Uncle Melvin and his niece Melvina spar on another creative writing exercise. She's the story teller in italics, Uncle Melvin kibitzing in regular font. The storyline is a riff on "Five Nights at Freddy's," a movie and a Tik Tok video game.
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Mud everywhere
It’s a dark and stormy night. Snoopy is at his typewriter working on another novel. Meanwhile, it’s the sixth night at Freddy’s. Freddy is calling for cleaning services to get rid of the carnage left behind by the last five nights. Those still alive are lying around with nothing to do, wondering how they can add more carnage.
Freddy has a stable of one-trick ponies and they need to be fed. Mangle and Balloon Boy are looking for hot action, so they head for town in the darkness to get bacon and molasses. Wait! Bacon and molasses? The feed store ran out of feed. Oh. Sure. On the way to the general store next to the livery stable they get caught in a downpour. Mud everywhere.
The shopping list
Nothing happens in livery stables. Put the store next to the saloon and Doc Holliday’s marshal’s office instead. Shut up! We can’t leave women out. Why not have Katy Jurado and Grace Kelly leaving town at the railroad depot? How about you leave instead?
Anyway, Freddy has to set up for another onslaught of bloodthirsty video game players and he has a splitting headache. He’s desperate for pain-killers and sends two one-trick ponies off to the apothecary for Carter’s Little Liver Pills. And Alka-Selzer for his false teeth. And a plug of Picnic Twist chewing tobacco. Add Four Roses whiskey and Romeo y Julieta cigars to the ponies’ shopping list and I’ll join them.
Bedtime stories for psychopaths
The ponies’ one trick happens to be getting unstuck from the mud. So when they come across Mangle and Balloon Boy stuck in the mud, they rescue them. They load up with bacon and molasses and Freddy’s goods from the apothecary, and now they need a buckboard to haul it. Dry goods. Doesn’t Freddy need to replace everyone’s clothes all shot up and torn to shreds by the mayhem? Where would we get that? At the dry goods store. There’s one in every Western.
How did this get to be a Western? Westerns were the original video games. They were called “shoot-em-ups,” only they were for real. They didn’t have video games in those days. They didn’t? How could anyone get through the day without being attacked by mobs of psychopaths? What did they do for excitement? Turn crazed killers like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid into women bait like Paul Newman and Robert Redford and glorify violence. “The Wild Bunch,” led by super-cool manly William Holden, makes video games look like bedtime stories.
The real “jailhouse rock”
Mangle and Balloon Boy and the ponies finish their errands at the dry goods store. But, of course, after they’ve gotten involved in a saloon brawl Yes. Definitely. They rent a nice buckboard at the OK Corral where the Clanton gang happens to be hanging out. Playing cards. Smoking and drinking. Cussing and showing off their gun-slinging skills on house pets. Stealing candy from babies. Really bad dudes. They spot the whiskey and cigars in the buckboard. Now they’re scheming too.
Our helpless innocent victims are heading back to Freddy’s when they slow down to get through the mud. Just then the Clanton gang springs out from behind a big rock at the jailhouse, lusting after their whiskey and cigars. Nice touch. What? The jailhouse rock. Could we add Elvis to the plot? He can be doing the sound track.
How could this get any better?
Elvis is singing “My Way” while the Clanton gang is doing it their way. They toss Mangle and Balloon Boy into the mud and grab the buckboard. But the load shifts, and before they can make their getaway the buckboard tips over. Spilling Freddy’s bacon and molasses, nice new suits, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and everything else into the mud. Now the thieves have to grope on their hands and knees, in the mud and in the dark, to find their whiskey and cigars.
Goodness! What else could go wrong? Doc Holliday shows up. The marshal. He’s putting the thieves in handcuffs and all of a sudden there’s another downpour. Lightning scares the ponies away and now everyone is stuck in the mud. Soaking wet besides. What a mess! I love it. How could this get any better? A stagecoach comes roaring out of the darkness with John Wayne riding shotgun, full of passengers and luggage, pursued by rabid savages. They fall into the mud.
The climax
Right after comes a cattle drive led by Montgomery Clift and they all get stuck in the muck. We’re on the Chisholm Trail? Freddy liked the smell of a barn so he put his place near the stockyard at the end of the trail. Can there be room for anything else to fall into the mud? We’re just getting started. The Orient Express arrives at the railroad depot and a bunch of detectives get off pursuing murder suspects. They all wind up you-know-where.
Now comes the climax. Pitiful cries for help coming from the mud attract elephants and saber-toothed tigers. The weight of the elephants is too much. The ground gives way and they and the tigers and everything else sink out of sight. Yes. This happened millions of years ago. The name of the town was La Brea. And that’s how the La Brea Mud Flats came to be.
Epilogue
Congratulations! You are hereby awarded first prize for most ridiculous piece of creative, uh, writing. There’s another name for it? The Clanton gang can answer that.