A/N: Hi everyone! This is my second Horton Hears a Who fanfic, but my first oneshot! I got the inspiration for this when I was thinking about the beginning of the movie, and a peculiar Think (to use the Seussian term) came into my head: We never learn what that first small noise that Horton heard was. So…I decided to create that scenario for myself, and this is the result! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Horton Hears a Who.
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Ned O'Malley, the Mayor of a little town called Whoville, woke up with a sudden jolt. He looked slowly at the clock, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he squinted to see the time.
7:12am. He groaned. Despite the fact that it was light out, his family didn't normally wake up and have breakfast until around 9. Except for his wife, Sally. She was always an early riser. He turned over and saw that his wife, not surprisingly, wasn't next to him. Silently, he was glad, because otherwise she would have asked her husband what made him wake up so suddenly.
It wasn't because he had one of those moments where you're late for something, it was because of something much more peculiar.
He had just woken up from a nightmare.
Now, Ned wasn't really the type to have nightmares. It was true that people said he was a little bit odd, even childish…and maybe he was.
But nightmares? Him? Nah!
Ned tried uneasily to recreate the odd nightmare in his mind. While it had been frightening, it had been somewhat strange too. Stranger than most of the dreams he had.
He had remembered it clearly. The sky had been strangely dark, though it was around noon. Everyone in Whoville seemed to be jeering at him, because he said something bad was going to happen. No one believed him except his family.
The rest of Whoville was suddenly proven wrong. A dark, clouded funnel formed, accompanied by thunder and lightening. It was a tornado. A big one.
The tornado began to suck up everything and everyone in Whoville. Despite Ned's desperate attempts to hold on to something, it was no use. He saw his entire family – his wife, 96 daughters, and his one son and eldest child: Jojo – being blown into the void. Then he too, was sucked in.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, he had heard voices. They were faint, very faint, but he could hear them. It was the people of Whoville, calling out one single phrase:
"We are here! We are here! We are here!"
As he began to shout the phrase along with them while the storm raged fiercely, he heard one last sound before he awakened: the cry of an elephant.
At that point, he had woken up. Yup, that dream was in the top five on this "Weirdest Dream" list. Maybe even #1. No, wait, he rethought that, my weirdest dream was when I was in a world where everyone was a pony, and all of them ate rainbows and pooped butterflies. That was #1.
Even so, the strange dream he had just had was over now. Ned, however, had an odd feeling that today would be different from most other days. "It's probably just that odd dream," he said to himself reassuringly. "Today will be an ordinary day…I hope."
It was at this moment when Ned suddenly remembered one of his mayoral duties he still needed to do. "I guess it's a good thing that dream woke me up," he said.
He went down to where his office was, where his secretary, Miss Yelp, was waiting.
"Hello, Mr. Mayor," she said with barely a glance at him as she typed away on her computer.
"Hi Miss Yelp," he said, rushing past her.
The moment before Ned reached the door of his office, Miss Yelp suddenly said something that stopped him.
"The papers that you needed are on your desk," she said to him, then paused. "So is the stapler."
Ned suddenly screeched to a halt right in front of the door, crashing right into it. He stared at his secretary. "What did you say?" he asked, unable to hide the nervousness in his voice.
Miss Yelp sighed. "I said the papers you needed are on your desk and so is the – " she paused as she said the next word, quieter than the others, "stapler."
Ned gulped. Then – very slowly – he turned the doorknob to enter his office. The moment the door opened, he jumped back as if it were a bomb about to explode. No bomb exploded of course, but there were the papers on his desk.
And the stapler. That was there too.
Ned visibly shuddered. He hated staplers.
Or rather, staplers hated him. Nearly every time he used one of them, he was the one who ended up getting stapled, instead of the papers. It was like the papers were on the stapler's side, refusing to get stapled and saying among themselves "Hey, I know! Let's make Mr. Mayor here get stapled and see how he likes it!"
Oh the horror!
Ned took a deep breath as he went over to his desk and sat down in his chair. "All right papers," he announced while cracking his knuckles, "prepare to be stapled, like you're supposed to!"
He then picked up the stapler – slowly – and glared at it. "And you, Mr. Stapler! You are always out to get me! Could you be a good little stapler this time and not attack me with your evil staples of doom?" The stapler, of course, made no response.
"Okay, okay," Ned said as he tried to relax himself, "deep breath. Just take a deep breath and everything will be okay." Cautiously, he picked up a small stack of papers, raised the stapler over them…and it stapled perfectly.
"SCORE!" he shouted, doing a little kind of victory dance.
"Mr. Mayor?"
"Uh, sorry Miss Yelp!" Ned said quickly, trying to regain his self-control. However, that became pretty much impossible as he went on stapling, with no injury al all.
"Uh huh! Go Ned! Go Ned! It's your birthday!" the Mayor chanted giddily, almost having fun with it now. Rubbing his hands together, he grabbed the stapler and prepared to staple the final pile of papers together.
Suddenly, Ned's victory chant stopped almost instantaneously. Something was wrong: the stapler wasn't stapling!
"Oh, come ON!" he groaned, trying to pry the stapler open with his hands. Unfortunately, when he did manage to pry the stapler open, it flew across the room.
The door suddenly opened and Ned's wife, Sally, poked her head in the door. "Ned, are you okay?" she asked.
Ned got a panicked look on his face as he saw the dreaded stapler heading right for his wife. "SALLY, DUCK!" he shouted desperately.
Sally ducked just in time. The stapler zoomed out of the room and hit the wall in the hallway. It then rebounded against the wall and was sent spiraling back into the room…
And Ned's eyes widened as the stapler slammed itself into his face, drilling one single staple into his head.
"YYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!"
Ned's scream was so loud, it re-vibrated all throughout Whoville as his scream was carried off into the sky.
And little did Ned or any other Who know, that one scream would carry off into a world above Whoville – a world they didn't even know existed.
And that one scream would be heard by the ears of a carefree elephant – an elephant named Horton.
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A/N: Well, there you have it! My first oneshot ever! The Mayor is my second favorite character, so it was nice to write a story centered on him! Hope you all enjoyed it! Read and review!