Randomness

Back when I worked for Amazon.com, I asked one of my buddies from my training class and group to give me a word, any word, and I'd make a story out of it. She e-mailed me back one word: Randomness. From that one word spawned my longest running and most often returned to story of one Arthur Barker dealing with a world filled with absolutely random events. We're talking crazy stuff here. Candy raining from the skies, lawns turned into large cities (scaled down of course), a lifeguard hovering over the Pacific ocean enforcing adult swim hours, and pretty much anything you can imagine.

There's a story proper of course, but to appease my friend Brandi I'll write little snippets that take place in the world of Randomness, but have no effect on the story as a whole. They're not canon I guess you can say. Anyway, there are some I'm quite proud of and I think Brandi's exclusivity deal has gone long enough, so I'm posting some of my favorites here.

Waking Up
Arthur turned over in his sleep, but happened to slip one eye part way open just in time to see his alarm clock (suddenly with legs) doing stretches. Both eyes popped open despite being halfway asleep.
"What are you doing?"
"It's 5AM, time for my morning run."
"Right. How silly of me... wait, I need to be up in two hours!"
"Can't say I'll be back by then, so sorry."

With that the alarm clock took off running, leaving Arthur behind in his bed.

"Little bastard's lucky my cell phone has an alarm." Arthur reached to where his cell phone was on the window sill, and saw it taking provocative pictures of itself. "Screw it, I'll get another job."

Much Too Loud
For Arthur, rubbing his temples had long been a necessity if he didn't want his head to explode. He had done it so long however, that now that he had a plain old headache, it just wasn't working. Even worse, his headache seemed to be directly tied to the volume... of everything.

Arthur never wanted to hear what it sounded like when a grasshopper was eating a smaller, less fortunate bug, but there it was (outside on his porch), snacking away. It didn't help that the smaller bug was still alive and screaming it's little insect scream that sounded as if a horrific murder was taking place in the next room.

"I will blow my brains out if this keeps going." The buggy scream got louder. "Finish getting eaten already!"
"Screw you, mammal! AAAAH-" The screaming ended abruptly.
"Thank God. Now where did that aspirin bottle go-"
"AHH! Now I'M getting eaten by a grasshopper!"
"Oh, come on!"

Arthur flung open his sliding glass door, located the piggish grasshopper and stomped on it as hard as he could. A choice he immediately regretted as the resounding STOMP sound practically bombed his eardrum out of existence. Literally. Thankfully, it immediately grew back, but it also kept ringing.

"Where the hell is the aspirin?"
"You killed me! You jerk!"
"AAAHH!!!" Arthur didn't care anymore, he stomped the grasshopper until it was only a greyish green spot on the concrete of his porch.

Note: The volume reset in his head when his seventh set of eardrums broke and the eighth set was normal.

Singularity
Arthur paused, his attention being dragged inexplicably to the right where he saw a small tear in the air. He walked around it once, seeing no change in its shape whatsoever. He reached out his index finger gingerly, as if he was five again and suddenly found a scab to pick at.

“Don’t pick at that!” A shrieking voice howled. Unfortunately, the voice made Arthur jump and poke his finger through the tear.
“Hmm, it feels a bit… Velcro-y… AAH!” The tear gripped onto his finger and pulled it in up to the second knuckle.
“I told you not to-“
“I wasn’t gonna pick at it!”
“Well don’t poke at it either.”
“Does it look like that matters now!?”
“Well I don’t know. I’m just here to tell people not to touch it.”
“Well, what is it?”
“That’s a very good question. Ooh!” The tear sucked Arthur’s finger all the way in, leaving him in a very awkward position. “Well, I’m going to go now. Good luck.”
“Wait! Hello?” Arthur looked around in futility as his finger started to go numb. “I hate disembodied voices.”

Now, when I eventually become a famous and successful writer, you can thank Brandi for giving me one of my cornerstone titles :)