Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Serial Weirdness - Chapter 1

Seeing as this seems to be a one-Gack show these days I am taking it upon myself to introduce to you, our dear readers, the concept of "Serial Weirdness". As I think of weirdness I shall enter them here, hopefully in some sort of coherent form for you to follow along in single chapter form. With any luck it shall entertain, possibly titillate and hopefully amuse the crap out of the lot of you. 

Probably not titillate.

So, without any further delay may I present to you Serial Weirdness.
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The wind whistled through the trees in the park, the bare branches and limbs moving with the force of the cold November breeze. The few people brave enough to venture outside moved quickly with the effort of hurrying to where they were going and getting inside as expediently as possible. The shops and cafes that lined the park were doing a brisk business and those shop owners were inwardly pleased with the hourly take while showing outward concern for the needs of the shoppers.  The rapid transactions kept the shop owners warm. But deep in the park it was cold.

You know the hot dog cart. You see them all over the city in the summer, hordes of nitrate-deficient people waiting their turn for one of mankind's' greatest gifts, the hot dog. Smother it in everything remotely edible that comes in a squeezable tube and wash it down with super highly concentrated sugar water and you have the perfect city meal. But deep in the park on a cold November day the cart was out of place. The canvas walls that the owner had erected to keep the cold off flapped mightily in the wind and the little immigrant man shuddered. Stanislaw Kovac was working against his will. His wife of what seemed to be *forever* did not like him spending time at home when there were hot dogs to be sold. Stanislaw tried to explain that no one would want to venture into the park for a hot dog but she was having none of it.

"Go sell your hot dogs! Keep your blood moving!" She yelled. A lot.

So there he was, huddled in his canvas enclosed hot dog cart, trying feebly to keep warm and keep the cans of pop from freezing. He looked outside; the grey clouds rolled past. He was bored. He closed his eyes.

"This is silly. I could be watching Jeopardy. I'm going home no....." he stopped talking. He thought he heard a voice behind him. He turned around. No one was there. He stuck his head out the back of the enclosure. No one. Another sound behind him. The voice, a tiny one was coming from inside the cart. Stanlislaw cocked his head to one side and tried to locate the source of the little voice. He waited. The voice called out again, muffled.

"Hey! In here!" The cooler? Stanislaw took a step backwards. What could possibly be in the cooler that was capable of speech? His wife put a tape recorder in the cooler and it came on after a time. She was a card! No. His wife was many things; funny wasn't part of the top 100 traits she possessed let alone a trait that she would want to show off. 

Stanislaw didn't want to open the cooler. What would he find? "Hey! Are you out there? It's cold!" Who was this talking to him? He thought briefly about running from the cart but since he'd lived through the Hungarian uprising in 1956 he figured he possessed enough "moxie" to withstand whatever could be talking to him from within the cooler. He inched closer. It was quiet except for the wind. No voice.

He grabbed the tongs from the top of the counter and stepped closer, staring intently at the cooler. Slowly he stretched out his hand with the tongs and reached for the lid. Edging the tongs under the handle he flipped the lid up and jumped back. Nothing. He crept back up and peered over the edge. Just the hot dogs.

Stanislaw looked around him. Nothing in his enclosure. Nothing immediately outside. Nothing around for miles it seemed. Stanislaw looked back into the cooler.

"Thanks for opening the lid. We needed the fresh air."

It suddenly became apparent; the hot dogs were talking to Stanislaw Kovac.