The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 8)

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

The Excuse for Not Writing (Number 8)

By Plot Roach

Here is my excuse for not writing today:

I had a creative writing prompt picked out and ready to go. The story was really going to be something awesome, outlandish and just a little bit heartwarming.

And then lemurs stole my laptop.

I can explain, really.

You see, I started off the day in my neighbor’s kitchen. I had been sleeping there since the night before. She had been hosting a really long party and I felt that I couldn’t leave before I saw the elephant walk a fiery tightrope-

No, really. It was an elephant walking a tightrope and it was on fire.

Nooooo! Not IN her apartment, but on cable in her apartment. As in cable TV, not the cable that the elephant walked on… Anyway. It was some sort of circus special to raise awareness of abused llamas or some such.

I don’t know how llamas get ’abused’, they didn’t really go into it. They just showed some sad eyed looking creatures and I guess everyone assumed that they were abused, though that could be the way llamas look everyday for all I know.

Anyway, After another five minute sob story of poor Peruvian llamas, the elephant came on. And the act went pretty well until the elephant fell. It’s okay, it just got a few scratches. But the trainer has seen better days, let me tell you.

That's because the elephant fell on the trainer...

And if you ask me, they should have seen that coming. No one expects a big thing like an elephant to walk across a tightrope -much less one on fire- without it falling. And the net would have caught it better too, but they didn’t factor in the right weight of the beast. And how could they? No one has ever seen an elephant fall that far -much lesson one fire.

No, the elephant wasn’t burned. It just had it’s outfit on fire. It was dressed up like a ballerina.

No, I don’t think the elephant enjoyed it either. The fall was pretty high up for a beast like that. And the tutu wasn’t flattering, either.

So I fell asleep in the kitchen because the bathtub was already taken by her brother in law, Samson.

Why was he there?

Well, she was trying -again- to fix me up with him. But I’ve told her like a million times that I don’t like people who smell like cheese. It’s not that I’m prejudiced, I’m just lactose intolerant.

I wanted to know what happened with the elephant, so I decided to wait at her apartment (since I don’t have cable of my own). I went into the kitchen to get another beer when she told me to help myself to whatever I wanted. Then I saw the leftovers from a turkey casserole and you can guess the rest. A full belly of turkey and beer and I fell asleep on the kitchen floor like a narcoleptic chef.

When I woke up I could hear the trumpet of the elephant and I thought that the show was still running. So imagine my surprise when I saw the slightly wounded pachyderm tiptoeing through the flowers of the yard in front of our apartment complex. The poor thing was still trying to do its ballerina act!

It turned out that the circus was being filmed at a local park, just up the street. And after the elephant fell, all hell broke loose and half the animal entertainment made a break for it. There were giraffes dressed like bride and groom, a tiger dressed like Elvis and a couple of monkeys dressed like mob hit men. When a lion dressed as a sequined ice skater roared his displeasure at me, I ran back to my apartment. Samson tried to run in with me, but I locked him out. I just can’t get past that cheese thing. I’ve tried, but I can’t help but feel bloated and gassy around him. He’s a nice man, but think of the kids!

Anyway, when I got inside there was a seal in my bed and two spider monkeys were trying to switch the channel on the radio. Maybe they were interested to see if they were on the news, as I’m sure that I was.

And then a crash from the living room caught my attention. It turns out that lemurs, dressed like Swiss dancing girls, were trying to steal my laptop. And they would have gotten away with it too, if they hadn’t been so greedy. They were almost out of the window when the cord leading from the computer to the printer caught on the windowsill. When I yelled, I startled them into dropping the loot. The printer hanging on the inside of the apartment, the computer hanging on the outside.

I still never found out who filled the bowling ball with cheese wiz and left in in the stove -or why.

And to top it all off, I wasted all my time in this little fiasco. So now I can’t write on my creative writing prompt.

Sigh.