachful look.
“What? I was just asking.”
Alright then, the two of you are going on a Quest.
“A Quest?” repeated Kate, with a proper amount of awe.
“A quest?” repeated Mark in a cynical tone. He refused to give this any credit; he even made the ‘q’ lowercase and failed to embolden the word.
A Quest, the Author clarified. A Quest to find… There was a dramatic pause… my Plot.
There was a moment of silence, which was unceremoniously broken by Mark.
“Me.”<br> The Author nodded.
“With… HER.”<br> The Author and Kate nodded.
“On a quest.”<br> “Quest.” Kate corrected.
“To find… your plot.”<br> The Author wrinkled her brow. Capital ‘P’. Plot. Not plot, Plot. I didn’t mean to make you this dumb.
Mark looked up off the pages in the general direction of the sky. “Take me now, Lord!”<br> Whether or not you believe in the Lord is entirely up to you, but either way, the Lord did not comply.
Mark glanced up at the Author hopefully. “Backspace? White out? Something?”<br> The Author shook her head firmly. Mark went to the corner of the page and sat there for a while to sulk immaturely.
“So,” Kate said in a valiant attempt to get back on topic (again), “Mark and I are being sent off on a Quest to find your Plot.”<br> Yes.
Kate pondered this. “I don’t know what it looks like,” she finally confessed.
Good! That shall make it all the more interesting! Off you go then! Goodbye! Farewell! Toodle-pip! The Author vanished.
“Wait!” Kate wailed. “You’re the Author! You can’t just disappear! We don’t know anything! You can’t just leave us hanging like this!”<br> “She can, and she has,” Mark said dryly, having ended his sulking session. “C’mon, let’s get this over with.”<br> “But, but, she’s the AUTHOR,” Kate protested. “She’s writing this! And we don’t even know which way to go!”<br> “People read left to right and down.” Mark granted her a withering look. “We can only go one way, unless you want to try to exist before she started writing.”
“But- but- how can she just…Poof?” Kate persisted as she obligingly followed Mark onward towards the next page. “I mean, if she was really gone, wouldn’t we, like, stop, or disappear, or something?”<br> “It’s not so much that she’s left, she’s merely… failing to communicate,” Mark explained.
Kate snorted. “Fine way to start a Quest.”<br>

[reasonably_crazy]

~2~

“Good Morning! Hello! Hey there! Greetings! Hi! Salutations! Hola! Buenas Dias! Aloha! Guten-”<br> “Okay, okay, we get the point!” Mark shouted. The stream of greetings finally stopped, having started the moment they had stepped into the second “chapter”.
Kate and Mark looked down at a funny little man, if ‘man’ was the correct word. He was scarcely three feet tall, wore brilliant green suspenders with a matching green top, and had random tufts of green fuzz sticking out all over his slightly green-tinted skin.
“Fine way to say good morning,” he was grumbling grouchily in response to Mark’s outburst. “I’m just trying to be friendly, and what does he do? He shouts at me! There’s no respect anymore- and this punk here yelling at me for no good reason-” if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was complaining about them, Mark and Kate might have thought that the green-tufted man was unaware of their presence, so absorbed was he in muttering into his green beard.
“Good morning,” Kate said quickly, hoping to soothe him.
“Good morning!” He responded in kind… and he didn’t stop responding. “Hi! Hello there! Greetings! What’s up? How are you? Konichiwa! Salutations! Welcome!”<br> “Erm, yes, hello,” Kate said uncertainly, attempting to be polite.
“Good morning!” he said again. “Hey! Hallo! Hello! Hi! Yo! How’s-”<br> “Excuse me!” Kate had to raise her voice over the man’s. She didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want the entirety of their conversation to consist of morning greetings, either. At least the man had stopped talking. “Hi, I’m Kate, and this is Mark. We’re Protagonists.” She capitalized the ‘P’ and sounded very pleased.
“Kate! Mark! Well, hello hello hello! Glad to meet you! How do you do-!”<br> Mark quickly spoke over the man, having figured out that if he wasn’t cut off, he wouldn’t stop talking. At all. “We’re looking for something, and wondered if you could help us find it.”<br> “Yes,” Kate supplied in agreement. “Have you seen a Plot?”<br> The man seemed to not notice that he had suddenly been diverted from greeting them. He scratched his green beard thoughtfully. “A Plot, eh?” he asked. He quit scratching his beard and instead scratched his green toupee, though it seemed that the toupee actually itched. “What’cha need it for?”<br> “Obviously,” Mark said dryly, “for a story.”<br> “The Author wrote a story,” Kate told him. “She sent us to find the Plot for it.”<br> Somehow she had managed to say the wrong thing. At the mention of the Author, the little green man grew quiet and sulky and seemed to be trying to bore holes in the ground with his (green) eyes.
“At least he’s not talking,” Mark muttered. Kate jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
“Would you please tell us your name?” Kate asked, hoping to break the ice and to distract him from his eye-boring.
To both protagonists’ surprise (and immense discomfort) the man immediately sat down on the ground and cried.
“What should we do?” Kate whispered to Mark, afraid to say something and make it even worse.
“Erm,” said Mark helpfully.
Fortunately, the green-tufted man seemed willing to explain. “Iyneber godda naim! Iywuz jusda noyyisithingy!” He wailed. He drew a contrary orange handkerchief from his pocket with green-fuzzed fingers and blew his nose loudly.
“What?” Mark asked, perplexed.
“Iywuz jusda noyyisithingy,” Kate clarified.
Mark stared at her for a moment. “Yes, thank you, I caught that.”<br> “Don’t worry,” Kate told him with a hearty wink, “I, conveniently enough, speak Sob.” She turned to the weeping individual and patted his hideous hairpiece consolingly. “Tell us all about it.”<br> “Imnota rundeh arakder,” he sobbed. “Iys jusmay doffda tipuf eredd!”<br> “Oh, you poor dear,” Kate frowned, the perfect mother figure. “It happens to far too many that way.”<br> He nodded and tried to stem the tide of tears with his kerchief unsuccessfully. “Aniylue ksiliy! Iymsor taniy avefayk aire aniy reelereele ategeen!” He sniffled loudly. “Aniym almose talgeen.” He added miserably. “Islyk see dusn teenk bowtta wilbeen uver karcders!”<br> He blew his nose again on his now seriously less-orange handkerchief (ew) and batted a few tears that dared to hang from the end of his nose. “Iywus sposedta beeda noyyisithingy, bu see ner pume inna sto’ee!” Still bawling, he pulled on some sackcloth and poured ashes on his head.
“I’m sorry,” Kate sympathized. Mark watched, incredulous, as she produced an astoundingly convenient brown toupee (out of a pack that she didn’t have until that moment) and replaced his green one with it.
This seemed to help; the sobs became hiccups, the foghorn of a nose became more of a bike-horn, and the river of tears became a stream. He even took off the sackcloth and attempted to wipe all the ash out from beneath his false hair.
Mark stared. “Um, what just happened?”<br> “This guy’s had it rough,” Kate explained. She crouched next to the little man, who looked up at Mark mournfully. “He was never given a name,” Kate translated. “He was made off the top of the Author’s head, granted his green-ness and his stunted height, and was supposed to be an annoying sidekick. He was never used, though, and never became a rounded character. And he hates green.”<br> Mark couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Kate- WE’RE not rounded characters! We were made off the top of the Author’s head, too! We’ve not even existed for four pages!”<br> “At least you were made for a reason,” the man muttered sullenly.
“So were you,” Mark responded sharply, refusing to be at all sympathetic. “You are an annoying sidekick. You merely haven’t side-kicked annoyingly yet.”<br> “I have an idea!” Kate said brightly.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mark told her firmly, slapping a hand over her mouth. He had a decent clue as to what her idea was, and frankly he’d had quite enough of the miniature drama king.
Kate, being sixteen and quite mature, acted in a manner fitting of her age: she stuck out her tongue and licked his hand.
“Gross!” Mark exclaimed. He yanked his hand away and smeared it on her pants.
“You can be OUR annoying sidekick!” Kate chirped while Mark was occupied.
The little man beamed. Mark buried his face in his clean hand and groaned.

[reasonably_crazy]

Wow... I forgot how long this is. I think to avoid wasting space, I'll just not put any more up, except in the rather unlikely event someone requests it.

Sorry for even starting! (and for the squished format.)

[Hobbit-eyes]

No, don't stop! It's great!!! I was giggling my head off pretty much as soon as it started!!!

(evil glare) KEEP GOING!!!! Or you may find some Wob-Wobs paying you a visit... or even dufflepuds...

[reasonably_crazy]

With the convenience typical of everything else in the travelers’ odyssey, Mark and Kate’s new sidekick happened to know of an old friend who dealt in new and used plots and Plots. The trio now faced words, sentences, and even paragraphs to meet him and hopefully find the Author’s Plot.
The group’s greatest trouble, however, was greater than any sentence, and it soon made itself apparent. A group of goblins jumped out onto the road.
“Who are you?” Kate asked in surprise.
“We’er thee bad speling goblens!” The leader shrieked.
Mark blinked. “Who?”<br> “The Bad Spelling Goblins,” their new friend supplied. “They’re the wicked little goblin men, the leading cause of misspellings and terrible fanfiction everywhere. They lurk around and pounce when least expected. Quite annoying. They come from the internet, usually; that or the little siblings of an author.”<br> “Just what we need,” Mark sighed.
“Excuse us, please,” Kate said politely, trying unsuccessfully to find away around the band of goblins. “We’re on a Quest and we really need to-”<br> “We’er heer to spoyle yoor qwest!”<br> “Quest.” Kate corrected.
“Qwest.”<br> “No, closer, but it’s Quest-”
“Don’t waste your breath,” came the green man’s voice at her elbow. “They don’t know any other lifestyle. Bad spelling is their way of life.”<br> “What do they want?” Mark asked.
“Too riddle this story with misspellings, of course. It’s what they do. They’re kind of a plague on all works of literature. Even Homer had to deal with them, and he didn’t even write down his stories.”<br> “How do we get rid of them?” Kate asked, eyeing them dubiously.
“Yoo cant!” one cackled. “wach as we roon thee storee!”<br>“SPELLCHECK!” Cried Kate in a moment of brilliance.
“Foal! Spill chick wont work fore yew!”<br>“Stand Back!” Mark cried, pushing Kate and their new acquaintance behind him. “I know how to deal with this!” His eyes glittered. “High School education.”<br>Kate and the sidekick gasped. Mark pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and brandished it in front of him like a talisman. “Behold! I am the bearer of one of the coveted High School diplomas! Flee! Flee if you value your lives!”<br>A few of the goblins glanced uneasily at their leader and edged away.
“Yew can nit beet me!” the goblin leader blustered back.
“I CAN!” Mark roared. “Gnosticize!” The goblins gasped and recoiled. “Onomatopoeia!” A white glow seemed to radiate from Mark now. The goblins howled in agony. “Antidisestablishmentarianism!” A high scream came from the goblin leader, and one by one the goblins disappeared in puffs of black, acrid smoke.
Mark calmly pocketed the diploma and started on towards page six. “Shall we?”<br>Kate and the green man gaped. Unable to think of anything coherent to say, they followed.

[reasonably_crazy]

“So,” Kate said conversationally as they journeyed, their experience with the goblins behind them and therefore, in Kate’s case, forgotten, “You say you never got a name?”<br> The little man shook his head glumly.
There was a sharp intake of breath from Mark. “Ouch.”<br> “Well, it just so happens that I’ve got a handful of names in my pack,” Kate asked, shooting a reproachful glance at Mark for not being more sympathetic. “I found them when I found your brown toupee.” She pulled her bag from her shoulder and rustled about in it. “I’ve got Brian, Hank, Greg, Aaron, and… Frodo?”<br> Oops, the Author intervened. How’d that get in there? That’s Tolkien’s. She flicked it from the pages, then looked at the characters. Carry on!
“Would you like to try on one of these?” Kate asked, ignoring the slight interruption.
The unnamed character furrowed his green brows thoughtfully, looking over the buffet of names. “You pick,” He sighed after a moment. “It wouldn’t be fair if I picked my name; everyone else gets named by others.
Kate surveyed the names. “Very well,” She announced after some thought. “You shall be Hank, and Hank I deem you.” Kate plucked the name from the lineup and handed it to her little friend, who took it from her and squeezed himself into it.
“How does it fit?” Kate asked anxiously.
“Yes, do tell,” Mark added in a bored tone, not seeming to care if they called the man Rumplestilskin.
The freshly-named Hank squirmed about in his new label, trying to get it situated. “Not bad,” he said. He wiggled his shoulders. “It’s different, but I like it.”<br> “Good,” said Mark. “Great. Excellent. Wonderful. Shall we?” He gestured towards the last few pages. “Or shall I fetch a thesaurus?”<br> With a shrug of assent, Kate stuffed the rest of the names back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “How much farther?” she asked Hank.
Hank shrugged. “Dunno,” he said in an excellent display of the English language.
“What’s your best guess?” Mark asked, impatient.
Hank shrugged again. “Beats me.”<br> “Thanks, Hank,” Mark said dryly. “That’s very helpful.”<br>
The Author, realizing that this was supposed to be a short story and that she was cutting it close on page six, poofed them to Hanks friend, the new and used plot and Plot dealer.

[reasonably_crazy]

Literally. Kate and Mark gulped at their sudden arrival and increased the space between themselves and Hank’s friend to more than an inch.
“RED!” Hank called. He generally had to call up to just about anyone, but he really had to with Red. “Red” was a huge man, standing easily at nine feet, with monstrous muscles and vast amounts of hair. Curly black locks fell into his eyes and a great black beard enveloped the entirety of his face beneath the nose. Kate couldn’t imagine where the label “Red” had been spawned for this man.
“Orange!” Red cried gleefully in an unsurprising deep and rumbling voice that startled Kate and Mark anyway. “Hello!”<br> It was inevitable. “Hi! Hey there! Long time no see! Good afternoon! Nice to see you! Greetings! Salutations!” Hank prattled on.
“You’re done,” Mark said sharply. Hank stopped talking.
“Red?” Kate repeated, staring up at the giant. “And Orange?” She eyed Hank dubiously. She’d never seen anyone less likely to be called “Orange.”<br> Red rounded on Mark, even though Mark hadn’t said anything. “When you haven’t got a name, is there anything wrong with going by favorite colors?”<br> Mark raised his hands defensively. “No, no, there’s nothing wrong with that.”<br> Hank looked up at Red, positively beaming. “I’m not Orange anymore, Red! I got a real name! And I finally got to be a sidekick!”<br> A flash of white struggled to break through the miniscule forest on the man’s face; Kate assumed it was a broad smile. Mark, however, rolled his eyes.
“All you did was walk with us,” He pointed out.
Kate jumped to Hank’s defense. “Isn’t that what sidekicks do?”<br> Mark wiggled his shoulders in a peculiar manner and made a non-committal grunting sound.
“So,” Red started, “What brings you here?”<br> “I’m Kate, and that’s Mark. Oh, and this is now Hank.” Hank, if at all possible, beamed even brighter. “We’re on a Quest to find the Author’s Plot.”<br> “Well, I’ve got a handful of plots…” Red began.
“Oh no, not those,” Kate said earnestly. “We aren’t interested in plots. We need a Plot. The Author’s Plot.”<br> Red gazed down at her, mystified.
“Capital P,” Mark supplied.
“Plot,” clarified Hank.
Red nodded slowly. “So you need the Author’s Plot, hmm? I’ll see what I can do.” Red produced a large bag seemingly from nowhere and began searching through it. “I have a plot, another plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot…”
Life went on like that for a while. The upper half of Red was nearly entirely consumed by his bag (no small feat) and he was scraping the bottom of it when he finally boomed, “You’re in luck! I have a Plot!” He extricated himself from the bag and uselessly attempted to flip his curly hair out of his eyes. “The Author’s Plot.”<br> “But, it’s got holes in it,” Kate said in disappointment.
“Plot-holes,” Red said apologetically. “It’s positively riddled with them. But it’s the best that I’ve got. It’s the Author’s Plot, anyway- exactly what you came to get.”<br> Mark eyed it as though he expected it to burst into flame. “Are you sure? Any idea where another Plot dealer is?”<br> “None who sell Plots,” Red told him. “They’re all small-timers; just plots, usually with even more holes than this one. And yes, I’m sure that this is the Author’s Plot.”<br> “This’ll be fine,” Kate told Red. “Erm… Oh dear. How are we supposed to pay you?”<br> “How about your other names?” Hank suggested.
Kate pulled out Brian, Aaron, and Greg. She held Brian up. “I think it’s too small for Red.”<br> “It’s alright,” Red smiled; or at least Kate assumed he did. His beard twitched, at any rate. “I like Red. You might say it’s grown on me.” He laughed loudly, Hank joining in. Kate smiled politely while Mark rolled his eyes.
“Go ahead and take the Plot,” Red offered once his thunderous laughing had faded. He handed it to Kate, who took it carefully, trying to keep her fingers out of the holes.
“Thank you very much,” Kate said, doing an odd sort of curtsy. She nudged Mark.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Mark added.
“So?” Hank asked, craning his neck up to try and peer into the Plot through its many plot-holes. “What’s it about?”<br> Kate carefully unrolled it. Mark peered over her shoulder, interested in spite of himself. Kate gasped. “Why, it’s about us! And our journey for this Plot!”<br> Mark snorted. “That’s lame.”<br>

[reasonably_crazy]

No, it's not over, but I need to go upstairs and rejoin the "real life."

*groan*

Wish me luck.

And thanks Hobbit Eyes, for, um, liking it... I enjoy making people laugh, or at least giggle.

[Hobbit-eyes]

This is great!! So, so great!

Uh... I was wondering if I could use this sort of premise in OFUT? Or maybe a LOTR fanfic? It's just so wonderful, and so brilliant, and you're the coolest thing since cool stuff, and (shines your shoes) you're lovely... oh, look, someone's carelessly left lots of muffins on the table! Maybe when I come back, someone will have taken them... *WINK WINK*

[reasonably_crazy]

Muffins?! Sweet!

*munch munch munch*

And if you really want to, you can. I really don't mind at all. Have fun.

mmm... Muffins. *munch munch munch.*

Thanks, you make me feel warm and fuzzy!

*munch*

[Hobbit-eyes]

Thankyouthankyouthankyou! (pounces and huggles within an inch of your insanity)

Frankie makes great muffins...

[Paranoid Android]

Hehehe, thanks.. Those were good muffins though...

[reasonably_crazy]

All muffins are good muffins!

(well, most)

I'm sure yours are the best though, Frankie

[Paranoid Android]

Hehe, I love that story!! I only just got around to reading the whole thing, and it's so cool!! You have to post the rest of it soon! Or I will rain fairy-like doom down on you!!!

[reasonably_crazy]

Eep! Not fairy-like doom!

The ending sucks, though... Have you any idea how hard it is to end things like this? Dear LORD it's bad!