The side door was open. Why was it open? Had other people already snuck out of their houses and looted the great Uncle Blair’s Wares? That didn’t seem right. It had only been two weeks. Surely other people, normal people, had more food squirreled away than Joey did. After all, when she had lived alone, she’d had all sorts of stuff stocked and overstocked in the pantry. It was different at Joey’s. Despite being perfectly capable of affording an entire cellar stocked for years to come, he chose to buy a few things every few days. That habit of his really wasn’t conducive to surviving something like this.
They crept up to the door and peered inside. The bright colours in the sky illuminated the large shelves and pallets inside; there was no movement and it seemed quiet. Joey rapidly pointed at the opening and grinned inanely, then strode inside. Jenny rolled her eyes and followed. At least she wouldn’t have to wear that stupid balaclava.
Joey shouldered his backpack and wiggled a torch out before swinging the bag behind him.
“What are you doing?” Jenny poked him. “There are windows out there. People are going to see the torch flickering around!”
“What people?” Joey shrugged. “How did you think we were going to see things without a torch? Fumble around, grab random boxes, hope you brought home mac and cheese and not strawberry flavoured condoms?”
Jenny closed her eyes tightly, then reopened them. She had no idea what she’d been thinking. Perhaps they should’ve gone on their adventure during the day instead. Joey turned on the torch and waggled it back and forth in her face until she whacked his arm away.
“Stop it!”
“Oooooooh,” he placed the torch beneath his chin like a camper telling ghost stories. “It’s a scary tooooorch.”
“Bite me.” Jenny shoved past him, shoved past the double-door flaps that led into the store, and strode towards the left side of the store. “Just be prepared to turn it off quickly if necessary.”
“Yes, ma’am. Where would you like to be bitten?”
Jenny clenched her fists, then froze in place as she faced the emptiness of Aisle One. Normally there would be fruits and vegetables piled up as far as the eye could see, but now there was nothing. She supposed that made sense. If everything had to be closed up for God-knows how long, it was probably best to ditch the fresh produce lest it rotted and stunk up the store. Blair definitely would not want his precious store tarnished by stinky apples.
Power-walking through the empty aisle, she approached the next. Aisle Two, home of bread and packaged baked goods. A normally-deserted aisle due to Blair’s Bakery being right around the corner and creating goods of far better quality. One lone package of crumpets sat on a shelf, surrounded by nothingness, and it displayed a proud fuzzy green mould inside its plastic. Jenny wrinkled her nose.
“No, thank you,” she mumbled beneath her breath.
They went down each and every aisle. Most of the shelves were empty, completely bare. Joey found a couple of noodle packets and threw them into his bag but there was nothing else. Nothing. Jenny bit her lip and tried not to cry. They really were going to have to catch that flock of chickens, weren’t they? What if this fungal nightmare never went away? What were they going to do? A year from now, two years, would they even still be here?
Stumbling into the last aisle, where Joey had once built up a fortress entirely out of toilet paper, Jenny stopped mid-step. A group of monkeys sat in the middle of the floor, surrounded by chip packets, and chattered away as they saw them. Two of them had a medieval knight’s helmet on their heads. She guessed that these creatures had played around in the costume store before breaking into Blair’s.
A helmet-less monkey tore open a packet of Twisties, stared straight into Jenny’s eyes, and started thrusting handfuls of cheesy treats into its mouth. The smug bastard.
“Well,” Joey sighed. “They got here before we did. I guess they earned them.”
“We’re not done here yet,” Jenny snapped. “We should check the bakery.”
“Something tells me that Blair hasn’t done any baking during this time, Jenny. There’s not gonna be any muffins over there.”
“I’m not after muffins!” Jenny flung her arms into the air and stalked out of the aisle, ignoring the chattering monkeys at her back. “I’m after flour. Sugar. Essentials. Not that you would know what an essential is, mister bacon-and-shrooms.”
“Hey, now. Bacon is an essential! Can you imagine life without bacon?”
“Easily.”
“Now, now, Jenny. Don’t lie to yourself. Bacon was created by the Gods for our enjoyment, everyone’s enjoyment. For pleasure! It’s impossible to live without such divine pleasure.”
Jenny snorted.
“Guess you’ll see what life is like after your liberated supply disappears.”
“I’ll just find some in another house,” Joey shrugged. “Pretty sure there are a lot of empty houses now, and all of them will be filled with bacon. Everyone loves bacon!”
“You’d wanna hope the power comes back on then.” Jenny smirked. “All the bacon in all the people’s houses… it’s going to go bad.”
Joey’s eyes widened.
“You’re right! Hurry up. Check the bakery. We gotta get home and protect the bacon.”
As they headed towards the bakery, Jenny had a swift realisation — what if the power didn’t come back on? Bacon be damned! What would they do? It was on the doomsday channel earlier… the reporters were talking about how the electricity service was struggling and could possibly fail soon. Was that what had happened? No, that didn’t make sense. The colours in the sky had brightened and then all the power-poles had sparked and everything had turned off. Did they get hit with a solar flare?
She paled at the thought and hurried faster towards the bakery, then jumped over the counter. They were doomed. Even if she found flour and sugar hiding behind the counter, they were doomed. She whipped open the cupboards, looked beneath the shelves, and stared forlornly at the stockroom. There was no flour and sugar. They were doomed.
Slumping over the counter, Jenny moaned into the wooden top where delicious muffins had once sat. This truly sucked.
“Dear, Jenny,” Joey patted her on the shoulder. “Do not despair. I will find you some flour and sugar.”
“I don’t dare ask how,” she mumbled into the wood. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The power is gone. Probably forever. I can’t cook.”
“That’s what fire is for!” Joey shrieked, gleefully. “My time has come at last. I will save the day with my trusty box of matches and wood from the forest floor.”
That was exactly what the world needed — Joey, brandishing fire, every day for the rest of eternity. Jenny headbutted the counter a few times then slowly looked up. Was that footsteps she had heard? Joey hadn’t moved anywhere. He stood before her, staring down at her with his perpetual smirk and his head halo’d by the coloured sky, then by the bright light of a torch. Someone else was there! Jenny stood straight up and backed away as Joey turned around to face whomever stood by the empty aisles.
“Hey, bitches!” A familiar, high-pitched nasally voice yelled. “I knew you would come crawling back. There’s no toilet paper for you to ruin now, you filthy animals.”
Joey shone the torch towards the figure, highlighting Blair’s gaunt and lanky frame. The man was beet-red, sweating profusely, and had a giant green pimple square in the middle of his forehead.
A giant green pimple.
Jenny’s eyes widened and her heart started pounding harder and faster as she backed into the bakery shelves. Blair had the crepitus. He was afflicted by the fungus. People grew the pimples shortly before they exploded. They were trapped in an enclosed space with someone who was about to explode!
“I told you the Great Fungus was coming, that you would run out of mashed potatoes!” He laughed. “No one listened to Uncle Blair, though. No, no, of course not. It’s too late now.”
They had to get out of here. Blair was a goner; she didn’t want to be one too. She wanted to live! Not fall ill and give birth to a thousand infective mushrooms.
“What? You got nothing to say, sweet cheeks? Tell me! Tell me that Uncle Blair was right. Mmmph,” he ran his hands over his chest and tweaked his nipples beneath his uncharacteristically dirty white shirt. “Go on, tell me.”
Jenny looked to the left then looked to the right. They had to escape. Within moments that man was going to blow and they could not be near him. There was no escape. She didn’t know what to do.
Suddenly, Joey started chattering like a monkey. There was a rustle at the far end of the store where the group of monkeys had been situated. They leapt over shelves, the two with knights helmets on in the lead, then, before Blair could turn to see the commotion, one of the helmeted monkeys ripped its helmet off and jammed it over Blair’s head with several screeches out-screeching the screeches of Blair himself.
Joey motioned rapidly for Jenny to hurry.
“Quick! We gotta go!”
With the monkeys laughing, screeching and chattering at their backs, they zoomed through the store, out the back docks, and into the night just as a pop-pop-pop-BANG echoed behind them.
Joey slammed the door shut before the cloud of mushroom spores could travel through the store and escape with them, then grabbed Jenny’s arm and dragged her down the road. Jenny couldn’t speak, could barely think. They had narrowly escaped the crepitus. They should never have left the house. They should have just stayed put like they had been instructed to. There was only one thought that continued to circulate through her mind as Joey guided her back home; the same thought she had been repeating to herself near daily since the fungus first came upon them.
They were doomed.
Helloooo! It's Day Whatever of a sudden onset of Writing Madness -- a NaNoWriMo-inspired challenge that uses the daily #freewrite prompt to help create a full story within the confines of a mere month.
@mariannewest has issued several prompts since I temporarily stopped writing, and I've kept note of every one of them and will be including them as I go. I'll be trying to do two prompts per chapter.
In today's writing is the prompt: Armour.
I didn't write the word itself, but insinuated the 'armour' with the monkeys wearing silly medieval knight's costumes. 🤺🛡️⚔️ This is a continuation of part 13, and together will make up a full chapter. 🙂
Today's writing is a bit messy, especially once we get to the end there. But that's okay. Rough first draft!! I must ignore the urge to re-write things a hundred times and just continue on! Rewrite and embellish later!
This is a very rough first draft of an upcoming book and will be tidied up and polished after this Writing Madness is finished. 😊 It might read like fast-paced-rushed-word-garbage at the moment, but it will be refined! (I over-edit like a madwoman.)
Title is a placeholder and will probably not be the final name of the book. 🤣 This story has nothing much to do with whistling but the local pub is called the Whistling Fart, things will go down there, and there will likely be a terrible amount of fart jokes. Because I'm uncultured and farts are funny. 🤷♀
Today's wordcount is 1,691
Total wordcount is 27,093
📝 A Quick Blurb 📚
Genre: immature adult comedy, reverse coming-of-age, apocalyptic silliness
Warning: irreverent, offensive humour
Jenny is a young lady in her mid-20's who finds herself out of work, out of home, and out of luck. An old friend from school has invited her to stay at his house until she gets back on her feet, but she just can't seem to land on them.
Every job opportunity she finds goes spectacularly wrong. The Great Fungus is spreading across the world and consuming all in its path. Then, to top it off, a solar flare renders electricity a thing of the past.
Faced with the end of the world as she knows it, Jenny has a choice. Will she embrace this apocalyptic madness... or will she, too, be consumed by the fungus?
Thank you for reading! 📚😊
See you next time! 📝🤓