The Curious and Dramatic Case of Calliou
Boris was overcome with a feeling akin to the anticipation of chlorine from a maniac's syringe getting dripped into his eye. He had wished he could live forever in his dreams but they would be forgotten within moments and he would have to face reality and endure another Saturday. What was supposed to be a brief respite in the endless cycle of the 9-5 grind was now just another in the endless cycle of his own personal Samsara where he died each night in his sleep only to experience a waking death with the rising of the sun. Calliou would always, and without deviation, wake up at 6:47 and yell for attention. Time to get up, he would say, time to get up time to get up time…
Right now, it was 6:45. Boris would savor the peace while it lasted. It was 6:46. Why couldn't these moments last a little longer. Were minutes getting shorter or was his perception of time getting too fast as he got older and more senile? Would he still have to let Callou suck off of him for money in 20 years? Here it comes.. 6:47… No noise. 6:48...6:49… Boris fell asleep.
"Honey, wake up, we got to get ready for the game!" It was Doris, his wife. She was talking about the Toronto Blue Jays game that they got tickets for and they had to leave for it at 12. It was also 9:00.
Boris yawned, "Man, I haven't slept that well in ages." He felt like he was born again.
"Me neither," said Doris, "I didn't get up until 8, myself. Apparently, Caliou has been up since six and has taken care of several chores for us. He even took care of the trash for us!"
"Well, that's the first time I've heard of him actually doing chores instead of doing something like smearing plaster over the TV or eating spiders."
"I know, right? Anyway, I'm going to make us all waffles. Can you wake up Rosie?"
"Sure, honey."
Boris leapt out of bed and changed out of his pyjamas. His casual uniform for the weekend was a pair of jeans, tennis shoes, and a green hooded sweatshirt and he wouldn't imagine being able to wear anything else.
He walked over to Rosie's door, decorated with stickers of Frozen characters, just down the hall. He knocked on it then pried it open..
Rosie wasn't there.
"Rosie?" Boris was confused, "Where are you?"
He checked the closet, under the bed… She had disappeared.
Boris wasn't intent on panicking just yet. Maybe she got up early, as well. However, rather than scrounging all over the house for her: he felt it was best to ask Callio, first.
He went down to the living room where Calliuo was reading a copy of… The Prince by Machiavelli? That was a bit of a step up from I Want My Hat Back.
"Hey, kiddo," said Boris, "what'cha reading there?"
"Oh, this one is a classic, a truly marvelous masterpiece of literatu-uhhh," Caribou was stammering and darting his eyes back and forth, "uh, I mean, I'm, uh, learning how to read big people books, yeah."
"Well, there's not a lot of pictures in that one." said Boris.
"Yeah, it's too bad about that, uhhh," Callui seemed to be acting as though he was hiding a baby pangolin in his pants and intent on selling it to a shady Chinese restaurant, "was there something you wanted to ask me, Dad.. dy?"
"Yes, actually, have you seen Rosie? I checked her room and she wasn't there."
"Uh, yeah, I heard some footsteps, a man and a woman talking," Calliuy seemed to be making up this story as he went along, "and Rosie being chloroformed but I was too scared to go into her room and look."
"Oh, well," Boris played it Bogart, "I guess we can file a police report after we see the Blue Jays win."
"Okay, daddy! I'll be sure to remind you to do that after the game."
"Thanks, kiddo."
"Welp," Caliou stretched himself out, "I better get myself out of these Pajamas and put on my regular day clothes." his eyes darted back and forth, "I'll be right back down."
As Calloy ran up the steps, Boris' brain sparkled with currents of suspicion. For one thing, he noticed that Catalog spelled the word 'Pyjamas' in a distinctly American way, against the folkways of his native Canada. Was he not really his son but a CIA agent that was merely imposing himself as his son; kind of like the plot of that Clint Eastwood movie, Changeling?
He was also pretty sure that, if Rosie, really was kidnapped, he would have heard something. Many turbulent years of parenting an uncontrollable brat like Calliope made him too vigilant to allow kidnappers to take any of his children without him noticing.
"Honey," it was Doris, "waffles are ready!"
"Okay, Dear," said Boris, "I'll be right there."
Cantaloupe always ate cheerios because he was an uncultured little swine who did not appreciate the taste and texture of a pure, genuine maple syrup so Boris and Doris, alone, would eat waffles. As Boris sat down to his plate, he pondered Calcitonin's strange behavior to Doris.
"Hey, sweetie," Boris glanced at Doris' pink bathrobe before fixing his gaze on her eyes, "you notice how Calvin is acting so weird?"
"A little, I guess," she was focused more on her plate of delicious Belgian waffles than her husband, lamenting that she had no leftover pieces of fried chicken to go along with them, "But you know how kids are: they rapidly change their personalities with each passing week."
"Yeah, okay." Boris said no more. He figured that going any further with the conversation would just upset her. He scarfed down the waffles and excused himself from the table to check on Caloulou. He briskly walked up the stairs and opened Canada's door to see…
THAT KAKAROT WAS HOLDING A JAR OF SOME ORANGE FLUID WITH A GLOWING BIOHAZARD SYMBOL ON IT!
"Clitoris, what is that you're holding?"
"It's a jar of Nickelodeon Gak that I won at school, now go away, please."
"California," dad asked, "I don't believe you got that from school. For one, thing, Gak is green. And, also, the way you act so manageable and well-behaved is completely out of character for you. What is going on, Caliban?"
"I guess the cat's out of the bag, now!" Caltrop pulled out a can of bear mace and sprayed it at Boris.
As Boris cursed and stumbled around with exquisite agony in his eyeballs, he felt Calliou's foot dig into his crotch. Calliyu poured milk into Boris' eyes to cure him of his blindness. Boris could see that he was smirking.
"What did you do that for, Cayluu?" Boris was completely bewildered.
"AHAHAHAHA! I am not Calliou, you fool! I am John Brightling, a resident of the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six universe! I quantum immortalitated into your son and I erased his identity, his mind, indeed, his very soul once I took possession of him. His life, his mind, his body, in fact, the very essence of his being, are mine now!"
"WHAT?!" Boris' heart sank into an abyss of shock and despair as a live snow leopard covered in breading sinks into a giant vat of boiling oil to be deep fried to perfection (a/n: This is a real delicacy. I make it myself by acquiring these animals under the pretense that I run an exotic pet rescue sanctuary).
"And, that's not all, you rube! When I quantum immortalitated: I snuck in this biological weapon from my home universe," he pulled out the canister of eldritch slime, "and, when we go to the Blue Jays game: I will excuse myself to the restroom and flush it down the toilet. It will spread throughout the labyrinthine networks of the sewers and storm drains beneath the city and wash over its entirety as an invisible miasma! Anybody who breathes it in will become a vector of the Neo-Shiva Virus and symptoms will not appear for two months so, by the time anybody starts getting so much as a runny nose, the entire world will be infected save for a select few who will repopulate this Earth as Mother Nature's chosen stewards!"
"You can't do that, you madman! You'll kill a lot of innocent people!"
"Innocent? HA! Few can be absolved of the harm they have committed against mother nature; least of all, you! I saw you throw an INCANDESCENT lightbulb into the recycling bin!"
"Aren't you supposed to put them there?"
"No, you disgusting barbarian! It goes in the trash! You sicken me with your ignorance!"
"What did you do to Rosie?"
"I took her out with the garbage! A brat like that would have been a liability to my plans!"
"You really are a monster!"
"I am not the monster here, Mr. Desputeaux! It's you and the rest of mankind and they're insatiable consumerist gluttony that is the real monster and it is my destiny to slay it!"
"I'm sorry, Coca-Cola, or John Brightling, whoever you are, but I'll have to call the police!"
"Go ahead, what are you going to tell them? That your son is a 4-year old lunatic terrorist? They'll find the body by the curbside and think you did it! And then, you'll be at the mercy of sodomites in prison who are twice your size! Don't bother with calling the pigs to the scene; comply with my demands! If you're a good boy, I'll give you a respirator for your wife and yourself and you can escape the city. Otherwise, I will kill you and bend your wife to my will. Women are much easier to control, anyway. She'll take me to the Blue Jays game where I'll make my little deposit and then I will kill her when she outlives her usefulness!"
"O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O! John Brightling, how dare you threaten my wife! THAT'S IT!" Boris ripped off his green hooded sweatshirt to reveal that his shirt was not the only thing that was ripped. Electricity surged throughout his muscular body.
"G-G-G-Gulp!" John Brightling's eyes widened. His jaw dropped. His muscles went limp. He knew he was a dead man.
Boris lifted Brightling by the bald little scalp that used to belong to his son and proceeded to juggle him in the air with machine gun punches, "YOU ARE GUR-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA," a rapid-fire barrage of punches poured down on Brightling like a monsoon, "RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA," Boris had a raging erection, "RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA-RA," Brightling's body bounced and spasmed around as it was kneaded into a soft, doughy jelly, "RA-RA-RA-RA-RAAAAAAA-," Boris lifted his knee to deliver the coup de grâce and drove his foot with a pivot side-kick into Brightling's stomach, "-ROUNDED GROUNDED GROUNDED GROOOUNDED!!"
Brightling sailed through the wall and his body started to get torn asunder by the force of Boris' beatdown, "B-BAKANA!" Brightling shouted as his torso and limbs exploded into buckets of gore, "I WAS MEANT TO LIVE FOREVER!" And then he ceased to live. His guts were splattered all over the neighborhood and his head landed on a table outside of a Cold Stone Creamery where a little girl would forever gain a new, incurable phobia of ice cream.
"Boris!" Doris burst through the door to Calcium's room with such urgency that the door slammed agaisnt the wall. The doorknob left a dent in the wall that they never got around to fixing, "What happened in here? I heard noises!"
"Calypso was possessed by an evil Eco-terrorist from another multiverse, named John Brightling, who quantum immortalitated into his body and he was plotting to release a pathogenic weapon into the city's water supply when we got to the Blue Jay's game and then he threatened your life so I had to kill him with my Sājingu Kaminari Jū Jū-ken Hōgeki technique. I got it all on video to prove it," Boris went over to the hidden camera on Calluo's bookshelf and pulled out the MiniDV video casette that corroborated Boris' story and left no ambiguity as to the events that had taken place in that room.
"What shall we do now, Boris?" asked Doris.
"Let's call the police. We'll explain everything.."
The RCMP arrived a half-hour after Doris dialed 911 and Boris explained everything to them.
The RCMP captain chortled, "Ohohoho, I do believe we are already quite familiar with this case."
"What do you mean by that, Officer Maclean?"
"You see," 'Captain' Kirk Maclean explained, "we belong to his organization: the Horizon Corporation. We are disciples of John Brightling and we belong to the same multiverse as he does and, we too, have quantum immortalitated into this one. We need this pathogen to reduce the populations of these overcrowded universes to more manageable numbers so that Mother Nature can be given time to heal herself across every one of them while we, her chosen race, repopulate them with more genetically desirable peoples."
"No..."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Despitux, or however you say your last name," Maclean took out a switchblade and flossed his teeth with its blade, "I can assure you that this is all true. And, as far as I can say: you have two options: you can kill us here and we'll just quantum immortalitate into somebody else and hunt you and your wife down like dogs for the rest of your days or you can join us and have the gift of quantum immortalitation bestowed upon you," he pulled out his knife and, having accidentally cut his gums, spit out a chunk of blood on Boris' chest, "The choice is yours."
Boris took one look at his wife. He knew it was immoral to join them. But then again, he did pop a boner when he killed Cairngorm and he now had an insatiable lust for the blood of children. A wide, goofy smirk stretched across his face, "Hey, honey! You want to join this guy and kill lots of children together?"
"I thought you'd never ask," Doris said enthusiastically, "Ever since we had kids, I always wanted an excuse to kill them! It'll be wonderful!"
"Good to hear, honey!" Boris turned to Maclean, "Put 'er there, pal!"
Boris and Maclean shook hands with each other. Maclean stared deeply into Boris' eyes, "You and me are going to be best of friends, buuuuuddy!"
This, Boris could sense was true. It would be a beautiful friendship indeed and this world would be alleviated of its surplus population of humans so that it could heal from the damage mankind had done to it.
Moral of the Story: It is socially acceptable to wipe tables with a mop.