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Simply Ludicrous

It was a lovely sunny Monday morning on good old Walnut Street, in a quiet suburb neighborhood, filled with laughter, happiness, and all of those different mushy feelings that people feel while in the presence of perfection. For that’s what this place was. Perfect… except for one house which is located on Walnut Street. A normal size house, the same design as all of its brethren, with a bright yellow paint, a flawless white picket fence, and a mint green station wagon parked in the driveway. Welcome, dear reader, to 3157 Walnut St., home of one Roger Gumby, an average Joe, with an average life. That’s right, nothing ever happens to good old Roger. No sir. His life is more mundane than yours or mine. But by no means was he perfect. He had trouble with depression, and rightfully so. He had just begun a painful divorce with his wife of thirteen years, and he still had custody of his two kids. But this story takes place on one strange day, where Mr. Gumby falls out of his normal daily routine, and finds himself hurled into a world that was far from the normal he knew and loved. I caution you, what follows is extremely weird.

“Good Morning everybody! Its 6:30, time to wake up, go to work, take your kids to school or whatever you do this early in the morning to start your daily life…” On this seemingly average day, Roger woke up with the sound of his radio/alarm like every other day in his life. Five days a week he not only wakes up, but he has to do it with the radio saying good morning to him. In this way, he can get on with having a synchronized day. As usual, he reached out took a firm hold of the talking nightmare box. Even though he was oh so tempted to hurl it against the wall, he instead opted to press the button that would put a stop to its incessant chatter.

Throwing back the sheets, he climbed from his king-sized bed, now only being put to half-use, and staggered to the closest door, which led to the bathroom. He started up the shower, and let the water cascade all over him, for exactly four and a quarter minutes; he would always set a timer before he stepped into the water. Once he dried himself to his own satisfaction, he swirled his tattered blue bathrobe over him, and slid into his pink bunny slippers. It was also his custom to walk out to get his morning paper, and then sit at the table for twenty three minutes exactly, before he would wake the kids and prepare himself for work. If his own lazy good for nothing dog Sima, would fetch the paper for him, then he wouldn’t have to go get it.

“But that is wishful thinking,” Roger thought to himself with a sigh.
He stepped out into the morning light, which filtered in through the trees, leaving little patches of sun on his walk. He shuffled down the path, locating his newspaper in a new spot today. Normally it would land in the gutter, sliding down the storm drain, causing him to go out and buy another. The time he would spend at the table mentioned earlier was not so he could read the paper, but rather to hold his head in his hands, and cry. Oh yes, he would cry.

As usual, beyond the white fence, there stood old Mr. Johnson, watering hose in one hand, pouring the clear splashing liquid all over his tulips and daffodils. Oh Mr. Johnson, how he loved his flowers. He raised his hand in greeting to Mr. Gumby.

“Good day to you Roger!” he called out in a cheerful tone, the same pleasant grin running across his face. “Lovely morning isn’t it?” Roger raised his own hand in return, not even looking at his neighbor.

“That it is, Walter…. just like it was yesterday.” Roger made his way to the mailbox where he found his paper wedged into the little door. He opened the slot, and a large scaly hand came forth, offering the newspaper to Mr. Gumby’s extended hand.

“Here’s ya paper, Mr. Gumby,” said the scaly hand. Roger took hold of the paper and replied with a mumbling, “thanks,” before he slammed the little door shut once again, right on the arm.

From inside the mailbox, there was the voice, which said, “Ow,” and then followed with, “Jerk.”

As he walked off, Roger was seemingly unaware that a strange hand had just given him his newspaper. He took maybe two steps away, when he suddenly replayed the event in his mind. He casually took a step back and reopened his mailbox and peered inside. Nothing but several rust stains as well as a big wasps’ nest. He closed the panel again, a scrunched up expression on his face. Once more, he opened it, just to be doubly sure. Nothing was different; the same rust stains and bugs’ nest were still staring back at him. He wondered if there had been a hand in his mailbox, but he decided it must have been his mind playing a trick on him.

“One damn good trick,” he said as he shuffled back to his front door, giving another passing wave to his neighbor, oblivious to the fact that his neighbor was now washing a Siberian tiger in his driveway.

After his ritual of sitting at the table reading the paper, instead of crying for once, he roused his kids in the usual manner of throwing a cup of water on their heads. Once they were awake, with the usual amount of grumbling and moaning, Roger went back to his room, and dressed in his normal “formal” attire. This consisted of a crisp white shirt, a dark colored pair of slacks, with a matching jacket, and a god awful bad tie, typically looking as if it was stained from something that had vomited profusely all over it. When he was fully clothed, he discovered that he didn’t need to drive his kids to school. They ran out the door as he was passing, saying that their best friend was giving them a lift. Roger was a bit put out at this lack of information, but he still stood on the front walk, waving a hand as the silver mini van vanished around the corner. Not having to worry about his kids, he had thirteen minutes to spare. He spent it at his desk in his den, sharpening pencils and arranging his briefcase so everything looked nice and neat. How…riveting.

At five minutes past eight exactly, he closed his briefcase, grabbed his keys, and locked the doors of his home. As he made his way down to his station wagon, his dog Sima barked. Roger reached down to pat his head, only to realize his little doggy was not where it should be. He looked around but he couldn’t see his dog anywhere. At least until the first drop of saliva plopped onto his head. His little English Terrier dog was floating, gazing down at him, his mouth hanging open, and the dog’s drool falling in his face heavily, like when somebody breaks an egg slowly letting the white fall first into a bowl. Not exactly what to make of the situation, and at a total loss of words, Roger opened his mouth, and uttered the only possible thing he could come up with that would at least make some manner of sense.

“Down boy,” is all that he said.

He climbed into his car, turned the key, and pulled out into the street. He made his way to work the same way he always did, going down Main Street, then taking a shortcut through 53rd, and then over to Sticky Lane. While he was on Main, he was stopped at a red-light, and he casually looked out the window to his right. There in a crimson red Plymouth, sat a dead guy. He looked mostly like a skeleton, but with a fair amount of decaying flesh hanging from the bones. He was dressed in a hideous white suit, a black tie, and an ugly white hat to match. The driver of the Plymouth turned to meet his gaze, several flakes of dried skin peeled away from his cheeks to fall to the collar of the white suit from Hell.

He, or rather it, raised a boney hand to the brim of the white hat, took hold of it, and pulled it off his head, in a gesture of hello. The only problem was, his head must have been stapled to the hat or something, for when the hat came off, so did his whole head. Not missing a beat, the head was replaced between his shoulders, while it stared back at Roger with an empty eye socket. The other eye was filled with a white film, like stretched tight membrane, no doubt covering maggots or some similar thing. Roger was caught completely unaware and was not exactly sure how to respond, so he made a similar gesture, in an attempt to maintain a calm, pleasant expression. His eyes just couldn’t tear away from the occupant of the red car. The light turned green, and the Plymouth roared off in a cloud of black dust. Roger breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“My God,” he said to himself, “What a nauseating suit.”

He finally reached his office building, and parked in his designated spot. Carrying his briefcase, he made his way past the secretary desk in the lobby, manned by an attractive blonde named Sonia, who always gave him an evil eye. He walked to the elevator, and pressed the up button. He stood waiting, fidgeting, and stepping from one foot to the other. He was completely sure that the secretary, who obviously hated him so much, was going to come up from behind and plant a letter opener into his back. At last the doors opened, and Roger took a double take. Dominating the inside of the elevator, stood an enormous shaggy creature.

It stood well over eight feet tall, covered in long brown hair, with black and maroon patches. Its face resembled that of an aardvark to an almost scary degree, complete with a long thin snout. It was wearing an equally cheap tie as Roger, and had a black beret on top of its head, with a logo of the Eiffel Tower as well as print that said: “Viva la France”. To put it simply, it looked like Chewbacca from “Star Wars” gone horribly wrong. Noticing his hesitation to board the elevator, the thing motioned him on with a big hairy arm. And although its mouth was a tiny little opening at the end of the snout, a loud booming voice emerged, complete with a terrible French accent.

“Come on now monsieur, there is plenty of room for you, hah hah hah! I can scoot over and we can ride up together.”

Not wanting to be late, and fall off of his schedule, Roger stepped inside, nearly being wedged up against the wall next to the enormous furball. The steel doors slid shut, and the elevator began its usual snail crawl upwards.

They both stood there, eyeing the numbers as they passed, enduring a long straining silence. Before long, Roger began to notice a strange smell wafting under his nose. He inhaled sharply, wondering exactly it was that he smelled. Noticing him, the Sasquatch raised its snout and began sampling the air like a snake. It tested near the ceiling, Rogers’s skin, and then finally its own underarms. Then, although it was almost indiscernible, a sheepish expression passed across the face of the creature.

“It looks like my anti-perspirant has expired,” it exclaimed. “Boy, I must smell like a dead goat.”

Roger shrugged, nearly gagging at the thought of inhaling this monkey’s body odor.

“It happens to all of us,” he replied, “And I know how embarrassing it can be. Here,” he said, reaching into a pocket on the inside of his work jacket, “You can use some of mine.” He pulled out a roll on deodorant, which the gorilla took with a nod, and rolled a vast amount of the contents all over his jungle of an armpit. He handed it back, tipping his beret, as a gesture of “thanks monsieur!” Roger replaced the roll-on stick back into his jacket, making a mental note to pull off the several loose strands of hair that were clinging to the tip.

They lapsed into yet another awkward silence, but “Cousin It” obviously was starved for some conversation. It shoved an absolutely huge hairy right hand under Roger’s nose, and pointed to a dark stain on the hair with its left hand.
“I spilt wine all over myself last night,” he bellowed. “I’ve tried everything to get it out but nothing worked. You wouldn’t happen to know of a way, would you now?”

Now Roger, not having the foggiest idea on how to remove wine stains from giant hair men (let alone ponder as to why giant hair men drank wine in the first place), decided to say something courteous, in hopes that he wouldn’t upset this much larger, and probably much more dangerous creature.

“The only thing I can think of is bleach,” was all he could manage. That seemed to satisfy the furball, contemplating what he had said in a very thoughtful manner.

At long last, the elevator doors slid open, and Roger stepped out, giving a parting wave to the Wookie. Now he was standing face to face with a mammoth fly head. This head was attached to a young woman’s body, wearing a very fine blue business suit. Obviously someone with a shred of knowledge as to what should and should not be worn in public, ever (Namely, ugly ties and awful suits). In one hand, she was carrying a file, almost overflowing with papers. With her other, she began to wave frantically at Roger.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here, Mr. Gumby,” the giant fly yelled as she reached out, grabbed his suit, and began dragging him down the hall.  “Mr. Vernon is in a panic, and he needs your advice desperately. He’s waiting in his office. Oh, you had better hurry. He is so depressed.”

Roger wasn’t listening in the slightest, but rather staring at the ceiling, considering about his day. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he had a lingering suspicion that the world was not as it should be.

His eyes were still staring at the ceiling, when it suddenly exploded outward into his face, in a hailstorm of plaster, dust, and chunks of wood. Roger and the fly woman leapt clear of the mess, just a split second before the ninja landed where they had been standing a moment ago. He was wearing a dark uniform, black mask, with a katana on his back, and several silver shurikens on his belt. In his left hand was a clipboard, with a dangling pen. Once he landed, the ninja stood up, quickly scanned the room, and began scribbling on the clipboard. When he saw the chucks of plaster lying at his feet, his eyes lifted to meet Gumby’s. In a very threatening swagger, he came up and was now barely an inch away from Roger’s face.

In a shouting, commanding voice, the ninja cried, “Clean Floor!” before he turned and leapt back up the hole from which he came. Roger was actually heading for the nearest broom closet to start sweeping up the mess, when the fly woman grabbed his hand.

“Don’t worry about him,” she said, easing Roger down the hall. “He’s on a power trip ever since he was promoted. The janitor will get that. See, here he comes now.”

And indeed, from around the corner, a wispy figure, wearing torn overalls, “Yankee’s” baseball cap, and holding a broken broom with an empty dust pan, started to clean up the mess. The fly woman flashed him a warm smile, as warm a smile as can be with mucus dripping from one’s mouth.

“You are so good at what you do Janitor Ghost.”

Ghost waved a hand, leaving a trail of smoke behind as he continued to sweep. Mr. Gumby continued walking to the office, when he suddenly heard a faint sound from the carpet.

“Hey! Stop stepping on me.”

Roger screamed in shock, like a little girl, and jerked his head to his feet in disbelief. He saw a face in the carpet looking back at him. Mr. Gumby apologized to the carpet and walked more softly, as he passed the bathrooms with the drinking fountain singing “De Colores”.

Moving on down the hall, Roger and fly woman ended up right outside Mr. Vernon’s room. Fly Woman motioned for Roger to step inside.
“He’s expecting you, Mr. Gumby. I have to go, and deliver these papers. Good luck in there.” And she turned and sprouted wings on her back and flew down the hallway, leaving Roger in front of the large oak doors, pondering a great many things. Occasionally, the female insect thing would fly in circles above the cubicles of the other employees. This was not nearly as disturbing as hearing her shout in an insect voice, “I am the queen... I am the queen… I am the queen; let’s get some work done around here.”

Roger reached for the knob, but paused. The day seemed to get even stranger and stranger, with no sign of stopping. Roger just knew that when he opened these doors, he would be faced with some new form of madness.

“Oh well”, he told himself, “everything that happens in this office was insanity anyway.” Pushing on the doors, Roger stepped inside. Looking about, lo and behold, there was a normal office, and sitting behind an enormous desk was a fat middle aged guy, with shining bald head, full black beard, and a white shirt complete with sweat stains. He was bent over the desk, gnawing on the tip of an eraser, while his face was all scrunched up like a raisin, a big vein quivering on top of his bald head.

Roger had always found his boss an interesting fellow, especially with that vein on his forehead. It attracts so much attention, when it starts to bulge, and he anticipated the day it would burst from the tension. Every time Roger talked to Mr. Vernon, he was fascinated by the vein, staring at it at every possible moment, watching it swell as his boss’s stress and irritation grew.
Mr. Vernon glanced up, maintaining his tooth-lock on his pencil. Seeing Roger’s head poking in the door, he threw the pencil over his shoulder, and actually out an open window behind him. As it fell to the pavement below, you could hear the pencil shriek, “Goodbye cruel world!”

  “Roger, just the gentleman I need to see!” He leapt out of his chair, hurtled over his desk, spilling papers and scalding hot coffee all over more papers, causing them to catch fire. He took Roger’s hand and began to pump it up and down with terrific force.

   “You are the only one that can help me resolve this nasty situation! There is a group of clients, big clients Roger, in the board room, waiting for a presentation that I am suppose to give today! But my computer crashed earlier and I was unable to print out the necessary documents! I need you to get in there and present our position on “Project Lazarus”. You are up to date on our current breakthroughs, yes?”

This was a lot to throw in one man’s lap on extremely short notice, but Roger had to do similar things before in the past. So, with a brief nod of his head, and a squeal of a joyful girl from his boss, Roger made his way to the boardroom. I needn’t go into the tiniest of details, dear reader. Suffice to say, Roger did a splendid job, explaining his company’s position, on “Project Lazarus”, which he did in a very business-like manner.

  And so, despite the fact that the chairman of the “big clients” was a giant sandwich and his secretary was a two headed lobster, Roger made his report with no trouble at all. Returning from the meeting to his boss’s room, he was none too surprised that his boss, Mr. Vernon was not quite himself. In fact, all that was sitting in his boss’s chair now, which was behind a now charred desk, was in fact, a giant bulging vein. It reminded Roger of “Jabba the Hutt”, how it sat in the chair, pulsating and quivering like a giant mass of jelly.

    “Roger,” came his boss’s voice from the vein, quite remarkable considering the fact that there was no mouth to speak of on the massive lump of flesh. “Oh, I’ve already heard! Well done, my boy; a truly spectacular job! I couldn’t have done it without you! I see good things in your future, Roger! Very good things indeed!” And on and on, spilling complements all over him, saying he would shake his hand if he had arms, all of those things. Roger pretty much tuned him out, trying not to stare, and eventually excused himself to get back to work. He spent the majority of the day sitting in his cubicle, typing new reports on his computer, writing notes, and trying to ignore the snorting from the centaur sitting in the next cubical over.

    Finally it was quitting time, and Roger was very relieved to be getting home. He needed to eat, and then zonk out in bed. He pressed the down button on the elevator, wishing a pleasant evening to an average looking fellow, except he possessed a pair of octopus tentacles for arms. As the doors slid open, Roger was hoping, praying, and in fact inner pleading with himself that the French Wookie would be absent during his descent on the elevator. Well, on the positive side, there was no giant Sasquatch there. But instead, the whole elevator didn’t exactly look like it did earlier in the day.

Now, it looked like the inside of a cathedral, totally warped by dark and evil forces. Standing in the center, at the base of a giant stained glass window, beyond which was constant flashes of lightning, was a stone altar. Standing around the altar were numerous people, garbed in black robes, kneeling down, and chanting some incoherent babble. A man resembling a bishop, complete with a tall black cap, long flowing arcane robes and an obsidian scepter, was standing at the head of the altar. His arms were stretched out to the heavens, as he bellowing about how he was about to sacrifice a dead walrus. Suddenly aware that they were being watched, the bishop and monks turned their heads to the door, where a man stood, complete with a bad tie, staring back at them. Hesitant to step on, Roger waved his hands, and took a step back.

    “Um...I’ll just take the next one.” So saying, the steel doors slid shut. The next car that arrived was normal, occupied by regular people. Roger took the elevator down, going through the lobby, giving a friendly smile to the ever frosty Sonia, who was now perhaps even colder than before seeing as how she was now a snowwoman, and headed home.

    Just as he had planned, he cooked his dinner, a grilled cheese sandwich, with a glass of milk, all of which before he ate, said “bon appetite” at the same time in an Italian accent. He had received a call that his kids would be staying the night at the same friend’s house that took them to school in the morning, so he pretty much had the house to himself. He went into his bathroom, and sat on the toilet, getting ready for a bath. Before he could turn on the water, he started feeling something licking his buttocks; he jumped and turned to see inside, the toilet had a tongue. Without a word, he flushed the toilet and the tongue disappeared.

Knowing how to use his free time wisely, he drew a long hot bath and read a romance novel. Mr. Roger Gumby, an average Joe, yes sir. Reading his romance novel in the tub, not concerning himself with the problems of his everyday life. Sure, he had suffered prolonged exposure to the “Project Lazarus”, an experimental chemical that his company had developed, one of the side effects being that it would cause trauma in the human brain, making his eyes play tricks on him, and see things that weren’t really there. Now his mind will forever alter his perception of the world, making him see the most bizarre of things, but he didn’t mind. This made the ordinary Roger Gumby, who was supposedly an average man, not quite as average as one thought he was. A little joke you see. Ha ha ha! As for Roger, he slipped into his nice comfy bed, and switched off his beside lamp. This was the one with the tongue as the little dangling switch. He suddenly became aware that he was sharing his bed with a very familiar large shaggy figure. And not his wife.

“Well, hello again Mon Amie! Fancy meeting you here, hah hah hah!” From out of the darkness, Mr. Roger Gumby had but one thing to say.

“Oh shucks.”