Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind
Drippin lay in a dark and troubled dream: it seemed that he could hear his own small voice echoing in a dimly-lit school cafeteria, calling NescaFrodo, NescaFrodoooo! But instead of his cousin, hundreds of hideous lunch-ladies grinned at him from the shadowy recesses, hundreds of hideous arms grasping at him from every side, pinching his face and saying, Awww! Isn't he cuuuuute?. Where was MochaMerry?
He woke, groggy and befuddled. He was lying on his back amid a litter of empty candy-wrappers and crushed styrofoam cups. MochaMerry lay beside him, still swooning in his sugar-coma, his face smeared white with blancmange and his eyes dilated as big as donut-holes. A large red apple had been shoved into his mouth. All about them sat or stood a great company of nasty gobbings and horcs, and their larger and uglier counterparts, the Porc-pai. They were licking their lips and rubbing their stomachs, staring at the half-caffs.
Slowly in Drippin's aching head memory pieced itself together and became separated from the strange dreams of dancing sugar-plums and cherry-phosphate waterfalls. Of course: he and MochaMerry had run off into the woods like idiots, shouting as if all the horcs in the world were not searching the continent for them. They had crashed into a large group of these foul creatures that had been standing arguing about which restaurant they were going to go to and how they were going to divide up the check.
The huge dark-skinned horcs had seized them and stuffed them into sacks, laughing evilly. The sacks were not empty, but contained slightly stale candy left over from Hallowe'en trick-or-treating. Terrified and uncomfortable, the half-caffs nevertheless wasted no time eating everything in their individual sacks, including those nasty black and orange peanutbutter-flavoured waxy taffies that everybody eats last.
Before they passed out from the insulin flux, the half-caffs witnessed the entrance of Boromocha and his heroic attempt to rescue them. He had come leaping out of the trees, shouting, "Those are our half-caffs... get your own!" He had fought well and valiantly but he was far outnumbered, and the gobblings shot him with arrows and pelted him with damp teabags and banana cream pies until he collapsed against a tree. Drippin's last memory of this brave man was of him wiping Coolwhip from his face and plucking out a black-feathered shaft from his shoulder, saying, "Hey! I did not order this!" before he fell down and lay still as death. Then a hairy-clawed paw had pushed Drippin deeper into the sack and tied it closed over his head, shutting out the light.
Drippin's head throbbed horribly. 'I suppose I shouldn't have eaten so much candy on an empty stomach,' he said to himself. 'I wonder if poor MochaMerry got more that I did; he doesn't look too well. What are these horcs doing with us, and why didn't they kill us, too? And why am I lying on a large slab of bread with mayonnaise and mustard smeared on me?'
One of the gobblings, a smelly and scabrous fellow, crept forward and prodded MochaMerry's lethargic body with a long, sharpened stick. "There's no time to cook them properly... no time for fondue on this trip."
"That can't be helped," said another. This horc was whetting two knives, throwing sparks into the darkness. He stepped up to Drippin, who cowered back but was unable to move with his hands and feet tied firmly with licorice ropes. "You want white or dark meat?"
"Half-caffs don't have any dark meat, dimsum! And we have orders," a third and larger horc growled in a deep voice. He was Ugrúb, the leader of the Porc-pai. "Don't you remember what Sacchrinman said? If you're going out, bring me back a little something... alive and unbroiled. That's the order."
"Well, we're never going to make it back to Isencoaster in 30 minutes!" complained the first horc. "He won't have to pay for either of them! Can't we eat just one of them now? Putrid please?"
The large Porc-pai raised his sword and shouted, "No! I am Ugrúb! Sacchrineman placed me in command. I return to Isencoaster by the shortest road!"
"Wizard's pet," a low voice growled, but when Uglúb whirled around he found only a sea of ugly but innocent-looking faces.
While the horcs argued, Drippin quickly ate his way through the licorice cords that bound his hands. He made quick work of the bindings on his feet, then of MochaMerry's ropes as well. He was just finishing off the apple when he realized that MochaMerry was waking up at last. He shushed his cousin and motioned for him to follow. Together, they ran and disappeared into the nearby trees. The thick branches and moonless night prevented them from seeing a large sign:
Forest of Cremehorn
Do Not Enter!
Home of dangerously overcaffeinated trees!
Ugrúb turned back and saw that the half-caffs had escaped. He lowered his sword and sighed. "Well, there's no point in going back to Isencoaster now. It's a silly place, anyway."
He rather welcomed the sight of a hundred and ten mounted horsemen, who proceeded to reduce Ugrúb and the gobblings to mincemeat. And the reader is left only with the following question:
If a hundred horcs left Perk Galen at 10:30am at the speed of twenty leagues per day, and shortly thereafter a Man, an Elf, and a Dwarf departed from the same place traveling at 15 leagues per day, when X equals the number of cups of coffee consumed, justify the number of bostoncréme éclairs needed to placate them (in base eight) until the next episode of Lord of the Coffee is written. Please present your answer in the form of an essay written on the backs of twenty dollar bills, and mail them to the author of this parody. Class dismissed.