It All Went Down at the Whistling Fart ~ April Writing Madness, part 13

 

When Jenny had said that they should go on an adventure to loot Uncle Blair’s, she hadn’t expected Joey to dress up for the occasion. It was silly, really; she should’ve expected this behaviour of him by now. It was like the time he was cooking packet-pasta a few months back and she’d found him in the kitchen with a novelty chef’s hat on. He seemed to have something for every occasion.

Waltzing down the stairs in black jeans and a black shirt, he held a golf club in one hand, a stereotypical balaclava in the other, wore a black backpack and had black paint smeared across his face. It was as though he were off to rob the local bank. With a golf club.

“Why the golf club?” Jenny wrinkled her nose. “We’re going shopping, not visiting the Frova Greens.”

“Cane toads.” Joey swung the club a couple of times, narrowly missing a painting on the wall. “I don’t know. We might need it.” He threw the balaclava at her. “Here.”

She threw it back.

“I’m not wearing that. And you should really wash that stuff off your face before someone accuses you of being a racist.”

“We’re breaking into Uncle Blair’s, Jenny,” he heaved the balaclava back at her. “Do you want a camera to see you?”

“Who cares!” she groaned, but kept hold of the balaclava. “I doubt anyone will be staring at the cameras or looking at the footage anyway.”

“When this is all over, looters will be caught and made to pay. Put on the balaclava.”

“If I thought this would ever all be over, I wouldn’t even have suggested this adventure,” she sighed, folding the mask into her pocket. “I’ll put it on when we’re there. Let’s go.”

It was around midnight, not that time mattered that much any more. All that mattered was that it was dark and it was unlikely people would be watching them. Assuming anyone was left, of course. She swallowed. There had been an awful lot of pop-pop-pop-bangs recently, not to mention that ones on the other side of town that she hadn’t heard… but the police were still in operation, and the bogans next door had been arrested, so surely it wasn’t quite that bad. Yet.

The street lights cast a warm glow across the footpath and empty roads. A few houses had lights on in their windows and there was faint movement behind them as people walked around their homes and muttered to one another, but mostly it was silent, eerie yet blissful. That was probably a good thing. They’d be able to hear any approaching patrols before they neared and they’d be able to hide quickly. But it was probably also a bad thing. Any noise that they made would also be heard very clearly.

They’d need to be as quiet as possible. They weren’t supposed to be out here. They were supposed to be locked inside their house — Joey’s house — but there was no other option. They couldn’t just live on bacon and ice cream and shroom spores. Well, maybe Joey could, but she most certainly could not.

As they neared the town centre, the street lights flickered intermittently then a brightness lit up the sky.

“Woah,” murmured Joey.

“Shush.” Jenny jabbed him with her elbow, but then peered up at the sky and gasped too. “Woah.”

A rainbow of colours burst into sight above the roof-tops, shimmering as they danced in fluctuating waves.

“What the hell is that?”

“Shush!” Jenny jabbed Joey again, then said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “It looks like the northern lights… only… we shouldn’t be getting them here.”

“That’s so cool!”

Jenny punched Joey’s shoulder.

“Admire it silently, please.”

It was a beautiful sight, but they shouldn’t be seeing it. Not where they lived. There were also the southern lights, Aurora Australis, but they weren’t in an ideal location to see that phenomenon either. This was too weird. The world was suffering from a great fungal disease the likes of which should only exist in a terrible story or B-grade horror movie, and now the skies were alight with so many yellows, pinks and blues it would put the gay flag to shame. She didn’t know if it was a good omen, or a bad one. Surely something so beautiful could only be a good omen.

Biting her lip, she shoved Joey forwards and they continued towards Uncle Blair’s.

The vibrant garden beds that decorated the frontage of the store were now overwhelmed by weeds and neglect. It had only been two weeks. Not being a gardener herself, she wasn’t sure how long it took for weeds to grow and for flowers to become vast shrubs that were out of control, but two weeks seemed a little crazy. Blair probably hired ten or twelve magazine-ready gardeners to tend to these beds each and every day… that was out of the question now.

One of the flowery bushes rustled wildly and a monkey jumped out before scurrying away and up a nearby tree.

“What is this, planet of the apes?” Jenny muttered, her hand against her chest as she watched the creature leap from branch to branch.

“Aw, that’s great.” Joey smiled — a caricature of a grin beneath the streaks of black paint and flickering lights. “The zoo… the animals must’ve gotten free.”

“There were tigers and things in that zoo!” Jenny spun around and eyed every building around the business district. “Your chickens aren’t safe any more. We’re not safe!”

“We live in a time where people explode in clouds of green mushroom spores, Jenny. We weren’t safe anyway.”

The sky suddenly brightened further, allowing the already-vibrant colours to become more vivid, then there was a giant boom as every street light and power-pole in sight exploded in a shower of sparks.

Jenny squealed and stumbled into the garden bed. Something sharp jabbed into her hand — she squealed again and leapt upright, tripping over the edge of the cement and headbutting Joey in the knee as she fell to the ground. Another monkey scurried out of the flowers and leapt into the tree.

“Scream silently, please,” Joey said, without missing a beat. He helped her to her feet then looked around. “Power’s gone. No alarms. Guess we could break a window.”

What the hell had happened? There were monkeys everywhere, the colours in the sky had flared and now there was no power — shit, Joey was about to break a window!

“If you break a window, that smash could be heard across town.” Jenny hissed, grabbing at Joey’s arm. “We could go through the side door. Jimmy it open with your golf club.”

“Or we could just do this with the golf club.” Joey shrugged her off, brandished the golf club, and slammed it into one of Blair’s great windows. Jenny winced but had nothing to worry about, the golf club rebounded off the glass as though it were made of plastic. “Or not…”

“And here I was, thinking you were prepared for an apocalypse.”

Joey waved her snide remark away and started walking along the path that would lead to the front doors and around the side of the building. “Guess we’ll do it your way,” he said, throwing the golf club into the flowers.

“You’re just going to leave that here?” Jenny asked, rushing to catch up to him. “What if a monkey takes it and tries to bash us with it?”

“This isn’t a cartoon, Jenny. Hey, look — the side door’s open!”

 

 
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: Bliss.

Apologies to those who were reading each day... I've decided to only write when I'm alone so that I'm not ignoring my family for 6-8 hours every day. So, my April Writing Madness probably won't be completed, but the story will go on into May. Will have to change my header image. 😅

These future posts will no longer reach the 2000-3000 word mark nor will they be complete chapters. I'm just writing and posting as I go along now. Need to get this done, even if its only a little per day! A little is better than nothing!

 

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 1,258

Total wordcount is 25,402

 

📝 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! 📝🤓

 

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_{Header image is courtesy of Pixabay, and was manipulated using the Deep Dream Generator.}