The Crab Legs Adventure

The Frozen Yogurt Gang Member Crab Leg Adventure!

By Billiam Corona



This is a story about a goofy underling in the infamous Don’t-Look-At-Me-Gang, which operated on a pier for tourists. We will get to the underling, but first some details about the gang:

Headed by the equally infamous and always terrifying Mister Face, who at the age of twenty five had already killed like fifty people or so, but it’s hard to say exactly because he didn’t like to discuss it. Second in command of the 22 members of the Don’t-Look-At-Me Gang was an enthusiastic reckless nineteen year old whose name was: Looks-Like-You-Bout-To-Get-Shot-In-The-Face. It was a long nickname, and most people just called him “Looks-Like”.

The purpose of the gang was on one hand to make money off the pier with their slowly growing cache of businesses, and also to fight off the advances of their sworn enemies: The Get-Out-Of-My-Face Gang who controlled the next pier a couple hundred feet over the water and who, when bored, would shoot grenades at our gang from their pier with a t-shirt launcher.

That’s not to say the Don’t-Look-At-Me was any more gracious in their diplomacy. Often times Mister Face, for sport, would stroll over to Get-Out-Of-My-Face territory in disguise as a publishers clearing house representative, and inform a lone rival that he had won a million dollars. He would let the kid get excited, then remove his fake mustache, revealing his true identity to the kid’s sudden horror, then proceed to beat him to death with a baseball bat he had hidden behind the giant check.

Mister Face was the brains of the Don’t-Look-At-Me, and as far as muscle goes, he certainly held his own.

Now, to the rest the story: its about a sixteen year old underling called Crab-Legs.

Crab-Legs was not the anything of the Don’t-Look-At-Me. In fact he was the weakest, stupidest, most helpless member of the whole thing. They gave him the name Crab-Legs because his legs were thin to the point of being unsettling. He did not know what a crab was, and did not care to find out. He just thought it was a cool word. Crab.

Everybody loved Crab-Legs because they took his shortcomings for innocence, and he was in fact a pretty sweet guy. He was, however, definitely out for blood. He joined the gang months before in order to avenge his father, killed by a t-shirt grenade during a day at the pier. He hated the Get-Out-Of-My-Face and could not think about much but killing them. The Don’t-Look-At-Me let him in because he seemed easy to control. They guessed correctly.

One day Crab-Legs found a real crab while standing on the beach looking at the sand. He Picked it up with his thumb and forefinger and watched it’s legs fly around. He had, despite his extreme proximity to water, never seen anything at all like it and was immediately enchanted with it’s every feature.

It appeared to be made of plastic, and it’s legs were moving and claws opening and closing as if it were walking and fighting at the same time. It’s blank eyes looked ahead with no emotion, just seeing.

“Wow.” said Crab-Legs. He looked around suspiciously, and walked of with it.

When Crab-Legs was a child, his dad took him to a robot exhibit at a local fair. There was a robot that rolled around picking things up and putting them somewhere else. There was one that rolled up and talked to him. There was even a robot that he was able to operate with a remote control. Crab-Legs stayed at the exhibit all day long, even skipping lunch, walking repeatedly from one exhibit to the other.

“Work hard in school,” Said his dad, “and someday you’ll be able to build robots.”

But Crab-Legs didn’t care about that. He just wanted to have one.

“You should build a robot, dad.” He said.

“Nah.” Said his dad. Crab-Legs was heartbroken.

Now, for the first time in his life, Crab-Legs owned what seemed like a robot. Really, it was exactly like a robot, only more complicated. This thing didn’t just have an outer covering, it have a beautiful outer covering, with varying shades of red on white. A robot built by an artist.

Crab-Legs could not stop staring at it and almost got hit by three cars on the way back to the pier. Also, some kid yelled: “Hey, I can’t tell which one is Crab-Legs!”

Not understanding the joke, he ignored the kid and continued to Shadenfreeze, the frozen yogurt stand he worked at.

His one other co-worker was the manager, whose name was “Cigarette-Explosion”, on account of his love for cigarettes and prowess in explosives, of course.

“Hey, Cigarette-Explosion! Look what I found on the beach! It’s like a robot! I think. What do you think?”

Cigarette-Explosion was in and out of the stand bringing in boxes. He was accustomed to Crab-Legs saying dumb things and after many disappointing and futile conversations, no longer had much of an interest in enlightening him.

“Holy crap! Did you build it yourself?” asked Cigarette-Explosion, with affected enthusiasm.

“No, it was on the beach.”

“Oh, okay. I figured it was you.”

Cigarette-Explosion himself wasn’t sure if he was lying out of niceness, or to be condescending.

Crab-Legs was happiness. “Oh, well I probably could’ve. I build ‘em sometimes… but finding ‘em is cool, you know?”

“Yeah, totally. So are you gonna take it home and have it clean your house or something?”

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe.”

“Sounds great, man!”

Cigarette-Explosion went back to bringing in boxes, while Crab-Legs stood at the window, staring at his find. It was this perfect thing, oblivious to all around it, suspended in the air pretending to walk. Always pretending to walk. He stuck his finger in it’s opening and closing claw, which gripped it. He shook them both in greeting.

“Hello.” he said, in a high tone, as if talking to a baby.

When people walked up to order he would place the crab on the counter, hoping people would mention it. It was all he wanted to talk about. The crab would always walk straight to the edge and look down, weighing it’s options. It would never decide before Crab-Legs finished the order and picked it back up for more staring.

“Hey, Crab-Legs! Looks like you found one of your own!” yelled Johnny Aids, from his medical station stand across the walkway.

“Yeah, It’s awesome!” yelled Crab-Legs. “It’s a robot, I guess.”

Johnny Aids’ expression changed from a smile to a look of angry determination.

“No it isn’t.” he yelled.

Crab-Legs was perplexed.

“How do you know?” yelled Crab-Legs.

“How do you not know?” yelled Johnny Aids. “You never seen one of those before?”

Now Crab-Legs was feeling insecure. His first instinct was to say he had, but then realized there was no way out.

“No. Have you?” The ‘have you’ was a last ditch attempt for ground in this sudden dignity fight.

“Yes. Do you wanna know what that thing is?”

The fight was over. Now Crab-Legs even wanted Johnny Aids to tell him what it really was, even though admitting that would make him feel worse. And wouldn’t he maybe rather not know? Maybe he was happier not knowing. He decided quickly that he needed to know.

Crab-Legs winced and said: “Yeah, what?”

Johnny Aids smiled, and began: “It’s a…”

Which was as far as Johnny Aids got before the entire medical stand exploded into pieces, with splintered wood flying everywhere. All the jars of blood in the back shattered, and the blood was launched into the sky, raining onto the screaming, frantic pier-goers, and creating the image of far more blood-shed than had actually taken place. Crab-Legs didn’t need to ask himself what had happened. He’d seen it once before. It was the thing that thrust him into his new life: a t-shirt grenade.

The crab began moving around on the counter at a more frantic pace. In a state of aimless and confused panic (which was not uncommon among dumb sea animals), it fell off the counter to the ground outside of the shack.

“Shit!” yelled Crab-Legs, who was upset and a bit disoriented, but was not about to lose his new robot. He leapt over, finding it upside-down trying to right itself, and picked it up again.

“It’s dangerous out here!” he said to the crab’s senseless eyes. “If you’re not careful, you’ll end up like my…” suddenly he felt tears coming on.”…my somebody. I’ll tell you about it later. Don’t…don’t worry about it.”

The crab accepted this in silence.

Cigarette-Explosion ran up from the back of the stand with two machine guns under one arm, and a frozen yogurt cylinder filled with grenades in his other hand. He had wood chips and blood in his clothes and hair. Crab legs realized he did, too.

“Take some of this stuff! Face just called. We’re going over there! Get rid of that crab!” He dropped one of the guns and set down the cylinder.

“Get rid of what?”

“The crab! Put it down! You’ll get yourself killed hauling that thing around!”

“What?” Crab-Legs was experiencing an overload.

Cigarette-Explosion looked at him frustrated, and with a touch of disappointment. “Don’t tell me you really think that’s a robot.”

He paused, looking at Crab-Legs waiting for a response, forgetting for a second what they had to do.

“Um…” said Crab-Legs, unable to process it all at once. He felt he was under attack from everybody, but that was as complicated as his mind got at the moment. Finally after what felt like eternity but was really more like a second or two, he managed to form a question: “What else could it be?”

“A CRAB! What’s the matter with you! You work on a pier! It’s a sea creature!”

Crab-Legs was not embarrassed. He brought the crab up to his face and looked into it’s eyes, which on account of having no lids created the impression, at the moment, of surprise and intensity. So this is a crab! thought Crab-Legs. Wow.

He looked at it’s legs. Okay. I guess maybe I can see that. Maybe. Not really. Hmm.

Cigarette-Explosion slapped him in the face.

“Snap out of it! Here comes face.”

A large cement truck pulled around the corner. Mister Face was in front, and Looks-Like was shotgun. As it turned, the truck’s engine seemed to scream: “I really really don’t like it when you push the gas pedal this far down.” The truck slammed to a stop upon reaching them. Mister Face had on his fake mustache. Looks-Like was ecstatic.

“Motherfucker, am I right?” said Mister Face.

“What?” Said Crab-Legs.

Mister Face held onto his smirk and motioned with his thumb toward the mixer.

“Climb in that spinny bastard and let’s go kill some people.”

Cigarette-Explosion hurled the grenade cylinder and the guns in the mixer, then he and Crab-Legs climbed up and in, where they found the seventeen other members of the Don’t-Look-At-Me.

“Crab-Legs!” a bunch of them shouted. “Where’s your crab, Crab-Legs! Let’s see that thing!”

Crab-Legs realized instantly that he did not have the crab anymore! His blood felt cold suddenly. He peered up through the opening and saw a nearly invisible light-red speck on the ground.

He’ll never make it! thought Crab-Legs. That little…crab needs me!

“I dropped it!” he yelled to the gang. “I have to go back!”

“Oh, no!” yelled the gang. “Stay with us, man! We’ll buy you a new crab!”

“Sorry, fellas, but this is something I have to do.”

“Awww!” said the gang.

“Hey, Crab-Legs.” said Cigarette-Explosion.

Crab-Legs turned his head. Cigarette explosion tossed him a grenade. Crab-Legs caught it with one hand.

“In case you need it.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Crab-Legs grabbed the rim and leapt out. He tried to nail the landing, but wasn’t successful and rolled a little. He got up and began the jog back to the stand, ignoring the pain in his hip from the grenade mashing into it, which was in his pocket.

After what felt like a pretty long time, he approached the crab.

As he was about to lift it off the ground, he heard the faint sound of a bunch of voices yelling “Oh Shit!” at the same time, which was directly followed by the sound of a powerful explosion. He turned his head back and saw in the distance, the cement truck of his friends completely engulfed in flames, a fireball erupting upward above it.

Crab-Legs felt weak at the knees and fell to them. His vision became blurry. It couldn’t be! he thought. All of them! In that fire! What the hell happened?

In an effort to calm the oncoming panic, he sat on the ground and picked up the crab and begun stroking it’s back with an index finger.

“It’s okay, crab, we’ll be alright. Don’t worry, I think we’ll be just fine. Yeah, just fine. It’s fine.”

He didn’t know how much time had passed before he heard footsteps.

He looked up and saw two mean unfamiliar faces.

“Don’t look at me.” said Crab-Legs, which he had been trained to say to a potential enemy or friend.

“Get out of my face.” said one of them, which was the second thing that informed him he was in trouble. The first thing was that the one who spoke had a t-shirt launcher.

“Looks like we have an outlier, captain.” said the other man.

“Oh yes.” said the captain, smugly.

They were both young looking. Early twenties, maybe. The captain had a military helmet on. The other man was extremely fat, and was very sweaty. Both of them were covered in dust and debris.

“Allow me to introduce myself!” the captain continued. “I’m Captain Ass-Punch. I run things. This fat guy right here is Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets.”

“Don’t look at me!” repeated Crab-Legs, louder.

The captain’s smile went away.

“Kid,” he said. “There is no Don’t-Look-At-Me. It’s over.”

“Don’t Look At Me!”

“I can and am! Now I’m gonna offer you the opportunity to join up with us. I would recommend agreeing to it. There’s a little bit of hazing involved but you can handle it, I’m sure.”

“DON’T LOOK AT ME!” he screamed, and turned his eyes back to the crab, stroking it.

Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets smiled. Captain Ass-Punch sighed. All three knew what was coming next.

“That’s okay.” said the captain. “We figured as much. Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets is gonna kill you now. Does that work for you?”

Crab-Legs didn’t answer, but he looked satisfied enough.

Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets pulled out a pistol, smiling, and began to advance.

After a few seconds, though, he stopped, got hazy eyed, and suddenly leaned down and hurled vomit out all over the ground between the three of them.

“Aw, gross!” the captain exclaimed. “Sorry. He does that sometimes when he gets excited. It’s pretty rough.”

Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets continued vomiting with his hands on his knees, and Crab-Legs saw his chance. He put his hands on the ground behind him and kicked the gun out the fat man’s loose grip, and it went flying. Then Crab-Legs pulled Cigarette-Explosion’s grenade out of his pocket, pulled the pin, tossed it into the vomit pool, got up, and ran as fast as he could.

“Oh, man! Ass-punch!” exclaimed Captain Ass-Punch. “We’ll be running for it, cause I’m not touching your vomit. Come on!” The captain ran.

Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets stood up straight and began to stumble away. Almost immediately he slipped on the ever spreading pool of vomit, and fell stomach first onto the grenade.

“Ow.” said Big-ol-Bowl-o-Bullets.

KA-BOOM!!!!!!!

The image was louder than the sound. The man’s body flew completely apart, smacking the ground and flying through the air, covering the already blood-covered surrounding area with a sticky thick goo that actually resembled vomit, only redder.

Crab-Legs got back up, covered now in body stuff, mesmerized by the destruction he had caused, and spared himself from, to some extent. He almost couldn’t believe it. He had saved himself, and not from just anybody. The two top guys from the Get-Out-Of-My-Face! He did it!

Suddenly a somewhat distant voice knocked him off his cloud. It was a bit more disheveled, but he recognized it anyway. It was Ass-Punch.

“You killed my bowl of bullets!” yelled the captain from about fifty feet away.

“I guess you should’ve been calling him Big-Bowl-Of-Gross-Red-Goo!” yelled Crab-Legs, feeling pretty confident.

“Aw, man, ass-punch again!” said the captain. He was covered in goo as well, and clearly had the wind knocked out of him emotionally. On top of having those things, though, he still also had the t-shirt launcher. He pointed at Crab-Legs with an index finger:

“That was a good one! My comeback will be me killing you!”

The captain produced a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin with a finger from the same hand, and loaded it in.

Then a strange thing happened. There was a POP sound, and the captain stopped what he was doing. Then he closed his eyes and dropped the launcher at feet, having not fired it yet.

Crab-Legs looked around. Did somebody survive? He didn’t see anybody else around, anywhere.

Then his eyes moved to the gun he had kicked away earlier. It was still on the ground, but he noticed it was aimed at the captain, and smoke was coming out of the barrel. There was something on top of the gun, too. He blinked a few times and saw it was the crab, made almost invisible by the goo.

“Thanks, little buddy!” said Crab-Legs.

“Ass-punch…” said the captain, sadly.

KA-BOOM!!!!





The End