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Two hours later, Roy was standing in front of Leonard holding a gun with a drink in hand. Leonard was sitting on the couch staring at him. It appears Roy was having just as hard a time believing Leonard as Leonard was accepting his current situation.
‘Little bald bastard is going to shoot me and eat me,’ Leonard thought, bettering his grip on his bottle, and said, “I made it up Roy, I'm not well, please don’t eat me Roy, I smoke, I'll kill ya Roy, put the gun down. I take it all back, this is all very normal, your lifestyle and toads and shit are are very nice, please don't eat me Roy.” babbling etc..
Roy didn't drop the gun, he dropped his drink and put a real funny smile on his funny face. He wiped his bald head with his hairy hand and moved zombie slow towards Leonard, safety off and finger on the trigger.
"Come on Roy," Leonard said, "Put the gun down, this has been a really long day already, you don't want to clean up a body do you? You could shoot me tomorrow, maybe. After breakfast. We can go for a walk, maybe get some sandwiches, find a nice spot, pop pop home before dinner, come on Roy, it's sunday, you can't shoot a person on sunday."
Roy was silent as he glided closer and closer, the room seemed to lengthen behind and in front of him, it was taking forever and Leonard was shitting in his pants.
‘He can’t hit me from there?’ thought Leonard. He squashed himself into a little ball on the couch and prepared to die for the second time in less than a day with his eyes squeezed shut.
Leonard - Part 6
Roy stopped short of sitting directly on top of him, but not by much. He said quietly, “You’re really new, really?”
“Please Roy, this has not been a good day, just do it,” Leonard squawked.
“Do you know what this is?” Roy said.
Leonard looked up and saw what was in Roy’s hand. A key. Not a gun, that was in his waistband, a small brass key on a Hawaii keychain with "Do Not Copy" stamped on it.
Roy sat down and started talking. He explained everything. The toads, evolution, the south continent, the sterile bio-dome, the giant babies, culture, religion, politics, the social structure of the place, everything. He talked for six straight hours and when he was done the morning was getting old, they had eaten two full meals, Leonard was still alive and they were completely talked out. They silently went their separate ways, Roy to his room, and Leonard to the spare, the key Roy gave him clutched in his hand.
Leonard sat up in the bed in the room belonging to a child killed by the toads in a house in a suburb in a bubble in a gravel pit. His mind was either dead or swimming, he couldn’t tell which. He knew everything and nothing, he understood, but couldn’t process any of it.
He wept. He clutched the key a little tighter. He slept.
End
Leonard – Chapter One in Six Segments
Date Written: July 27, 2004
Author: TheBuyer
Average Vote: 2.5
Signed,
The Finch
08/3/2004 Mr. Pony: Fair enough. In fact, I have more respect for that than you would believe. But anyway...
08/3/2004 Dylan Danko: YOU THINK THAT PROVES ANYTHING??!?!?!
08/3/2004 The Finch: Thank you for the link, Mr. Pony
signed
The Finch
08/3/2004 Jacob Starfish: How about this?
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: and Dylan Danko is The Finch. Gosh!
Also, Mr. Pony: Thank you for your consideration and comments. I think you've hit the nail mostly on the head. It seemed like a good idea at the time but man, this thing got really, really long really, really fast. I have a damn novel on my hands now and this is the first chapter [which does not segment very well and didn't translate well at all in this format.] I think that if I were a talented artist that Leonard would make for a good graphic novel if edited properly by a large, stifling publication house.
08/3/2004 Mr. Pony: Hey, hey, don't get ahead of yourself there. One thing that Starfish said that I really agreed with was that this thing really feels like you are making it up as you go along. I would add that at several points in the story, it feels like you are doing so without regard for what has happened previously, or what is going to happen next. Some of the ideas are good, but without a framework for them to fit into, they're just random details. Maybe there is a framework there, and I'm missing it entirely, or maybe there intentionally is none, and this is just a style of writing that I don't particularly care for. Either way, I'm left with the sense that my downstairs neighbor has just invited me in for the first time to show me his collection of unusual fingernail clippings.
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: It was written all at once as a chapter then broken up into segments afterwards then each segment was shortened and rewritten before it was posted. On reading the whole thing all the way through, it's pretty obvious to me that I cut some useful material, left some useless material, and published this, as is my style, in its raw, undercooked form leaving my cherished audience writhing in confusion yet again.
08/3/2004 qualcomm: allow me to be a bit more brutal than pony here, the buyer. i think my reaction to your endless short is something like this paraphrase of that fat movie executive from Barton Fink: "You think people are interested in everything that rattles around inside your little kike brain?"
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: That was a little more brutal The Finch, but still appreciated, thank you for your input.
08/3/2004 Mr. Pony: Perhaps THIS will help put matters into perspective.
08/3/2004 TheBuyer: Pony: To clarify; not a hallucination, I hacked out a great unweildy chunk of dialogue that would have turned that 2 into a 1 for sure, it just went on and bloody on forever with Leonard babbling about toads and Roy just not getting it and getting madder and madder until he whips out his piece and threatens to airate Leonard if he doesn't start making sense.
All that subsequent stuff, they key, the giant babies, the bio-dome, etc. will for now remain unexplained but perhaps revisited at a later date. I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to revamp what I've already got written into something funny and useful and try for a second batch of Leonard, especially since Bill Cosby has beaten me to the punch.
08/3/2004 anonymous: Back to Espion it is!
08/4/2004 TheBuyer: Fine, I'll do some actual work. Espion fan fiction is coming to kill us all!!
08/4/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan: Hey, Espion is a cool Pokemón!
08/4/2004 Ferucio P. Chhretan: Oops, that's Pokémon. Sorry.
08/4/2004 Litcube: Fuck! Espion is the name of a Pokemon!?