Happy New Year! This one is from me.
A Coastal Town in New England
is Full of Crazy Characters
is Full of Crazy Characters
by Johi Jenkins
January 17, 2020
Aguaclara sat down on a wooden bench under the
shade of a beautiful tree whose name she didn’t know. A man rode by in a
weird-looking bicycle, but no one appeared to question his transport. Along the
boardwalk people walked with careless abandon, looking for all the world like this
coastal town in New England was totally normal. It totally wasn’t. What the
sign on the road had advertised as a charming little town, had actually turned
out to be a ridiculous parade full of crazy characters.
She tapped her forehead in frustration. “We
should’ve gone to Hawaii instead,” she bemoaned.
“Agreed,” a voice said above her. She looked up
to see Laster as he sat down next to her. “Although all twenty islands are just
one giant tourist pit, I’ll take a Hawaii sunset over this weird town and that
awful storm that came out of nowhere on the way here.”
They had flown in from California, but as they
had descended over the Appalachian Mountains they’d barreled through a thunderstorm
that no weather monitoring bot had predicted.
“That storm was
awful, right?” Aguaclara agreed. “And this town … yeah. Everyone talks so funny
and acts so strange. I think they’re going for quaint, but it’s
remarkably archaic.”
“Yes! Oh my gosh, this place is nuts!” Laster
held up his hands in frustration. “The people are crazy! Just now, I saw a balding
man asking for money. He said he didn’t have anywhere to live.”
“What? Where does he sleep?”
“I don’t know! It doesn’t make sense, but I
didn’t want to pry. Well, I tried to give him money, and he didn’t have a
scanner. He even asked me, ‘why would I have a scanner?’ What! How does he
expect people to help him? Can you believe that?”
Aguaclara nodded sadly. “Laster, I believe you,
but only because I went into a little store where a woman was selling handwoven
goods, and she also said she didn’t have a scanner. She did have a hand
computer that looked like a scanner, but when I waved my wrist over it nothing
happened. She took back the scarf I meant to buy and said she didn’t weave for
free. I said I didn’t want it free; I meant to pay but her scanner didn’t work!
And then she acted really confused and said her computer was a phone and not a
scanner. Okay, crazy lady, bye. I left.”
Laster shook his head. “This whole town is
crazy. While you were shopping I went by the beach. I stopped to watch a small
group of people stretching in unison. I wondered out loud why they would do
that. A woman next to me heard me and said they were doing yoga and that it was
a great way to keep their bodies flexible.”
“Why would they need to exercise for that?
That’s why we have metaxalone in the water. Ooh …” Aguaclara snapped her
fingers. “Maybe these people drink untreated well water. So they’re all stiff.
That’s crazy.”
“Right? But that’s not as crazy as the other thing
she said.”
“What else did she say??”
“She said she was a better teacher than the guy
teaching the class, and had more
experience. But she quit when she found out that he made more money than she
did.”
“What! How come? If she was better, she must
have been getting paid more.”
“I asked the same question, and she just shook
her head and mentioned the gender gap.”
“The gender gap in population? What has that
got to do with salaries?”
“No clue. She was wearing tight pants printed
to look like leopard spots, though, so I just assumed she wasn’t right in the
head.”
Aguaclara shook her head. “These people are
crazy.”
“Definitely,” Laster said. “Maybe we should
just head back.”
“I’m hungry, though. Let’s find some food.
Someone is bound to have a scanner.”
“Let’s hope. I’m hungry, too.”
They walked along the boardwalk until they
reached a small shop with a sign that read: All
forms of payment accepted. They walked up to the counter eagerly and read
the menu. Attempted to, anyway.
“I have no idea what any of this means,”
Aguaclara confessed after a minute.
“Me neither,” Laster said. “Bacon, ham? Drumsticks?
What’s that?”
“And what about this chicken, fish, lobster stuff?
Why call food after an animal?”
At that moment a young man came out of a door
in the back and smiled at them. “Hi, welcome to Ed’s Lobster House. What can I
get you?”
“Um, we’re not sure yet,” Aguaclara answered.
“How ’bout some of our famous lobster? Ed just brought
them in this morning and they’re super fresh.” Seeing their confused
expressions, the young man added, “Ed’s the owner and also the lobsterman.”
Laster frowned, extra confused. “You mean like
a superhero? Like Spider-Man?” He’d heard of Batman and Spider-Man, but not
Lobsterman.
The boy looked confused. “No…? I meant like … a
lobsterman? You know, a person who catches lobsters?”
“Why does he catch lobsters?”
“Uh, maybe to serve them—” he said in an
infantile tone, as he pointed to the restaurant sign “—in his Lobster House??”
Aguaclara and Laster looked at each other in
horror as the light bulb turned on in their heads. And they ran away. Out of
the town and across the road, and into the clearing where their monojet was
parked. Only when they were back inside their jet did they stop to catch their
breath.
“These people eat animals, Laster.”
“What crazy town did we stumble into, Clara?”
But Aguaclara’s gaze had drifted to a banner
that was hanging from a tree. The large, bright letters were printed over depictions
of fireworks. She read the words, but they didn’t make sense.
Happy New Year! 2020
“Gosh in Heaven, Laster,” she finally whispered,
horrified. “You know that crazy storm we went through on the way here?”
But Laster couldn’t answer, because he had too
seen the sign, and had lost his voice.
“I think it warped us back through time,” she
concluded miserably, “… to the 21st century.”
Dun Dun Dunnn
The End
