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RMS Humbug and
Chatterbox: Inkwell
RMS Humbug and
RMS Humbug and RMS Tiny Invite You To Their Maiden Voyages!
On September 22, a day that looks, smells, and tastes like any other day – which, for that matter, it probably is – an “ordinary” person much like yourself (maybe even yourself?) finds in the back of their cupboard a five-year-old mayonnaise jar. The nutrition facts label reads as follows:
Vitamin B12 – 2%
Vitamin Z564 – 26%
You, random but lucky person, are invited to the maiden voyages of the RMS Tiny and the RMS Humbug, two cruise ships belonging to the Ridiculous Management of Seagoers (RMS) Company! Isn't that awesome? It starts on October 10, so you have lots of time to pack! Isn't that even awesomer! And it's completely FREE*! Please RSVP by October 5. Anyone who wishes to join after October 5th but before October 10 has a lot less chance of making it onto the ship on time. Anyone attempting to board the ship after October 10 will find that the ship has already left, and I am afraid that under no circumstances can we pick up latecomers.
Cheesiness – 41%
Corniness - 22%
Good Old Random Humour – 5555555555%
Logic - (-111%)
Vitamin A+ - 4.67%
The person squints to read the fine print (the finest print they've ever seen) at the bottom of the label:
*This may or may not include certain expenses, including but not limited to: food, accommodation, extreme trauma counselors, staff, my new billion-dollar fridge, etc. NOTE: Some of these expenses may seem entirely unrelated to the subject at hand, but let me assure you that, when viewed from a holistic point of view, they are all completely necessary.
-Your Future Captain,
The Ominous
ANOTHER NOTE: Any complaints, questions, forwarded expenses, or wishes to sue may all be sent to John F.Q. and CaptainRead of the Cricket Chatterbox!
ANOTHER NOTE: We here at RMS Co. believe that there are two possible reasons why the Titanic sank. One is that it had such a huge, grand name that the sea serpents got angry and told the iceburgers to “let 'em have it broadside!”. Of course, as you all know, iceburgers don't have very good aim, so instead of “having it broadside”, the Titanic was rammed from the front, causing the deaths of millions. The other is that everyone thought it was unsinkable, and so we all jinxed it and of course it just had to sink after that. This is why we have built the RMS Tiny and the RMS Humbug. The former ship will be completely unsinkable because of its unassuming name, and the latter will be a test to see if we were right. The RMS Humbug has been equipped with all the sorts of things that superstitious sailors think contribute to the angering of sea serpents and the sinking of ships, and it will probably be sunk almost immediately.
AND ANOTHER NOTE: When everyone has boarded the RMS Tiny (no one will want to go on the RMS Humbug, we are certain), their names will inexplicably appear in Pandora's Fedora, owned by your captain, The Ominous (that's me!). A “murderer” will be drawn out of it, and the game will begin! From then on, those whose names are drawn out of Pandora's Fedora will “disappear”, unfortunate “victims” to the will of the hat.
YET ANOTHER TEDIOUS NOTE: This was inspired by T.O.N.'s Ski Lodge Murder Mysteries(TM), and we here at RMS Co. sincerely hope that it is different enough to avoid any copyright issues. To be sure of this, there is a rather severe plot twist that we can't tell you a single thing about. We will not use the Ski Lodge, nor any of the characters from it, and we will attempt to use our own style of writing, no matter how much we may be unconsciously influenced into doing otherwise because of the sheer awesomeness of the Ski Lodge. "Days" will be written whenever possible during the busy schedule of The Ominous, and you can hope to expect from one to three of them per week. Everyone who signs up may post their view of the "day," but please wait until you've read whatever The Ominous has written before doing so, and because of the severe yet unknowable plot twist, your memories will be wiped once you die, so there are unfortunately no ghosts. If you really want to, dreams or hallucinations are allowed.
The person snorts dismissively. “Some silly, outdated advertisement or conspiracy meant to get more people to eat mayonnaise! Well, it certainly didn't work very well...” They think, staring at the uneaten mayonnaise jar for a few seconds, and then throwing it over their shoulder into a garbage can and inadvertently causing a snowstorm in Italy.
DINGALING! DINGALING! The phone rings. You pick it up, wrenching your gaze from the scattered tea leaves in front of you that had just produced the story above. “Hello?”
“Good evening. This is Super Mayonnaise Incorporated, business partner with RMS Co. We have been looking through our records, and it has come to our inattention that the five-year-old mayonnaise jar you just now allegedly threw over your shoulder was never sold, stolen, or even brought into existence in the first place. It does not exist, and neither does your house, no matter how real it may appear. Furthermore, you do not exist. We deny everything, and have lawsuits in place to make sure you do not claim otherwise. In fact, I am talking to thin air right now, because you do not exist. Neither does your telephone. Goodbye, thin air, and thank you for your co-operation.”
Before you can speak, the line goes dead. Now thoroughly mystified, you decide to thwart reason and pack your bags to wherever it was that the ships were supposed to leave from. Not that there had been a location mentioned anywhere in the story your tea leaves just told you, but you still think you have an idea of where to go. You hope.
submitted by The Ominous, age unknown, mysterious
(September 22, 2014 - 7:25 pm)
(September 22, 2014 - 7:25 pm)
Thou shalt not die! I love thee writing too much!
(October 29, 2015 - 7:22 pm)
Oops... Looks like the plan to post regularly every other day failed... But have no fear, I intend to see this to the very end! And thank you, Rose Bud, for reassuring me that at least one person still reads this.
I'll try to post the next part of Day 10 (I told you it was a really long day) tonight or tomorrow.
-The Ominous
P.S. It's been a year since I first created this thread. Wow. I don't know if that's good because it means I've actually stuck with this story for so long and I intend to stick with it until the very end, or if it's bad because it means I'm a really slow/un-regular (is that even a word?) writer. Hm. Maybe it's both.
(October 31, 2015 - 2:55 pm)
DAY 10, PART 4
* * *
The Masked Piester's berry pie was only the beginning of what would later be called “The Great Destruction” by one of the less stuffy of the stuffy historians of the world. Of course, historians are prone to exaggeration, and it is completely untrue that the library was set on fire, or that the ballroom was blown to smithereens (it was only the disco ball exploding, and pieces of the ballroom that were found later were quite a bit bigger than smithereens). It is also untrue that the Captchas were thrown overboard, or that The Ominous grew a beard (although I'm not entirely sure that's not true because he vanished as soon as the first Mountain Dew grenade was thrown), and the idea that the engines imploded during the food fight is entirely absurd. If that were true, I would be crashing right now.
Food flew through the air, and people screamed and ran around in circles. And zigzags, and ovals, and other panicky shapes.
Forrest tried to make her way through the pandemonium to the door, but it was hard to move very far in the chaos. A bright green pie flew past her head, whistling with the cliched noise of a bullet, and exploded violently in the air. She was lucky it hadn't hit her! She continued on towards the door, pushing her way between people throwing food and people being covered in recently-thrown food, as well as the usual people who just stood there and panicked.
Meanwhile, in another part of the ballroom, Everinne, Madeline, and Bookbug, who thought that running in circles was kind of dumb, were dueling with baguetttes.
“En garde!” Everinne shouted, poking Bookbug with her baguette. Bookbug poked Everinne back, and then whirled to face Madeline, who had been sneaking up on her. Madeline lifted her baguette, preparing to rap Bookbug on the head with it, but was poked in the back by Everinne, who had snuck up on her.
“Touche!” yelled Bookbug.
“Au revoir!” yelled Madeline.
“Ou est la banane!” yelled Everinne.
“Why are we yelling random things in French?” yelled Bookbug.
“Because it's fun!” Madeline yelled back, “Je m'appelle Madeline!”
Suddenly, the disco ball decided to ruin their day. It fell to the floor, mere feet away from the three CBers, and exploded. Bits of shiny disco-ball-shrapnel flew everywhere, one piece nearly – but not quite – blinding Aldo, another piece knocking Everinne unconscious. A shockwave flew through the room, knocking over the tables filled with food and causing several people to fall over onto conveniently placed pies.
At that moment Forrest had just reached the door of the ballroom. She had nearly been hit by flying cabbages, almost gotten whacked with empty Mountain Dew bottles, and could have been throttled by a bright pink bunny, but she'd been lucky and had gotten to the exit with no more than a splash of green Mountain Dew in her hair (I don't get what it is with Mountain Dew and you CBers, but it's true).But now she had reached the door of the ballroom at last! Now she could escape from the mad fury of random food fights! Now she could escape to the library and a nice book, or perhaps she could go up on deck and see if she could see the ground, now that was an idea! She reached for the door, her escape, her portal out of this craziness...
It was locked! LOCKED! LOCKED??? NOOOOOoooooo! Forrest was beginning to lose it, whatever it was.
And then suddenly a piece of disco-ball-shrapnel flew by, knocking off the doorknob and unlocking the door for her. She was saved! Forrest quickly returned to her normal state of sanity, slipped through the ballroom door, and ran off into my passageways.
Back in the ballroom, it was suddenly very quiet.
Bookbug, Curio, and Madeline, who were the closest to the unconscious Everinne, heaved the piece of disco-ball-shrapnel off of their friend. “Is she okay?” Curio gasped.
“Don't worry, she's just unconscious,” said Aldo, who had seen the whole thing.
Once everyone knew that everyone else was okay, the chaos resumed.
Aldo, who was thinking much along the lines of Forrest, tiptoed away. He had had enough chaos for one day.
* * *
Forrest wandered my passageways, taking every stair leading upwards and yet never seeming to get any closer to my deck. With every step she took, she got more and more lost. It seemed as if she had been walking far too long to still be below decks, and yet there were still more stairways leading upwards. She began to wonder if she was in one of those Escher paintings where the stairs go up forever but never get higher.
She could just imagine a little old lady in a museum, peering at the optical illusion of Forrest walking forever upwards, on a stair that circled in on itself so that she never got anywhere. The little old lady reached up to polish her glasses, squinting at the picture. “Albert, come and look at this one, dearie! Isn't it a wonderful painting? It could be a metaphor for all the stairs we had to walk up to get here! Albert? Albert, where are you?”
“I'm over here darling, just lookin' at this picture of a girl smilin'!”
“Oh, you found the Mona Lisa, did you? That one's a masterpiece!” The little old lady wandered away from the Forrest-Escher to find her husband, and Forrest's daydream ended as she opened a door and suddenly found herself on my deck.
Relieved that she wasn't lost anymore, she grinned and moseyed over to the edge of my deck and leaned on the railing. It was a beautiful view, and as she looked around at the vast expanse of sky she momentarily forgot that she was afraid of heights. Looking down, she remembered.
The ground was very, very far away, and she couldn't see any details except that – judging by the colour – it looked like they were flying over a desert. It scared her that the ground was so far away and that she couldn't see any physical way the RMS Tiny could be flying, but she found that she couldn't keep her eyes away from the ground. There was something not quite right about it (apart from the fact it was so far away, of course). Forrest looked harder. It was hard to tell because it was so far away, but... it almost looked like it was... getting closer... But that couldn't be right, could it? They were flying, not crashing, like in the nightmare she'd had last night. She looked at the ground again. No, there was no mistake, the ground was indeed coming closer. She didn't remember there being anything about a landing anywhere in the pamphlet – or even on the mayonnaise jar – but maybe she hadn't read the small print properly. After all, there had been a lot of small pri – there was a cracking noise as the railing broke, and Forrest overbalanced and fell...
* * *
END OF DAY 10 PART 4
(November 1, 2015 - 9:03 pm)
DAY 10, FINAL PART
* * *
In the kitchen, Inspector Scotty and Aldo had both gotten away from the food-fight party and were chatting.
“You know, a cousin of mine once designed a fruit that would both predict the weather and argue his court cases at once!” Aldo waved his hands in the air excitedly.
The Inspector leaned forwards across the kitchen table. “How interesting! Tell me more about this cousin of yours! And how did he get the fruit to talk?”
“Oh, quite easily in fact! My cousin lives in Norway, and you know how it's so wet in Norway, well, this fruit was able to respond to the moisture in the air, and then use simple fruit-logic to deduce how rainy it would be in the next couple of days. Now, you might not think that would be properly predicting the weather, but all my cousin really cared about in terms of weather was rain. He sold bottled rainwater, and he also used it for his fruitology experiments. My cousin was quite the scientist! Well, until he was strangled by a mango. Boy, that was a sad day...”
The Inspector nodded. “Go on! Go on! Did your cousin experiment with anything else?”
“Why yes! He once sent me a sack of potatoes that – you'll laugh when I tell you this – he said would fling themselves out the nearest window if an accident was about to happen. He told me it was especially good for car crashes. I've never seen them do anything, of course, but I haven't used them in case they did do something. I don't quite get the point of that anyways. I mean, you're eating a nice potato salad and suddenly it flings itself out of your throat. You might end up choking and that would cause the accident, and you didn't even get to eat the delicious potato salad before you died!” Aldo leaned back and looked curiously at Inspector Scotty. “Why are you interested in this anyways? I find it quite boring stuff. I mean, food should be food, and not talk or jump out windows.”
“Au contraire! I quite disagree, this is fascinating stuff! Do you know, when I was little I wanted to be a horticulturist!”
Aldo smiled. “Really? Well then I suppose --”
He was interrupted by a banging coming from the pantry (I had made Aldo quite a lot of pantries, so it could have anywhere on me, but we shall assume that it was the pantry right next to the kitchen). Suddenly the pantry door flew open and a bunch of potatoes rolled out. “Everyone overboard! Women and children first!” yelled a squeaky voice. The potatoes rolled off up the nearest stairway to find a good port-hole to fling themselves out of.
Aldo's face was frozen in shock. “I didn't know potatoes had women and children!”
* * *
Forrest's life flashed before her eyes, and she remembered all the strange looks she'd gotten when she'd asked for directions to the town of Just-West-Of-Pidgewidgeon, which she had found out – don't ask how, she just had -- was the place where I was docked. It also happened to be just west of a larger town called Pidgewidgeon. Everyone had said that the town didn't exist, even the people who lived there!
And she wasn't even falling yet! She had just barely managed to cling to the edge of my deck with both hands. Forrest hung there in a state of pure shock. She had almost fallen to her death! That would be enough to make even the bravest person's life flash before their eyes.
Forrest hung on, her fingers gripping the metal edge where my hull met my deck. Her fingers began to ache and she wondered how she could get back up to safety. She tried to look from side to side to see if there were any helpful ledges or windows she could stand on or go in through, but the side of my hull was barren smooth metal. She could try screaming for help, but everyone was probably still at the party.
She wondered if the railing had been sabotaged. Maybe the murderer was still around. And maybe if she sounded really scared the murderer would have a change of heart? Yeah, right. Maybe the murderer thought that she'd already fallen, and if she yelled for help they'd come and stomp on her fingers, and then she'd really fall to her death. But if she didn't yell for help she'd eventually fall and die anyways. There was nothing for it, she'd have to scream.
“HELP! HELPMEHELPMEHELPME I'M GONNA FALL AND DIE!!! HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP Help help help...”
Something bonked her on the head. She gasped in fear. It was probably the murderer with some large metal thing come to knock her out so she'd let go and fall. Then she realized that she was still conscious, and the thing that had bonked her head was a rope.
“Need a hand?” George's friendly face looked down at her.
“George! Where have you been?”
“No time to talk. Grab on to the rope and I'll pull you up!”
But he needn't have told her, she was already climbing halfway up the rope. As she was pulled up onto deck, she looked gratefully at George. And noticed that there was a not-so-friendly-looking saw in his friendly-looking toolbelt. She wondered again if the railing had been sabotaged. But that didn't matter, she was almost safely on deck.
All of a sudden, two hands holding a bucket rose up behind George. They turned the bucket over, and George's head was deluged with green powder. George wrinkled up his nose.
“A-a-a-A! CHOOO!”
With that fateful sneeze, the rope slipped from George's hand. He grabbed after it, but it was already gone over the edge.
For the second time that day, Forrest fell. Oh, she fell! The ground rushed towards her, much faster than it had when she had been on my deck. There was a flash of light, the sign that she was out of the reach of my teleporters.
Rest In Peace, Forrest. Rest In Peace.
Oh and by the way, it looks like I'm crashing. Stupid engines!
“It's not my fault!” Said my starboard engine in it's annoying thick italian accent.
“Neither ith it mine!” Said my port engine with its even more annoying lisp.
“We were sabotaged!” They said in unison.
END OF DAY 10 (finally!)
(November 3, 2015 - 8:25 pm)
Supreme as always! I can hardly wait for the next day!
(November 5, 2015 - 9:41 am)
I am NOT in love!!!! Other than that, though, awesome writing!
Rest in Green Powder, Forrest. Rest in Green Powder.
Koda says doxy. Wait, what? Doxies? Where?!
(November 6, 2015 - 9:35 am)
(November 15, 2015 - 2:44 pm)
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TOP!
(November 24, 2015 - 8:07 am)
TOP TOP TOP! PLEASE! DON'T! DIE!
(December 3, 2015 - 1:58 pm)
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