Newsflash: Large Caribou Writes Story in Which Nothing Much Happens
Posted by Moose on May 22nd, 2006. Filed under: My Brain Needs a Drink.Below is the winning title(s) of the cookie contest. Kindly control your excitement. As promised, I have written the accompanying story. Please excuse the fact that the heroine just walks around her apartment. I decided it was too complicated to actually think up a plot.
Prunella the Barista, or The Ferret Made Me Do It
Prunella stared at the grocery shelf. Dropping three packages of prunes into her basket, she wondered what unholy whim prompted Grandma Lester to name her after a favorite snack. Aside from the basic improbability of anyone’s favorite snack being a mummified plum, there were so many less reprehensible options. Playground bullies could have retained the use of their teeth and limbs if she had been named Cherry or Almondine or… or… Pringles. Prunella cast her eyes about, trying to land a more name-worthy snack. Safeway’s shelves of mayo stared back unhelpfully. Prunella decided Pringles would have been scant improvement.
Heading toward the checkout line after being spooked by the ghastly seafood options with their pitiless, staring eyes, Prunella automatically ducked under the cheese counter to avoid detection. Why Starbucks had to install the green sign inside Safeway when there was already a Starbucks right next door was a less important concern than Jimmy Hoffa’s continuous presence at its counter. Yes, his name was Jimmy Hoffa, his health was dependent on a steady infusion of dessertified caffeine, and Prunella wanted to escape his scathing – and suspiciously pointy – tongue. Hence, the ducking. Then, when Jimmy spied her fuschia head and turned toward her, the crawling. Dropping from view to avoid Jimmy’s cancerous repartee seemed a far better option than retaining her cool exterior. Prunella was an adept crawler and she cleared the cheese counter to sprint for the far door, escaping with neither prunes nor dignity.
Mood only slightly dented by her dusty knees, Prunella wedged herself into the front seat of her ’76 Chevy Nova and jabbed the key into the ignition, missing it by a good three inches. Lowering her magenta head to inspect the wheel, she found the ever-shifting ignition and raised her head in triumph. And smashed it against the rearview mirror. She took a nice long moment to loudly ponder its possible relation to a goat’s nether regions and then carefully inspected her roots in the mirror. She felt her head for blood while deciding that the color was really more magenta than raspberry. Conveniently forgetting that the low light in the rapidly darkening parking lot took the edge off a shade more suited to a flashing neon sign advertising scantily clad girls than an aspiring architect.
“Or maybe I’m more an aspiring doctor. Nurse’s aid? Go-go dancer?” Prunella asked her rearview mirror, revising her career options yet again. She decided to add go-go dancer to the yellowing list above her TV. A go-go dancer could totally swing raspberry hair. Her current career as coffee wench was admirably flexible about things like time off and hair color. It was lacking in amenities like polite customers and free scones. Prunella was accustomed to both snarfing a scone in under two minutes and smiling tightly when Jimmy Hoffa unleashed his uncouth vocabulary.
“How’s the job hunt going, Prunella? Found temp work at McDonald’s yet? Or doesn’t their hiring policy allow for hair the color of slowly decomposing day glo hooker?”
Prunella recalled baring her teeth to bite off Hoffa’s nose. She tamed her teeth into a poor excuse for a smile and dropped his change in front of him. She was supposed to hand over the quarters instead of dropping them on the counter, but she considered herself the soul of patience for not imprinting his tie with the impressions of those three quarters when she stomped them into his prone body after knocking him over the head with a large rock. Maybe she was less the soul of patience than unable to find a rock on short notice. Mental note: stock counter with rocks.
Prunella was more given to treating rudeness with a swift kick in the chin – she was admirably flexible – but Jimmy Hoffa was her boss’s brother. Prunella may have lacked noticeable ambition but she did not lack an instinct for self-preservation. “Goddamn iguana stomping, jackrabbit molesting ingrate,” Prunella muttered to her front door as she shoved a shoulder in the jamb. Wrestling a cat carrier through a narrow door way was one thing, wrestling in a cat carrier with one majorly pissed off ferret in residence was considerably more troublesome.
Unsure if she was insulting Senor Hoffa or Wilson, the unhappy ferret, Prunella opted to make it an all-purpose rant and began checking the floor for ferret snacks. She stowed the remote control safely in the half-dead pansies and gathered up the stray screws. Bracing herself, she opened the door of the cage to release Wilson. Wilson fell out of the carrier and landed on his tubby belly, small legs scissoring against the wood floor. Wilson gained purchase on the ground and scampered straight for his favorite toy. Prunella registered her disgust with a sniff as Wilson began frantically humping her plaster Buddha. Wilson stared impassively back at Prunella while vehemently exercising his pelvis.
Prunella flipped on the TV in hopes of drowning out Wilson’s breathy grunts. Tossing the remote back into the flower pot, Prunella’s disgust magnified as the pot tipped off the shelf and showered the floor with dusty dirt. Wilson looked up from the Buddha, decided that dirt was better than sex with an inanimate object, and tossed himself face first into the mess. Wriggling on his back to better grind the soil into his fur, Wilson assumed an expression of bliss.
Bliss was eluding Prunella. She blamed it on everything from her errant pet to Jimmy the Iguana Stomper to her prune-loving grandmother. She stood up, grabbed a trash bag from the kitchen, collected dirt, pot and one filthy ferret, and dumped the lot into the bathroom. Shutting the door in Wilson’s protesting face cheered her right up. Feeling fortified, Prunella made herself a pot of tea and settled into her purple flannel couch to criticize the television.
~~~~~
Prunella awoke to the sounds of Oprah, her complaining alarm clock, and harried scratching. Prunella fluffed up her colorful bedhead and went to rescue Wilson from his bathroom prison and her door from further abuse. Wilson sauntered out, his muddy coat explained by the running tap. How he managed to turn on the faucet escaped Prunella, but it was a damn impressive trick for a beast with no opposable thumbs.
Idly observing the progress of her pet, Prunella contemplated the coffee-scented purgatory that awaited her. Starting with the green apron that did nothing for her hair and the fact that she was awake before the civilized hour of eleven. Worse was the moment the door swung open with Hoffa the Horrible waltzing in. To his credit, he didn’t waltz. He strolled. Prunella hated strolling. Only women with parasols and gloves strolled. Prunella wouldn’t mind a parasol with a good sharp tip to greet him in his morning mocha peregrination. “Let’s see how cocky he is with that umbrella sticking out of his ass,” she thought. Cheered by the prospect, Prunella was half way to her closet to check the floor for a suitably pointy umbrella before remembering the tenets of customer service and Hoffa’s unfortunate relationship to her boss. Holding some respect for her boss, Prunella couldn’t understand why he felt affection for an obnoxious toad who made her hair the subject of confusing metaphors about dead hookers.
Baristas deal with rude every day, but rude about a coffee order is one thing. Prunella is always happy to enjoy a good hearty laugh at the expense of a customer who is miffed because Madam Patron asked for “the usual” and received a blank stare in return. A blank stare ever-so-slightly tinged with “Yes, ma’am, you DO look exactly like every other Banana Republic drone who walks through that door and damned if I’m going to waste precious brain cells remembering your preference for nonfat milk.”
But rude about the state of her appearance and employability is unacceptable. Just because he prances around with a vastly inflated paycheck doesn’t mean everyone is a corporate whore. Warming to her subject, Prunella conveniently forgot the fact that Starbucks was signing off on her health insurance. Just because his hair is the dullest shade of Mouse on Planet Boring is no excuse for disparaging her creative use of kool-aid, she thought.
Prunella pulled a sweater over head and was dismayed at the popping stitches and the sight of her raggedy bra strap. As her head emerged from the sweater, she noticed Sir Wilson hopping up onto her bed. “Off, you muddy menace!” she shouted, arms flailing for emphasis. Wilson just climbed onto her pillow, curled into a ball and promptly fell asleep.
Gearing herself up for a massive ferret ousting, Prunella noticed how happy Wilson looked while befouling her pillow.
Why is that ornery beast allowed to walk all over me while I’m forced to swallow my tongue because the boss’s brother wants to mock my kool-aid?, she wondered balefully. Prunella considered her character. Assessing her formerly fiesty use of umbrella spikes and realizing the doormat she had morphed into by accepting Jimmy Hoffa’s brand of condescension day after day, Prunella noted that her self-respect was slowly eroding for a mere $9 an hour.
Prunella stuffed her large feet into her favorite red boots and dumped some anchovies into Wilson’s bowl, in thanks for his contribution to her newfound resolve. To avoid ferret leniency, she decided that the glorified rat didn’t get anything else until he figured out how to mop the floor.
Prunella locked her door and strode toward her car, looking forward to work for the first time in months. After tripping over the bottom step, she began devising the beat down that Jimmy Hoffa so richly deserved.
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