Bright sunlight came through my window early that morning, and though the sun wasn’t actually out yet, its rays felt good upon my face, almost the way a street light beaming down will make you feel. I rose stiffly from my bed of crumpled newspaper and walked bumblingly to the bathroom to wipe away the peanut butter that covered my face. I lingered only long enough thereafter to use the toilet, which I find a very private thing and don’t feel that what I did there was really any of your business.
I packed my bags and all that I could not leave behind that very morning. Although it wasn’t practical I still really wanted to bring a few cans with me, something to remember the life I was leaving behind, but I just couldn’t justify taking up the pack space. My pack was more a plastic shopping bag than a real pack actually, but I knew it would make the journey as we had spent a lot of time together. I’ve never felt closer to a plastic bag than I did with the one that started out this journey in my tightly clenched fist and now sits as a memory in the breast pocket of my oversized green t-shirt. I sometimes take it out at night when my wife Alkali is sleeping. I know it may sound crazy to you, but to me that plastic bag is my best friend.
When I closed the door to my old and run down trailer house I knew in the depths of the soles of my shoes I would never be coming back. That damned leprechaunicle may not have known it at the time but it set forth the cogs of a wheel that would bring us so many adventures, good and bad. Before I left however, there was one thing I had to do. Since it was the middle of the night I knew that nobody would be watching as I unzipped my pants and took my second leak of the day on the pink flamingo in my front yard, a decision I would eventually live to regret. That being done I zipped up and zipped out of the Shady Palm Trailer Court and Retirement Community with nothing but a plastic bag of clothes, light rations and a porcelain figurine of a cat I had found one day long ago. And might there be a couple cans of stuff hiding on my person? Well, I think you’ll have to keep reading my tale to find out the answer to that. Why give away all of the milk when the cow really wants it to follow you on a fantastical voyage?
I spent the wee hours of that morning walking aimlessly, but with a purpose and a destination set firmly in place in the eye of my inner mind place. Outwards I seemed to be just another Marl in the crowd, but inside I was bursting apart at the thinly sewn seams. I had left behind a life of luxury amidst a trailer seriously cluttered with thousands of beautiful cans for some strange trip that even Mr. Arjen Lucassen couldn’t describe in an Ayreon epic. And for what reason did I have of leaving, what was my motivation? Revenge on the leprerepper. It had said some seriously harsh words about Football Team, and had my beloved spam’s scent in its cursed shoe and I was going to ask the thing face to face why if it was the last thing I did.
There is something to be said about being alone in a deserted alley where you had met a mystical creature wearing green shoes the day before, and I must that if you ever get the opportunity to do so yourself, you have my permission to try it. There are so many things that you wouldn’t normally notice during the day. To name just a few would be a smell that lurks just under the typical alley smell of rotting trash and bodies, the scraping and chewing sounds of hundreds of rabies starved mice, and of course the undeniable fact that in the dark the trash seems to make some sort of David Hasslehoff collage.
I walked slowly to the dumpster that I had encountered the leper-thing earlier the day before and lowered myself cautiously to the ground, and unfortunately directly on to the body of a young squarget who would never live to be another day older thanks to my bumbling idiot of a knee. I stopped for only a moment contemplating my next move when I noticed a weird glow coming from beneath the dumpster, an almost magical glow that reminded me of the way whale fat will sometimes force your face to shine if you spread it on right before the peanut butter at the height of winter solstice.
“I am intrigued,” I said to the corpse of the squarget that was smeared all over my newly soiled pants. Lowering my head cautiously to peer under the dumpster I was astonished to find some sort of open portal underneath the behemoth blue garbage receptacle. Slowly I put my hand inside the hole and drew it back, completely unsurprised to find that when I put my arm up to my face my hand was gone. I had assumed that it would disappear into some other world and am rarely, if ever, wrong.
“Well, that decides it buddy,” I said to the squarget head that I had picked up at some point, “it looks like we’re off on us a little bit of a journey.” Giving the thing a kiss on the cheek I stood up and we both pushed the heavy dumpster aside. I tell ya know, had it not been for the extra boost of power I got from the noggin’ of the squarget I’m not sure that I would have been able to move the dumpster aside with only one hand and this tale wouldn’t need to be tailed to ya. I guess it’s true what they say Balki Bartokomous works in mysterious ways.
Without a second thought I jumped straight into that strange hole and started the journey of a thousand tales.
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