Today's assignment in Creative Writing is to write a fictionalized version of what happened during our long 4-day weekend this past week. (Or tell a highly-dramatized version of the truth.) So here's mine.

Mr. Piotrowski and the Woebegotten Waffle Hunt

I bounded out of bed early on Friday, full of energy, ready for the day ahead. I strode briskly into the kitchen and began to make coffee. But when I opened the freezer, every bone in my body fused together and my lungs went dead.

I sank to my knees and raised my head to the heavens. "Why??" I wailed, tears streaming down my face. "Why didn't I buy more frozen waffles yesterday?" I slumped forward and pounded the avacado-green refrigerator door. "It's not fair!" I cried. "It's just! Not! Fair!"

Dazed, numb, I stumbled outside onto the frozen sidewalk and the cruel world that lay beyond our neighborhood. The corner store was closed. Two blocks away, the Kwik-E-Mart carried no waffles. As I dragged myself toward the eastside supermarket, I reflected on how stupid I was to leave the house without shoes or a jacket. But it didn't matter; nothing mattered.

My toes began to shrivel and my arms lost all feeling by the time I reached the semiautomatic doors of the supermarket. I somehow found my way to the breakfast freezer, and stood there in the aisle, surveying the goods. A pack of employees had gathered to peer at me, but I didn't care. My jaw slack, my eyes half-shut, I gawked at the cooler and realized I was too exhausted to weep: They were out of waffles.

I roamed around the city for three days, lost in a cloud of self-pity and loathing. Eventually, I collapsed under a banyan tree near Fish Lake, where I froze to death. Fortunately, though, a biogenetic engineer from UW-Madison took a sample of my DNA, cloned me, placed the new life form in a temporal accelerator, and implanted a cache of memories.

On Monday evening, the door to the cryogenic chamber slid open and I stepped through the billowing haze. "Mr. Piotrowski-beta," the scientist said, "how do you feel?"

I blinked several times, trying to get my bearings. "I could really go for some waffles," I said.

TimeWaster™

Go look around at HomeStarRunner. There's some funny stuff on there.

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