Krazy Kai

Chapter Eleven: Green

Jack's fear of the villagers was slowly growing. Besides his obvious Kai-related paranoia, the young farmer also lived in fear of the Green family. The fact that he was afraid of polite farmers (…okay, Gray was kind of an asshole) didn't help his reputation at all.

Both of Doug's children had less-than-positive opinions of Jack. Gray's reasons were obvious, and every time he expressed them Jack's blood loss increased dramatically. But what about the red-headed girl?

Ann rubbed her eyes as he lay in bed. The old shack was likely to collapse at any given moment, but thankfully that would not be until years later. Or days. The local architects weren't exactly professionals, or even slightly qualified.

She got dressed into her overalls and ran outside. The day was bright and sunny, except for the areas Gray walked around in. They, somehow, seemed to decay with every footstep he took. Metaphorically, of course. I think.

Colorful leaves blew in the wind, all falling into a pile in front of the ranch doors. Contestants for the annual Cow Festival gathered in the center, all standing next to the mammals they entered. The word 'mammals' is used because some entrants forgot what festival it was, and instead brought sheep. One sad, sad man brought a panda. Not only was there no Panda Festival, but smuggling pandas onto the island was a felony. This happened to be the previously lynched salesman, who was promptly injured again by Mayor Thomas.

"Get out of our village you goddamn bum!" the mayor spat, despite the many children watching. "Go to Goat milk Village if you want to sell your drugs, or Asian animals, or other crap!"

The irritable mayor noticed the crowd and paused. He coughed and inched backwards. "Heh…so… Bring out the judge!"

A viscous creature oozed into everyone's view. It was dressed in a purple coat, and a large top hat. Two giant lips covered most of its face.

"Hello, I am the Gourmet Man," it greeted, revealing its alias and gender. "Welcome to the Cow Festival! Please gather around as I drink a lot of milk, because it's free… I mean, it's my job."

Everyone ignored the man as he swallowed gallons of free beverages. Ann walked over to Jack, who was trembling. How could she be in high spirits, as every single visitor knows that she loves, with such a psycho on her family's property?

"What's wrong, Jack?" she asked. "Are you worried that some people didn't overlook all the stuff you did over the past two years?"

"No, I was waiting to find out how my cow did," he admitted. "But thanks for infusing terror into me."

"You jump off the roof of a building with a razor-sharp blade and attack the mayor, yet I scare you?"

"For the last time, it was a freaking mistake! I thought that he was the purple bandana possessing thingy!"

Jack's ranting didn't help at all. "All my worst fears have been confirmed…" Ann muttered. "So, Jack, did this whatever-the-hell-you-just-mentioned lock you in that cellar, too?"

"It was a damn raccoon! You should know what those are, considering you probably run them over all the time with a trailer, so shut the hell up you hillbilly!"

Jack blinked, realizing that he had a rather violent outburst. All his pent-up rage had been released, besides the rage towards Kai, that is.

However, shouting at people is not a recommended way to do that. Ann turned red as she reached silently for a hoe. When she shouted at Jack that "if he ever effed up like that again she'll come after him", she was joking. Or at least that was the impression she gave Jack at the moment.

"S-s-sorry…" he stammered, as the three 's'-s in the word 'sorry' clearly indicate. "I'm just so…worried…and…"

The girl swung her hoe at him wildly. As it slightly slashed through the boy's overalls, Jack got an increasingly growing urge to run away.

"I just…keep messing everything up…" he muttered, his mind overwhelmed with unnecessary angst. "I don't know why I can't just fit in, and all I do is blame it on other people…"

"—Inanimate objects," Ann cut in, not helping at all.

"…if what Jeff said is true, then why do I think of Kai as the alter-ego that I hate so much? Why does it only affect me?"

"Schizophrenia?" the farm girl shrugged, playing with the tool in her hands. "You do seem to withdraw from reality in favor of fantasy and delusion a lot." Ann was actually a licensed doctor, so if she changed her mind while stabbing Jack, she could easily fix him up. Not likely she would, though.

"Fine, okay… You know, about that incident with the cellar…"

The girl drowned out the sound, still believing her bizarre theory. She clamped her eyes tightly, in case he had index cards with explanations printed on them. When she stopped, Jack had already fled.

Ann growled and jerked her head towards the direction of the crowd. The entire population of five villages was gathered, and many of them were dressed like Jack.

"AHA!" she exclaimed, running into Jack. It had to be him!

"Hi, Ann!" he said cheerfully.

"You idiotic bastard!" Ann snarled, raising the hoe in rage. "How can you act so happy when you know what you called me?"

"Why would I insult you?" Jack asked, puzzled. "We've been good friends ever since I first met you at the Mineral Town Inn!"

She twitched. Mineral Town? What kind of a crappy name for a place was that? But at this point, Ann was fed up with gratuitous violence. Feeling somewhat defeated, she sat on the grass and watched the festival.

The Gourmet Man, whose true name was in some alien tongue unknown to humans, wobbled over to the table where all the milk was placed. He grabbed a large jug and examined it closely, before reluctantly taking a gulp.

"Hmm…" he muttered, stroking his chin(s) in thought. "This is from the Possum farm, no?"

"Hey ma', they knows us!" a farmer called out.

"I can tell, as now cow could possibly excrete this." He shuddered before dropping it on the ground. "And that wasn't even milk. That was urine."

"Yer in alotta trouble fer gettin' the wrong drink!" a woman scolded the previously mentioned farmer.

After that rather tasteless (except for the Gourmet, that is) moment, the competition resumed. Hesitantly, he reached for the next jug. It was blue. Turning his head to see if anyone was paying attention, he jerked the container backwards, sending God-knows-what-that-was flying into the bushes.

He made a false smile with his gigantic lips, in hope that whoever entered it would be so content that they would never trouble him with that poison again. The next three contestants were perfectly fine. He let out a sigh of relief.

"Well, I believe I've made a conclusion," he announced. Everyone was chattering, so he took a light step and caused a minor tremor in the ground. "A-hem! Like I was saying, I've reached a verdict! All entries were good…" He didn't even judge half of them, but few were intelligent enough to notice. "…but one contestant was excellent! So without wasting more time, the winner is Jack!"

"YES!" exclaimed the farmer, leaping up from the mob.

"Jack from the Mineral Farm!"

This sent Flowerbud Jack crashing back down as his look-alike hopped up eagerly to accept his prize. The defeated farmer glanced sadly at his cow. A thought that the cow wished she could communicate to him filled her mind.

"Why don't you have your sheep win it for you, bitch?"

The last line refferred to Chapter 2. I know the urine joke was in poor taste. The quality of this fic is going to hell, huh?

Yeah, I wanted to take the focus off Jack, if not for a little bit, so this one was more about Ann. Next chapter will either be about Popuri or Karen. Then the next will be about the other.

I know I promised some New Year's thing, like I did for Christmas and Halloween, so here's some early draft of a one-shot I'm working on, ever-so-brilliantly titled:

Random Jack/Karen Fluffy Thingy (I'm Goddamn Brilliant, no?)

The young man, Jack, wandered through the vacant village for the first time since he was a small child. It was only yesterday that he had visited his grandfather's farm in the outskirts, only to hear his grandfather's final words and watch the as old man died.

It is safe to assume that he was unhappy.

Jack straightened his blue baseball cap. Since no one was at home, he guessed that they were in the Town Square. Two stone staircases lead up to the gates of the town square.

"Oh…this is the first day of the year!" he recalled out loud, figuring that the absence of people made talking to himself okay.

A teenage Jack wandered through the same village. Instead of the blue overalls he was wearing in the present, he wore a simple black t-shirt and jeans. He walked an inch before being ambushed by Kent and Stu, two brothers that were about four years old at the time.

"Hey, big brother!" Kent, the older one by a few minutes, called out.

Jack sighed. Although he loved how affectionate these two kids were towards him, he WAS planning on hitting on chicks. "Darn it. Yes, Kent?"

"Why is it that only grown-ups are allowed to go to the New Year's festival?"

"No idea," the teenager answered with a shrug. "Sorry." He walked away, wondering about the same thing.

Now Jack was curious once more, but he soon dismissed it as one of the pointless egg-collecting festivals or something similar. That thought soon left his mind, as "HOLY CRAP!" left his mouth.

At that very moment, Ann, a girl he knew from his childhood visits, collapsed onto the ground, sending her beer splattered into the crowd of people.

It was a drinking contest. A damned drinking contest.

Zack sighed and dragged the unconscious (due to a combination of alcohol overdose and slamming her head into the rocky ground) girl home. Jack walked towards the crowd of people, hoping he could introduce himself.

Of course, the drunks acted as if he wasn't there. His grandfather had died yesterday, and all the people were so intoxicated that nothing went through their mind.

Jack merely ignored them, despite the fact that the drinking contest had left several people lying on the ground, unconscious. Seeing these people again brought him back to his childhood. However, seeing them like this made his childhood seem rather depressing.