Adventure 2 Know - Story-a-long the A2K way

bump. give your literarily artistic side a shove.

........and boy did she seem out of breath.

She was giving m the eye, no doubt about it When i glanced her way I caught her looking at me. her glance darted away but she was definitly checking me out.

She was... I dont know how old, with a body like molded fiberglass to a design by Benvenuto Cellini I mean smoooooothe and curvaceous, flawless.

Too flawless for me, surely, a man teetering on the cusp of his late thirties. Oh I could dream allright, but you get the point.

Hey! she yelled across the carpark

"You just parked in the handicapped space!"

I opened my mouth to speak but made no sound. Why was I so nervous? After all, I was innocent of any wrongdoing, but there was something about her utter perfection that made me feel guilty just the same... guilty of being such an unworthy peasant in the presence of a goddess. Finally, words crackled in uneven pitches and stumbled over my quivering tongue, spilling clumsily from my lips: "No... I didn't... I mean yes... yes, I parked there but I have a card... guess I forgot to hang it on the mirror."

I pulled up my left pants leg to reveal the artificial limb. "I can't afford a better one and walking for any distance is..."

Montana's breathing slowed and her perfect plastic face molded itself to a kinder facade, as she interrupted, "Oh my, yes, I see. So sorry for misjudging you. Let me apologize over a cup of coffee... my treat.

Without replying, I felt my feet--or foot, at least--following her steps to the cafe two doors down. Just as we got to the door, she paused and said, "I've already made one mistake and don't wish to make another, so there's something you ought to know right up front..."

"I find guys who eat tuna melts to be very, very exciting. So if you order a tuna melt, I will be, well, let's just say I've been arrested a couple of times and while it wasn't hard time, it sure wasn't easy."

I thought of a tuna melt. They normally make me gag but I was intrigued. "T-tuna? H-hard time?" I could barely form syllables, let alone complete sentences.

"I've been in rehab lately. Over at the Bulk Barn. I'm trying to shake the urge but, well, you know what shaking can lead to."

I dropped the handicapped card. Just then, I saw dyslexia and Diane appear. They were with Penny, and clearly in the mood for gabbing. Not now! My brain screamed. I'm close to Nirvana! Or some other Seattle scene band from the 90s!

"Penny here says you left her high and dry." said dys. "Me and the Lady Diane don't like that. So we've hired the A2K Mafia to set you straight."

Out of the shadows appeared the A2K thugs I'd heard so much about: gustavratzenhofer, msolga, Lola, Slappy Doo Hoo, littlek, dagmaraka, Region Philbis, dlowan (who had incredibly pierced bunny ears -- at least 30 holes in each ear), Ticomaya, wandelj, ebrown_p, Phoenix32890, Lash, Chai and dozens of others. They all parted to allow the big cheese to stroll up.

The big cheese was tanned and mysterious, flicking a cigarette to the side, he blew smoke in my face and glared at me.

"Mr. k-k-kickycan" I stammered. "I-I didn't mean it." Whatever it was. I sensed I was about to find out.

"We hear you've been secretly sending Montana hull-free white popcorn from the Bulk Barn in Fredericton! Don't you realize she's in REHAB?? How dare you set her back this way?!" Kicky roared. The A2K crowd hissed at me and started closing in.

I started to sweat. I was guilty and they had me dead to rights. In my defense, I just wanted to send that sweet girl a gift, but they were right, it had been thoughtless.

Montana, darling that she is, sidled closer to me and touched me on my sweaty left arm.

"Now guys, let's give him a break. I'd like him to buy me a tuna melt. Let's all go in and have a melt-down", she simpered in that syrupy Moncton accent of hers that sent shivers up and down my spineless spine.

Just then, a couple of capybaras came around the corner of the building, followed by ...

... a shadowy figure covered in what appeared to be goat fur, pulling a cart. He averted his gaze from the rest of us, but everyone could sense trouble was brewing. As it drew closer I could see the fur was actually a robe of some sort.

After what seemed like an eternity, but what was actually about two seconds, the creature raised its head, and parted it's dusty lips to reveal the sharpest and nastiest looking yellow teeth I had ever seen. I couldn't describe its expression as a smile, as it seemed more sinister than that, but a sense of doom took hold of me.

It's mouth opened, ever so slightly, and it rasped, "They call me ..."

irresposible! I am NOT!

I provide dental care and pedicures for my capybaras, and I have the abacus receipts to prove it.

Wait, wait, who has my abacus?

He rustled around in his robe, sending plumes of dust and debris towards the A2K mafia, who began sneezing and hastily backing away. "Mebbe I left it in the swamp? No... here it is!" And with a flourish he brought out a centuries old abacus that was hermetically sealed in a double zipper Ziploc bag.

"Who are you?" roared Kicky, the apparent leader of the ragtag mafia. "Do you want to go to a Police concert?" he shouted. "I have an extra ticket and instead of paying me in coin, you can give me one of your smelly capybaras."

The fur-covered, flea-ridden, yellow-toothed creature...

...drooled "I aint for sale, scum. We's here ta settle a score." Montana shivered and pulled me even closer, cutting of the blood supply to my right arm. "Gimme da woman or youz gonna be capy chow."

Kicky glanced at Montana and caught the desperate plea in her eyes, but they were outnumbered and guns were no match for the capybaras... no bullet could get through that thick mat of unwashed wiry hair. Kicky shook his head... both ways... not knowing what to do. The capybaras hated indecision even more than they hated soap.

The capy chief then turned to a capy brute twice his size and said, "Go ... have a snack." The big capy licked his swollen festering lips and lunged at Kicky.

"WAIT! Take her! Take her and we're even, right?" wailed Kicky.

The capy chief pulled her from my side and said, "Now Chuck get new wife... we be even."

As Chief Chuck dragged Montana out the door, she screamed to me...

"Quick! Call the Police! Kicky has tickets!" and she was dragged into the centre of the smelly, putrid capybaras.

I stared at Kicky in shock, unable to even comprehend that the guy would give up my sweet Montana to such a foul disgusting creature just to save his own sorry hide. No wonder the guy couldn't get a second or third date!

I lunged toward the capy chief and snarled, "

"If I can't have her, YOU certainly can't!"

And I reached behind Montana's neck and pressed a dimple switch. The perfect girl fell limp and her eyes stared wide like lifeless marbles. What a pity, I'd always thought, that perfect girls didn't exist except like this. Real women had pores, and cellulite, extreme moods, and far too frequent headaches. It had taken a team of desperate men ten years to design one who had none of those and so many other annoying flaws. A Plastifem was every man's dream girl. Except for one remaining feminine bug: They were easy to turn off and very hard to turn on.

"You've killed her! Bring her back!" growled Chuck, furiously pressing Montana's neck in vain.

No matter what Chuck did to me now, I couldn't help him, for the only way to turn on a Plastifem was to...

... wave a tuna melt somewhere near her nose.

"Quick!" yelled Diane. "Someone's in the kitchen!"

"With Dinah?" asked dys.

"Not now, dear." said Diane, quickly taking action. "We have the tuna. And I think there's cheddar cheese. Quick! Someone get the bread! We're running out of time!"

ehBeth raced to the bread box or at least it was what she thought was the bread box. But it was bigger than a bread box, hence the confusion. She pulled on the drawer handle and it did not move. "Hang on, I'll do that." said Setanta. He pulled on the drawer handle and it suddenly gave way, revealing a hidden passageway.

Inside was shewolf. "In here!"

The others piled into the secret Narnia-like passage but something made me hesitate.

Of course! We had forgotten whats-her-name! Dashing back, I arm wrestled Chuck to the ground and wrenched the wench from the brutish capy who was starting to drool all over her.

Heaving her over my good shoulder, I leapt over Chuck and made my way back to the passage.

"How are we going to get a tuna melt in here?", I asked?

"I've got one in my purse", answered Shewolfn, "Now come ON, this door is a portal and will close in 5 seconds!"

I squeezed in last. My artificial leg was partially caught in the closing of the portal but fortunately friendly hands pulled me out just in time.

The magical land was filled with a lot of, well, vertically challenged people. We all looked around in wonder. Slappy had tears in his eyes. "It's midget paradise." he sniffed.

"Do any of you have a microwave?" I asked no one in particular.

"We have micro everything." said the leader of the magical midgets. "Come in, come in, my name is parados. Now, what needs nuking?"

shewolf presented her purse. "You can just nuke it with the tuna melt inside it."

"Much cleaner that way." offered littlek.

parados put the purse and sandwich into the microwave and closed the door, setting it for 2 minutes at 80%. "Now, ladies." he said, checking out Mame and eoe, "wanna see my etchings?"

A ding informed us all that the melt was done. parados removed the steaming package from the cooker. "It seems to have all grown together. Oh my God! It's alive!"

We watched in horror as he was sucked into the combo purse-nuked tuna melt. It had teeth. The end was not pretty. dagmaraka fainted.

"Wonderful!", crowed Slappy. "I love my women unconscious!"

"Stop that!", ordered jespah, and she slapped Slappy's hands (and face, just for good measure). Slappy's hands fell away from the limp dag like a limp rag.

"What now?" I asked. "We have to get the tuna melt inside whats-her-name before she dies! But it appears parados has consumed it, the greedy hog."

"Don't you worry", replied shewolfn calmly. "We'll just call for a moderator to delete the event that just happened. Jes, can you do anything?"

"No, it's not an algorithm I recognize." Jes replied sorrowfully.

Just then,

Mame pulled a small toy from her purse. "I always carry a few of these to keep the kids from bugging me," she said, holding up a Transformer figure. "Hold the... the blob... for me." She pushed the toy as far as she could into what appeared to be the mouth of the klein bottle creature formed by parados eating a pursemelt which had just eaten him.

Mame was glad she'd sprung for the more expensive model, for the Transformer did its job well. Everyone gasped as the monstrous glob separated into a purse, a steaming hot sandwich, and a very cranky parados... as a small plastic toy saluted and fell to the floor.

"Quick, give Montana the melt!" As soon as she got a whiff of it her eyes blinked, her mouth formed a smile, and she said,"...

"Hi, my name's Montana and I'm a bulkaholic."

Farmerman gasped, "OMG! How serendipitous! Do you know if they have bags at the one in Fredericton?" Montana nodded, then reached for the tuna melt. "All the Bulk Barns have bags, FM, they're at the end of every aisle and in between. Don't you know nothin'?" And she wolfed down the sandwich.

Shewolfn made impatient noises. "Let's get going, we have a long trek ahead of us." "But what's our plan?" queried ehBeth. "Don't we need a plan?" "Yeah", chimed Diane, "We always have a plan. That's the way we women work."

"The first thing is to get rid of these cooties", replied shewolfn firmly. "For that, we'll need a male, a manly man, a manly male, a masculine man - who have we got here?" EbBeth reached behind her and dragged Setanta to the middle of the circle. "Here he is, my own marvellous model of masculinity. Will he do?" "I guess he'll have to", shewolfn replied as she stepped forward and stopped right in front of him. "Setanta", she intoned, "

"this calls for an exegesis on the history of tuna melts. And klein bottles."

Setanta cleared his throat, looked at his audience and grinned. Everyone was paying rapt attention except for Slappy, who was trying to look down the tops of, well, of every woman in Midget Paradise.

"It all started with the ancient Etruscans. Before there were Romans, there was tuna, and then the French invented cheese."

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" someone yelled from the back.

"Yes, yes, monkeys, but that's where evolution comes into play. Plus there's a certain town of Cheddar where all of the good-looking apes used to come from. They, of course, invented cheddar cheese, but it wasn't until the Crusades that knights errant began combining cheddar with tuna for their ladies."

"What about the bread?" asked Tico (or maybe it was Ticomaya), staring at a watch.

"The bread portion of the sammich was not added until one Sebastian Ratzenhofer got involved, during the Great War."

"And the Klein bottle?" asked pstewart.

"Oh yes, the bottle. That was invented by comedian Robert Klein in the 60s. He dropped a bunch of acid, it caused an ordinary Coke bottle to evert -- that is, turn inside out -- and so the Klein bottle was born. Add the classic Etruscan-Medieval Tuna Melt sammich to a Klein bottle of Coca-Cola and you have a delightful lunch indeed."

"What about dessert?" asked Bumblebeeboogie. "We could make apple tarts or cheese danish."

"Tarts." said Slappy, a glazed look in his eyes.

"Danish." said nimh, a glazed look in his eyes.

"Capybaras." said Gus, a glazed look interrupted by Bella, in labor, screaming.

"My baby!" she shrieked. "It's -- it's a capybara!"