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Leonard – Part One - Introducing Leonard


This is when you get to meet Leonard.

Leonard is a regular human being, six feet or so tall. He is a single white male from a current, regular sized North American city on the current, regular Earth. He has a regular human job, does regular human things, and cannot take care of a plant decently. Leonard likes to watch rugby on the television. He needs a haircut. He also has three pairs of shoes and he alternates between two them and for some reason blames the other pair for ruining his last relationship so, he never wears them. He is liked, but not really that popular with his friends. He kind of fell out of touch after high-school and doesn’t really get out that much. He is kind of a home-body. Smart, but not brilliant. He is a good guy. Pays his bills on time. Owns a car. You know, just a guy. That is mostly Leonard. There is more to him, of course so do not close the book on him just yet, all humans are unique, some are just less unique than others. Leonard was slightly less unique.

He was just having lunch with the two ladies you just met. Leonard was in the salad that Julia hardly touched; he was in a layer under the cheese and on top of the lettuce. If she had eaten the salad, he would have been the "meaty good part." He was packed in shoulder to shoulder with about a dozen other humans, and was as they were, naked. Some of them were dead, some not dead. He could not tell which was which because the not dead ones were just as still as the yes-dead ones. Leonard is currently not feeling very well but Leonard is very lucky to be one of the not-dead ones.

Also, Leonard has no idea what the fuck is going on; none at all. Neither do you, but you will, as will Leonard.

He was just as confused while getting dumped into the trash as he was three hours prior. Three hours prior he woke up freezing his ass off in the pitch black lying on his back. He was disoriented. Actually, saying “Leonard was disoriented” is the rough equivalent of saying “lava is hot.” Leonard was not just disoriented, he was displaced, in another time, on another earth, and is considered food; he was so completely fucked up not one cell in his body felt un-fucked up. He had no idea where he was, how he got there, or if he was even awake. Unfortunately for Leonard, he was not dreaming, and Leonard was about to have the great-goddamn-grand-daddy of all long days.

This was the day Leonard woke up in a Styrofoam carton full of people in the walk in cooler of a fast-food restaurant in a food-court. This was the day Leonard became the ingredient in a salad purchased by a huge bipedal, bulimic toad who worked at the Gap. This was the day Leonard would avoid being eaten alive by that same carnivorous toad only to be tossed into a trashcan full of rotting deep-fried body parts, frapped baby guts, huge baby parts, and stacks of groaning, twitching, seemingly paralyzed or dying, naked people.

Light flooded onto the pile as the lid of the trash-can was lifted illuminating the bio-horror on which he was lying; it defied description – aww fuck it, no it didn’t – he was lying on a bit of gory wax paper that was previously used as a grease mop for some gigantic mexi-fries. Gore, gore, and gore all around him. It was a trash bag smeared up the sides in gore and gore and gore which filled every bit of available space. It was a pile of fly-ridden, fast-food remains of tens of thousands of people. Also fries and soda-pop cups and napkins and things that were not human remains.

“Fuck,” he said, lying in the muck at the top of the festering heap of filth.
Then Leonard puked.
Normally the sight if his own vomit would make Leonard want to vomit more, this time it did not. He buried his face in it, thankful for the familiar smell of his own bile as the top of the bag was twisted shut, and he was born away at the top of the pile, bad amphibian-pop bleeding from the headphones of Jake, the horny, horny-toad hauling his ass to the dumpster in the hefty-bag that would be his tomb.

Next

Date Written: July 15, 2004
Author: TheBuyer
Average Vote: 3.5

Comments:
07/22/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan: So what you're saying is that Leonard; a regular guy, is now food for giant toads, in some sort of parallel earth development...and this is part one?
07/22/2004 anonymous: In a nutshell. Too wordy? Something happens soon, I promise.
07/22/2004 qualcomm: i'm finding all those paragraphs daunting. not sure i can do it.
07/22/2004 qualcomm: though i do like how in the first graf, The Buyer (a bill collector) notes as the first criterion in support of Leonard being a "good guy" the fact that he pays his bills on time.
07/22/2004 anonymous: Leonard also does not have a poorly designed 'creative' voice-mail greeting.
07/22/2004 Stash: i'm in love with the concept and the writing. it's not too wordy at all from my perspective. i really want to give it a five but i can't get over the "Leonard vomitting on himself and burying his face in the puke" part; isn't he chopped into pieces or did i miss something?
07/22/2004 anonymous: He's fine, just all messed in the head. More to come.
07/22/2004 Stash (5): apparently so. marvelous, well done then.
07/22/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan: Are you a big Douglas Adams fan by any chance, Author?
07/22/2004 anonymous: Ya, but I like to think I secretly wrote his books.
07/22/2004 Mr. Pony: I can't wait for Leonard Part Six!
07/22/2004 Jacob Starfish: F U, Pony
07/22/2004 scoop: I second that emotion, Jacob Starfish! Your sentiments concerning that Pony character sure are right!
07/22/2004 Mr. Pony: scoop, your constant insistence that you are just wearing shorts and a T-shirt wouldn't be so silly if you weren't always wearing your feelings like a fleshy, ballooning party dress.
07/23/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan: ew...welcome back Pony!
08/3/2004 Jacob Starfish: A lot of words were used to tell me not a lot of things. Also, the narrator has now become Douglas Adams. And there is so much build-up, and it's all labeled "build-up"!
08/3/2004 Mr. Pony (2):
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: Mr. Pony: This one I thought was best and most important because of all the buildup and grossness, your 2s for other segments don't bother me but this 2 does. I think that if there are any laughs in this entire series they'd be here, and incedentally this is something I should have split into two, and killed Leonard off at the end of the second one, or at least given him a really cool machine gun or something.
08/3/2004 Mr. Pony: I think Starfish's problem with all the buildup was that it was not so much actual suspense, but the narrator telling us to feel suspense, and quite a lot of it. Just a minute; here it comes; there's something very special about Leonard; boy, are you going to be surprised! It's kind of a lot to ask, without any actual proof. Also, I think (unless you're joking) you may be focusing too much on the details of the story (how it should be divided, stuff people should be holding, etc, and not enough on the larger ideas you are trying to get across. I'm not saying that themes and big ideas are essential, but on something this long, I'm not sure I'm willing to be interested in a seemingly random list of events. I hope I'm not being overly harsh, or putting any sort of limit on your forever, but I'm just saying, is all.
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: Ahh, thanks for clarifying. No worries about harshness, the first people I showed this to said things like, "You wrote all this? Did it take a long time?" and "You are deliberately trying to offend me" so this honest critisism, even if it isn't positive reaction, is welcome reaction.