Anyways, here we go for the third time. You'll enjoy it, yes? -chuckles evilly- You'd better.
The sandwich shop was surprisingly unsightly, and Allen wondered how such a small area could manage so much repulsiveness. He and Norman sat down at a table speckled hot pink, neon orange, and dark green.
“You think someone was inspired to design this after seeing an exceptionally colorful pile of vomit?” Nor asked, poking the table gingerly as if expecting it to actually be throw-up.
“Maybe. Or the insides of some rotting animal.”
“You always beat me at being more disgusting,” Nor complained, looking crestfallen. He glanced around, eyes widening at the bright, lime-colored tile, the smudged and dented once-white-washed walls.
“Yessir, cockroaches would feel right at home in here.” Allen watched the other customers curiously, their ragged clothes and rotting teeth seeming to attract him, somehow.
“Y’wanna get something to eat?” Nor asked suddenly. There was about a twenty-second silence, and then they both fell out of their chairs, laughing hard enough to end up with permanently broken faces, not to mention ribs. No one within earshot seemed to notice, but went on talking to themselves, or eating their clearly moldy sandwiches.
“A-a-a-alright, a-alright,” gasped Allen, getting up from the dirt-stained floor. He caught the writhing form of Norman by the coat-collar, who was somehow still laughing hysterically and holding his head as if he were afraid it would fall apart. “Get up – you look like a squid in its death-throes.”
After a few more metaphors and an incident where Allen grabbed a relish packet and broke it over Nor’s head to sober him up, the boy crawled back onto his neon chair, hiccupping quietly.
“You know,” Allen said, squinting at Nor as if he couldn’t quite see him, “you look almost feral in this light, Norrie dear.”
Norman gave him a confused look, and then declined to reply, watching as one of the sandwich shop employees (wearing a bright pink apron and a white nightgown under it, as far as he could tell) marched up to their table.
“Imzrydrzrzbtyllavetgoivyoodonwansumfudz,” the thing mumbled. It was hard to tell if the employee was a very old woman, or an eternally scowling teenage boy, and so Nor simply stared, waiting for Allen to say something.
“I would, thank you. How much are the fungi filets?” Allen asked, smiling innocently up at the employee.
“Irdnnowutyortlkinboutimmagogitmnjrr.” It turned around and stomped off, with both of the table’s occupants staring at its receding back.
“Y’think we should leave?”
Allen pointedly ignored him, looking out the window, which was hard, considering it was nearly opaque with filth.
“Hey, Norrie, what kinda car does your mom drive?” he asked suddenly, sliding the saltshaker back and forth between his hands.
“Why do you ask?”
“I know, right?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It was pretty cool.”
“Why do you ask?”
“And then the huge rhinoceros dog charged me and I was all—”
“Why do you ask?” Norman shouted, knocking his plastic chair over as he stood up.
Allen chuckled as malevolently as he could, which ended up sounding more like a cow giving birth than anything else. “Ahem!” he said, sneering in an unapologetic way. “To answer your pathetic little question, yes.”
“It wasn’t a yes or no question!”
“It could’ve been.”
Norman sat back down – or tried, forgetting that his chair had fallen backwards behind him. His exasperated sigh turned into more of a whooaaaump! Sprawled on the filthy lime tile, he was torn between simply walking away, and thinking up an even more clever remark than the one he knew Allen would say when the boy righted his seat. Realizing option A would just be pitiful, and that option B was, with all likelihood, physically impossible, he calmly rose and picked up his chair.
“I apologize for the interruption. You were saying?” he asked, struggling to retain his dignity.
“Stop beating around the bush. I know what you want to know.”
Nor frowned. He seemed to be trying to remember what he might have wanted to know, and after a few moments of general silence, Allen got tired of waiting and said, “You want to know why I’m sticking with such a lousy job – or, rather, such a low-paying job.”
Deciding it was better to just agree, rather than pursue the topic of his mother’s car, Nor nodded. “I kinda thought ‘lousy’, and ‘low-paying’ were synonyms, in a certain light.”
“Well, not in my light. Now keep quiet, please, or else I won’t tell you.”
“Wow, so polite,” Nor taunted, and then, noticing the warning look on Allen’s face, quickly finished, saying, “Fine, fine.”
Allen ran a hand through his light brown hair, causing it to stick up and out even more than before, if anything. Not that he seemed to do it to tame the mess, but it still looked pitifully futile.
“I dropped out of high school in junior year – I think. No one there was the least bit interesting, and so, one day, I just ditched my guinea-pig-colored backpack in the girl’s bathroom and left,” he stopped, and Nor frowned slightly. He could tell Allen was only telling a bit of the whole story, but said nothing, knowing it would mean never finding out even the slightest thing about the mysterious man, whether it be truth or not. After a few long moments, he continued. “I lived with my parents for quite some time, until they got sick of my moping. I’m kind of like a sponge, in one way, because if I don’t get to see anything intriguing or unexpected happen often enough, I dry up. I get depressed, down-trodden, like a duckling trampled by a marathon.” He smiled at the metaphor.
“So they kicked me out. And I wandered, sort of a homeless dude for a while, I guess. It took quite some time, but one day, I was hanging around this one toy store. I saw this woman standing outside, pretending not to be interested in a guy being dragged towards the police car. He was cursing something awful, shaking his fist and glaring daggers at her, but she just pulled a cell out of her pocket and called someone. I was… curious. So I went over and talked to the gal, after the police had left with the crazy guy. She – she didn’t look at me like you’d look at a diseased rat, and everyone else did. That made me even more curious, I guess.”
Nor was lost now, seeming not to be sure what was truth and untruth. And yet… it all sounded so miserable, he almost wanted to cry – not that it didn’t seem embarrassing to admit it.
“And then, outta the blue, she just asked me, ‘Do you want a job?’ and I didn’t even stop to think. I immediately said ‘Yes.’ So there we stood, and here we are now, aren’t we?”
Nor shook his head. He had been mixed up in confusing thoughts, wondering how much of the story had actually happened, and what kind of freakish kid Allen must’ve been.
“I… I’m not sure,” Nor whispered, seeing the man across from him quite differently. “Maybe we’re not. Maybe I’m insane – maybe you are. Or perhaps we’re both just clinically crazed.”
“Nah, I’d give myself a lot more sanity than I’d give the dudes who try to steal chocolate donuts from a supermarket,” Allen disagreed, smiling in a sad, uncommonly serious way. It didn’t look right on his face at all.
“You’re like, a Meer cat trying to be a donkey. Wait, what?”
“Ah, Norman, I think it must you who’s nutty. If I were, you wouldn’t have so well mimicked my metaphor right there. I didn’t say anything of importance, don’t worry, old boy.”
Nor frowned, having too many questions to bother himself with hearing Allen.
“Hang on, just hang on a second. You started as a shoplifter because it meant meeting weird people, is that right?”
“Or watching them. Otherwise, if I would’ve taken a desk-job, I might have just dropped dead. Nothing exciting or comical about those,” Norman pointed out, fingering the neckline of his dark gray sweater, as if contemplating strangling himself with it. He pulled a strange face, growing quiet.
“You might be surprised. Actually, never mind, you wouldn’t be. But what you might be astonished by is the fact that I am also a high school drop-out, and I win that competition, because I dropped out as a sophomore!” Norman crowed. Allen shot him a glazed, sorrowful look, as if saying, you can’t cheer me up.
“Elephants,” Nor began, trying to think of a good joke, “could not sit on you long enough to drag that face out of the dirty old closet. So what did?”
“Fine, fine, fine. I’ll admit it, I’m worried.”
“About what, Mr. Elephant-sitting-on-your-head-face?”
Allen frowned. “That sounded really sick, dude. Just don’t. As I was saying, before you threw that diseased little tidbit out, I’m worried.”
Pounding the vomit-colored-table with his fist, Norman just barely managed not to shout his reply. “Stop being suspenseful! Spit it out,” the kid commanded, as if he held sway in the manner in any way.
Without any warning, Allen stood up. He walked calmly over to the utensils table, where you could practically see the germs and bacteria crawling around, and plucked a straw from its place. Eyes still on Nor, he opened it, and threw the straw away, stuffing the thin tube of paper into his mouth. He sauntered back over, sat down, and spit the soggy glob that had once been a small part of a tree onto the table.
“Okay, that wasn’t even a funny pun. That was… a punny fun. No. A fonny pan. No, a p— never mind! It was disgusting. Don’t do that.”
Allen smiled in a decidedly sickly sweet manner at Nor, and then began to giggle like a little girl. Norman stared, stared, and stared some more, knowing he’d never quite understand this determinedly eccentric man.
“You always manage to change the subject, no matter how long it takes or how disgusting you have to be. As we were saying before you spit tree-pulp on the up-chuck table, what are you—”
For what seemed to be the thousandth time that day, Allen cut deliberately into the conversation, saying in a most contrived way, “Doesn’t that sound kind of rhyme-ish, in a vague way? Tree-pulp, up-chuck, up-chuck, tree-pulp.”
He started saying it back and forth, mixing it up so much (‘tree-up, pulp-chuck’) that Norman felt dizzy. Before the man could make it into a sort of distasteful rap song, Nor pushed the previous subject again.
“Seriously – if you can be – what are you worried about? Y’can’t distract me now, Al.”
“Never call me that. Ever. Or I’ll tear your ears off and make a sandwich out of them. And then burn it over a very slow fire, liquidize it in a blender, and funnel the whole revolting concoction down your throat. Now, what were we talking about?”
“Worries,” Nor gulped, struggling desperately not to imagine what blended ears-and-bread might taste like. “And why you were acting so depressed a little while back.
“Ah yes, my worry. That no one with any passion for the job would take it after me.”
“You mean the catching shoplifter job?”
“No,” Allen said, flawlessly straight-faced. “I mean the one where I catch stray dogs and grind them, fur and all, into cow meat for that really horrible fast-food restaurant. Mic-something.”
“O-o-o-oh, the place where you can become fantastically obese in one sitting. Yeah.”
Treating Norman to an endlessly despairing look, Allen continued, saying, “Except I don’t do that, Norrie... But if I did have a job like that, it would probably be marvelously interesting. Maybe even better than talking and trailing people who steal stuff because they can’t ever imagine paying for anything.”
“It’s all in the parents,” Norman sighed. “I should know. My mom’s a freak from heck and back because—”
“Wait, did you seriously just say, ‘freak from heck and back’? Honestly, Normie? How embarrassing for you. I almost feel pity. Almost.”
“Shut up, I was talking. I said my mom’s been a monster ever since my big brother dropped out of high school and ran off just before he graduated because, in his own smudged note, ‘it was all too predictable.’ Now she takes out all her paranoia on me. I can’t go anywhere, do anything without having to worry about that old hag showing up and chewing me out. It’s miserable.”
Allen’s brow furrowed, and he poked the soggy straw-wrapper with a tentative finger. “How old are you, then? You said you were a sophomore in high school when you dropped out, and that was…”
“Two years ago. I’d be graduating in a month, and turning nineteen twelve days after that.”
Allen gave him an astonished stare, and then fell face-first onto the table, ignoring any injury to his hooked nose and assaulting the table with flailing hands, his laugh loud enough to deafen people in Russia. “N-nineteen? I was gonna guess fifteen at most,” he gasped, looking up for a second before going back to hysterics. Nor leaned back in his scratched-up chair with a frown on his face.
“Everyone says that.”
Allen immediately stopped, and he nodded apologetically. “Of course. And I don’t want to be like everyone else, so…” at this point, he caught another glimpse of Norman’s face, his height, and his twig-like limbs, and tumbled again into wild chuckles of glee.
“You sound like an oversized baby. And not a nice one at that,” Nor complained, scooting his chair back to avoid getting clobbered by a wayward hand. He folded both arms over his chest, preparing to wait out Allen’s sudden attack of good humor.
Even through the windows that really couldn’t have been cleaned since they were made, he could see it was getting dark. Allen noticed too, and calmed down considerably. Widening both pale-brown eyes for what could only be dramatic effect, he said, “Listen, Normie. I’ve worked here for six years, catching, talking, arresting, catching, talking, arresting. In all those years, I have met strange people. People who say they can see huge, rainbow-colored penguins and hippos on the ceiling, and that these animals told them to steal. People who’ve sworn violent vengeance on me and then come back and start talking to me like an old friend. People who laugh, who cry, who scream. This job isn’t always fun, nor exciting, nor eccentric. It usually is all three, but sometimes… It’s just plain sad.”
“But…?” Nor asked, hoping there was a ‘but’ hiding around somewhere.
Allen nodded, allowing the little word into his speech. “But… it’s still a great job. It can cheer you up, and bring you down, and it can shake you to your very roots, at times. It can be ‘scary’, and ‘weird’, and sometimes random shoppers will start following you around for no reason, but – what?” he stopped, questioning Nor’s upraised eyebrows.
“‘Random shoppers?’ What d’you mean by that?”
Allen smiled secretively. “Huh, that’s confidential. Only people in my profession are allowed such info. As I say, it is a hard job, but a worthy one. And…”
“And,” Norman prompted.
“And…”
“And.”
“And…”
“And what? Just spit- I mean, just tell me!”
“And I want you as my apprentice,” Allen finished in a rush, grinning as if he found the shocked look on Nor’s face beyond amusing. “I’ve never, in all my years, met a dude so much like I was, back then. I knew, someday, I’d need someone to learn the tricks of the trade. The expressions, the tact, the nonchalance. And, by now, I’d almost given up hope. But then, this funny, short little skater dude came swaggering along down the front aisle of my kingdom, like he’d conquered the place. I never imagined what he might be like. Now… I sorta know.”
“Well, that’s very lovely and beautiful and inspirational and all, but what about room and board? What about my mom and my—”
“Easily taken care of. I’ll get it done, you worry-face-wart,” Allen waved his hand in the air, as if he were shooing reality away. “The question is… do you want the job?”
Nor opened his mouth, still unsure of what the answer would be. He was proud, happy, lighthearted, worried, relieved, and so many other emotions he couldn’t explain. Somewhere to work, no more sitting at home, guarded by his mother like a tiger watching her lunch. However, just as the words formed on his tongue, the door came bursting open, and in stalked Mrs. Skorn. Her face looked like a pile of angry bees stuck together with superglue, and yet, this time, he didn’t feel quite so small. He felt his height, now, not so cowed in front of her. The woman’s hand grabbed his arm, and in her eyes he now only saw fright – she was only afraid he would get hurt, die, disappear forever. She was only a mother.
As she dragged him away, feet pounding the floor like mini nuclear explosions, Norman turned, winking at Allen conspiratorially.
“Seeya tomorrow, Master.”
THE END; sort of.
I know it's kind of long - live with it. And Prok? Get those dirty ideas out of your filthy head, you freaky little mouse.
