Kyle did not wake up today.
Kyle slept until the evening, and let out a labored cry.
"What treachery! The sun has abandon us in our greatest time of need!" he let out in anger.
Only then, did he look over to his trusted alarm clock, Clocky.
"You fool!" bellowed Clocky. "It's night time now, you've slept through the day and missed literally EVERYTHING."
Kyle begins to think to himself for a long, long moment. (Isn't it strange how some moments are quick, as if they never even happened at all, while others can seemingly take an eternity?)
Kyle thinks on this for many, many more moments. Some short, some quite long. Kyles fingers begin to tremble. His heart begins beating faster and faster until the thumping causes Clocky to interrupt.
"Uhh, Kyle?" questions Clocky. "I think you may be having what is known to your kind as an existential crisis".
Oh no! Kyle is indeed having himself quite a time, indeed. Never in his waking life did he ever expect himself to be confronted with the harsh realities of time.
"An exi-what now, Clocky?" Kyle asks somewhat disrespectfully, knowing full well how to say the word existential.
"An existential crisis, my dear boy. It simply means you are loosing your mind, or something. I'm just a clock, you know." Clocky responds.
Kyle thinks on this for a couple of short moments before nodding approvingly at his favorite alarm clock and acknowledging that pressing the matter further with Clocky probably isn't going to get him anywhere.
"Well, be that as it may, why didn't you wake me up sooner?" Kyle asks Clocky with conviction.
Clocky, with his limited ability to express emotion just shrugs. "Maybe you shouldn't be putting all of your time eggs in the same time basket." He retorts.
Kyle now has worked himself up into a tizzy. He wasn't even aware he had any time eggs at all, and wouldn't the most appropriate place for them be a time basket? Furthermore, if the basket could hold as many time eggs as he had, what's the harm in placing them there?
This conundrum stays in Kyles mind until he eventually is overwhelmed by a rumbling sound coming from his innards.
"I must be hungry." Kyle thinks to himself, outloudly.
Clocky nods, and goes back to sleep.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Down the stairs goes Kyle, one foot in front of the other, until he eventually reaches the very last step.
"I've made it! Time to chow down!" Kyle excitedly exclaims.
Still a little shaken up by the whole existential mumbo jumbo, Kyle isn't quite sure what type of consumable will ease his trouble noggin.
"Surely a large glass of soylent will provide all of the nutritional benefits of regular food, without all of that distracting flavor!" Kyle says to the open refrigerator.
All of the sudden, Billy Joel appears through the whirlwind in dark tinted sunglasses. Spinning his way into Kyle peripheral, he begins to mumble something being right, or possibly being wrong.
Chalking this up to being very, very hungry, Kyle waves away the whirlwind, et al, and chugs the soylent as if his very life depends on it.
Immediately, Kyle is filled with an immense amount of regret. Kyle did not enjoy the soylent, even though it quite possibly did provide all of the nutritional benefits of regular food, without any of the distracting flavor.
Having been "satisfied", albeit unsatisfactorily so, Kyle decides to check off one box on his trusty checklist.
"Drink a glass of flavorless goo, check!" Kyle bellows for all of the household appliances to hear.
Kyle feel quite pleased with himself, especially after the approving nods he received from Mr. Microwave and Carmine the Kitchen-aid Mixer.
Kyle flips down his sunglasses, and gives them both finger guns, as is customary in this specific situation Kyle assumes.
In fact, he assumed wrong, and little did he know he just initiated war on all of the household appliances in his house!
Awkwardly looking throughout the room, Kyle begins to see beady angry eyes peering at him from every corner. Unsure of how to diffuse the situation, he ignores it and leaves the house.
"Well THAT was weird." Kyle says aloud after making his way towards the train station. "Hopefully by the time I get home, this whole misunderstanding will have blown over."
Kyle hops on the train, and takes it as far as this particular train will go.
What seems like days, and days, in actuality is only about 28 minutes. Kyle arrives in the next town over, right in front of the local appliance repair shop.
"Wow, convenient." says Kyle, audibly. "I wonder if the owner of this shop will have any wisdom words for me.
As soon as Kyle approaches the door, he is stopped by what is most likely an invisible forcefield blocking the entrance.
"What treachery!" Kyle says, for the second time. "How am I to extract the wisdom from the repairman if I cannot get past this infernal field of force!?"
In that moment, a policeman strolls by.
"Oh, nothing...no bother at all..." Kyle says as his voice trails off.
The policeman doesn't like the sound of Kyles trailing nondescript words.
Not wanting to have an uncomfortable encounter with a man of the law, Kyle gets the heck out of dodge and jumps on the first motor scooter he finds.
"Well, that's that!" the man of law laments, and returns to his baked goods.
Now, things are really picking up for Kyle.
Racing through the streets of dodge, Kyle feels the wind on his face.
Uh oh.
Kyle is NOT wearing a helmet! This is bad news, indeed, for as soon as Kyle reaches this understanding, a pothole on the poorly maintained dodge streets sends the motor scooter adrift and Kyle flying through the air and towards the haunted dodge woods!
"Oh no! Not the haunted woods of dodge, as I like to call them" says Kyle as he soars like an eagle, with zero grace.
Without warning, Kyles body plummets to the ground and lands with a harrowing thud.
"Ouch. I feel like several, if not more of my bones have been obliterated." says an anguished Kyle. "It feels as though my feeble body is made of glass, and someone with unmistakable accuracy has pummeled me with many, many stones."
While that wasn't the case, Kyle still feels an incredible amount of pain. Luckily, he reaches inside the pocket in pants and pulls out a large dose of PAIN-BE-GONE.
Feeling much better, Kyle begins to assess the damage to the motor scooter.
"Oh no, this doesn't look good at all" Kyle bemoans. "All of this damage, and I don't know the second, third, or even first thing about motor scooters."
Just then, all of the critters from the forest appear from all sorts of neat little hiding places.
A little family of squirrels scamper out of an old, hollowed out log, for example.
A raccoon scurries down the branch of a tree, for another example.
For a third and final example, a black bear gets up out of his leafy bed and wanders over to the commotion.
Kyle eyes the bear with anticipation. He has seen a bear before, but not under these conditions. This time, he fears, things may turn grisly.
"It's not that kind of bear" Kyle chuckles to himself, loud enough for the bear to hear.
"I'll show ya what kinda bear I be!" says a (rightfully so) offended black bear.
The black bear then takes off his sleeping hat and puts on his dancing shoes while gesturing to the other critters to create some sort of dance-off-beat in unison.
Somehow, the forest critters oblige and within a few medium sized moments, the entire forest echoes in the refrain of a thousand various forest animals, in unison, remember?
The black bear is feeling very confident now, and does a few simple warm up stretches to shake off the hibernation. He has been waiting for this moment. He's trained for it, he's hibernated for it. The black bear is ready.
Kyle isn't quite sure how to proceed. Even by forest critter standards, Kyle is a terrible dancer.
Kyle moves to the clearing which obviously is used as a makeshift dancefloor, and does a enthusiastic little shuffle kind of thing. It's not so much a dance, but it appears he's trying to move rhythmically to the sounds the critters are making.
Realizing it's not going so well, and not wanting to admit defeat, he does anyway.
"Okay, okay, you win!" Kyle defeatedly admits. "You are clearly the superior dancer in this forest, perhaps in all of the forests."
"PERHAPS?" the bears exclaims. "PERHAPS I WILL EAT YOUR ENTIRE BODY FOR DISRUPTING MY HIBERNATION. PERHAPS."
Not liking the cut of his jib, Kyle reminds the black bear that he won, and that by forest rites he can take one, and only one limb from Kyle's fully limbed body.
Settling down a bit, the black bear wonders how Kyle knows so much about the forest and next to nothing about dancing.
"PERHAPS YOU SHOULD SPEND MORE TIME DANCING AND LESS TIME IN THE FOREST" ridicules the black bear.
This makes Kyle feel a great deal of sorrow, because he always thought his time in the forest valuable, and never saw the need for dancing. Now, with the realization that even the forest critters value dancing over the ways of the woods, he rethinks the thoughts he had previously thoughten.
"Well, I guess I can learn a thing or another thing about dancing, if you spare my limbs, of course!" says Kyle.
"PERHAPS...PERHAPS." say the black bear, who still has not made himself known by name.
"Well great, Mr. Bear. But I must be going, I've got to find a way to sneak past a policeman, circumvent a mysterious forcefield, and learn the secrets of diffusing an awkward situation with angry household appliances!" says Kyle.
The black bear understands, and motions in the general direction of the repair shop, and all of a sudden, has a thought!
"PERHAPS, MY NAME IS BLUSTER. PERHAPS I'D BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO ASSIST IN YOUR QUEST FOR VENGEANCE UNDER ONE CONDITION. YOU HELP ME COAX THIS WRETCHED MICROWAVE INTO POPPING MY CORN, PERHAPS." Bluster (the black bear) says.
Kyle finds this quite agreeable, indeed! The two new friends make their way out of the forest, and back to the dreaded streets of dodge.
The two spend many moments discussing the reliability of various household appliances, and why household appliance repairman don't work at all hours of the day.
Once they arrive, they find the shop in the exact same state as when Kyle left it previously in haste.
With no policeman present, the two move towards the field of force.
Bluster decides to try something, and puts a large paw up to the door, and pushes.
Amazingly, the door opens! Clearly the field of force was in reality just a stuck door.
Kyle shakes his head, wishing he would have tried that.
Regardless, the two enter the shop but find zero persons capable of repairing any sort of household appliance. In fact, the find the shop to be absent of any person, in particular.
Just as the two are about to turn back towards the door and leave, an alarm goes off.
"ALARM! ALARM! ALARM!" says the alarm clock that was waiting behind the counter.
"IT'S TIME FOR ALARM. THIS IS THE ALARM. I AM AN ALARM AND YOU ARE NOW ALARMED."
Kyle and Bluster both turn to each other and beginning laughing nervously.
"Please stop, Mr. Alarm. You are correct in that we are alarmed, but you are quite alarming!" says Kyle, unthreateningly.
"THAN MY JOB IS DONE, THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT" says the alarm clock.
"No, wait! Please! We came all of this way in search of information. What we desire is a means to diffuse a awkward situation which caused some household appliances to be offended, inadvertently."
Bluster then gestures to himself with a low growl.
"Oh yeah." Kyle remembers. "We also want to know how to get a microwave to make popcorn, I guess."
Bluster grunts in satisfaction.
The alarm clock thinks this through for a short, long, and medium moment before giving the answers the two have been hoping for.
"TO DIFFUSE A GROUP OF OFFENDED HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES, YOU NEED ONLY APOLOGIZE. AND FOR YOUR MICROWAVE POPCORN DILEMMA, YOU NEED ONLY SAY PLEASE." The alarm clock admits.
In unison, Bluster the bear and Kyle the person bow quite low in respect, and thank the alarm clock with all of the humility they can muster. With this new information, the two friends leave the shop and reach the train stop.
"Wow, I really hope this works out for both of us." Kyle says to the bear.
"ME TOO, I GUESS WE SHOULD HAVE TRIED BEING A LITTLE MORE THOUGHTFUL BEFORE REACHING SUCH HASTY DECSIONS. BUT I DIGRESS, FOR I AM JUST A BEAR. WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?" questions Bluster.
Without a valid excuse, Kyle hangs his head in embarrassment and hops on the closest train he can find.
Luckily, there's one really close (because he's at the train station, remember?).
The train ride home for Kyle seemed much shorter than it had previously and Kyle wonders if perhaps they took a different route this time.
Once the train stops at the station in Kyles hometown, Kyle gets off and runs all of the way home, as dawn approaches.
"Ooh, there's that lazy sun!" Kyle says aloudly.
Opening the door slowly, Kyle looks and finds all of the household appliances in a very agitated state.
The toaster, menacingly is holding a pair of scissors. Carmine the kitchen-aid mixer appears to have spun himself silly, but is still very much enraged.
Clearing his throat, Kyle speaks the only words he assumes at this point won't get him beaten up by a bunch of household appliances.
"I am sorry. You all are my world, and I made a mistake. For that, I will never forgive myself but in time, I hope to win back your trust. Please forgive me." Kyle apologetically apologizes with mostly sincerity.
At once, all of the household appliances throw down their makeshift weapons and rush to Kyles side, embracing him as lovingly as any household appliance could.
Kyle is quite relieved to have resolved this situation before it got ugly. Kyle isn't sure what would have happened if his apology didn't work, but he feared he may be searching for many new appliances if that were the case.
Regardless, Kyle and the house of hold appliances seem to be on good terms, and Kyle is not extremely tired.
Kyle heads up to his bedroom and recounts his tale to Clocky. Clocky doesn't seem surprised at all by the story, which surprises Kyle.
"Clocky! I just told you of one of the wildest escapades this world has ever seen. How are you this unimpressed, and not at all, like, out of your mind with surprise?" Kyle asks the alarm clock, Clocky.
"Well Kyle..." Clocky begins. "When you got to the repair shop, and heard that alarm clock, you know, the one who gave you the words of wisdom? That was my cousin, Alarmy. He called just before you arrived and told me the whole story." Clocky ends. "So that's how I knew."
Kyle realizes he still has a LOT to learn about the relational dynamics between various household appliances, alarm clocks, and dancing.
The END.
