A/N: OK, this is my first Stooges fanfic! I've loved The Three Stooges ever since I was a kid and would watch it with my youngest brother, who once gave himself an asthma attack because he was laughing so hard.
I've recently kind of got back into them by watching them on YouTube, and they are as funny now as they ever were. Perfect slapstick never ages, and the Stooges were consummate professionals at the top of their game. God bless all of them, from Soup to Nuts, from Shemp to Joe Besser. :)
So here goes with the fic. It's my attempt to write their usual mayhem, though I can't hope to ever do as good a job as they did!
Thanks for reading!
Pipe Down Stooges
The boys were plumbing again. Times were hard- it was fortunate, said Moe, that one of them had the wits to keep all three of them employed, because sure as eggs were eggs, Larry and Curly would be living in cardboard boxes beneath the railroad bridge by now, if it weren't for his leadership skills.
Larry interrupted Moe in the middle of his rant, causing the mop topped Stooge to fix him with a glare of warning. "Sure, eggs are eggs," the bushy haired Stooge pointed out, a little sulkily. "What else would they be? Macaroni and cheese?"
Moe's expression turned thunderous.
"Egg-sactly!" declared Curly. He waggled his fingers and began to 'nyuk nyuk nyuk...', getting only as far as the second 'nyuk' before Moe slapped him, hard. "What was that for?" the bald Stooge pouted.
"Being insolent," Moe snapped.
"I wasn't being insolent!" Curly pointed at Larry. "He was being insolent!"
Moe slapped him again. The sound rang out across the room like a pistol shot.
"What was THAT for?" Curly protested, rubbing his forehead.
"Answering back," glowered Moe.
"Ruff!" barked Curly, but recoiled, blinking, when Moe lunged forward, his blue eyes glittering under his beetle-black eyebrows.
"Pipe down, knucklehead!" Moe growled. He slapped the grinning Larry for good measure, then grabbed both Curly and Larry by the ears and dragged the two protesting Stooges over to the workbench. "Now get to work," he ordered, pointing at the motley assortment of plumbing tools that littered the bench like bits of shrapnel in all shapes and sizes. "The lady of the house is gonna be checking up on us this morning because somebody made such a mess of our last job that word got around." He narrowed his eyes and set his jaw and looked askance at Curly.
Curly screwed up his face. "Boy, when I get a hold of that dirty rotten somebody..."
Moe slapped him soundly across the face. "It was you."
"You said it was somebody!" Curly cried, indignantly.
"Yeah, and that somebody was you!" Larry interjected over Moe's shoulder. "Except you're nobody!"
"Yeah," Moe agreed, siding with Larry. "Nobody."
Curly pouted like a little kid. Then he suddenly brightened. "Say, if I'm nobody then it couldn't have been me...'cause Nobody's Poifect!" He grinned in triumph. "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
Moe reached out with two fingers, grabbed the end of Curly's nose and tweaked it painfully. A cracking sound was heard and Curly yelped loudly. "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Moe!" he squeaked, rising further and further up onto his tippy toes with every twist of Moe's hand.
"Leave him alone!" said Larry, a little guilty that he has caused Curly to get slapped so many times before they'd even had their first coffee break.
Moe let go of Curly's poor bruised nose and turned around sharply. "Who asked you, Porcupine?" he snarled.
"Nobody," Larry answered, tensing.
"No I didn't!" Curly protested, holding his aching nose tenderly with both hands. "I never said a woid!"
Muttering under his breath, Moe pulled his arm back and slapped Larry and Curly soundly and squarely across both of their faces as they stood next to each other. "Shaddaaaap," he grunted. The rapid double-slap echoed off the walls as both unfortunate Stooges whined under their breath and rubbed their cheeks. Moe then grabbed their heads and knocked them together, making a sound like two hollow coconuts. "Now quit enjoyin' yourselves and get down to business," he grumbled. "Our clients want a new bathroom and we ain't got all day."
Moe picked up a tape measure and stalked over to the other side of the room, muttering under his breath. Curly pushed his arm out and went, "nyeeeh!" while Larry stared forlornly at all the tools scattered on the table top.
"Where do we start?" he said, scratching his scalp through his wild, bushy hair.
"I know!" said Curly, brightly. He picked up a pile of tools and sent them clanking and clattering across the table. "Now, close your eyes and pick one. Whichever job matches the one you pick, that's where we'll start."
Larry closed his eyes and his hand hovered over the tools, finally settling on the biggest monkey wrench in the world. He hefted it into the air, still with his eyes shut.
"Well?" he asked, expectantly.
"Nyyeeeeeee-uu-uu-urghh!" uttered Curly as Moe reappeared quite suddenly between them, fury boiling off him in waves. Moe pushed Curly out of the way and with a sly grin, carefully, almost daintily, plucked the monkey wrench out of Larry's hand.
"C'mon, Curly, which one did I pick?" Larry asked. "I hope it's an easy one and I don't haveta listen to Moe whinin' at me all day." His eyes were still shut and he thought he was still talking to Curly, who was standing behind Moe, making hand signals that Larry couldn't even see.
Moe lifted the wrench and clonked Larry right in the middle of his expansive forehead. "You picked this one," he barked.
"Owww!" Larry yelled. His eyes squeezed shut from the pain and then flew open and fixed onto the dreaded sight of Moe standing there, brandishing the monkey wrench in both hands. Moe and Larry stared at each other for several tense moments, and then Moe threw the monkey wrench onto the table with a loud crash. "I oughta brain you two monkeys," he growled. "Here we are, broker than we've ever been, and you two noodleheads want to louse everything up, just like you always louse everything up."
"Hey! I ain't no louse," Curly protested. "I'm a victim of coicumstance!"
Moe held up two fingers. "See these?"
"No," said Curly, knowing full well what to expect.
"Then look again!" Moe snapped, and poked poor Curly right in both eyes.
By now, Curly had just about had enough. He went into meltdown and began jumping up and down on the spot, swinging both arms up and outwards, back and forth. "Woo woo woo woo woo," he hooted, then slapped both hands over his face several times, ending in a loud "RUFF!" aimed directly at Moe.
"Get outta here," Moe retorted. He punched Curly in the stomach then followed through with an uppercut when Curly bent over. Then he swivelled on his heels and slapped Larry, who was just standing there minding his own business.
"What did I do?" Larry whined.
"Nuthin'. I was anticipatin'," Moe replied.
Larry shrugged. "That's reasonable," he conceded.
Moe eyed Larry for one long, drawn out moment. Then he delivered one short, sharp slap to the bushy haired Stooge's cheek. "So's that," he nodded. "Now get that bathtub installed, or I'll install it for you!"
Larry, realising what Moe had said, grinned cheekily. "Be my guest," he chuckled. "We could do with some help."
Moe's eyes widened, widened some more, then narrowed into slits. "Tryin' to catch me out, huh?" He picked up a length of pipe and swung it up into an arc above his head, ready to brain poor Larry, who was already cowering. Unfortunately there was a smaller length of pipe loosely inserted into the end and it flew out and shot across the room like a missile just as the door opened and the lady of the house entered the room. The length of pipe slammed into the wall right next to her, protruding out of the plaster like a javelin while bits of the wall dislodged and rained down onto the bare floorboards.
A shocked silence descended into the room. The Three Stooges blinked at the lady, opening and closing their mouths like fishes. The lady didn't dare move from the doorway. Her wide blue eyes slid sideways to where the pipe stuck out of the cracked wall, still trembling slightly from the force of impact.
"Why, that could have been me," she whispered in a small voice tinged with fear.
"Yeah!" said Curly, looking at Moe. "It could have been her!"
"I wish it had been you," Moe hissed out of the side of his mouth. His hand twitched with the urge to slap Curly senseless, but instead he pasted on his most ingratiating smile and beamed brightly at the lady. "Mrs. Leadbetter," he said, as jovially as he could. "Nice of you to drop by!"
"Well, I did say that I would come by to check up on you," Mrs. Leadbetter smiled nervously. "If you didn't want me to, you should have just said so!"
Moe laughed, waving his hand dismissively towards the pipe sticking out of the wall. "Teething problems," he said, cordially. He walked across the room, still grinning inanely, and grabbed hold of the end of the pipe. "Now don't you worry, Mrs. Leadbetter. I'll just take this, and..." he yanked the pipe out of the wall and a jet of water promptly sprayed out of the hole right in his face. Mrs. Leadbetter cried out in surprise as Moe tried in vain to cover the hole with both hands, his head pushed back by the force of the water gushing out. "What idiot put a water pipe there?" he yelled, his mouth instantly filling with water which he spit out, narrowly missing Mrs. Leadbetter's expensive Italian high-heeled shoes.
"My grandfather did," she said, icily. "He was the one who designed and built this house!"
"Nyeeeee-uu-uu-uurgh," said Curly, slapping his own face several times with both hands.
"Oh!" spluttered Moe, still trying in vain to stem the water flow. "Well, tell him he did a great job. There's nothing wrong with the water pressure!"
"He's been dead for twenty years," Mrs. Leadbetter said, stoney faced.
"Good," said Moe through a torrent of water.
"Good?" Mrs. Leadbetter gasped in shock.
"I mean, it's good that he's not here to see this!" Moe amended, then thought better of saying anything more to add fuel to the fire. Soaked now from head to foot, he backed up against the wall and attempted to block the hole with his body, which resulted in water now spraying out in all directions. Mrs. Leadbetter cried out in anger as her carefully arranged hairdo came loose and fell in wet rat's tails to her shoulders.
"Look at me!" she spluttered. "I'm ruined!"
"Well, I never ruined ya," Moe retorted, finally managing to stem the flow with a balled up rag from the back pocket of his overalls.
Mrs. Leadbetter surveyed the room, which was now flooded with coppery water from the bowels of the house and who knew where else. "There's water everywhere, and you men haven't even started!" she fumed.
"Sure we started," Larry said, his chin stuck defiantly in the air.
"Yeah, we built you a shower," Curly grinned. He turned to Larry, who grinned back at him. "Nyuk nyuk nyuk."
Mrs. Leadbetter drew herself up to her full height of five feet six inches. Even with her hair wet and bedraggled, she was an imposing sight. "Out," she said, coldly. "Get out. All three of you. OUT!"
The Three Stooges trudged forlornly out of the house. Moe dripped a trail of water all the way out onto the street where their beaten up old jalopy stood waiting. They threw all of their tools into the back, not even caring where they landed.
"Well, that's the end of another promising career," Moe deadpanned.
"What are we gonna do now, Moe?" Curly asked plaintively, squinting into the sunshine like a little boy waiting on advice from his father.
Moe's eyes narrowed into familiar slits. His bowl haircut, plastered wetly to his head, gleamed like polished jet. "You know, I been thinkin'. Plumbing's for drips anyway. Pretty soon everyone'll be doing it."
"Yeah, just to fix all the mistakes that we made," Larry said, as cluelessly as ever.
"Pipe down, Porcupine." Moe leaned his arm on the driver's door of the old jalopy. "No, I been thinkin'. Look at us. We're broke- we ain't got two cents to rub together. We can't even afford food, we're always hungry. What say you we become bakers?"
"Yeah!" Curly agreed, enthusiastically. "That way, we'll always be in the dough!"
Moe's grin broadened and he turned around to face Curly head on. "See this?" he smiled, holding out his hand.
"Yeah!" said Curly, happily.
Moe promptly slapped him across the cheek with his other hand. "Bet you didn't see that," he chuckled.
And this time they all laughed, because a happy Moe was a rare sight indeed.
End