Fat Chance- Chapter One.

*Hey there this is just a short note from me, you can skip this if you want. This story is intended as humour but not everyone may find it funny especially as some of the comedy is dark humour. Still, this is the first of a novel I wanted to write as my own personal entry to the NaNoWriMo (I've no idea how to do that). I hope you enjoy and feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks! MissPhoenix.*

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Fat Chance

Chapter One.

Well, well, well. Fancy seeing you here. I see we meet again, you little son of a-

"Chance?" A voice cut through the man's thoughts and he looked up to see his boss standing over him. "Chance..." His boss asked, "What are you doing?"

Chance looked down and then back up again with a distorted look of surprise on his face. "He was hiding in there," Chance nodded towards a large box below him, eyeing it suspiciously.

"Who?" His boss, Nathan, asked.

"The nut..." Chance crinkled his nose upwards in disgust as he opened the box, revealing a small assortment of chocolates.

"The nut," Nathan repeated, raising an eyebrow, "Chance, I hope you realise you're on memory duty tomorrow... we have the Newfoundlands coming in the morning and I don't want them to see you acting as though you're a bit of a... well, nut, as it were. Try and be as normal as possible for me, will you?" And with this, Nathan was gone.

Fat Chance was a man of many talents. He had been dutifully named "Mr Potato Head" in his later school years and had rightfully obtained the title of "most sarcastic in the workplace" since 2120. Not only this, but the school children running around outside his apartment block decided to name him Santa Senior for his oversized, spherical stomach and the white, fuzzy beard dominating his cheeks. He took pride in his eccentricities. 

Aside from his personality, looks and anything people actually claimed to like about him, Chance was a normal man. His workplace was less so- Memory Lab wasn't exactly renowned for being the most "normal" place to work. Instead, it was the modern graveyard- a place to watch recordings of a dead man's last memories and realise that, no, he had not turned the oven off before leaving the house like you specifically told him to. Families could connect with the final sights and last words of their loved ones at a small fee. 

Chance was a good worker, he knew so himself, but his previous memory duty had shaken his record a little. After making a comment along the lines of "dear lord, how did he manage to marry a woman like her?" at a deceased man's memory, Chance was sued, sent to court by the family and, more importantly, kicked in the crotch. Following this occasion, Chance was grounded to the simple task of paperwork by his employers and only three years later granted memory duty once more. This time he would not mess up.

Chance opened the thin beige folder on his desk entitled "The Newfoundlands" and popped a chocolate in his mouth. Inside the folder were pictures of the deceased man and information about him, as well as a picture of his family. Chance felt his face contort and wondered whether this movement was the repercussion of the taste of the peppermint chocolate sizzling on his tongue or the fact that he had to return to work tomorrow. He surreptitiously eyed his left side and his right, checking that the coast was clear, before leaning into the box of chocolates and spitting out the foul tasting substance rotting on his tongue. Then he folded the file closed, and left to go home. 

Dardanelles Avenue was an out-of-place street in a town overflowing with technology. It was a set of coal coloured Victorian apartments, shaped in a key hole if you looked at it from a birds eye view. Chance lived at the top of the keyhole in the centre of the large arch of housing. It was a strenuous task walking to work and back every day as Chance had not quite got to grips with hoverboards yet, or public transport for that matter. The children on his street would plague him with Santa references, hooligan vocabulary and something about being cheeky in nandos. 

But as Chance went home on this day, he really couldn't care less about the crazy kids outside his home, mostly because they weren't there. Chance felt strangely warm inside that he could peacefully return to his home without being mobbed by yobs. This content feeling lasted while he opened the door to the block of flats until he looked up the staircase. Standing in the way between Chance and his home was the biggest child the world had ever seen. His name was Mickey.

"Are you standing there because you have nothing to do or your brain has nothing inside it?" Chance asked from the landing. Mickey looked up with a short flash of surprise before grinning at Chance. Mickey was almost seven foot but still hadn't reached ten years. He had a mop of mousy brown hair covered by a strange cap and he wore dungarees intended for a fully grown man working at the circus. 

"Yo Santa," Mickey nodded at Chance, his smile ever growing as he sneered, "Saw your wife today. She asked if I had been naughty and I said no Claus Santa was watchin' me."

Chance blinked at Mickey with dull eyes. "Mickey, I have to say, your jokes get funnier every day," Chance could feel the sarcasm pouring straight out of the if-only-I-had-time-for-this part of his brain. "And she's not my wife."

"Pfft, okay, sure," Mickey chuckled, shrugging his way down the stairs, "Well my mates say they see you every night sleepin' wiv each other."

Chance raised his eyebrow an inch and backfired, "Yes, well, you're friends are so reliable that they left you today."

"...what?" Mickey opened his mouth in slight horror before running past Chance and out of the door with an echo of "guys wait for me" reverberating through the hall.

Chance rolled his eyes to release the sarcasm muscles and headed up the stairs. On the first floor was his apartment. He used his fingerprint on the door handle and it opened slowly, pushing back all of the untouched mail lying around the door. It was a nice decoration on the floor. Chance glanced around the room upon entering, staring at the crumbling walls and ripped carpet. Martha was supposed to clean this place, he thought.

Something hit Chance on the leg. It bumped into him again. Chance looked down to see something small and white rolling into him repeatedly and he told it to stop. The thing didn't stop. It was a white sphere with a tiny black eye at the top- a micro cat.

"Shoo," Chance kicked it away with his foot and the micro cat rolled away for the wall. Whatever happened to traditional animals? He silently complained.

Chance took a seat on his large, sickly green sofa, picking up the newspaper from three days ago and scanning the headlines. It was mostly trivial- the astronauts had arrived on Saturn, cauliflower was revealed to be inedible, yadda, yadda, yadda.

"You-are-home," Chance almost fell off his chair at the sound of a voice above him. He shot his head up to see an intense, metal face staring down at him and two silver connecting hands above his nose.

"Dear lord, Martha," Chance sharply pulled away, "You scared me there. Can't you say hello some other time?"

"No," Martha replied in her monotonous voice, "I-have-some-important-news."

"If this is about your robotic bowel movements then I already heard enough last night, thank you," Chance waved her away dismissively. 

"No-it-is-more-important," Martha insisted, stepping out of the room and into the kitchen to fetch something.

Maybe she's finally going to return to that darn shop she came from, Chance mused. He sat up in his seat, rolling the newspaper up in defeat that he would not get a peaceful evening after all. Martha quickly returned, with her heavy silicon feet leading her, standing by him for a moment only to drop something on the coffee table in front of him.

"...what's this?" Chance asked, staring blankly in front of him.

"I-am-preg-nant," Martha said slowly. Chance looked at the item in front of him, then at Martha, and then back to the coffee table. Martha was silent.

"Martha..." Chance coughed awkwardly, "As delightful as this news is, there are two problems with your big revalation. First of all, you are not, nor ever will be, my wife so this cannot have happened. Secondly, this is not a pregnancy test Martha. It's a fork."

Martha remained silent for the shortest moment, only to add, "But-it-is-positive."

"No Martha, it's IKEA," Chance picked up the fork, and then put it back down in case Martha had put her... bowel movements over it. Martha gave no answer and left to return to the kitchen to do whatever it was she did all day.

Aaaand she's crazy, Chance concluded, wondering whether he would have to buy a new fork or not. But he had duty tomorrow, so there were more important things to be thinking about.

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