Last Night’s Story
Posted in Solo Comedy on September 14th, 2009 by Mike Fotis – 2 CommentsHappy Monday!
1. Last night’s Rockstar show was a blast. Everyone (that I was able to watch) was at the top of their game. Here’s my story. Enjoy. I like it. It’s certainly weird. Pass it around if you choose.
The tumbleweed tumbled by. This was the first time Ronald had ever seen tumbleweed. It was round. And weedy. And it ambled more than it tumbled. It was almost hypnotizing the way the tumbleweed danced as the slight breeze that swept across the town caught it and lifted it just inches above the ground. Ronald envied the tumbleweed. It wasn’t stuck in this joke of a town square. It was free to amble down the road and off into the vast nothing of the Arizona desert. It was becoming clear to Ronald that he was never going to leave this town. Unless the cemetery on the west end of New New Codsburg was considered “out of town”.
Ronald Trufflecoat was terrified. His legs always felt weak, a condition brought on by too much reading and not enough calisthenics, but they had always held strong. But now he feared they would finally give out and he would tumble to the ground like a tree that been deflated. His palms were covered in sweat. Sitting on his right hip was an incredibly heavy revolver. It wasn’t his revolver. He had never held a gun in his life. Not even a toy gun. Guns scared Ronald. They were loud. Little hand held cannons. He wondered how anyone was even capable of holding a gun with just one hand. The gun (he had been lent) was so heavy that it threatened to topple him over. To make matters worse, Ronald also had incredibly weak wrists, a condition brought on by too much education and not enough push-ups. His condition was so bad that his parents had removed all the doors from his home, lest he be trapped in his room forever. He was sure that were he to try and pull the gun from his holster, his wrist would snap like a twig, the gun would fall to the ground and fire a round straight into his forehead. Looking across the empty town square at his opponent who was only 20 yards from him, Ronald figured that his weak wristed day dream might be the merciful way out. His opponent was called the lion tamer. The Lion Tamer had a haggard face and a look in his eye that suggested he ate puppies as a means of animal control. The look in his eye suggested that he would aim for the stomach. Just to make Ronald suffer.
Ronald looked up at the clock that loomed over the town square. It served as a reminder to anyone that bothered to look that time moved forward, even in the middle of nowhere. The minute hand shifted forward and stopped. Three minutes until noon. Ronald had already been standing in the near mid day sun for over 20 minutes. He had never been in a duel before and had certainly never seen the events leading up to a duel, but 20 minutes seemed an awfully long time to wait for death. It was certainly a case of insult being added to his forthcoming misery.
But why should he be surprised, he thought? From the moment he had arrived in this town two days ago, he sensed that this place was different. That the town of New New Codsburg was quirky was without question. At the entrance of the town was a 15ft tall marble statue of a Colion, a menacing figure with the upper body of a lion and the lower body of a cod. The Cod half of the statue was meant to honor the town’s forefathers who hailed from Codsburg, Ma. Population 29,000.
Ronald had spent the night prior in New New Codsburg’s only bar, which was called the walking fish. Like is true anywhere across the country, some bars are meant to serve as watering holes while others seem to exist solely for the purpose of telling strangers of their town’s secrets. The Walking Fish was like a bored elderly woman in that sense, filling Ronald with story after story after story. Long story short, Ronald had learned the night before that the forefathers of New New Codsburg had been lured west by tales of fortune, Utopia and…Lake Arizona. A lake rumored to be so large and so full of cod, that if you wanted to swim, you needed to bring a shovel with you to the lake so that you could dig a hole through the cod. It only took the forefathers a few moments to realize that the Arizona Territory they had spent months trekking to was NOT Lakota for Trout Heaven and that they had been duped.
The lion half of the statue was meant to pay honor to the African lions that tormented the town every year on Christmas Eve. How the African lions came to Arizona, no one knew. Some in the town surmised that the lions were runaways from the circus. Others thought they were nothing more than mirages. Deadly mirages. Most townpeople now agree that the lions were sent by God to punish the town for ever daring to relocate from Massachusetts. What is not in doubt is that New New Codsburg only exists because most of the residents of New Codsburg were devoured by angry lions on the very first Christmas Eve of the town’s existence. The lions were sneaky. Some dressed as town folk and lived in the town for months, gaining the trust of their neighbors and lowering their defenses. Others posed as tumbleweed, rolling through town and observing the towns habits. But most hid in festively wrapped presents. By all accounts it was horrible. On Christmas Day, those who were spared burned down New Codsburg and moved 700 feet to the east. It was the opinion of the town leaders that moving closer to Massachusetts might please the lions. They were wrong. The next year the lions returned dressed as dollar bills. That sounds strange but building a new town just a year after building the old new town is expensive. It wasn’t until the townspeople arrived at the bank to deposit the lions that they realized it was a trap. Ronald was trying to process this bizarre tragedy when someone casually asked him where he was from.
“Lyons, Illinois” he said. The room fell silent. Someone screamed, “The evil prophet hath come to reap our souls!”
Someone else screamed, “Alert the lion tamer!”
“I’ll go get the sacrificial guns!”, shouted a tall man.
And that was that. Ronald stood dressed in a a Lamb costume in the middle of a town in Arizona that was founded based on a lake that didn’t exist and that was attacked by lions every Christmas Eve.
If he lived, the town would move back east and give up their dreams of the west. If he died, then he would serve as a sacrifice to the lions and then in theory the curse would be broken for one year. In theory. They had never tried this before.
It should be noon by now thought Ronald. It was. The lion tamer reached for his gun. So did Ronald. Ronald was still fumbling with the gun in his hands when the lion tamer took aim and fired. The lion tamer seemed stunned when the gun failed to fire. He stared at Ronald, who was still fumbling with his gun. Ronald had been given a chance to survive, but his wrists couldn’t carry the weight of the revolver. Ronald’s hands continued to sweat. Sweat and weakness conspired against Ronald on this day, and just like he had imagined, his wrist snapped like a twig and the gun fell to the ground. But instead of firing and killing Ronald, the gun discharged towards the lion tamer and put a round straight into his forehead. The Lion Tamer fell. And just like that, the strangest day in Ronald Trufflecoat’s life had come to an end. He ambled out of town like the happiest of tumbleweeds.
