Horseshoe Champion

It's a beautiful spring day in Boston. Birds are chirping. Flowers are blooming. And I'm eating a fajita while sitting on the stoop outside my apartment. Life is pretty ok. Suddenly, a rocketship descends from the sky and lands on the sidewalk.

My eyes goggle. "Nice!" The rocketship startles me so badly that I nearly drop my fajita. I scramble to regain my composure. Meanwhile, the rocketship's door opens and a critter emerges from within. The critter looks like a bearded goose.

So I'm thinking something along the lines of "Whoa, this is pretty goddamn ok!" When the space goose waddles up to me and says "hey what's up?" It's voice sounds equal parts feathery and robotic. We talk for about ten minutes -- mostly about outer space, music, and cartoons.

I offer the space goose some fajitas and he accepts. "After all that space travel I'm  hungry as fuck!" So I direct the space goose toward my kitchen and build a pile of fajitas. Then I grab us a few bottles of tasty brown ale infused with hickory-smoked plums.

Me and the space goose chill in my living room, eat fajitas, and drink beer. Good times. While we're eating, I fire up the TV and plug in an old VHS tape full of Mister Magoo cartoons. Mister Magoo is the fucking man. In one cartoon, Magoo thinks he's going to a movie theater, but he actually walks into an airplane. Oh, Magoo!

Anyway, Magoo clowns around and acts like a bozo. Eventually he stumbles out on to the airplane's wing and does other impossible cartoon shit. The space goose loves Magoo and laughs his ass off. Space goose laughter is trippy -- it kind of sounds like little metal balloons being popped by a machinegun.

After we finish eating fajitas and watching Magoo, the space goose thanks me for my hospitality and offers me a ride in his rocketship. Well that sounds boss as fuck, so I accept no questions asked. I pack some t-shirts, jeans, and bananas into a backpack; lock up my apartment; and climb into the rocketship. Then me and the space goose blast off into the sunset.

Space travel fucking rules. Everything is better when you're hurtling through space. Bananas are tastier. Arm hair is fuzzier. And farts are smellier -- but in a good way! Space travel is just great. I want to hang out in space forever but sadly the trip only lasts a couple hours.

We land on a temperate, maple-scented planet. The grass is white, the sky is green, and the planet's fourteen suns reminds me of sugar-glazed cinnamon rolls. So I kick back and relax on this cool alien planet. I eat a banana. It's good times. Then the space goose's face and beard suddenly contort into this look of absolute panic. It's actually sort of hilarious.         

"Shit!" Squawks the goose, "I totally forgot -- I've got a job interview way over on the other side of the universe. I have to haul ass or I'll miss it!"     

I tell the goose "no worries, this planet is solid. I'd be happy to chill here while you're at your interview. I ain't got any important stuff to do." The space goose appears a bit hesitant at first but I assure him that it's all good. Then we exchange a manly handshake and part ways for the time being. 

So the space goose hops into his rocketship and flies away. I'm alone! For about an hour I wander around aimlessly -- kicking rocks, climbing trees, and so on. Then I find a dirt trail. The trail cuts through a smallish forest of poofy trees that resemble giant dandelions. The dandelion trees' slippery, limp stems make them difficult to climb.

I follow the trail through the forest and into a small town. The town isn't particularly exotic: little storefronts along a quiet main drag, cozy colonial-style buildings, a fresh and well manicured common area, etc. However, the town is inhabited by envelopes. Yes, I said envelopes -- six-foot-tall envelopes with arms and legs!

After all that walking I'm feeling exhausted and hungry, so I wander around and look for a place where I can crash. Main street is clean and busy. Nice -- but not what I'm looking for. Eventually I find this sleepy looking bed and breakfast. The proprietor, an envelope wearing an embroidered green bathrobe, is snoozing on a sofa in the lobby. I introduce myself, and the envelope is all kinds of smiling and friendly (an envelope's face is alarmingly expressive!). In less time than it takes to eat a banana, I've got a place to crash and a bowl of food to eat. Envelopes are thoroughly hospitable!

Next morning I wake to the sound of fourteen cinnamon roll suns sizzling happily in a pea green sky. The weather looks and feels beautiful. I jog toward a beach several miles outside of town. The sand is hot and tastes like cornflakes.

While I'm walking along the beach and eating handfuls of cornflake sand, I encounter a group of envelopes playing horseshoes. I sit and watch and after the envelopes complete their game, they invite me to participate in the next round. I accept, but with a degree of trepidation. Horseshoes isn't just a game to these envelopes -- they treat it very seriously. Whenever one of the envelopes tosses a horseshoe, it does so with this super intense gravity -- it's as if the fate of the universe hangs in the balance!

So I'm incredibly nervous. Then, shockingly, I play an amazing round of horseshoes. I just toss after ringer after ringer. It's insane! The envelopes are absolutely stunned by my performance -- and so am I.

Envelopes from all over town crowd around to watch me play horseshoes. It's a pretty intense scene. I play so many games of horseshoes that I don't even have time to eat lunch or dinner! By evening, I've beaten every envelope in town at least twice.

A month passes. I wait for the space goose to return. In my free time, I play horseshoes. The envelopes treat me like a celebrity. The bed and breakfast offers me their best room and I eat pizza every single day. Envelope-style pizza has a thin crust and a fruity sauce. The toppings are outrageous: barbeque potato chips, grapes, pickles, and junk like that. Either you love it or you hate it. Personally, I love it.

Anyway, that first month kicks ass. But during the second month I start feeling bored. And antsy. I miss Boston and my girlfriend and my coffee grinder and my stupid office job. So I pack all my shit into a canoe, say goodbye to my envelope friends, and paddle off into the ocean.

I travel for ten days, eating nothing but bananas and ginger ale. On the eleventh day, I discover a forest of giant kitchen utensils -- whisks, spatulas, forks, spoons, peelers, salad tongs, and so on. The smallest utensils are ten or fifteen feet tall but the largest are so big I can't even see the top. Huge!

So I tie my canoe to a giant cheese grater, climb ashore, and crack open a can of ginger ale. I'm thinking "AH, it feels great to be back on land!" Then, suddenly, I'm abducted. Like, I don't even realize what's going on -- one second I'm feeling great in the kitchen utensil forest and the next minute I'm stuffed into a sack that may have been either a pillowcase or a bag for Halloween candy.

My abductor carries me for an hour or so. Maybe longer. I doze off a couple times. When I'm finally dumped from the sack, I tumble across a polished marble floor and find myself laying in the middle of a spacious ballroom. Bears are standing around me in a tightly-formed circle. The bears are all wearing colorful and elaborate clothing. It's sort of like a fancy society party from a Tolstoy novel -- only with bears instead of people.

The bears want to disembowel me for trespassing in their kitchen utensil forest. When they ask me who I am, I explain that I'm a traveler from Boston and a famous horseshoe champion. The bears scoff at my horseshoe ability. And they immediately demand that I compete against the kitchen utensil forest's greatest horseshoe player. If I win I get to live and if I lose the bears will disembowel me. I accept the challenge, of course.

So I compete against kitchen utensil forest's greatest horseshoe player, a fifteen-foot-tall bear with six arms and green fur and huge laser-red eyeballs. And although the bear is quite good at horseshoes, he's no match for me. I soundly defeat my opponent and thereby earn the bears' trust. The king of the bears invites me to a burrito feast and awards me a fancy vest. The vest is purple and "Horseshoe Champion" is embroidered on the back. Yeah, its a pretty rad vest albeit slightly on the large side because its bear sized. But I wear it anyway. I don't want the bears to think I'm a dick.

The bears provide me with a small house and I live among them. It's a cozy little setup. In the evenings I sit in a green beach chair beneath the shade of a spatula and listen to my neighbor play his bass clarinet. The bears love clarinet music. Their favorite tunes are "brass bonanza" and "jingle bells."

A few weeks later, the space goose finally returns. His beard is longer than ever.

"The job interview didn't go so hot." squawks the goose. "I got sick on the way there. Then I misread the directions and arrived late. Then they asked me questions for three days straight without even feeding me lunch. Ugh! Anyway, sorry about the delay -- everything cool?"

I tell the goose "yeah, no worries." Then we drink a few beers, order a pizza, and play horseshoes. The space goose beats me -- it's the first round I've lost in two months.

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