Nonfunctioning Title

The atmosphere on this particular day in Stamford, Connecticut was rather dismal. The skies were grey and the weather forecast had predicted rain. It did look like it was going to do so. Oddly, there was little wind. A leaf rattled on the sidewalk and a squirrel darted up a tree. The traffic on the street moved quickly, cars passed the park as if avoiding it intently and maliciously.
On a park bench sat a man looking bored and semi-depressed. He rather wished it would rain.
A cloud passed overhead.
The cloud was rather heavily burdened with rain. Unfortunately, the cloud had a blockage problem; it had often gone to hospitals, but it, being merely water vapor, had a rather difficult time getting medical attention. Although the weather forecast had predicted rain, today the cloud was rather complacent providing shade for the miser-able populace. However, as the cloud slowly approached the man on the park bench, it wondered if it should in fact rain on this man. The man looked depressed, and the cloud wondered if it should make this man’s life poetically worse by raining on him. It was asking for it if the man was sitting on a park bench when the weather forecast had predicted rain.
On the other hand, the park bench had rather different opinions on the prospect of being rained upon.
Lou Rogers sat on the bench, bored and waiting for it to rain. Despondently he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a rumpled package of cigarettes and an old lighter. He put one of the cigarettes into his mouth and lit it.
He took a long draw from the cigarette and he reclined, looked at the cloud in the sky, frowned, and blew smoke out.
He thought of his life. He worked at an advertising agency in Stamford. He never liked his job; it was just something to keep him alive while he figured out what he was supposed to do with his life. And his love life was no different, just a series of empty soulless sexual encounters .
Lou got off the bench, took one last draw from his cigarette, dropped it and started to walk towards the street.
It then began to rain.

         ----
Lou walked on the rainy sidewalk heading back to work from his lunch break. He held an umbrella and newspaper in one hand, and a steamy cup of coffee in the other. As he walked down the sidewalk, he would occasionally take sips from his coffee. As he passed a fruit stand he slipped on an overwhelmingly cliché banana peel. He got to his feet and a man wearing bright lemon yellow tennis shoes passed by, but when he looked for the man, he had utterly disappeared. He then thought to himself about who would wear lemon yellow sneakers.
As he continued to walk down the sidewalk, he realized he was running late, and rushed to the doors of Très Bien Advertising Firm.  He forgot about the man in the bright sneakers, and became more concerned about the stain on his grey suit pants. He cursed under his breath, mumbling something about the fruit stand and about how ridiculous the situation was. He would sue, but slipping upon a banana peel seemed too insignificant to get worked up over. For a moment, his mid wandered and the sneakers passed through his mind before being filed away in the part of the brain that stores useless and forgotten information.
Lou entered the front offices and went up to the receptionist, a man named Nick Mourningside.
“Hey Lou, you’re late coming from lunch break”, said Nick.
“Yeah, I ran into some problems on the way back from lunch,” Lou grumbled, indicating his pants.
“Yikes, that’s not good. What happened?”
“Believe it or not, but I slipped on a banana peel.”
“Ha! Wait, can that can actually happen?” Nick laughed aloud.
“Yeah it sort of sucks.” Lou chuckled.
A phone rang. “Well, you better get back to work, Lou. You don’t want to get into any trouble.” Nick said quietly before he answered the telephone cheerily.
He walked over to his desk and opened up his Pong program.

         ----
The alarm clock beside Lou Roger’s bed rang into the darkness. Lou stirred a little bit, and he hit the snooze. Silence crept into the room once again. For three minutes, it lingered, lurking in the corners of the room, until it was forced to flee. The alarm rang again.
Lou rolled out of bed and walked into the kitchen. He filled up a glass pitcher with water and inserted it into a contraption on the counter.
After messing with the coffee maker for a few short minutes, he stomped blearily down the hallway into the bathroom. He shed his clothes, yawned, turned on the shower, and stretched while waiting for the water to warm up. After a while of thinking into the mirror, he climbed into the shower. In the kitchen, the coffee perked.
It was stormy outside today, so Lou decided on a navy blue suit with a cyan tie and green shirt. Walking into the kitchen, he fed his two fish, Leonard and Dale. He poured himself a cup of coffee and dropped some bread into the toaster.
He walked outside and opened his umbrella, a futile gesture; he was soaked by the time he had it open above his head. It was heavily raining. Thousands of small beads dropped from the skies and pelted the thin layer of plastic suspended above his head. It would be another regular day, thought Lou dejectedly.
Then he passed an alleyway next to his apartment building. A trash bin fell and made a loud clanging noise as something scurried away. Looking into the alleyway, he saw the old beat-up trashcan rolling gently in the mud before settling itself with a satisfying squelch. A car passed by, taillights glaring as it receded into the distance.
He trudged on in the rain walking slowly to his pitiful job, then stopped in a small convenience store to buy a newspaper and a pack of gum. While at the counter, a man walked out. He had not noticed the person when he had come in, but now something about the mysterious figure intrigued him. It was not the long dark overcoat that interested him, nor was it the nondescript look to the man, it was his shoes. The shoes were a bright yellow. Lou was convinced that this was the same man he had seen a few days earlier. How many people in all of Megalopolis would even contemplate wearing such shoes? Not many, he decided.
Lou left the store and looked down the streets for the mysterious figure with eccentric footwear, but he had all but disappeared. This troubled him. He continued to walk on to his place of employment.
He sat alone at his desk and stared at his little potted plant he had bought off some guy in the street. It had only been three dollars and sixty-eight cents, and he rather liked it. He had never really known what sort of plant it was; he just thought it added some atmosphere to his office space.
Looking at the computer screen blankly he noticed that the desktop screen seemed to be melting into a giant bug that was threatening to eat his brain. He wondered why the bug was speaking to him, and why he was seeing it in the first place.
Lou woke up with computer keys in his cheek. He had fallen asleep at work again. Looking around him suspiciously, he could see no one giving him a glare or odd look so he went back to work. Typing furiously he wrote a nice little ad for a beer commercial, it involved a bunch of fuzzy little animals drinking a certain alcoholic beverage and then having the fighting strength to take over the world. The message was pretty simple, even for a regular drunkard, he had thought. He thought about the moral dilemma of having an advertisement involving possibly cartoon animals and alcohol, it seemed like it would appeal to children, but then he considered all the underage drinking going on in his middle school. “What the hell,” he said to himself as he saved the document.
Lou went into the break room and got some coffee. As he slowly sipped his warm caffeinated beverage, he looked out the window. Out side across the street a couple was walking along, they looked happy. The man bent down slightly to give the woman a kiss on the cheek. The couple stopped at a car, and the man opened the door for the woman, and then got into the other side. The car’s lights blinked on, and the car slowly got out of its parallel-parked position and then began to accelerate to a nice city speed as it moved out of the view of the window. He continued looking at the dry spot where the car had been as rain fell to make the cement as damp and dark as its surroundings. After a minute, there was no sign a car had even been there, and the couple all but a memory in a sad onlooker’s mind.
He thought about the couple. He was rather lonely himself, and wanted something else in his life than an empty soulless job and two ungrateful fish . Unbeknownst to Lou, his life would soon change, and it would change in a way he had never thought even possible.
Heading back to his desk he dove back into his workload and became, for some reason, utterly engrossed in an ad for a new shoe for Nike.

         ----
Lou was snoring away worriedly. He was tossing and turning in his bed, a dreamless sleep. Unknown to him, outside his apartment an idle car sat on the side of the street. The car was rather dirty; it had many patches of rust all over it and a teal paint job. But, one could also assume that the body was made of copper and the green bits were just corrosion. The left rearview mirror was snapped off and there was a black trash bag covering the right rear window. It would occasionally emit black clouds of carbon monoxide from the rusty muffler that was suspended by an old bungee cord. It was an ugly car, and no one had noticed it sitting there. No one had noticed it parking there, and in the morning when it sidled out of its spot and crept down the street, no one noticed.

         ----
The phone in Lou Rogers’ apartment rang into the silence.
Lou’s phone rang a second time.
The third time the phone only got half of the ring completed before being picked up by the drowsy occupant; it was his mother.
“Your uncle Jeremy is dying. He’s asking for you to come out to see him,” said Dorothy Rogers solemnly.
“Alright, I’ll be on my way mom, see you soon.” Lou clicked off the receiver.
After showering and getting dressed, Lou called a taxi service to come pick him up in twenty minutes. After this he packed some clothes and his best suit, called work to take off some time, and headed out his door, leaving Leonard and Dale alone in their little glass bowl. Leonard overturned himself and began to twitch around in the water. Dale just stared vacantly at the light switch near the fishbowl. Thunder rumbled in the distance and a raven began to tap at the window of the empty apartment.

         ----
“So where you travelin’ to?” asked the cab driver in a thick Bostonian-Irish accent. His name was Murphy and he had a big cigar in his mouth, and wore an old Yankees cap on his black and grey hair.
“Seattle, my uncle has been fighting cancer off and on for the last five or so years, and he’s nearing the end,” answered Lou nervously.
“Cancer, eh? Yeah, me brother had that, in the spine, killed ‘im dead ‘thin a year. Me dad kilt ‘imself over it, Seamus always was ‘is favorite son! Good riddance, I say, serves ‘im right, ‘e ‘accidentally’ killed my flower garden...” The taxi driver continued ranting about such things all the way to the airport. Subjects the old man had opinions on were numerous and diverse, and somehow they all were strung together with vague connecting elements. The smoke and the accent annoyed Lou, and by the end of the journey, for some reason, he had a strange new inclination to strangle armadillos. Lou grabbed his suitcase, paid (and possibly over-tipped) the cabbie, and walked as fast as he could to the main entrance.
Lou’s shoes squeaked as he walked across the waxed linoleum floor of the airport foyer. He heard the squeak and crept back to the carpet to wipe his feet. The airport was rather desolate, only about twenty or so people. The lines were practically empty.
A thin man  in a large coffee-cup costume stood outside the nearest soulless franchised Koffee-Stop.  He held a sign in his hand and was yelling out about the strange concoctions that could be purchased inside. The man evoked a pity within most who walked by. His life seemed to be, from looking at his career choice, not exactly stellar by any means. The truth was that the man was a struggling poet and transvestite. He would get some of his prose from the strange and emotional atmosphere of the airport. Most of his poems expressed great sadness or frustration, while still others expressed the rare hope and joy experienced within the airport. Very few of his poems were about the airport, but the depressing atmosphere and décor merely helped nurture his tortured soul.
Lou went over to the ticket booth and was welcomed warmly in a generic greeting of chilling exactness.
“Yes, uh, I would like to buy a plane ticket to Seattle,” said Lou.
“Alright we will see what we have available, when are you planning on traveling?”
“Today, please, as early as you can squeeze me in.”
“Alright,” said the woman, squinting at the screen, “We’ve a seat available on the 5:45 to O’Hare, and a 1:00 flight to Seattle. Will that do, sir?”
“Yes, alright, sounds fine,” muttered Lou vaguely.
“Alright here you go; your flight will depart from terminal 4B, enjoy your flight, sir.”
Lou sat on an extremely uncomfortable blue chair in the terminal reading the previous day’s newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. He felt greatly stressed, frustrated, and worried. The latter was nothing new, but the two former were side effects of his location. Lou moved about in the chair trying to get comfortable, tossed the newspaper aside, and settled himself in a very irritated pose. He noticed a small stuffed giraffe on the floor beneath one of the seats across from him. A small child probably left behind the giraffe on the floor, and the mother was likely to be in a bad mood. Lou picked up the giraffe and noticed the stitches on the neck, its worn and dirty appearance, and its missing ear. He randomly decided to keep the dilapidated toy and stuffed it into his carry-on. He then began to whistle an old Beatles tune as he awaited the plane’s arrival.

         ----
Alphonse Robinson sat in a small dimly lit bar in Seattle. He was in his mid twenties, thin, almost always had a trademarked wide grin on his face, and seemed to be overly enthusiastic about just about anything that would come his way. The man sat in the corner drinking alcohol as to counter the depression he was currently suffering. Alphonse could hear music, but he was unsure of its subject, notes, and lyrics. He tipped his glass bottoms-up to get the last trickle of alcohol pooled in the bottom of the mug.
Alphonse began to notice that the music was somewhat slow, and employed the use of a piano and possibly acoustic guitar. The words began to form definite meanings in Alphonse’s mind, and the lyrics were somber and meaningful, pertaining to the loss of love or life.  He now understood that he needed more alcohol. He stumbled over to the bar and asked in a nice tone of voice  for another mug of lager. The bartender, named Phil, looked at Alphonse and frowned.
“I know your father, he would not be happy to see you wallowin’ in pity, now, I’ll help you sober you’self up and I’ll send you in a cab to see him at the hospital,” said Phil kindly, yet harshly. “Life’s too short to be a fool, I am not gonna see you killin’ yourself, no reason for too many funerals, there’s enough death as it is these days, now sit down.”
Alphonse half grimaced, half grinned, and sat himself on the barstool. He laid his head upon the bar and began to snore quietly. He mumbled something about a red telephone and the barman sighed as he went to fetch some hot sauce and coffee from the back.

         ----
The flight to Chicago was not nearly as bad as expected. He heard the captain explaining that the weather at O’Hare was decent and they would be arriving there on schedule. The cabin was pressurized and Lou’s ears popped. The plane crept towards the runway. He fell asleep as the plane accelerated and the large machine launched into the sky.
He was awoken about twenty minutes into the flight by the old man wearing glossy round glasses who sat in the aisle seat. He became aware of his surroundings slowly, and noticed that the flight attendants were passing out drinks and pretzels .
After downing his orange juice, he laid his head back and let the cool, recycled air hit him in the face. The old man sipped his soda and turned to Lou, proffering his bony hand, and introducing himself as Raymond Jay.
“I’m headin’ home to Denver,” Jay said with enthusiasm. “My grandson just got married, I was here in Stamford, for the wedding, they’re a happy couple, yessir.”
“Hey, that’s great, you must be proud.”
Jay beamed and then asked Lou what his final destination was. He explained to the man about the situation with his uncle and the unexpected phone call that had awoken him early that morning. The man offered commiseration and patted him on the shoulder.
“What do you do for a livin boy?”
“I work in a small advertising firm in Stamford, the pay’s good, but it is such an, er, well an empty existence. I guess that is my problem, it is not that interesting of a job at all. I feel like my life should be leading up to something, but, all I get is an uncle with cancer and a flight to Seattle.”
“You’re a prop, not an actor; you gotta just do something out of character to become more, to live a life worth living. People called me a ninny head for pursuing a job in the FBI, and I been through some shit no-one’d ever believe,” Jay said with a wide grin, “the “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you” type of stuff, and look at me now, I’m no fool, I’m 87 and still kickin. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some business to attend to.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and walked back to the toilets. When Jay returned Lou was snoozing peacefully against the window.
The plane continued to fly through the white wisps of water vapor suspended in the sky, and speeding away from the sun rising over the east.

         ----
A couple was sitting on the park bench, making out. The park bench was utterly disgusted, the one day during that week that it hadn’t been raining, a couple just had to choose it to sit upon while publicly displaying revolting and excessive affection.
The bench often thought that it would be much happier back home as a tree. It missed its branches and leaves, it even missed the sap and the simple pleasures of photosynthesis, oh what satisfaction would result in the converting of sunlight, carbon dioxide, and dihydrogen oxide into glucose and emit oxygen in the process. It had been many years since it had experienced photosynthesis, and it missed it so much. The park bench was glad that its manufacturers were nice enough to augment wrought iron to itself so as to keep the boards together. The operation had been rather painful, however the lumbering process had been the worse, it often wondered what had happened to the rest of itself, but the answer was too horrific to comprehend .
But in the und the park bench was rather content with life, sometimes old people would sit upon it and feed the pigeons. Days like those that it wasn’t raining were rather enjoyable. Sometimes it would consider the irony of not liking rain, it used to love the rain as a tree, but as a park bench, it just could not stand the inclement weather. But it had decided that the lumbering process which had changed its shape had also changed its personality  and weather preferences.
But the fact remained that the park bench was not a fan of such behaviors, especially upon itself, so the bench groaned loudly and the couple, shocked, ran away. The bench started to laugh silently to itself as the birds chirped happily in the trees.

         ----
Alphonse half staggered, half swaggered, down the hospital hallway. The nurses who knew him had a sad look of pity on their faces, the newer nurses and the coldhearted  ones were afflicted with emotions ranging from confusion to disgust. He flashed a grin at everyone at the nurse’s station, and he walked to the middle of the hallway where he entered his father’s room. Jeremy Robinson was asleep, so his son sat down and flipped through a newspaper sporadically until he would find something interesting. He would read the first paragraph once or twice before giving up on finding out why the lemurs were stolen from the zoo. He decided that he was too hung over to read any more, so he too began to sleep.
He awoke, feeling energized much later. Alphonse went up to the bed and his father awoke.
“Hello there son, I’m glad to be seeing you.” The old man smiled weakly and coughed.
“Yeah pops, I’m here for you, plus, there are some lovely nurses here, then some…”
“Oh hush up son, your time with me is short and all you think about is women, listen here, I want you to have something of mine, there is a vault in my house that holds some books and research I have done, I want you to continue with this, for me, it’s very important.”
“Okay dad, but I’m a busy guy...” Once again, his father cut him off.
“Bullshit, you do nothing with your life, now here’s a chance to make something of ya, I know you have the brains, you’re my son, but grow up boy, it’s about damn time. I know you can figure it out in time for…” Jeremy dozed off into a light sleep, a faint smile on his face.
Later in the day his heart slowly came to a stop, and he lay peacefully still on his bed. An electronic tone cried out, and Alphonse began to cry. This surprised him, he had no idea he even had emotions, but here he was crying over the loss of his eccentric father. After thinking about it, he realized that it made more sense than he originally thought. He had loved his father, now he was gone, and he had not said it to him. This fact made the tears spurt even more. He felt like an asshole. This wasn’t exactly far off, but certainly, he could do better. His father’s orange hospital armband seemed to glow, and he was stunned. He went over to the chair and sobbed quietly into his hands as the nurses cut off the loud electronic wail.
Later, Alphonse awoke to the nurses telling him to go home. The next thing he remembered he was home in his bed.

         ----
“So, sir, you are looking for the best way to send your dear old dad down the River Styx, no? Well fear not, for we have many different sorts of coffins to meet anyone’s needs!” The small squatish funeral director wore a gray suit with an American flag tie, and he smelled of eggnog and stewed cabbage.
Alphonse looked at the man and shrugged, “I just need something that works for my dad, nothing too extravagant of course.”
Ignoring him, the little man went on chattering away madly. “Here we’ve got one nice outer coffin cover thingy; it has a titanium hull with space-age comfort! No worms or grave robbers will get in. And over here is a marble coffin casing, with custom engraving, all for only six-thousand dollars! It’s a great buy, and it comes with a free funeral home water bottle!”
Alphonse began to grow sick. “Got anything a tad more traditional, like, I don’t know wood maybe?”
“Hmmm, one of those sticklers, eh? Well come on, this way.” The man grumbled as he led Alphonse down a showcase hallway where various other caskets were assorted. One casket seemed to have a bronzed Fender Stratocaster mounted on top, and another appeared to have a fully operational Tetris game attached to it. Another was adorned with moose antlers. Then he saw the perfect coffin. It was a wooden casket with intricate designs woven about it, in a Celtic knot sort of manner. It seemed to fit his father perfectly and he would have liked it, Alphonse thought optimistically.
The small man was happy to be rid of it. It had been in the hallway for decades, and it was about time such an ugly coffin was disposed, at least it would no longer devalue the popular Mooseket5000, the funeral director’s personal favorite. The two men went into a small room to discuss funeral arrangements over complimentary cold coffee.

         ----
Somewhere, pretty far away, not to get too cliché, there is a field.
Some time ago, in this field, a large animal was grazing. It just sat there and ate the grass. Day after day, it ate the red grass that grew in the fields, but then, it had finally had enough. The animal, a large purple wool-covered creature named Bunny Sparkle Moonshine, went over to the high electric fence, threw his ex-best friend, Petey Meaty Fergendwork, into it, and laughed maniacally as the sparks flew.
Later, Bunny Sparkle Moonshine ambushed his captor and left the fried purple and black corpses in the red field. He walked on toward the rising sun, until he came upon an odd furry creature. Bunny Sparkle Moonshine had never seen a creature like it before, and he became curious. He approached the tall blood red colored creature, and noticed that it only had two eyes, and an odd horn like protrusion beneath them. It also had a hole in its face that closed, and then stretched out opening to reveal something white and shiny.
Bunny Sparkle Moonshine stated to feel fear at the back of its neck, his wool was standing on end. He began to quiver and then unexpectedly he bit the strange creature in one of the two long extremities that anchored it to the ground. The creature opened the face hole widely, sounds and vibrations emitted from it, its eyes narrowed, and it jumped around on the unbitten extremity while holding the bitten one with the two shorter extremities. Bunny Sparkle Moonshine ran off in fear bleating as it trampled large luminous flowers. He eventually grew tired and fainted.

         ----
The sun shone brightly and there were few clouds in the sky. For the City of Seattle, it was a bit of an anomaly. The blue sky cheered up many nearly suicidal people and these people decided to go buy some ice cream, yet other more desperately crazy people saw this as an opportunity to jump off a building or shoot themselves in the head.
The cemetery reeked of the semi fragrance of freshly cut grass. Mourners had congregated around a fresh hole in the ground, and a casket was being lowered. Some mourners began to realize that their attire, though appropriate, was growing rather uncomfortable as the ceremony dragged on. Alphonse was speaking solemnly and tearfully about his father, and Lou stood nearby, his head bowed for reverence sake. The commemoration that passed Alphonse’s lips was generic, he spoke of the greatness of the man, his odd quirks, of which he had many, the time he had introduced his son to alcohol, and other amusing anecdotes to give people happy memories. After the ceremony ended there was a moment or two of silence, after which the crowd dispersed. People muttered incantations of a Christian persuasion to send the dead to another realm, or something to that effect.
Alphonse turned to Lou and said, “I appreciate you being here, my friend.”
“No problem, you two were always my favorite relatives, a little on the odd side, but hey, that’s the attraction I suppose,” said Lou.
“Well it is a pleasure seeing you again, now let us go get drunk to commemorate.” He grinned his famous grin.
“To celebrate your father going on to a better place!”
Alphonse looked the hole, his face with an expression of deep thought. He looked at Lou, then looked at the hole, tilted his head, and shrugged. “I do not know whether he would have liked the enclosed space, but the cushioning seemed comfortable,” Alphonse said.
Lou looked confused, but then decided to let it go, and together they walked down to his red rental. Two men began to fill the grave with dirt. The car exited the graveyard and turned left. The sky began to darken, a relief to the diggers.

         ----
Leonard was worried. He was usually worried, but now he was just plain disturbed. Dale stared at the stovetop. Leonard had fallen asleep with everything in perfect order. The castle was free of debris, and nothing was missing from the treasure chest. It was just like the other three thousand seven hundred forty two days, but day number 3,743. Everything had changed. Now the entire treasure chest was completely missing. ‘How does that happen?’ he wondered. Now, that was not the only thing strange that had happened. It appeared as though the treasure chest had turned into a blueberry muffin.
‘A blueberry muffin! Oh, the strangeness of it all. What did this little zeta fish ever do to deserve a plastic pirate chest being turned to baked bread products?’ he bubbled, ‘Disaster! Ohgodohgodohgodohgod!’
He began to dart about in the fishbowl. Occasionally he would run into Dale, who would just spiral around and the right himself before going back to a state of semi consciousness. Leonard fussed, and Dale stared.
Outside the apartment it was raining, as per usual.

         ----
The bar was reasonably quiet, and the day was darkening. The radio was playing a sad and soulful cover song. The woman’s voice resonated from another realm, the wine and quiet music helped Alphonse into a stupor. Lou sipped his beer slowly.