Your sneak peak, where sneaking is ≥ peaking.
Posted by Kyle Jacobson , Saturday, October 2, 2010 3:40 PM
For the past couple of months, I have worked furious and furiously at producing my first mini novel, "Robert Daisy and His Future Neighbors." It is, up to this point, the highlight of my writing career. I am going to share a piece of this work with you. I plan on submitting it for publication within the next month or so. I hope you enjoy. Also, stay tuned next Monday and Wednesday for some great experiences from my life. Bon Appetit.
Robert Daisy and His Future Neighbors
Kyle Jacobson
PART I: ROBERT DAISY
The sun tried to warn the world. The world didn’t listen.
Who knew that the end of the human race would fall on a Thursday? This Thursday, actually. If anyone did know, it surely wasn't Robert Daisy. He didn't have many ideas at all, especially about the end of the human race.
PART I: CHAPTER I
Drool began to seep onto a pile of freshly printed papers; papers that happened to be Robert’s presentation for the meeting that he was currently in. The drool ran over such words as “shovel” and “immediate”. Robert hadn’t a clue about the vigilante saliva. He was asleep.
“Robert”, said an excessively large and slightly obtuse man standing over him at the mahogany table, “ROBERT!”
“Whiafu?!” Robert seemed completely startled and oblivious to his current situation. He had no idea what was going on. He let out a yawn. A pause. A little yawn. Then a second pause for dramatic effect. Now, if anyone were to ask him what he thought was going on currently, he might have said something along the lines of, “I’m uncertain that I’m not living in a false reality where my friends really aren’t my friends and I’m the target of some sort of futuristic governmental conspiracy.” He could not have been more right, but nobody did ask him.
Mr. Obtuse stood and stared. He stared for as long as it would take. He always stared for as long as it would take. For example, last Tuesday, when his car broke down, he only just stared. The car apologized, in writing, and then quickly started and filled itself with gas for the obtuse man’s inconvenience.
Robert repositioned himself, reviewed some notes, and slipped off into a blank stare towards the right hand corner of his presentation. The word presentation bounced around a few times in his head, then circled about with large signs representing their strike over such an unfair brain to be working for. Ideas have become so headstrong over the years. Presentation.
Mr. Obtuse continued to stare.
“Why is blubber boy still staring?” Robert mused. “Doesn’t he have something better to do, like give a presentation? Or maybe grow his mustache a little more on the left side of his face to catch up with the right side?” Robert’s thoughts circled, and then picked up momentum.
It wasn’t until Robert wiped the, hopefully unnoticed, drool from the tip of his presentation that within his average-sized brain a neuron fired and as some say, “a light bulb went off.” Except, this light bulb brought no light, no vision, no joy, and definitely no warmth. It brought only shame, embarrassment, and cold. It was his turn to give the presentation.
Now, Robert had always been a highly charismatic guy. But, even the best smooth talkers have a point of no return. He stumbled to the front of the room. But not after he inadvertently pushed a chair over which knocked the fake fern into Sara, the intern, who became blinded by a wave of plastic foliage along with some overlooked cobwebs. And only after tripping over a few other, slightly less important people than Sara and, after accidentally making fun of three of the companies chairmen, Robert made it to the front of the decreasingly large room. The light from the projector found it’s spot in his cornea. It became hard to see and even harder not to imagine an interrogation room. Robert’s heart began to beat like waves bashing against a littered beach. A bead of sweat travelled down premature wrinkle lines. Robert paused. Robert breathed. Robert began his presentation. It’s very unlucky for Robert that he day dreamed and even unluckier that he had sweaty palms. He could feel the heat of the projector light staring at him, not unlike the way Mr. Obtuse liked to stare. Now Mr. Obtuse was just fiddling. Not really with anything. Just fiddling. And Robert was nervous.
***Not less than 2 hours later***
Robert’s presentation had ended over an hour ago. He sat in his leathery chair, listening to Mr. Obtuse drone on and on.
The seconds slowed as the last minute remained on his “longer than life” shift this Wednesday afternoon. Robert continued to sit and stare, not necessarily in that order. The clock stopped at three seconds to five. He could not believe this, the second time this week. The first time the clock froze just before leaving time, obviously a Monday, was quickly waved off as a crazed-excuse to go home early by Robert, and probably due to Robert’s overactive imagination. He closed his mouth, fuming with regrets, bad words slithering across his molars, just itching to shoot out of his mouth and splatter on the expensive-looking tie of Mr. Obtuse. He mimed that he was locking his mouth and throwing away the key in order to prevent himself from letting the bad words slip out. Little did Robert know that his mouth loathed him when he did such things. It was so demeaning.
***Ten minutes and five seconds after the clock was fixed.***
Robert drove not knowing where he was going; his hand-crafted motorcycle spitting out licorice as he hit some potholes. It was not a surprise that it was spitting out delicious candy pieces, since that was the way Robert designed it in the first place. Robert began his childhood taking apart almost everything that could be taken apart, such as televisions, fishing poles, chipmunk heads. He now spent the better half of his free time putting them all back together, just not how they were designed originally. He invented and created and shaped and formed the parts into applicable and partially useful items. For example, if one were to look closer at Robert’s hog, they would instantly realize that the main shaft belonged to a highly out of date Shop-Vac. No one ever did get that close to it because it had about as much aesthetic appeal as an upside down picture of the letter “X”.
Robert’s bike was named Steal Maxwell; it was not named after anyone even slightly important. These "toys" of his were what gave him comfort, in place of friends and healthy relationships. Relationships which he always seemed to screw up with his complete and utter lack of potential and his unusual manner of staring into the eyes of his dates. Some said it was "creepy", others said it was "extremely creepy," the way he would stare. It might have also been that Robert was always searching for something; something that seemed so distant; so removed from his life. He was never fully there. That’s one of the reasons why he began so many different hobbies. He was looking for something, he just didn't know what. There was no way he could have known that the thing he was looking for was named Emily, or that she lived in Connecticut, or that she had never eaten a strawberry.
Robert blasted the throttle into a speed not recognized by most humans, 7 MPH. He tried dirt roads and cruised freeways; storm drains and stoplights. Nowhere that Robert went, seemed to fill the void of self-inflicted loneliness that plagued him so intimately. He was not a proactive man; he liked to wait for good things to happen. Now look where he was: Working full-time for white supremacists in a small branch of the marketing wing of “Folddables Inc.”. The same white supremacists who desire nothing more than to drink stale soda and laugh at pictures of kittens with humorous text attached. Sometimes Robert wondered that if he were using just ten percent of his brain, how much they were using during such activities. He estimated a number close to, but not reaching, .02889402%. And after analyzing such things, Robert placed them in the “not so important” file in his brain. He began to wonder if he really enjoyed life. “It’s better than the prospect of death,” he reasoned.
He was regretfully brought back into reality by the noises “Steal Maxwell” made. The noises somewhat soothed him. The hard clicking noise that pumped rhythm through Robert’s arteries made him feel calm, relaxed. The oscillating crunches caused by the radiator caused his brain to dance a beautifully metaphorical waltz in his frontal lobe. And Robert especially loved the constant screeching noise-a noise that sounds very similar to when a group of vultures finds a broken down bus full of fat people in the Mohave desert. Though even with the compilation of the soothing noises of his bike, he had no idea why he felt so conflicted inside, he tried to shake it off, but the feelings didn’t wish to leave. He jammed the throttle to an eardrum-destroying 8.2 MPH. And with the speed, went his problems. Or so he thought.
The sun said to Robert, “good evening sir, it is currently 7:36pm, I hope you enjoy the rest of your extremely short time left alive.” Robert clearly didn’t understand a word that the sun tried to tell him, because Robert only speaks a rudimentary form of English and not "Sun." Robert had mistaken this warning as what he would later call an "unusually hot day for April."
There's the first chapter. I'll be able to give out the rest once it's been published.
Transpeciatedly,
Kyle
Post a Comment