A Day in the Life of a Pickle

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

A Day in the Life of a Pickle

 

Once upon no time at all, in a void-like land of endless black-ish colors very un-uniquely named The Void Lands, there lived a pickle. This pickle was a very happy pickle, and it lived comfortably in it's home at the edge of the abyss. The pickle sang as it watered the few terrified flowers that it had coaxed in life in the area surrounding the abyss. Suddenly a question flew out of the abyss and straight into the pickle's green and warty head! The pickle looked up, and for the first time asked, “If I am a pickle how can I speak?” The pickle puzzled over this peculiar question, but when the question showed no promise of an easy explanation, the pickle decided to ignore it. However, the question continued to annoy the pickle so the pickle decided to build a dam around the abyss to prevent more questions from flying out while it took a nap. The pickle thought the dam was a damn good dam, so good in fact that the pickle decided to call the dam Fred and took it's nap in the shade of it's fluffy cover. While the pickle was napping, Fred the dam caught all the questions it could until eventually it caught a funny question. “What utter nonsense!” thought Fred with a smile, but his smile became a chuckle as he caught more and more absurdity until finally, Fred completely cracked up. The pickle woke up just in time to see the horde of questions flying straight for it. It got up and tried to run, but the questions all raced up and into it's poor head before the terrified flowers could even blink! Luckily, most of the questions were repeats and dissolved into dust, which the abyss ate, once the pickle had already thought of them. Unfortunately there were still more questions in the pickle than it could take at once! The pickle was in a pickle indeed. It shouted out into the Void Lands of void it's questions in frustrated anguish, for once it had thought of them it couldn't un-think them. “WHAT AM I?” “WHY DO I NOT HAVE A NAME?” “AM I REALLY A PICKLE?” “HOW CAN I SPEAK?” “WHY AM I ALIVE?” “WHAT AM I DOING BY AN ABYSS?” and many others. Strangely, the pickle's pointless shouting helped a little. Calmer, though still frustrated and sad (the Pickle had never been sad before) the pickle decided the best thing to do was to was to leave it's comfortable little home and wander aimlessly in search of someone who could help it. So the pickle fetched a little bag it had made with scraps of cloth from it's comfortable home and put a terrified flower and a few shards of Fred in it to keep him company. Then it looked out at the view over the abyss and sighed (it really was quite a beautiful picture). Then before the pickle could think of new questions of it's own. It turned and disappeared into the void fog. The pickle wandered and wandered, seeming to get nowhere, though occasionally passing glittering bits of dust. Then when most of his hope had disappeared into the void fog's endless twilight gloom, he spied another abyss! This abyss had a city suspended over it on beautiful stone-like bridges, and the pickle could just barely glimpse through the void fog shapeless blobs moving around and mumbling to each other. “Well, they must be good if they live by an abyss!” thought the pickle and it moved towards them quicker.” When the pickle crossed one of the stone-like bridges it discovered the city was made of bits of rubble, debris, and trash, and what the pickle had assumed to be shapeless blobs were actually goats. All sorts of goats. The pickle asked a goat with a long scraggly beard if it would be so kind as to help him. Seamus, for that was the goat's name, asked him, “what's wrong, umm.... pickle?” The pickle explained it's tragic tail-less tale, as Seamus 'hmmm-ed', 'Oh my-ed', and made other thinking noises. By the time the pickle had finished explaining it's plight a crowd of 'hmmm-ing' goats had gathered around it.

“Well,” Seamus mused, “the best thing to do would be to ask the Author your questions.”

“the Author?”

“Oh yes, the amazing, awesome, wonderfully kind and wise Author who knows all things (related to this story), but we all just call her 'the Author' for short.”

“Where can I find this author?”

“Well, I have heard she lives in a fathomless jungle library of ever-speeding time. It is impossible to get there from here so your best bet is to go back to your abyss and ponder the questions yourself.”

The pickle sighed, it was discouraged, sad and frustrated at the same time, but mostly discouraged. So turned around and walked away from the city, back into the Void Lands. As the pickle walked it grew sleepy and the pickle yawned loudly, took out it's terrified flower and told it reassuring things until it looked a bit less terrified, and was about to put it back in it's bag when it heard a voice. “I hear you're lookin' for the Author, I'll trade ya that there flower for directions.” The pickle looked right up into the sly face of a pudgy rat riding a unicycle. The terrified flower immediately looked much more terrified. “Directions? What are directions? And why in the void would I need them? “Whell..” said the rat, looking around conspiratorially, “directions are.... oh shoot! There's that kid again!” the pickle turned to see a girl with fuzzy black hair come swimming through the void fog, and make a grab for the rat's tail, “Leave me alone kid!” shouted the rat as he pedaled furiously away through the fog with the girl chasing after him. So the pickle trudged on through the void fog and as it trudged it thought about it's options, it could go back home and try to forget, but the pickle was certain that it would take many many days to forget all it's questions, and the Void Lands days are long. It could go back and ask the goats for help again, but the way the goats had surrounded it while eating trash had scared the pickle. So the pickle decided to go on until it either found the Author or found something to help get rid of or answer it's questions. Eventually, the pickle got tired of wandering aimlessly onward. So it found a nice clump of shapeless fluff, the same stuff it had used to make Fred, lay down underneath it and fell into a bad dream. In the pickle's dream goats chased it into an abyss covered in terrified flowers that echoed with strange laughter. The pickle was just about to ask Fred for help when it remembered that Fred was dead and woke up. The poor pickle cried for a little while and it tears formed a little ball in the void. When pickle had cried itself out it took out the terrified flower again and set it near the little ball of tears. The pickle began talking to the flower again, asking it why all this happened to it and crying more. The flower drank up all the pickles tears, sighed and said in a tiny timid little voice, “I will help you. Keep going until you reach the next abyss, it should have a little green light in it, jump into that abyss and you will find the fathomless jungle library of ever speeding time. I do not know if you will find the Author there though, she is not always in the library, you may have to wait for a while until she appears, or until she decides to see you.” Then the more of a timid than terrified flower vanished in a wisp of flame. The astounded pickle watched as the flame became ash and the ash got caught up in a strange new wind. The pickle blinked it's three invisible eyes rubbed them with a nonexistent arm and hurried after the ashes. The pickle went so fast it was on the edge of an abyss before it knew it, wobbling back and forth, when it saw there was a greenish cast to the abyss and as lost it's feeble grip on the edge of the void around the abyss (which is quite literally the edge of nothing) and tumbled head long into this abyss it saw a faint green-ish light at the end of the fall. The pickle fell hard on it's stem and heard a crunch, it was about to sit there and complain for a minute before it realized it was a pickle, and it didn't get hurt because it had no bones. So it got up brushed itself off and looked around. The pickle realized how small it really was, no bigger than a person's hand. It was certainly not bigger than the lowest shelf of any of the book shelves it saw clustered about in the room. It also felt ground for the first time and realized the green stuff it saw poking up from the ground was like his terrified flower, but less flowery and not terrified at all. In the distance the pickle could see a person silhouetted in a pool of lamplight. It was sitting at desk, scratching away at several papers at once with quill pens stuck through everywhere and erasable ink. The pickle climbed up on an empty stool and hopped on the table. The silhouette, which turned out to be a girl with messy hair and big glasses, completely ignored him. “Excuse me!” said the pickle.

“huh?” the girl looked up, “oh! I'm sorry! May I help you?”

“Are you the Author?”

“What me? Oh goodness no! I'm just an intern! Since the Author is gone so much of the time she hired me to sit here and do all her taxes and other important paper stuff.”

“Why are you writing on all of these at once?”

“Oh, a few reasons, one: I have a deadline to meet, and two: I'm just not very organized... but I can still help you! I read the Author's script, well the beginning of the script, I couldn't read the end because it wasn't in there yet...... But anyway, you're here to get answers about some questions right?”

The pickle looked up hopefully, “Yes! A flood of questions flew out of the abyss and into my head! How can I get rid of them?”

“Hmm, well I think I remember some of your questions... You are a sentient pickle! You used to be a semi-sentient pickle, but with everything that has happened to you your mind has changed, so you are now sentient! You are alive and live by an abyss because the Author wanted to have you live there! It was a beautiful view too, right? Now umm.. What were the rest of your questions?”

“I did love my abyss... but, why don't I have a name? Why am I always called an it? What are the Void Lands? How did the Author make me? Why did the questions fly out of the abyss in the first place? How do I stop other questions from flying out of the abyss? What am I supposed to do now? Why did my flower disappear? Can you make Fred come back? And what is a script?”

During the pickle's rant the intern's eyes had steadily widened, “Wow, I'm not sure if I Can answer all those!” “Hmmmm.... Oh! Idea!” the intern rummaged through the desk, pulled out pulled out a deck of cards, and flicked through them until she found the two she was looking for, then placing the cards, a king and a queen of diamonds, face up in front of the pickle she asked, “Which one do you like better?” The pickle looked at the cards, confused, then after much deliberation, it pointed to the king of diamonds. “Not the best one I think, but it's your choice... it really doesn't matter as you are a vegetable...You are now a 'he'” She picked up the king card and handed it to the no longer gender-less pickle. This made the pickle so happy he spun around in circles until the intern spoke again, “As for a name, the Author probably didn't give you a name just because she was lazy, either that or she wanted you to be confused later on... but anyway, how does the name Thomas sound?” the pickle shook his head. “Alexander? ...Wilhelm? ...Arthur? ….Joe? ….Tristan?….Ooh Ooh! How about Larry?”

“Miss, I am a pickle, Larry is Not a name for a pickle.”

The intern sighed, she had had a long day, “Well, what name would you pick?”

The pickle thought a minute, then said, “I like being a pickle, and now that I know I really am a pickle.... is Pickle a name?”

“Pickle's much better than my name,” said the intern while thinking, “and there are so many strangely named things around, I am sure a pickle named pickle wouldn't be too much of a pickle.....oops”

“To answer your next question, the Void Lands are the a group of clustered together nothingness inside of a black hole, or multiple black holes depending on how you see it. As to how the Author made you, that's classified, we can't have just anyone making new charac....umm people...” Pickle looked at the intern strangely, “Ahem, back to your questions, the questions flew out of your abyss because the Author wanted them too, and there is really no way to stop them from flying out, but I will write down your complaint in a sticky note and put it on the Author's office door. The script is the paper that says what is going to happen to you next, that's really all you need to know about it, and it's not really finished, so, I could 'continue' the script... make you into an amazing hero pickle, who rescues the dilapidated muffin people, slays the terrible nothing beast who lives in the red abyss and...”

“No!!! Stop! Stop!!!”

“What's wrong?”

“I don't want to be a hero pickle!!! I want to be Pickle who lives in his comfortable house with his terrified flowers and is happy!!”

“Really? Huh, well... ok.” The intern rummaged around in the desk for a minute, pulled out a blank paper and wrote down 'Summary' on the top, then scribbled quickly in unreadable handwriting, a nice round paragraph... “There done, after meeting me and having your questions answered you will go back to your comfortable home and live happily ever after with your terrified flowers. Will that work?”

Pickle nodded, “Yes, but you still haven't told me why my flower died or brought Fred back.” Pickle fished in his bag, “He cracked up really badly, this little piece I have of him is still giggling.” The intern picked up the shard of Fred and held it to her ear. “Hmm..” Then she squished up it shaped it a bit until it resembled the shape of an ear, and whispered something Pickle couldn't quite hear into it. Then squishing it back into a blob, she handed Fred back to Pickle. It wasn't giggling anymore, or even smiling at all, so Pickle shaped it into Fred and ask if it was alright. When he was certain Fred was not dead Pickle placed Fred carefully back into his bag and the intern spoke again. “About your flower, it's really not dead either, when terrified flowers become not terrified any more, they come to this library. You might have passed your flower when you came in. Now all you questions are answered.” and immediately a black sphere appeared and engulfed Pickle, and Pickle and the sphere shrank into into nothing and disappeared leaving intern alone at last.

Meanwhile, back at Pickle's home, the abyss began coughing, then clearing it's long tunnel throat, it spat Pickle out and up into the air, and he floated back down to the ground and went back into his house and took a long nap, and when he woke up, he sat on his porch with a glass of flinn and terrified his flowers to keep them from leaving.

The abyss for it's part, having decided it did not like coughing up pickles, directed all other questions it had to the trash city of goats where they were eaten, and everyone lived happily ever after, except for the intern who was promptly grounded when the Author returned.

The End.

[Snypiuer]

ARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Head HURT!

 

You are FREAKING me out!

 

What scares me, is how you write the way I think. At least when I got things under control. Most times, my thought process is so haphazard that this would be a version of me being coherent and focused.

 

I LOVE this story.

 

Thank you!

[Bubbling Mud Heads]

Yup! it's nice having an intern though... Oh! I forgot to have Pickle ask if he was dill or sweet!!

 

Another day in a pickle-ish life:

 

The next day, the Author was hungry. Hungry for pickles. So, she created a she-pickle named Sweet and sent her to live with Pickle the pickle. Eventually, they was children hordes and masses of little baby pickles, most of which the Author devoured. Several of Pickle's other children went on to be great heroes and heroines of the unclear realms. But the rest of them settled down with other wandering pickles (and one cucumber) and created more comfortable houses with terrified flowers everywhere, and they formed the happiest village in the Void Lands, Pickle Town, named after their founder, Pickle. Pickle lived to a very ripe old age and died happily and in peace, and Seamus the goat, who came and took the job of village undertaker in Pickle Town, ate Pickles corpse, and all was happy and strange in the world.

 

The (better) End.

[Harmonious_Echos]

WOw. Great use of the randomness factor...

 

Also, loving the underlying storyline that holds up nicely, despite the coughing abyss and the undead Fred... LOL.

[MagicianEmpress]

Oh my... I love Pickle the Pickle!!!! just feel a bit sorry for the flowers..Always terrified because Pickle doesn't want them to leave.. Also love the stream of conscious writing style!!