An offer he couldn’t refuse
Unmitigated on September 26, 2010.
This week, my quest was not for the lost city of Dyston-Fyffe (which ultimately turned up in some dusty old short story by some old guy), nor for the fabled Englebee Troobles which had recently reinvaded my obsessions. Instead my quest was merely for a delectable crudberry pie. Rumor has it that crudberry pie can overcome even the strongest addiction to those ever-so-insidious flobcumber pies, so I had to try it. But where to find it? The Spend-O-Mart on Alpha Ralpha Boulevard was all out, and the old Spend-O-Mart on Crunkner Boulevard had recently been converted into a Jesus store by its new owners, the Church of the Almighty Bunghole of Christ.
Seeing no other option, I called upon the insect god Iggy Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps, to aid me in my time of need. He just giggled at me and sent a swarm of locusts to devour my palatial home, leaving me homeless and naked with not even a cornpone to my name. So next I tried bowing down to Iggy’s sister, the voluptuous insect goddess Strahazazhia Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps, She of the six-legged delights, in the futile hope that She wasn’t as cruel as her brother.
My hopes were indeed dashed—with something even longer than an em-dash, to be precise—when instead of aiding me, Strahazazhia sent swarm after swarm of angry, angry Cappadocian Tweezer Ants after me, who surrounded me in my nakedness and tweezed me half to death. Strahazazhia just giggled at my plight, too.
I concluded that this would get me nowhere, so instead I sauntered next door and asked my neighbor (poor Mr. Wilson!) if he had a recipe for crudberry pie so I could make it myself. He was of course overjoyed to see me, but never answered the door even after I continued pounding on it for nearly three hours while shouting “I know you’re in there! I can see you hiding behind the TV! Come on out and share your crudberries with me!”
Darkness stumbled and fell, and I realized this course of action had proven to be an unmitigated failure. I scurried on home and, after rummaging through the rubble of my house, finally found a pair of pants and two thirds of a T-shirt I could don. Don them I did, along with a slice of pepperoni I had found abandoned in the driveway, and an old chicken suit I had thrown up in a tree four years ago. (I couldn’t even guess why I had eaten that suit in the first place.) My costume complete, I sauntered down the road to the next house I felt welcome at: That of Richard Dreckers Sr., grandfather of the vile trained assassin Samuel Dreckers.
Old Richard’s house was still on the top of a hill—a very tall hill—and thus it took me the greater part of a day to climb (on all fours, naturally). Once I arrived, I found that Richard was out, so I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally concluding that Ol’ Dicko wouldn’t be back anytime soon, I fished a roofing nail out of my pocket and scratched a note into his front door:
Hey, Dicko: Pnårp was here. Want recipe for crudberry pie, or your grandson gets it. Ask the squirrels if you don’t believe me.
Most indubitably sincerely,
With much effrontery and galoobery,
Phillip Norbert Årp
I chortled lightly at what I hoped would be an offer he couldn’t refuse, and then somersaulted all the way home (with glee). Twenty-four sevenths of an hour passed, and then there was a kid-nork! kid-nork! kid-nork! upon my door. At first I thought famous rock star and comedian Kid Nork had actually come to visit me, but then I remembered that this was merely the sound that my new doorbell made. I got up from the parsimonious grumnuttery in which I had been engaged, and went to answer the door.
It was Richard. Ol’ Dicko himself. And not only did he refuse my offer to not kill his grandson, but he began filling my entire doorway with refuse that he had collected on the way over!
“I don’t want your garbage!” I howlsputtered at Dreckers, to no avail, as he piled more and more on, cackling like only a crazy old coot could. “You’ll rue the day you piled refuse upon Phillip Norbert Årp’s doorstep! You’ll rue the day!!”
Idle threat delivered with as much melodrama as I could muster, I scurried back into my house and hid in the deepest closet I could find.
Hours passed, as they are wont to do, and still dump truck after dump truck arrived at my house, dumping their loads of trash upon my doorstep. If I didn’t do something soon, my entire house would soon be buried under a mountain of trash as big as the town dump!
So, do something I did: I fainted.