Open Mic Night at the Starbucks at the End of the Universe
by Res
Archive: M/A, I hope, and anywhere else if you like...tell me
where it goes, though, ok?
Pairing: N/A
Category: Humor!
Rating: NC-17...technically...I think...
Warnings: General sillyness and irreverence. If THIS bothers
you, boy are YOU on the wrong list!
Spoilers: None
Summary: In response to Master Ruth's challenge...as the title
states. Open Mic Night...anything can happen at the End of the
Universe!
Disclaimer: I only own me (Res) and 'My Friend'. All the
others, I just borrowed. Please don't sue me...I was only
kidding!
Feedback: Sure! Love it! I promise not to bite...at least, not
unless requested!
Notes: At the end, so as not to spoil some of the surprises...
THANKS: To Master Ruth for the challenge, and to Smitty for all
her help and prompting of the inspriation well! Sorry, Master
Ruth...it came out closer to 1800 words than 500, but I got
everything in!!
"Yeah, I'll have a double-shot white chocolate vanilla latte,
non-fat, hold the foam..."
"And then, Chi-chi told Fuzzy --"
"Kin I have a single-shot Americano? No, better make it a
hazelnut mochachinno, de-caf, whole, please...."
"Hey, VERN! You there, Vern? I'm on TV! Yanowhadameen?"
"One writer's chai, coming up!"
"Hey, Res, over here!"
I finished placing my money on the counter and looked around,
trying to locate the familiar voice. The place was really
teeming tonight. After scanning the crowd for a few moments, I
finally spotted a waving arm attached to a friendly face, near
the back of the coffee house. I grinned and waved back, then
made my way through the crush to join my friend.
"I don't care if he is an ambassador, he'd better keep
those...those...THINGS to himself or he's going to lose them!
And it's still cheating if you pick them up with your penis!"
I dodged as a gentleman with an elaborate coat and a spiky
hairdo stepped back from a table, his hands in the air and a
hat box under his arm. He lisped an apology to me and bowed at
the irate bald woman still sitting at the table before turning
to rush away. Shaking my head, I continued toward the empty
chair my friend was pulling up to her table and gesturing me
into.
"Hey, Res! Long time no see!" She gave me a hug and sat down
again, using her hip to shove the young man next to her deeper
into the booth. He glanced up from the table, (where he was
playing with an action figure in brown robes that looked
REMARKABLY like him), a look of surprised indignation on his
face. The older man in the other side of the booth looked
amused, flipping his long hair over his shoulder as he smiled
at me and moved his PlayJedi magazine over, making room for my
drink.
I grinned, "No kidding, babe! Where ya been? Its
been...geez...couple a years, at least!"
She shrugged and grinned, then nodded at her companions, "Hey,
I'd like you to meet my co-workers...," pointing at the older
man first, "That is Qui-Gon...and this," she poked the younger
man next to her in the ribs, making him laugh, "this devil
playing with his dolly is Obi. We just got off work...thought
we'd head over here for the open mic night."
"We'd heard that there was quite a bit of amateur talent that
shows up here," Qui-Gon interjected.
I nodded. "Oh yeah, if you like unusual poetry, this place is
gre--"
A puff of perfume against the back of my chair, followed by a
high-pitched, dainty voice saying, "This is mine!", interrupted
me, quickly followed by a black clad arm reaching past me to
squirt our table and booth. "And this is mine, and this is
mine, and THIS --"
Qui-Gon yanked his magazine out of the way just in time and
glared at the person behind me, growling, " -- is MINE." Obi
looked up and frowned, adding his icy green glare to Qui-Gon's
sizzling blue one.
"Ok, ok," I turned to see the cat behind me backing up, hands
in the air, "That one is yours!" Then he grinned and darted in
to squirt a pair of sensible-looking shoes in a bag next to
Qui-Gon, before dancing away, squirting merrily and chanting,
"This is mine! And this is mine! And THIS is mine!"
We watched for a moment as the lunatic bounced up to a man with
red hair, an odd-looking beard, and dressed all in red leather.
The cat didn't even pause as he reached out and squirted the
chair the red man was sitting on, the table in front of him,
and the ancient dead-and-dried rose in the vase on the table,
chanting, "Mine, mine, and mine!"
The man ignored him, holding out his hands in front of him and
shaking the fists up and down three times. The third time he
opened both hands out flat, looked at them, sighed, and shook
his fists again. This time, the third time he held out two
fingers on each hand. With a deep sigh and a shake of his head,
he tried again, again holding his hands out flat in front of
him. The cat blinked at him then shook his head and reached to
squirt the large sword leaning against the table. "Ooh...Mine!"
The red man snarled and was on his feet, batting the little
squirt bottle across the room, and casually tossing the cat
after it with hardly a grunt. Settling himself at his table
again, he once more began shaking his fists in front of
himself. A black-haired woman and a tall brown-haired man
slipped past our table, followed closely by a bald woman with
blue skin and a gray-skinned, white-haired girl; the man
muttering, "I keep telling him...he'll tie every time! You have
to have two players! But does he listen? No! Never listens!" A
frog-looking creature floated by, trailing the four, an odd
smile on its face as it listened to the man mutter. It paused
to examine some tableware, eyeing the spoons with proprietary
interest. "SPARKY!" The frog-thing floated a little faster.
"Ahem, where was I?" I turned back to our table, picking up my
drink. "Oh yes, poetry." I glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Should be starting any time now..."
An Unsubtle Plot Device lurched into a cleared space at one
corner of the room, carefully hooking up a microphone and
testing it, then stomping hard on the batch of Technical
Difficulties that attempted to swarm the now-stage. The host of
the evening, (a large rock that looked as if someone had
dropped a pizza on it, wrong side up, then scrapped the crust
off), rumbled up to the mic and announced the first poet of the
evening.
Or rather, group of poets. A swarm of furry rabbit-looking
things, several carrying a couch cushion, a sari, a several of
bottles of nailpolish and what appeared to be a very
bizarre-looking alien fetish statue artifact, mobbed the stage
and began setting up.
"Oh cool!" a little black-haired kid in broken glasses said,
from the table next to us, "The Mogwai are going first! They do
the best performance poetry..."
"Now THERE's a Chosen One!" Qui-Gon suddenly burst out, behind
me. I turned to see him gazing avidly at the boy, apparently
enraptured by the lightning shaped scar on the kid's forehead.
"Can't you just feel the Force in him? I need a blood
sample..."
Obi just rolled his eyes and muttered, "Not AGAIN...," before
reaching out to take Qui-Gon's hand. "No, Master. This is our
night off, remember? We are here for Poetry, not Chosen Ones."
Qui-Gon sighed heavily, then resignedly turned his attention
back to the swarming Mogwai, who now seemed to be painting each
other colors with the nailpolish, sniffing it heavily, then
climbing up the statue and launching themselves at the couch
cushion in a waterfall of colors, giving an amazing impression
of a sunset on a lonely beach somewhere in paradise.
"Err... are they doing what I think they are doing?" A few
tables over, a woman with one eye and a six-limbed treecat on
her shoulder leaned over towards the man next to her, a look of
faint consternation on her face.
"I think so," the man replied, unwinding the obscenely long
striped scarf from his neck and standing briefly to hang his
overcoat on the back of the chair he was sitting in.
"Oh."
Behind the sunset, several of the Mogwai were twisting the sari
into a series of colorful slings, grabbing random flying
partners and stuffing them into the slings for a quick round of
what appeared to be wild, uninhibited sex. The Mogwai were so
small, and between the colors of the sari and the colors of the
nailpolish-painted fur, it was kind of hard to tell. Especially
with the sunset mutating into a rainbow in front of the orgy.
Suddenly a small group of creatures that looked like knitted
pink aardvarks threw themselves into the mob of Mogwai,
whistling madly as they grabbed partners for themselves. The
disruption seemed signal the end of the performance piece and
the mob of madly fucking furballs was quickly cleared from the
stage in preparation for the next speaker.
The pizza-rock rumbled forward and said its bit, and the next
poet swung onto the stage. The orangutan was holding a banana
in one hand and a book in the other, and used them to gesture
in emphasis as it recited, "Ook! Ook, ook ook, OOk! Ook, Ook,
ook."
Obi actually had tears in his eyes, as did several of the
other, more furry, patrons of the coffeehouse, as the orangutan
fell awkwardly to his knees at the end of his poem. "Oook...ook
ook...," he sobbed in finale. Several patrons sprang to their
feet to clap enthusiastically.
Near the door, a large robot clapped stiffly and bent to its
companions to remark, in a metallic voice, "Not bad for a
monkey." The red sensor flashed, whish-whish, across the front
of its face, audible in the sudden, deafening silence.
I gulped. "Ooh...shouldn't call him a monkey," I whispered,
meeting the wide eyes of my friend and her companions. My
friend nodded and Obi cuddled his action figure closer as he
leaned against Qui-Gon.
There was a brief moment of pure stillness, then the orangutan
slowly turned to face the robot. "Ook?"
"I said, that was a pretty good poem for a monk--" An orange
hurricane erupted, whirling around the coffeehouse and
centering on the robot.
Somehow I ended up holding the book, and the red man a couple
tables over was left staring at the banana that magically
appeared in his fist. I heard him ask the frog-thing, "Does
this beat rock?"
When the orange fur stopped flying, the orangutan was handing a
shiny new silver toaster to the barissta. The barissta shook
his glowing blue lined head, flashing red for a moment as he
said, "What am I supposed to do with a toaster? This is a
coffeehouse, not a donutshop! My user would not be pleased."
The orangutan ooked thoughtfully for a moment, then went to
work again. A few moments later, he was handing a brand-new
espresso coffeemachine to the barissta, complete with an
envelope of spare parts and instructions. The barissta smiled,
the red lines on his body fading back into a cool blue.
"Thanks... I can use this!" He turned to put the envelope on
the door of his milk freezer, attaching it with a magnet in the
shape of a dead firelizard.
The orangutan ooked happily, then came to retrieve his book and
banana as the host announced the next performer and a man with
long black lambchops on his cheeks stepped up to the mic. He
was holding a towel and had a fish stuck in his ear.
My friend gasped. "Oh my god...I think that's Elvis!"
I just smiled...if she thought that was amazing, she should
have been here last week.
end
Notes: In response to Master Ruth's Challenge for a 500 word
NC-17 or R story that involved one (or more) of the following
situations (an orgy, a poetry slam in an urban coffeehouse, a
lonely beach somewhere in paradise), three (or more) of the
following items (a towel, a magazine, an envelope, a hat box,
an action figure, a dried rose, nailpolish, a sari, a bizarre
alien artifact/fetish statue, a couch cushion, a pair of
sensible shoes, a refridgerator magnet) and two (or more) of
the following characters or type of characters (Qui-Gon and
Obi-Wan [both of them], an original character you made up, a
literary character, yourself, a dead historical character).
Well... so its more than 500 words, but I thought I'd take the
challenge a step further and just put them ALL in!
References from: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Great Golf
Stories, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Red Dwarf, Farscape, Star Trek,
Harry Potter, Gremlins, Honor Harrington, Dr. Who, The
Clangers, Discworld, Battlestar Galactica, Tron
Special appearances by: Ernest P Worrhall, Ambassador Londo of
the Centauri, Cat, D'Argo, Kritchon, Zhaan, Chiana, Rigel,
Harry Potter, Honor Harrington, Nimitz, Dr. Who, The Clangers
Clan, The Librarian, Tron, Elvis
Archive 