Greetings.
It is I, Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre. You know, the recent one time LAMMY award winner.
Anyway, last week I gave you an assignment for LAMB Grazin' On The Plot Farm 2.0. And you responded with 7 entries. Eight if you count Friend Mouse Speaks' 2 entries which I will so that means that we have eight. And one of those is a frickin' Japanese Tonka Poem. How about them apples?
So read these fine fine entries with a critical eye and vote for your favorite at the end.
A macaque monkey escapes from a UC Riverside animal testing laboratory and immediately exposes the student population to Ralph Lauren's highly unstable new fragrance Liquid Sexy-Time Obsession. The monkey, primed with a scent 1794% more amorous than roses, eludes capture time and again as it races across the country, all the while reducing nearby humans into gibbering horndogs compelled to dry-hump anything in their paths. But Ralph Lauren's resourcefulness rivals his enthusiasm for pedophilia and he quickly deploys his expert escaped-monkey-recapture team into the field. Team leader Jonathon Frankenberry is willing to do anything to quell the olfactory threat -- including introducing the dreaded monkey bounty hunter Tornado McGraw into an already combustible situation. For Frankenberry knows that Ralph Lauren is not a merciful master and saving the nation's overstimulated libido is his only chance to recover his young daughter Tilly Frankenberry from the lascivious clutches of his garishly garbed overseer.
(Friend Mouse has 2 entries)
A solitary horticulturalist lives alone, hermitlike, outside of Dallas, meticulously tending his heirloom roses. From out of nowhere, a tornado descends upon the area, flattening the surrounding towns and demolishing his precious rose gardens. Half-crazed with grief and with nothing keeping him in Texas any longer, he hits the road where he is befriended by a stray cat – try as he might, he cannot chase the cat away and he slowly becomes attached to it. Their journey takes them to the Gulf Coast where despite his inexperience he gets hired as a deckhand on a shrimp boat. The cat is useful as well, quickly ridding the boat of its infestation of vermin. Shrimp are scarce this season, however, and the man is soon laid off, returned to shore with only 53 cents in his pocket. Realizing that he is in desperate need of cash, he dons a cheap pair of sunglasses and attempts to rob a convenience store, using a pair of scissors as a weapon. He is soon arrested and thrown into jail and, appalled at the treatment the prisoners receive, decides to go on a hunger strike in protest. The warden’s men put him in restraints and force-feed him an all-liquid diet. His spirit all but broken – he wonders what has become of his cat – he remains in jail long enough for his hair to grow into a ponytail. Then one day, not long before his release, he comes across a familiar picture in a magazine in the prison library: it’s Tyler, Texas, “Rose Capital of America.” Filled a longing for his flowers, he heads north when he gets out of jail, arriving at the Tyler city parks administration in time to apply for a summer groundskeeper position. As we fade out, he is moving among the roses again, finally at peace (except for wondering about his cat).
I’m a pet detective, Hutton Ambrose by name, and when all of the stray cats in Los Angeles suddenly disappeared, I knew who to talk to - Blind Willie always has his ear to the ground. I found Willie wearing his trademark wraparound sunglasses and selling gypsy roses to the tourists out on Sunset. When I asked him about the cat-nappings, he just shrugged and painted me a familiar picture: “It’s the same old-same old, Hutt. Big dog blows into this town like a tornado and all the shrimps are dyin’ to give him what he wants. This time, the big dog wants cats.” I shook my head in disbelief, my ponytail snaking over my shoulders like a snake. Blind Willie reached out his hand but all I had to crease his palm with was 53 cents – that’s an insult, not actual cash - so I told Willie I’d get him on the return trip. He shrugged, knowing I was good for it. I had to find out who was responsible for this latest catastrophe. LA is a big town but the people here like to talk about who and what they know, and the best way to make the canaries sing is to wet their whistles. A few liquid lunches and I’d be able to cut through the bull like a pair of scissors through tissue paper, and find out what’s really going on here.
Piper gazed at the reflection of herself in the dressing table mirror. A cold and unexplained chill ran through her at that moment as she picked up a familiar looking picture that she discovered just this morning. She was tending to the roses with a pair of scissors in her garden when she found a box buried in the earth. Two faces, a man and a woman, stared back at her from inside the steel-plated box and she noticed that they bore a strong resemblance to herself.
In another state, unbeknownst to Piper, her fellow cult brothers and sisters have descended onto a farm where an old couple lives. Armed with cleavers that glistened like stars in the night sky, they barged into the humble abode of Mr and Mrs Fletch, hacking them to smithereens. The commanding officers of this cult were seen after this brutal murder taking puffs on the porch. Fitz and Nick were their names and they remain loyal to Piper. 'Saint Piper', as they call her had dropped from the sky one August afternoon thirteen years ago.
Carried by a tornado that blew her from a small farm in Idaho, the child had miraculously survived and acknowledged thereafter as godsent by the cult settlement that found her. All of them would give heir lives and limbs for her and it was with this purpose that her parents were killed on this fateful night. They needed for themselves, and more importantly for her to believe that she did in fact fall from the Heavens.
Terry Tornado thought she had put her past behind her. She had tried so hard, anyhow. Years of electroshock therapy helped, but mostly it was the drugs. And here she was again, moving out of Branson and onto a new chapter in her life. The time had come to pack her things up, so she put on some sweats, collected her long, black hair into a ponytail, and settled down in front of her closet.
Before long, she came across the one box she had forgotten about - the one she didn't want to find. In it, she stumbled upon that familiar picture...and there they all were again. She in her Hello Kitty sunglasses, a 5-year old holding her stray cat Roses, her mutant parents, oozing that nasty green liquid from their ears, in the background, holding a pair of scissors to her neck. She never did figure out who took the picture, and she never could fathom it.
But she had brushed all these memories away, like the days when shrimp cost a mere 53 cents per pound. However, was not the time to run and hide from her past like Scooby and Shaggy. Now was the time to confront it; to find her metaphorical Mr. Weatherby, take off his mask, and send him where no Scooby Snack had gone before.
Wally used the pair of scissors to cut the outside of the container, holding the shrimp. He liked shrimp, he hadn’t had it in a while.
After his first bite, he realized why he hadn’t had it in a while.
HE WAS ALLERGIC!
Desperately, he reached for the phone, only to find that, due to the tornado outside, the lines were down.
With wind howling, he made it to his car. He drove, trying to steer clear of all the flying debris. He thought he even saw a cow flying through the air, but then realized that it must be a reaction from the shrimp.
There was a dinging on his dashboard. He was almost out of gas. He pulled into a gas station. Checking his pockets, he only had 53 cents. That wasn’t enough to make it to the hospital!
His throat was beginning to swell shut.
He began to collapse.
Seeing this spectacle, a trucker took off his sunglasses.
“Well, this is a familiar picture” said Bubba Jones, an ex EMT driver turned long haul trucker. “It looks like he just ate shrimp only to find out he is allergic”.
Bubba fixed his ponytail, picked up Wally in one arm, a stray cat in the other and loaded them into the back of his truck.
“Be careful back there, I’m hauling liquid nitrogen. I’m trying to earn enough to buy Betty Lou a bouquet of roses. Then, I’m going to retire.”.
The two headed off the dangerous path to the hospital.
(This took the form of a Japanese Tanka poem 5,7,5,7,7 syllables)
A Pair of Scissors,
Jutting out of a stray cat
This wasn't unique
Was a familiar Picture
Serial Killers start young.
53 cents won't buy you much anymore. But 53 cents and a familiar picture of a girl the ponytail and sunglasses are all that Jeff has left.
That loose change won't even get him on the bus out of town after and incident with a pair of safety scissors and his covert operation trimming the neighbor's roses for the government.
With only a stray cat with a shrimp allergy to offer advice along the way, will Jeff ever find the girl that he's never met again?
