THE COUCH POTATO
By Brennan Haley
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Brennan Haley
The Omniscient Narrator of this story stands before us, a dour faced fellow in a boring suit and a very superior tone to his voice. "One day a little while ago, maybe where you live, there was a man who liked to stay at home. All he did was eat and watch television and play video games and vegetate. His parents called him Dave, but everyone else just called him a couch potato."
Dave rested comfortably on the couch in his sparsely decorated house. Dave is a very, very, very, huge human. "Ahhhh. What a day today is going to be. I've got my potato chips, my cookies, my hot dogs, my french fries, my onion dip, my taco chips, my chocolate bars, my ice cream, my apple pie with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, and to wash it all down, a nice pitcher of root beer. Just the food energy I'm going to need to watch all those game shows this afternoon. Yeah, it's going to be quite a day."
The Narrator announced dramatically. "But, just then, the doorbell rang."
Dave frowned, not expecting any visitors. "Hmmmmn. That must be the doorbell, being that it doesn't sound like my alarm clock and I don't have anything in the microwave. I wonder who it could be." Dave slowly but eventually got up from the couch with a grunt, and answered the door.
Dave squinted at the sunlight through the doorway and saw a terrible Monster standing in front of him. " Hello, can I help you? AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's a monster!!!!!! "
The Monster just stood in the doorway until Dave stopped screaming. Eventually he regained his calm and breathed slower with a hand to his chest, until he wondered. "Uh, what can I do for you?"
The Monster smiled and shrugged with a boyish smile. " Oh, I'm just paying a social call. But let me tell you, if you're on the menu, then I am staying for supper!"
The Monster's mouth opened to reveal more teeth than a dentist's wastebasket and he snarled. Dave's eyes bugged out and his arms cartwheeled furiously. " OOOOOWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Narrator, who didn't seem to want to help or call the authorities, elaborated. "The monster began to chase poor Dave all through his house. Through the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, even the den, but when Dave finally made it to the front door to try and leave, he discovered ... he couldn't!"
Dave squealed in surprise. "Oh my God, I'm stuck."
The Narrator spoke with a certain righteous delight at Dave's dilemma. "That's right. Dave had put on so much weight being a couch potato, that he couldn't fit through his own front door."
At the last second before getting pounced on, Dave bolted for the cellar and locked the door behind him.
Dave collapsed on the stairs, panting and wheezing. "Thank God that nasty monster can't get me in here. But, wait a minute, there's no food in here. And no TV. And I'm stuck here. What the heck am I supposed to do now? Oh, fudge nut butter crunch ice cream! Aw, man, now I'm hungry too."
The Monster walked around the house, checking out Dave's digs. "Actually, this is a pretty nice place that Mr. Dump Truck's got here. Wow, it's got a big screen television, tons of video games, laptops in each room, a very sturdy couch, and look at all that food! Booyah!! I think I'll just kickback for awhile and have something to eat."
The Narrator spoke to cover the passage of time. "So while Dave hid in the cellar, the monster spent day after day, sitting on the couch, watching TV, playing video games, surfing the net, and eating everything it wanted."
Very slowly, the cellar door opened and Dave peaked out. "Hey, that monster is eating all my food! And watching all my favourite programs! And he left all the movies out of their cases - they're gonna scratch!!! This isn't fair at all."
The Narrator brushed his teeth, checked his hair in the mirror, and continued the story. "Pretty soon after all the time in the cellar, Dave began to lose weight. Until the day came when he thought he might actually, possibly, just this once, be able to fit through the front door."
Dave stood at the cellar door and crouched like an Olympic runner. "I think I can, I think I can."
The Narrator set down his cup of coffee and his voice got more excited as the action was about to ramp up. "And so, Dave made a run for the door. The monster was truly quite fat now, but still had a ravenous hunger for Dave Burgers. So the monster leapt up with a groan, held it's sore back, then began to chase him. But then a strange thing happened. Dave went running out the front door, but the monster couldn't follow, because now IT was too fat to fit. Hah! Pretty ironic, huh? Bet you didn't see that one coming."
Dave did something he never did in a place he'd hardly ever seen - he danced up and down on the front stairs of his house. "Fatty fatty two by four, can't fit through my front door."
The Monster spat and growled, but no matter how it turned, it couldn't get through the door. "I'll get you, Mr. Scrawny, and eat you for an appetizer. Just you wait."
The Narrator shook his head with a satisfied smirk. "But the Monster didn't do any of that, because Dave went and called a Monster Exterminator, who came and made the Monster go away. Silly Monster. Then Dave finally came back to his home, safe and sound."
Dave looked around his house, hands on his half sized hips. "Well, I sure have learned my lesson."
The Narrator smiled mischievously. "He sure did. Dave still ate way too much and watched too much TV, and you'd need a crowbar to get him off his laptop. But from then on, every now and then, he'd get up to make sure that he could fit through the front door. The End. Hah! Pretty ironic, huh? Bet you didn't see that coming? You did? Oh."
The End
***Thanks very much for reading my submission to Smashwords. As I learn how to use this properly, I'll make more short stories available. The whole point is to provide tiny stories for a very quick and convenient read (in a waiting room, on a coffee break, etc) to take away a little chunk of boredom and replace it with a laugh or two. My hope is that they could maybe make great bedtime stories to be read by time crunched parents who would prefer a fifteen minute reading session rather than an hour plus reading them from a full book. Hopefully these stories come across as a combination of a comic strip and a video game where an adult can still enjoy what is mostly child orientated subject matter, and you can get a new story on a regular basis. As soon as I can, I'll have a website up for anyone interested in seeing more about my work, but for now the only place to get them is right here at Smashwords. I hope this story got you through what would've been a boring twenty minutes and was fun. A buck doesn't even buy a bottle of pop or a cup of coffee these days, but it can get you an adventure and a laugh. Bargain! To say hi, just email me at haleyb@shaw.ca or search for Brennan Haley on Facebook. The adventures of Jordan the Pirate, Little Red Robin Hood, Pequenito, Solemn and the Ogrenaut, Jack the Giant, Jingle Bill and the Falalala Kid, and many others are hiding on my hard drive waiting to pop up on Smashwords and hopefully they find a good home on whatever gadget you're using to read with.