The troposphere and stratosphere were completely cloudless one summer day; this example of clear weather allowed the sun to shine on the town on Muncie, Indiana without anything getting in its way. A tiny hole in the ozone layer, though, made this day excruciatingly scorching for the Muncie residents. Said residents included a thirty-something-year-old man who was the proud owner of a fat, orange cat and a stupid, yellow dog (whose former owner ditched him without any warning many, many years ago).
Sweat ran down Garfield's entire body as he lay motionless on the table. Odie, panting much harder than usual, also climbed onto the tabletop and began to sniff Garfield's sweaty foot.
"Odie...no," moaned Jon Arbuckle, also uncomfortable by the heat. "We don't lick sweat off other people." Odie did anyway, much to the annoyance of Garfield.
Jon sighed heavily. "That's it, Odie." He was not really all that angry because he was suffering from the extreme heat— in fact, the heat made him nearly apathetic about everything— but bad dogs must be punished. However, Odie managed to get in one lick of Garfield's sweat before Jon forcefully grabbed him and took him away to be spanked for misbehaving. This left just Garfield.
"I hate this. It's too freakin' hot. If it were any hotter, I'd seriously consider taking off my fur, going outside, and dancing around naked. But it wouldn't be a good dance. It would be a stupid dance that would probably get me driven to the vet if Jon saw it. But in this heat, that wouldn't be so bad."
His inner monologue was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. He jumped off the table to answer the door.
He immediately yelped and recoiled a little.
It was him.
Why did it have to be him?
"Is anything the matter, Garfield? It's just me, the world's cutest and dankest kitty cat!"
The elder cat rubbed the tears of 'oh dear God I can't do this anymore I'm going to kill myself right now' out of his eyes. Thankfully, Nermal didn't notice this.
"Aren't you going to say anything to me?" asked Nermal as he barged in before Garfield could slam the door on him.
"How do you keep your fur so tidy in this awful heatwave?" was the only question Garfield could think of. He envied how Nermal didn't have sweat running down his body and matting his fur at the moment.
"That's a dumb question! It's obviously becau—"
Garfield stopped him. "Yes, I know. It's because you're sooooo cute. Know what? No, Nermal, you're not cute." He grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up so they were seeing eye-to-eye. "In fact, you are an ugly, smelly, annoying, stupid, retarded, uncute little rat. Your mother should have aborted you as soon as she saw the ultrasound. Now stop pestering me, get the HELL out of my house, AND NEVER COME VISIT ME EVER AGAIN! You are BANNED from here, you pathetic little twerp!" He pushed Nermal outside as hard as he could. He then slammed the door. As he was about to go take a cold shower, Garfield realized the sharp pain coursing throughout his body, and happened to glance down and see his fingers trapped in the door.
There was a loud shriek from inside.
Nermal stood on the stoop, facing the closed front door, and was completely frozen in shock. After a few minutes, he started shaking, barely noticeable at first, but gradually becoming harder and more violent until Nermal turned around and ran as fast as he could down the street, screeching at the top of his lungs as "Crawling" by Linkin Park played in the background.
He kept running until he noticed a car in the distance, growing bigger and bigger. "I'll show Garfield!" poor Nermal sniffled. "Yeah, I'll show him!" He went into a sprint, straight towards the car and its unaware driver.
As the gap began to close between them, a giant, demented, toothy smile contorted onto Nermal's face.
"GOODBYE, WORLD!"
...
Garfield was still trying to get his fingers out of the door. The thought of simply opening the door never crossed his mind, so he just kept pulling and straining. He tugged one final time, as hard as he could, and was thrown backward into a wall. He did it. Unfortunately, his fingers suffered from having their blood circulation cut off, and pressure built up inside them as a result. When Garfield got his hand loose, the resulting waves of blood coming to his fingers was too much for his body to handle. His fingers swelled up for a second, and then popped, subsequently flooding the house with hundreds and hundreds of gallons of dark red blood.
The house got so full of blood that it exploded, and Garfield flew out of the chimney on a flying Pop-Tart. His paw was still squirting blood, so it looked sort of like Nyan Cat but with Garfield, and blood.
...
The sound of muffled rap music disturbed the peace of the neighborhood. It got so loud that some of the animals living in the woods behind the neighborhood cut their wrists and shot themselves. The offending noise was coming from a 1979 Pontiac Bonneville sedan cruising down the road— at about 10 miles an hour, to be more precise— and the rear bumper was covered with Westboro Baptist Church inspired bumper stickers, saying things like "GOD HATES YOUR TEARS," "TOO LATE TO PRAY," "NO REST FOR THE WICKED," and most shockingly, "THANK GOD FOR DEAD CHILDREN". A giant outlined trollface decal took up the whole rear window, implying that the bumper stickers did not reflect the driver's actual beliefs, but were put there as a joke to troll other drivers. The custom plate read "AYYMATE".
Most interestingly, the front grille had a small grey cat plastered on it. As Nyanfield flew over the city, he lowered in altitude just enough to make out a grey blob on the front of a car that was entering the drive-thru for Hardee's. "Oh noez!" he articulated internally. "I must save Nermal!" But his fingers started spraying blood even more than they already were, and he started to feel a little bit weak from the blood loss. "Screw this..." he decided. "I must save ME!" Losing the Pop-Tart and gaining a blue cape for some reason, he raised a bloody finger into the air and said, "To Muncie Veterinary Clinic! The Caped Avenger... away!" He then flew off in the opposite direction.
Down below...
"THNKYUFCHUZINGHARDYSWTCANIGTFRYUTDAY," blared the drive-thru worker through the old distorted drive-thru speaker.
The Bonneville driver, whose name was Swizzle C, was a morbidly obese, ugly African-American man who was wearing cringey "bling". He sighed. "Dey really need ta git dat goddamn thang fixed," he muttered. He had a very deep voice, between baritone and bass, but closer to bass. Neglecting to turn down the volume on the radio, the fat-arse started to take his order. "Yo, man, can I git a #2 with extra mizzle, hold da fliboppityrizzle? N'hurry da mothafuc—"
"SURKYNYUPLEZTRNDARADYODWNSIKANHERBTTR?" the employee asked.
After pausing to decipher the garbled sentence from the speaker, Swizzle replied, "Ya want me ta turn down my dopeass tunes? Please, you ugly anyway." He floored the gas and hightailed the Pontiac out of Hardee's, flipping off the 70-something lady at the first window as he went around. After which he rear-ended the car waiting at the second window at 54 miles an hour.
An angry white man stepped out of his 2013 Chevrolet Sonic LT and knocked on the driver's side window of the car behind him. Swizzle C pressed the power window switch (you had to special-order the power windows on cars back in 1979) to roll down the window. "You smash up my car?" growled the man quietly. It was none other than Jon Arbuckle.
"AWWW HELLLL NAAAWWW, cracka," scoffed Swizzle C, as if the whole thing was no big deal. "You let it git smashed up yourself by sittin' in da middle of da damn parkin' lot."
"For your information, I was waiting for them to hand me my food," Jon retorted. "You know how hard you hit my car?"
Continuing to wave off the incident as if it was nothing, Swizzle replied, "Ahh, I di'in't hit it dat hard."
"Oh, really? Well, look at what you did to my trunk!" Swizzle got out to see what he did. Jon's trunk was all crumpled up.
"Ha! You cereal, sonnnn? I compacted yo' trunk, playa!"
"You know how much money I have to pay to get this fixed?!"
"Ah dun give a fuuuuuuuuck! Look at my ride!" Swizzle C pointed to the damage on his own car. "LOOK AT DA HEADLIGHT!" He was more upset about the slightly cracked headlight than the messed-up bumper or the bent, contorted hood lid. Or the cat on his grille, for that matter.
"You know what? That's your own problem." said Jon calmly. "Know why? You are an asshole. A self-centered, narcissistic asshole who cares about nobody but yourself. You're also a fat, bloated, tub of lard who probably sits at home all day on welfare because you're too lazy to go out and find a job and work for a living. Your gold dollar-sign earrings are not cool; neither is your "SWAG" necklace or your outdated afro. You are a sick bastard and I hope you rot in Hell. Have a horrible day! Good! Bye!" Swizzle C stood there unfazed throughout the whole speech, until he heard the brunette Caucasian man say "I knew the racists were right when they said blacks were bad news!" under his breath as he turned to get back into his Chevy.
"DAT'S IT! FULL NIGGAAAA!" he shouted, as if he were powering up. Then he screamed, "IMMA BUST A CAP IN YO AAAASSSS!" With that, he pulled out a machine gun and opened fire on innocent Jon, who skillfully dodged the streams of bullets, snatched Swizzle's gun, snapped it in half on his knee, and struck Swizzle across the head with one half of it. Now weaponless, the black fatso punched Jon right in the nose. A fistfight broke up, stirring up a cartoon... dust cloud...
...
The scene cut to the vet's office, where Garfield had finished getting stitches in his fingers. "There you go," cooed Liz sweetly as she finished wrapping gauze around his paw. She kissed him and gave him a sucker. It was blue raspberry, Garfield's favorite. After sending him on his way with a pat on the head, Liz sighed, "Oh, it's so nice to see Garfield without seeing Jon." She frowned. "Stupid Jon and his flirting. Yecch!"
...
Both men, by this time, were bruised and bloody. Jon even had a black eye. They just stood there panting heavily.
"I give up, man," Jon sighed, pulling out his phone. "I'm just gonna call the police and let them sort it out."
"Wait! What's dat in da sky?!" gasped Swizzle C, pointing upward.
"Hmph. You can't fool me, that's the oldest trick in the..." But Jon's voice trailed off as he saw an orange object zooming toward them out of the corner of his eye. "...book?"
Garfield landed so hard his ankles nearly snapped. "Nevah feahh! Da Caped Avenger iz heaahh!" he bellowed in a weird voice.
"Who da..." started a very perplexed Swizzle C.
Jon rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, it's just my cat, Garfield, being crazy again."
Using his super strength, Garfield the Caped Avenger started to push the two smashed-up cars apart so he could access Nermal. Except Garfield didn't have super strength, and his arms popped off his body like they were Mr. Potato Head limbs. So instead he kicked Jon's car up into the sky toward outer space. Jon was so pissed he couldn't see straight, and yelled out, "GAAAAARRRFIIIELD!"
"Hey, I guess all those years of kicking Odie actually paid off," remarked Garfield, using his mouth to insert one fallen arm back into its socket, and then using that arm to attach the other arm. "Now to rescue Nermal! The Caped Avenger... away!" He ran about two or three feet to the front grille of Swizzle's automobile, not really having to go that far. "Oh, there you are, Nermal... Nermal?" Peeling Nermal's body off, he noticed he didn't seem to be breathing. Garfield then checked for a pulse. There was none.
"Sheeiiiittt," Garfield shrugged.
...
Horns honked and beeped as traffic slowed to a standstill on southbound Indiana Hwy. 67, the jam starting from an accident at the Macedonia Avenue off-ramp and stretching all the way to Memorial Drive—
"Oh, my God, do you EVER shut the hell up?!" interrupted Garfield, putting his face in his hands. "Nermal's in critical condition here! We don't have time for your unnecessary details!"
*sigh...*
Anyway, Swizzle C was driving Jon, Garfield, and a still-unconscious Nermal to the vet's office, since Jon no longer had a car. Odie didn't come with them because he was off somewhere touching himself or something.
"Thanks again for driving us to the vet, Mr., uh..." said Jon.
The fat middle-aged black man chuckled. "Call me Swizzle. An' it's mah pleasure; it's da least I could do since you gun call the po-po on me after dis."
"I just hope we make it in time for our appointment." Jon looked in the back seat. "Garfield, are you still doing the chest compressions like I showed you?"
"Yep," answered Garfield, rhythmically sending blows to Nermal's chest with his fists. He turned to the camera. "Wow, they're letting me punch Nermal for a change! This is freaking awesome! Usually when I hit him I get screamed at!"
After a few minutes, traffic slowly began to clear up. "All right, we're moving again!" Jon exclaimed.
"Hell, yeaaah!" added Swizzle C, fist-pumping with both arms. However, after a few minutes of running full blast in the traffic jam, the old A/C unit in the car couldn't take anymore and gave out. "Ugh, dat thang always needs to be fixed."
"Eh, we'll just roll down the windows since we're moving," Jon said. So everyone rolled down their windows. Buuuut it turned out the traffic jam wasn't over after all and the car stopped once again. Wind stopping blowing into the car, and Garfield's fur quickly became matted with sweat again.
"Curse you, Jon Arbuckleeeeeeeeeee...!" he cried out skywardly.
...
Everyone was crowded around Nermal's limp body in the examination room at the Muncie Veterinary Clinic, just staring at him.
After a few minutes of nothing happening, Jon opened his big fat mouth. "Hey, Liz." He winked at her. "Wanna go over to my house and do some hanky-panky after this?" He then took off his shirt, revealing his hairy, flabby manboobs, and started twerking and dabbing unsexily all around the room in a failed attempt to turn Liz on, while going, "Unh. Unh. I'm simply ir-re-sis-ti-ble. Unh. Unh."
Liz cringed and managed to look away from Jon's disgusting body in time; however, the others weren't so lucky. "Oh, my Gooooooo..." Garfield started, before suddenly fainting and faceplanting on the floor. Swizzle C started barfing uncontrollably. Nermal, despite being nearly vegetative at this point, rolled over and grunted weakly with an unpleasant expression on his face.
Liz rooted around in a drawer until she found what she was looking for: a box of tranquilizer darts. "Nighty-night, Jon!" she laughed slightly, stabbing the dart into Jon's arm without even needing a tranquilizer gun.
"Unh, unh, I'm so sexy, unh— oh, nighty-night, Mommy. Can you tuck me in and bring me a glass of waaaaaaa..." Jon stumbled around for a few seconds and then collapsed.
...
Garfield regained consciousness a few minutes later, with puke splatters scattered all over him. He sat up woozily, rubbing his forehead. "Ohhhhh..." he moaned. "What happened?"
"Well, Garfield, I see you're up!" Liz observed aloud in a perky voice. She was writing something on her clipboard.
Looking around from the floor, Garfield couldn't help but notice that an oxygen-mask-clad Nermal had been hooked to several large machines during the time he was out. A rhythmic beeping noise now resonated throughout the room, which was previously silent. Jon and Swizzle C were standing next to each other on the other side of the table, staring solemnly at the gray kitten.
"Well, Garfield, I've got some good news and some bad news, and also some really bad news," stated Liz. "The good news is that Jon has promised to stop acting embarrassing. Jon, tell Garfield you're sorry."
"UuuuhhhhhhhI'msorry," Jon apologized insincerely.
"Da bad news is, we've hadta hook yo li'l friend here up on life support," continued Swizzle.
Garfield's eyes widened and the others waited for a moment to see how Garfield would react to this news.
"Life support?" Garfield chuckled. "THAT'S the 'bad' news? You know what? Just humor me. Tell me the really bad news!"
"Well, the really bad news is that Swizzle C threw up all over you after you fainted," Liz said, her eyes once again focused on her clipboard.
Garfield gasped loudly, putting his paws on his cheeks. "No...NOOOHOHOOO!" he screamed dramatically. He started speed-pacing while hyperventilating. "What am I gonna do? My fur is RUINED and it'll never come out ever and Odie'll make fun of me and thenoohhhh yeah I'm a cat." He skidded to a stop. "I can just clean MYSELF up." He started licking his fur clean, with no regards for the others in the room.
Swizzle C vomited once more.
...
Garfield was leaning over the table staring at Nermal, as the heart monitor beeped. And beeped. And beeped.
Bored, he began patting on the table in time with the heart monitor, then began drumming more complex rhythms while still being in sync with the beeping. Then he started beatboxing as well. Eventually, he started singing to himself in his head, "That's called bein' a cat! Lie around, get fat! That's what it takes to be a cat!"
"There's no use in keeping him alive anymore," said Liz to Swizzle and Jon with a heavy sigh. "I'm just going to pull the plug and let nature take its course." She sadly unhooked the life support, causing Nermal to flatline.
"You'll be sittin' pretty, kitty ca—" Garfield stopped drumming and beatboxing and looked annoyed. "Hey! Who turned my beat off?!"
Jon ran up and put his arm on his cat's shoulder. "Garfield, I'm..." He cleared his throat. "Well, I'm not quite sure how to t-tell you this..." He stammered for a long time, trying to find the right words.
Eventually Swizzle C had had enough of Jon's stuttering and hollered out, "NERMAL'S DEAD! OKAAAAAY?!"
After recovering from the initial startle, a very creeped out Garfield replied, "Dude, he's not dead. He's just not alive is all."
Liz, even though she lacked telepathy like everybody, noticed Garfield's face and body language and calmly told him, "We've done all we can do for him here, Garfield." She stifled a little sob. She hated seeing cute animals die. "I'm sorry, but we just can't keep him alive anymore."
"You still have Odie at home to play with," Jon smiled.
There was a long silence, then Garfield nodded his head blankly. He hated Odie with a burning passion. "Yeah, whatever. Forget Nermal. Let's get out of here." He turned toward the door.
"You know, I really didn't expect him to take it so well," whispered Jon to Liz.
"I know, it's weird! We should get him a family-sized Stouffer's lasagna for being so brave today," Liz whispered back.
"That sounds like a gre..."
Their conversation was interrupted by water filling the entire volume of the room and hitting the ceiling in half a second before draining by shooting out the windows and seeping out into the hall. When it was all drained, the two found that the source of the sudden flooding was from Garfield, who was kneeled on Nermal's table with him, wailing intensely and loudly. It was an ugly cry, the kind with wrinkles and giant tears that roll down your neck and under your shirt, even though Garfield never really wore shirts.
"Oh, Nermal! I'm so sorry!" sobbed the fat land barge, pounding his fist on the table. "I said all those mean things to you and made you die! What have I done? I've been such a fooooool!"
"Aw, dammit," Jon grumbled, rolling his eyes at seeing his cat being overly-dramatic again. He was always like this. For example, one time, Pooky needed to be put on to wash. Garfield had followed Jon into the laundry room, and was waving handkerchiefs and throwing confetti as if Pooky were boarding a cruise ship and he was watching from the docks. "You have no idea how much pressure I'm under," Jon had said on that day.
But this time was different. Jon couldn't help but feel sorry for the little guy as he watched him bitterly mourn the death of his old pal, Nermal. It didn't help that Jon had to make the dreaded phone call to his parents later about the passing of their cat.
As Garfield cried, he thought he heard Desireé Goyette's voice singing ever so sweetly:
"So long, old friend, I wish that I could see you once again... I never knew the time would come when I'd be losing you..."
Garfield looked up slowly, seeing a record player in the corner. He got off the table, ran up to it and smashed it as hard as he could.
"I hope you know I never—" "SHUT UUUPPPPP!" shrieked Garfield furiously.
He returned to Nermal and resumed his wild fit of sorrow. "There's no time for music! I just killed someone! Oh, WHY did I kick you out of my house, Nermal? Why did I make you suicidal? Come back, Nermal! Come back! I LOOOOOVE YOU!" He was absolutely crestfallen.
"Dude, chill. You're going practically nuts over me, and, to be honest, it's getting on my nerves a little," said Nermal, sitting upright.
Garfield was angry at this sudden turn of events. "What the hell's the matter with you?! You're supposed to be dead! Go back to being dead!" he sniveled, still heaving with sobs.
"I... am?" Nermal was puzzled. "Well, okay, then." He lied back down and closed his eyes, trying his best to re-die.
"Good. Now, where was I?" After a pause, Garfield burst into hysterical tears again for several minutes until his mind finally put two and two together. "Duh... wait a minute... NERMAL!" He embraced Nermal, whom he now considered to be a person he was okay with, and laughed in relief and overjoy as the last few tears rolled down his face. "Nermal! Nermal, Nermal, Nermal, Nermal, Nermal!" He repeated his name over and over rapidly as he squeezed him and cuddled him. "Oh, Nermal! I was so worried about you! You had no idea!"
"Actually, I did kind of... have an idea..." Nermal grunted, squirming against the weight of the overweight orange cat's hugs and hoping not to get sucked into his fat rolls.
"I don't understand it!" Liz gasped, shaking her head in disbelief. "He didn't die at all?!"
"I guess not," chuckled Jon. "Maybe he was just 'not alive' for a while, is all."
Liz expressed further flabbergast upon reading Nermal's oxygen and heart monitors. "On top of that, his vital signs are looking quite good for someone whose heart stopped for a few minutes."
"It's uh miiiracle!" Swizzle C cried, sounding like a black preacher. "Haaallelujah, baby!" He jumped in the air.
"That, or maybe Garfield's love for Nermal saved his life," Jon suggested. "We could solve so many problems in our society today if we were more loving to people."
"Yeah!" agreed Liz. "There would be less war, less fighting, less bigotry and prejudice against Arabs and asexuals."
"Speaking of love," said Jon to Swizzle C, "I'm going to do something loving to you and not call the police on you for wrecking my car and being rude to me earlier, as well as trying to shoot me."
"Wow, thanks! I wuz worried I wuz gon go ta jail."
Back to Garfield and Nermal.
"Daaaammn, what a sappy conversation!" Garfield whispered loudly to Nermal as they looked on. "Anyway..." They started hugging and stuff again. "Oh, Nermal! Nermal! I love you, Nermal! I love you! Oh, Nermal! Ohhh, I love you so much, I could just..."
There was no way anyone could predict what occurred after that. Garfield started to give Nermal little kisses all over his face. Nermal giggled because it tickled. At first he was kissing him innocently and platonically, but suddenly Garfield felt strange new feelings for Nermal and the kisses slowly grew hotter and more intense. Finally he couldn't take it anymore and grabbed Nermal's head, pulling it towards him while pressing his lips against his as dramatic yet romantic orchestral soap opera music played.
Initially, the smaller cat kicked and resisted, trying to escape, but actually began to like the feeling a little. When Garfield pulled back, he wanted more. So, Nermal pulled Garfield's head towards his own and they kissed once more, making little smooching sounds as they did. Then Nermal pushed his tongue between Garfield's lips. Garfield's eyes widened at Nermal's sudden enthusiasm, but realized that he loved the feeling of French kissing and began to squirm his own tongue around the inside of Nermal's mouth.
They wrapped their arms around each other, their tongues exploring their now-connected mouths. Each cat stared at the other through dreamy, half-lidded eyes as their tongues waltzed and tangoed, swirling around and wrapping around each other as the two made out. Their lips were moistened with each other's dripping salivation. It was the best feeling and they both felt tingly all over as they each savored the moment. Then Garfield decided to try something different. As they continued kissing, he lightly bit down on Nermal's tongue, causing him to yelp out in pain. And yet, it felt good, the pleasure being much stronger than the pain. In response, without stopping the kissing, Nermal bit down on Garfield's tongue hard, making him moan in pleasure. They continued making out as the other three just watched and stared with their jaws open wide.
"Nermal's a kitten, right?" Liz said to Jon with the most disgusted expression ever.
"How can a cat born in 1979 still be a kitten?" responded Jon. "He just looks like a kitten because he's so cute!"
"Good point." Liz wiped her brow. "Whew!"
"You... you know, this story's over 4,500 words long now..." Jon chuckled, blushing a deep pink.
"Yeah, dis iz makin' me sick ta mah stomach," whimpered Swizzle C.
"So, end the story?" Jon asked.
"HELL YEAH!" shouted the other two.
"Odie! Here, boy!" called Jon.
Odie skidded into the room, holding a sign that he had hand-painted himself. "Ruff, ruff!" he barked proudly, emphasizing and pointing to each word individually. "THE" "END."
(What did I just WRITE? By the way, NERMAL IS NOT A KITTEN.)