Best Looking DAC Member: 2006 EDITION
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Thor Kaufman
- Mamma's Gang member
- Posts: 5081
- Joined: Mon Dec 16, 2002 11:56 am
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POOPERSCOOPER
- Paparazzi
- Posts: 5035
- Joined: Sat Apr 05, 2003 1:50 am
- Location: California
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Spazmo
- Haha you're still not there yet
- Posts: 3590
- Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2002 4:17 am
- Location: Monkey Island
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When Pat woke up on that grim September day, he didn't know anything was wrong. Yes, he was sore from the vicious beating he'd gotten from his father yesterday, and he still had the unpleasant salty taste in his mouth from his "playdate" with "Uncle Sal" last night. But all in all, it wasn't an unusual day. He put on his uniform and trooped off to the sweatshop for his 12 hour shift of shoemaking. He always regretted not being allowed to go to school. He knew his lack of education was evident in his writing and speech. Every sentence was a vile crime against the English language and he knew it. He despaired all the more because he couldn't do anything about it. If he ever complained, his dad would lock him in the oven and turn it up to 200 degrees.
When he got to work, his supervisor told him he was two minutes late and that he would be reprimanded a week's pay. Darn, though Pat, now I won't get to eat. And dad will give me ten lashes because I can't pay off the interest on his gambling debts.
Pat dejectedly walked to his workstation and sat down in front of the industrial sewing machine. The rich children of Washington State needed their running shoes, and Pat, suffering from mild retardation in addition to his staggering ignorance, was happy to provide. And the wages were quite good. The supervisor had told Pat that in some countries, workers made as little as seven cents an hour! Pat's arithmetic was as poor as his English (which is to say he was confident that two came after five), but he had spent a few hours working it out one day and he was sure he made at least three times that.
Pat checked his worksheet for the day. K-Mart had placed a big order and Pat had two hundred and fifty three pairs to sew today. He saw that the night shift had already prepared his materials for him. He had a lot of work to do, so he sat down to do it.
Pat always tried his honest best to sew a good pair of shoes, but his deformed hands made it hard. He thought he was a good worker, but the fact that half his stitches went into his fingers--his left pinky was now sewn to his ring finger--meant his shoes were rarely sellable. The supervisor said he kept Pat around to keep morale up and to remind people what happened when you disobeyed. Pat smiled. He remembered when the supervisor had used a clawhammer to permanently shatter his hands. He said it was because he didn't like Pat's face, which wasn't his fault because he wasn't born with the face he had. No, it was repeated blows of his father's bottle that had created Pat's ghastly visage.
But Pat set aside this idle nostalgia and got to work. And yet, despite his intense focus, he wasn't really able to concentrate. His attention deficit disorder never helped, but that wasn't it. She was back. Across the worktable from him, she would sometimes work. Her name was Amanda, and Pat thought he loved her. The supervisor had said they found her lying unconscious down by the pier, and since she obviously wasn't human, they could exploit her as much as they liked. Pat didn't see what they meant. Yes, she had gills, and she was generally fairly scaley, and, of course, there were the compound eyes. But they were beautiful compound eyes and they were windows--thousands of little windows--into a beautiful soul that longed for companionship. And sugar cubes.
Pat gazed longingly at her webbed fingers and the fin sticking out of her head. The supervisor passed by and shattered one of Pat's ribs with his baton, but Pat didn't notice. Finally, though, he had to get to work or he'd have to spend his lunch hour shovelling uranium into the reactor core and the last time he did that, the supervisor said he'd gotten twelve tumours in his brain. He'd become colourblind and deaf in one ear shortly afterwards and thought there might be a link.
A couple hours later, Pat heard a loud noise from far above. He was puzzled, or at least moreso than usual. The sweatshop was at the bottom of a tall building. There were two, actually. He knew they were important somehow, but when he asked the supervisor what they were, he just laughed, told Pat the buildings were just a candy factory and then jammed an electric cattle prod into Pat's eye. Could something be wrong in the candy factory? Pat liked candy. He would be very sad if anything went wrong in the candy factory.
Then, the supervisor burst in, waving his shotgun. He shot one of the workers in the head, then another. The supervisor swore as his weapon was empty. "Too slow," he yelled. "Gotta kill 'em all at once! No evidence!" The supervisor looked around until he saw the large vats marked "EMERGENCY EVIDENCE DESTROYER - CONTAINS 100 L NAPALM". Pat was never sure what that vat was for. He had hoped it might contain kool-aid. Cherry kool-aid, maybe. The supervisor ran over to the vats and turned a valve. A thick liquid sprayed everyone from what Pat had assumed was the fire suppressant sprinkler system. The supervisor said, "Nobody leave until lunch. There's, uh, pizza." The workers all exclaimed in joy. Usually lunch was a combination of rat and leftover shoe leather, with sprinklings of bellybutton lint. The supervisor punched some numbers into a pad on the wall and ran out. Pat looked at the pad and thought he saw a timer counting down from 5:00.
Pat turned towards Amanda to ask what she thought could be going on, but she was already lunging towards him. Amanda parted her sensual mandibles and jammed her tongue/tentacle into Pat's mouth. Pat, who for so long thought his love was unrequited, kissed her back, glad that someone finally appreciated him. Finally, Amanda released him and Pat said, "Did you hear, Amanda? Pizza!"
Amanda just said, "This place is doomed and I cannot leave. I have placed my egg sac in your body. My brood will hatch soon. You must take them to safety." Pat saw that Amanda was chained to her workstation.
"You mean the candy factory is coming down?" said Pat. "But where will we work?"
"You must leave now," said Amanda. "You are the only unchained worker." And it was true. The supervisor always said that Pat was too stupid to run away anyhow, as evidenced by the fact that Pat would willingly come into the sweatshop every morning.
"Get into the shipping crate there," said Amanda. "It is ready to leave for Washington state. You must see my brood to safety. My children must be free to multiply." Pat looked at the crate. It was addressed to Big Pete's Foothouse, Washington. He knew the crates didn't travel by trucks or trains but by a special system of tunnels. The supervisor said it was to avoid the feds, who didn't approve of what the supervisor called "incredibly inhumane work conditions" and "worse than Bergen-Belsen" and so on. Pat thought these feds must be mean if they tried to hurt the supervisor, Pat's only friend.
Pat saw that the timer had reached 1:36 and decided to get into the crate. He felt an obligation to the egg sac that even now was bouncing about, filled with life, inside his left lung. He, too, wanted to make sure the kids, the thousands of crawling, squirmy kids, would be okay. He hopped into the half-full crate and saw Amanda seal it. She chittered one last goodbye to him and her--their--babies before sending the crate off. The sudden acceleration caused Pat to bang his head and he blacked out.
When he woke up, someone was unsealing the crate. The top came off and a man in a stained wifebeater and a trucker's cap peered down at him. The room the crate was in was only lit by old and dim neon tubes, but it was blinding all the same to Pat, who'd spend so long in the darkness.
"Whut the hell are you doin' in my crate, you goddamn mongoloid cocksucker?" bellowed the man who had opened the crate, and who was now menacingly brandishing a crowbar at Pat.
"Uh... me... Pat?" said Pat, doing his very best. The man leered at Pat.
"Have yew got my gawd damned shoes, Pat?" he said, leaning in to really eyeball the battered young man in the crate.
Pat felt something rumbling inside him and he knew the brood was ready to burst forth. He knew, too, that they would eat his body to give themselves the strength they would need to live. He welcomed it. He felt it was his role as... a parent. He closed his eyes and prepared to give birth to his little swarmlet.
Suddenly, though, he opened his mouth as wide as he could. Inside him, he felt the sac burst and felt a thousand little legs scrambling about. But no bites. His new instincts told him this was wrong, but Pat couldn't do anything about it. Suddenly, a wave of black chitin burst from his gaping mouth and onto the crowbar waving man's face.
The man screamed, but within seconds the swarm had reduced him to a fine slurry. Pat stood up in the crate to admire the brood he had just birthed. All of them, in their numberless thousands, seemed to look back at him. He was sure their little eyes were locked with his and he smiled. Now he knew the pride of a parent. He knew why his father sometimes would stop throwing furniture at him for a few minutes when he brought home a bag of pennies on payday. He knew the meaning of the grunt of satisfaction his uncle gave on their playdates. He knew the joy of parenthood. He was proud of his brood. He loved them and they loved him back.
Suddenly, he heard the radio was on. "...the third day of our ongoing coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. Once again, terrorists have destroyed the WTC and new reports are showing that there may have been some unexplained explosions in the basement of one of the towers. Charred remains of things... less than human chained to endless rows of sewing machines continue to baffle investigators."
For a moment, Pat was confused, but in the very next instant, the insight and rational power of a thousand thousand tiny minds came together to provide the answers: it was where he worked. He'd escaped a horrific terrorist attack. He turned to his brood. They were helping him think! He felt a fresh rush of affection for them all.
Soon, though, his thoughts turned to the tragedy he'd just learned of, and his narrow escape from it. It was no coincidence that he'd escaped the WTC to get to Washington. There was a meaning here. He had escaped to look after his brood. To care for them, to raise them, to love them all. He knew, now, that he was no longer a boy. He was a woman. No, more than that.
He was a mom.
Pat set out to find a hairdresser who could design a wig--Pat's own hair having long since been torn out by his dad in drunken fits of rage--that would make his new maternal duty clear to all. And then... maybe a pair of eyeglasses, all the better to keep an eye on his endless horde of sweetums. This place, this Washington, would make a good home for the brood. Wide areas of wilderness and enough campers and hikers that he could feed some to his children without anyone noticing. There was a great future here for the brood and their queen, Pat...ricia.
When he got to work, his supervisor told him he was two minutes late and that he would be reprimanded a week's pay. Darn, though Pat, now I won't get to eat. And dad will give me ten lashes because I can't pay off the interest on his gambling debts.
Pat dejectedly walked to his workstation and sat down in front of the industrial sewing machine. The rich children of Washington State needed their running shoes, and Pat, suffering from mild retardation in addition to his staggering ignorance, was happy to provide. And the wages were quite good. The supervisor had told Pat that in some countries, workers made as little as seven cents an hour! Pat's arithmetic was as poor as his English (which is to say he was confident that two came after five), but he had spent a few hours working it out one day and he was sure he made at least three times that.
Pat checked his worksheet for the day. K-Mart had placed a big order and Pat had two hundred and fifty three pairs to sew today. He saw that the night shift had already prepared his materials for him. He had a lot of work to do, so he sat down to do it.
Pat always tried his honest best to sew a good pair of shoes, but his deformed hands made it hard. He thought he was a good worker, but the fact that half his stitches went into his fingers--his left pinky was now sewn to his ring finger--meant his shoes were rarely sellable. The supervisor said he kept Pat around to keep morale up and to remind people what happened when you disobeyed. Pat smiled. He remembered when the supervisor had used a clawhammer to permanently shatter his hands. He said it was because he didn't like Pat's face, which wasn't his fault because he wasn't born with the face he had. No, it was repeated blows of his father's bottle that had created Pat's ghastly visage.
But Pat set aside this idle nostalgia and got to work. And yet, despite his intense focus, he wasn't really able to concentrate. His attention deficit disorder never helped, but that wasn't it. She was back. Across the worktable from him, she would sometimes work. Her name was Amanda, and Pat thought he loved her. The supervisor had said they found her lying unconscious down by the pier, and since she obviously wasn't human, they could exploit her as much as they liked. Pat didn't see what they meant. Yes, she had gills, and she was generally fairly scaley, and, of course, there were the compound eyes. But they were beautiful compound eyes and they were windows--thousands of little windows--into a beautiful soul that longed for companionship. And sugar cubes.
Pat gazed longingly at her webbed fingers and the fin sticking out of her head. The supervisor passed by and shattered one of Pat's ribs with his baton, but Pat didn't notice. Finally, though, he had to get to work or he'd have to spend his lunch hour shovelling uranium into the reactor core and the last time he did that, the supervisor said he'd gotten twelve tumours in his brain. He'd become colourblind and deaf in one ear shortly afterwards and thought there might be a link.
A couple hours later, Pat heard a loud noise from far above. He was puzzled, or at least moreso than usual. The sweatshop was at the bottom of a tall building. There were two, actually. He knew they were important somehow, but when he asked the supervisor what they were, he just laughed, told Pat the buildings were just a candy factory and then jammed an electric cattle prod into Pat's eye. Could something be wrong in the candy factory? Pat liked candy. He would be very sad if anything went wrong in the candy factory.
Then, the supervisor burst in, waving his shotgun. He shot one of the workers in the head, then another. The supervisor swore as his weapon was empty. "Too slow," he yelled. "Gotta kill 'em all at once! No evidence!" The supervisor looked around until he saw the large vats marked "EMERGENCY EVIDENCE DESTROYER - CONTAINS 100 L NAPALM". Pat was never sure what that vat was for. He had hoped it might contain kool-aid. Cherry kool-aid, maybe. The supervisor ran over to the vats and turned a valve. A thick liquid sprayed everyone from what Pat had assumed was the fire suppressant sprinkler system. The supervisor said, "Nobody leave until lunch. There's, uh, pizza." The workers all exclaimed in joy. Usually lunch was a combination of rat and leftover shoe leather, with sprinklings of bellybutton lint. The supervisor punched some numbers into a pad on the wall and ran out. Pat looked at the pad and thought he saw a timer counting down from 5:00.
Pat turned towards Amanda to ask what she thought could be going on, but she was already lunging towards him. Amanda parted her sensual mandibles and jammed her tongue/tentacle into Pat's mouth. Pat, who for so long thought his love was unrequited, kissed her back, glad that someone finally appreciated him. Finally, Amanda released him and Pat said, "Did you hear, Amanda? Pizza!"
Amanda just said, "This place is doomed and I cannot leave. I have placed my egg sac in your body. My brood will hatch soon. You must take them to safety." Pat saw that Amanda was chained to her workstation.
"You mean the candy factory is coming down?" said Pat. "But where will we work?"
"You must leave now," said Amanda. "You are the only unchained worker." And it was true. The supervisor always said that Pat was too stupid to run away anyhow, as evidenced by the fact that Pat would willingly come into the sweatshop every morning.
"Get into the shipping crate there," said Amanda. "It is ready to leave for Washington state. You must see my brood to safety. My children must be free to multiply." Pat looked at the crate. It was addressed to Big Pete's Foothouse, Washington. He knew the crates didn't travel by trucks or trains but by a special system of tunnels. The supervisor said it was to avoid the feds, who didn't approve of what the supervisor called "incredibly inhumane work conditions" and "worse than Bergen-Belsen" and so on. Pat thought these feds must be mean if they tried to hurt the supervisor, Pat's only friend.
Pat saw that the timer had reached 1:36 and decided to get into the crate. He felt an obligation to the egg sac that even now was bouncing about, filled with life, inside his left lung. He, too, wanted to make sure the kids, the thousands of crawling, squirmy kids, would be okay. He hopped into the half-full crate and saw Amanda seal it. She chittered one last goodbye to him and her--their--babies before sending the crate off. The sudden acceleration caused Pat to bang his head and he blacked out.
When he woke up, someone was unsealing the crate. The top came off and a man in a stained wifebeater and a trucker's cap peered down at him. The room the crate was in was only lit by old and dim neon tubes, but it was blinding all the same to Pat, who'd spend so long in the darkness.
"Whut the hell are you doin' in my crate, you goddamn mongoloid cocksucker?" bellowed the man who had opened the crate, and who was now menacingly brandishing a crowbar at Pat.
"Uh... me... Pat?" said Pat, doing his very best. The man leered at Pat.
"Have yew got my gawd damned shoes, Pat?" he said, leaning in to really eyeball the battered young man in the crate.
Pat felt something rumbling inside him and he knew the brood was ready to burst forth. He knew, too, that they would eat his body to give themselves the strength they would need to live. He welcomed it. He felt it was his role as... a parent. He closed his eyes and prepared to give birth to his little swarmlet.
Suddenly, though, he opened his mouth as wide as he could. Inside him, he felt the sac burst and felt a thousand little legs scrambling about. But no bites. His new instincts told him this was wrong, but Pat couldn't do anything about it. Suddenly, a wave of black chitin burst from his gaping mouth and onto the crowbar waving man's face.
The man screamed, but within seconds the swarm had reduced him to a fine slurry. Pat stood up in the crate to admire the brood he had just birthed. All of them, in their numberless thousands, seemed to look back at him. He was sure their little eyes were locked with his and he smiled. Now he knew the pride of a parent. He knew why his father sometimes would stop throwing furniture at him for a few minutes when he brought home a bag of pennies on payday. He knew the meaning of the grunt of satisfaction his uncle gave on their playdates. He knew the joy of parenthood. He was proud of his brood. He loved them and they loved him back.
Suddenly, he heard the radio was on. "...the third day of our ongoing coverage of the World Trade Center attacks. Once again, terrorists have destroyed the WTC and new reports are showing that there may have been some unexplained explosions in the basement of one of the towers. Charred remains of things... less than human chained to endless rows of sewing machines continue to baffle investigators."
For a moment, Pat was confused, but in the very next instant, the insight and rational power of a thousand thousand tiny minds came together to provide the answers: it was where he worked. He'd escaped a horrific terrorist attack. He turned to his brood. They were helping him think! He felt a fresh rush of affection for them all.
Soon, though, his thoughts turned to the tragedy he'd just learned of, and his narrow escape from it. It was no coincidence that he'd escaped the WTC to get to Washington. There was a meaning here. He had escaped to look after his brood. To care for them, to raise them, to love them all. He knew, now, that he was no longer a boy. He was a woman. No, more than that.
He was a mom.
Pat set out to find a hairdresser who could design a wig--Pat's own hair having long since been torn out by his dad in drunken fits of rage--that would make his new maternal duty clear to all. And then... maybe a pair of eyeglasses, all the better to keep an eye on his endless horde of sweetums. This place, this Washington, would make a good home for the brood. Wide areas of wilderness and enough campers and hikers that he could feed some to his children without anyone noticing. There was a great future here for the brood and their queen, Pat...ricia.
