SPACE GHOST: COAST TO COAST
BOSTON WAS YESTERDAY
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
"The alphabet letters swam around the soup at a snail's pace, Corella Breadweather waited for them to align and form a word, a sentence, and if luck should have it, a paragraph.
There were a lot of letters in the soup.
She had seen to it personally, taking out as many of the cans and pouring them all into the same bowel, stacking it with sauce and hopeful sentences, boiled it for twenty minutes, and now sat poised at the table waiting for something shamanic to occur.
For her world to make sense again
A sentence. That's all that was needed. She had looked through the television magazines, read her star charts, and found them a tired routine, they would sucker you in with small, manageable miracles that would come slightly true depending on your perspective of events, then gradually, more and more they would demand you make more of yourself in order for greater results to manifest in reality.
Go to a spa was one suggestion.
She figured that could wait until the previous week's charts had come to pass.
But that was now fated to never happen.
In her known world, she wondered if it had been ever at all possible.
A small cottage situated on a spinning silver disc hanging on the branch of a domed tree house which contained a vastly larger city overlooking a faintly uneven variation of the established interpretation of our own milky way. beige of all things, with a slight hue of perfect liquid crystalline blue around the rims of the nebula.
She often dreamt of the perfect entrance for her man, who was a rather privileged citizen that dwelled within the domed city a few miles above her quaint little abode. He would descend from the dome, swing down on a grappling hook, a valiant mountain climber, he'd turn and twist around, release his grip on the rope, and swan dive into her cottage chimney, and emerge from the fireplace. His face ripe with soot and dirt, but his heart and hers would be clear and full.
Corella's dreams rarely matched the fantasy. And reality never met her expectations.
She knew what her mother would have said to her "so long as you're in the zone, you can rise above everything"
She was in a zone alright.
A friend zone.
Six years of pining for this boy. Six years of sharing little details about her life online to him, six years of light conversation, small jokes and jibes, and all..."
"This is a confessional. Totally a confessional " Zorak pointed out, showing no hint of remorse for the interruption.
An awkward silence fell over the assembled crowd watching Thad Ghostal, aka Space Ghost, read from a small purple booklet with a velvet ribbon attached to the back of it.
It was a book he had been penning for a substantially long period...the entire duration spent between the quiet and undignified ending of his talk show and the date this fic was published. It was, had he not been so keenly interrupted by Zorak, the story of how a young impressionable girl living within a shoestring nebula on the branch of an orbiting tree house satellite ultimately enlists the aid of her gadget-obsessed best friend to infiltrate the local lunar Chinese takeaway that routinely hovered around the orbiting sun, recruit the king of loitering, pry him from his candy coatings, and enlist him in his old habit of conducting the legendary and all too fleeting in fame "Croweller Symphony" to win the heart of a boy who had dumped her in a chat room conversation on Facebook.
"Zorak, don't interrupt the fable just as it's getting to the raw portion of drama it needs to propel interest in it straight to the top" snapped Space Ghost as he tried to find his place in the passages he was reading
"Why?" Zorak replied
"It's to encourage the Boston runners" replied Space Ghost, his index finger trailing along the slightly
"The marathon was yesterday" said Zorak
"Then what are all these runners doing in the audience? MY hand-picked audience?" said Space Ghost, pointing at the assembly, all decked out in loose pants and shorts, some with ribbons tightly tethered to their arms, all wearing face paint reminiscent of the late Ultimate Warrior.
"Their all sponsored by you. They marathon runners understood that and turned them away at the door. Your lack of a reputation precedes you as always" Zorak replied
"I saw one on tv" insisted Space Ghost.
"That was the London Marathon...which was a Sunday. You're trailing behind man"
"Only because I had ninety chapters to write" Space Ghost argued
"You wrote only nine chapters" Zorak replied
"In comic book time, nine chapters can stretch to ninety"
"Nine chapters...and only nine pages"
"You peeked" Space Ghost said, aghast.
"Better than you peaking at that short a number" said Zorak
"I was gonna wing the rest" said Space Ghost in defence
"I want some wings...Moltar's still back at the stand ordering the wings" Zorak said
"Then go back and pay for it, you've got my wallet" Space Ghost replied
"You've got my wallet" said Zorak, "And MINE actually has money IN it"
"What happened to my finances? I was rich" Space Ghost asked
"You LOOKED rich" said Zorak
"Blame my monocle" said Space Ghost
There was yet an awkward pause
"Hey, Daniel Bryan's father recently passed away. We should got to the nearest wrestling event and pay our respects. Like now" said one of the runners, slightly tearing up as he read the text from wrestling sites informing them of the tragic event, he gently rubbed the face paint off of his features and loosening the tight ribbons on his arms. Everyone began to file out, leaving Space Ghost and Zorak to collect their thoughts, and whatever money was lying around
"This could have been a best seller" said Space Ghost
Zorak placed his hand firmly on Space Ghost's shoulder
"If only she'd said yes..." said Space Ghost in reflection of recent days
"If she'd said yes, you wouldn't have had a hook for your nine pages" Zorak replied
"It really was only two pages" Space Ghost said, "most of the chapters just had one sentence. There was a phase where she was lost for words. There were periods where she kept everything to herself...including the fact she loved me..I mean...the gizmo boy. The Gadget boy. Minus Heather"
"You reckon we'll reach nine FULL chapters then?" Zorak said
"Boston was yesterday Zorak. Boston was yesterday"
