Note: Congratulations on making it this far, reader!
Recently, I went through a HEFTY period of reorganization. Some of the later episodes have changed completely. I'm also trying to shift my writing style to something that dedicates extra words only towards the details that are actually important. The slog days of this story are (hopefully) done for.
I'll be honest, I just want this episode to be done with. I screwed myself with chapters 7-9 on pinning down a solid direction for this episode. There's gonna be like, a STORY story for Episode 2.
I'm not saying this episode is pointless - because it's VERY important in transforming Heather from a side character to a main character - but the episode isn't as consistent in style as those that'll come later.
Ep 1, Ch. 7: The Doomsday Scenario (~10k words)
"Let me tell you a story of man. They put a price tag on everything the world offers them… or, they offer to themselves, perchance. Rollercoasters, golf courses… Some animals want to become part of it. And following the untimely destruction of Awesomeland, Verne backed himself onto the edge of a cliff in his resistance. He can try to size up, but all he'll do is take RJ along for the fall. Cliffhanger chapters don't come often around here. Hoot hoot."
ACT I: The Issue
Next thing anyone knows, two meteors of RJ and Verne plummet down the cliff. With Verne blazing in a spinning torpedo over him, RJ catches every last snack, gadget, and a couple embarrassing magazines that sneak out of the golf bag.
They thrash hands, tails, and shells immediately upon crashing into the deforested ground with no care for the impact on their spines. The joy of tossing RJ's belongings every which way turns Verne into a sugared-up leprechaun spilling a pot of gold. He leaves breadcrumbs of Milk Duds that twitch RJ up. By the time RJ salvages each, Verne's manic laughter has made it over the crossroads outside town.
RJ throws his life onto the sediment melting under the sun. A new hedge marks the next age of humanity, fortified by a construction yard of a hundred acres. He acrobats through the portal and watches the world he knows flip over in a second.
Inside, RJ and Verne fight over the bag like animals until they end up on the roof of one red-orange house sitting behind a climactic opera of machines and hammering metal. They ignore the turf's strange abnormalities foreign to anything the suburbs have ever offered as a battlefield. Forks in the perimeter of the roof make it more than a single, consistent shape. Wealthy windowsills and more Victorian architecture spike an uneven range of points and ridges.
Random formations of stratuses tumble over the sky. The incoherency improvises the mood for them, from light to dark and white to black. Pushing them against each other creates the gray matter of the brain, lost of its connectivity and squeezed into a rogue mist.
Then there's the flipside.
Jack - THE BIG MAN - belches a massive yawn from his dusty lunch desk. To his skinny secretary, Jerry, he tells, "My daddy took me to this homestyle dinner place with the darn-dest bread rolls-"
"I think you can just say 'rolls', sir."
"BREAD ROLLS, iiiiidiot! And I WANT THEM! Nowwwwwww!"
The family chases down RJ and Verne.
"Just think of it," Jack goes on. "'Jack 'n Jerry, dinner joint pioneers of the galaxy-" He shoves the table down after his troll ears alert themselves to a group of feisty, dirty specks wrestling atop an otherwise sanitized home. "AH THEY'RE BACK!"
Jack rips binoculars off Jerry's lanyard and squeals girlishly after settling on his blasted old pet turtle and her newfound companions.
"Where are my homestyle BREAD ROLLS?"
"Bread rolls, sir."
Jack gobbles up the warm plate Jerry brings him. Next, he flails all over the outdoors like a fat house fly expelled from the window. Clouds are even quicker to riot.
Before that monkey found his banana, two chunky underpaid workers were able to enjoy their break in peace with National Geographic (or something) set up on an archaic type of TV table making use of backyard outlets.
"Maaaan, brother… That lion's got more ladies than I ever will."
"He's got a lotta things you never will."
"Like a mane."
"I want that mane."
Now, Jack (the big man) bulldozes the foldable chairs from under their jeans. "GET UP, HOSERS! The homestyle dinner buffet from my childhood just got run over by some charity center looking to contribute good things to society, and if ALL YOUS gonna top the loss of my bread rolls as today's biggest disappointment, I'LL ROLL YOUR HEADS DOWN MY LAWN!"
At last, after reaching a small black post in front of a cover, he smashes a giant red button with his last breath. It's something he's been waiting on for over a week.
Blaring bells within the construction site synchronize to the family's alarm. Hammy squints at a dark brown cloak covering the cubic mantelpiece of a carefully-contained set, house-sized, supported by a frame of iron beams. Fiendish red caution lights circle some kind of hangar prepared by a team of human workers slaving away, its top hidden in the darkness by the largest cranes he's ever seen killing the sun. A heavily-bearded man splits his legs apart assertively in his supersized jeans as the cranes slip the cloth off its dinner platter.
The gigantic wheels inside the belts of its rotating platform growl. Four mechanical arms plant into the ground one at a time from all sides, gripping what tangibility lies in the loose, dry dirt. Clouds of dust twist up the three-fingered claws of each. Hammy's mouth falls open from the stands, but he can't scream. It seems no one else in the group could hear anything but each other right now. When the particles settle down, a machine comes into play by a flashing beacon activating at the head, far past thirty feet into the sky. Gears web its bulking, bolted yellow-plated body together, doggedly, and fearfully so.
"Time's ripe, my mechanical beauty…" At the foot of his Frankenstein creation, Jack leans a bit forward, eyes devious, almost crying in joy. "Let's plough that turtle into the GROUND! YE-HAHAHA!"
Each house is a castle, but this one… this one starts to move.
Hammy tries tapping them, and Fred the Wood Tick yelps as the machine grinds over the scaffolding of house-work and draws increasingly near, spewing out a wildfire of foul exhaust. No one listens to either.
The family fight continues as long as they allow it to. "Just gimme the bag and we can go HOME!" RJ rapid-fires his words as he latches onto his golf bag.
"You're gonna kill MY home! You don't KNOW what I've been through!" Verne roars out of his struggle. He heaves back from RJ and Stella, who joined in.
The roar of an engine's stomach expands, and some things made of metal clink onto all four corners of the roof.
No one saw it or smelled it. Funny, because its mechanisms are already louder than the inner earth. It blended so seamlessly into the tones of their voices, and now it kills them off. Ignoring the yellow, cautionary fortress it rides, the forefront cockpit facing them is a windowed box as wide as two couches. It sports many industrial pipes on its shoulders that pump its rhythm into the sky, a factory itself. The chunky driver in the orange chair has plenty of levers and buttons to work with on the control station, a combination of which could surely pry out their innards in at least 50 different ways.
Verne repeats it in a breath as his grip on the bag slowly pulls the shutters: "You… don't… know what I've been through."
The family doesn't look for an apology, or instruction, or anything, and they don't know what to say anyway. Verne chuckles for a second, until he figures out that not a single other animal is gonna think about chuckling too.
RJ stares. "You're the devil."
The machine pries off the roof and juts it into the air. They hobble over the sloping bricks on the pointed peak of the building as they rise like heat into high daylight.
"Okay RJ… what is that?!" Although Verne's question is genuine, he makes a slight parody of his naivety.
"You see," RJ explains calmly at first, "That's what the humans call a Goddamn ISSUE!"
"Shut your stupid, squeaking mouths," cuts in the mastermind behind the solid gray screens of the cockpit box. "Prepare to face justice, Velma. For all the fingers you've bitten (one), and THE CHILDHOODS YOU'VE RUINED (ALSO ONE)!"
The arms snap the roof in half. The Hedgies disperse into the house below and run more rampant around the system than mice in a maze.
"What is he on about?" RJ shouts at Verne.
"I don't know; That human thinks I'm a girl! And if I had to guess, he probably punts baby animals for fun!"
Jack steals a pair of plastic flamingos from nearby yards and plays house with his vehicle's four arms. "Oh, why hello there, Mr. Flamingo."
"Hello, Mrs. Flamingo."
"Say, did ya hear about that tush-sniffin'-tree-humpin'-stiff-gutted box turtle who's been choppin' around the wood stack?"
"NoooOOOOooo, could ya tell me mOOOOOOORe?"
"Oh I'll tell you more alright-" He smashes the heads of the flamingos together. By the time he's finished fantasizing about animal abuse, he finds Velma running slower than all the other pests into the open lane. They carry pink flamingos over themselves to disguise their pawprints on the sidewalk's soft cement. "OOOOOOOOOO!"
The Hedgies escape down the street. No worker on the scene catches onto them. Some stop and wave to the passing flamingos. From scaffolding heights that creak in line with their backs, to drowsy-hammered nails forced to tighten their pain into wood, entertainment - as bonkers as it is - is a godsend to their sad ant-like lives.
That's how everything feels here. The dead street - an empty mall - the framework in place - vendors absent. The cement feels fresh, with hardly any wear. Same goes for the paint of blue mailboxes established identically between front yards. Even so, something eerie about the artificiality of it, the capitalistic sorrow used to create it… is irking. It's like the real suburbs have been stripped down to the simple fakeness Verne suspected of it since the start.
"What is this?" The most concerning part is that RJ's the one asking. "Nobody cutting their lawn? No humans sitting in their cars on their phones for WAY too many minutes before actually pulling out of the driveway?"
No decorations, no frills. No birds. Turns out, what lies on the other side means nothing if there's nothing to steal from it.
They move left foot, right foot, faster, faster, from the droning construction array. The atmosphere drains them. If only they had a green carpet to keep them dry from sunburn. They won't find anything of the sort here. Not where it's a bright red, like the rooftops, and sparkling white - all advertisable colors. Everywhere they can look shoots lasers into their eyes, the way light reflects off Picasso painting homes.
Jack tears down such lifeless structures while pursuing the flock past a stone fountain at an intersection roundabout. He forces all his arm's might into the conveyor wheels. This Goddamn Issue of a machine is an unstoppable force, a perfection of engineering. The mechanical arms - like prehensile tails - contain the strength to pluck telephone poles, puncture foundations and drive yard obstacles into the ground.
The Hedgies take to the rooftops and locate the closest high-rising shelter. They choose a window, and RJ hurries them in. Lusterless wheels thunder near the yard soon after.
Next objective: Abandon the second floor. Especially inside, this new settlement reeks of staleness. Mixed with foreboding emptiness. So silent, their panting resonates. The bare living room segment is right down gray, carpeted stairs… with absolutely nothing alive. As expansive and irregular as it's shaped, corners upon corners have nothing in between. A hollowed chest, striped a faint green memory of the wilderness near the top and bottom. Their feet are held responsible for the first marks ruining the spotless boards of the floor. There's hardly anything inside the mansion. Nothing. Nothing but themselves. It's nothing fit for a heist.
They collect each other in a circle. Shades over the large windows across the room shudder from cold vents underneath, dimming their faces.
"See anything like this in your nine lives?" Stella asks.
Tiger shivers before Stella embraces him. "This house is more intricate than anything in our division. We're not putting square blocks in square holes anymore. No, I've never seen a home like this."
"Whadda we do now?" Lou says.
The doors to every labyrinth thump briefly out of their frames.
Startled faces pop up like nails in broken wood. Hammy lets out a "hoo".
Verne diverts the attention of every judgmental eye coming his way. It doesn't stop them from heating up the nerves in his shell. In case the boxes on his shoulders weren't obvious enough, there's an aching weight in his gut. Though he was silent on the stand, Stella claps the court awake with a shout.
"Alright Verne…" Shhk-shhk cocks her behind. "Gimme a reason why I shouldn't make yuh FILTHIER than ME."
"I… have a charming personality?" Verne tries.
It has no effect!
"Gosh, I was only trying to make things right!" Verne finally whines. "If everyone had stopped goofing around yesterday, this wouldn't of-"
"We had everything we could have dreamed of." Tiger put himself up to bat before even Stella did. "I was never treated as lushly as this family's just shown me. You got us into this mess."
"I got overwhelmed. My shell's jammed on too tight. I've got an ache in my tail. I know. I'm sorry."
Their reactions mix, mouths untightened just a little. The signal that flicks between their ears plays a different pitch for each individual. While the others maintain their distance in the dark, Stella nods pretty firmly. "Good. Heartwarming. So, step 1 done, what now?"
A frightening boom in the rigid roof breaks white flakes off of the hard material. They sail gracefully overhead in the seemingly tender resolution.
"Awww, look! It's snowing!" Hammy cheers.
"Snow?" The crumbling bits start to give Heather a unibrow.
Ozzie catches a piece between his fingers. "Very flaky snow…"
Hammy deposits one of the paint chips in his mouth and almost chokes to death on it. Fred smacks it out of him.
Danger lurks more prominently once the roof coughs again. The next 'snow' pelts aggressively onto their fur and eyes. As the bone starts to crack, RJ watches their last line of defense plea.
Those definitely aren't the hooves of 8 tiny reindeer.
Three metallic fingers gore the weak point in a blur that makes the shaft look twice its size. The claw stabs straight into their likenesses, forcing them apart just in time for it to prey on a chilly rug. It remains dug, tearing in search of a texture quite similar - that of warm-blooded fur - as they stare grotesquely, too stunned to move.
The kids cry for their parents. Heather jumps into RJ's arms, and Hammy into Heather's. "Everyone link up!" RJ commands. "No. Tail. Left. BEHIND!"
They form a line between their arms. RJ thoroughly janitors his nose before putting his mop out for Verne at the end.
"I am not grabbing that thing you call a hand," Verne declines.
"O-K," RJ continues without him. "THREE TWO ONE GO!"
Another alligator claw busts through the wall and snaps for Verne's shell. He decides to link up after all.
They speed to the closest bunker they find - a bathroom. A couple shards of glass from exploded windows slice them along the way.
As they attempt to hide, the bathroom is punctured with bullet holes until there's not enough left for there to be more air from inside the house than out. Soon enough, after one politely knocks before smashing the window, RJ spots the consistency: Verne is the target. They want him.
It replays in RJ's head too: "That human thinks I'm a girl!"
So there's the imaginary firefly.
An arm fragments the wall behind RJ and nearly scoops him up on its predictable path to Verne. Ozzie's tail sweeps him out of the way.
He watches everyone else in the collateral front of danger. As they crouch around his safe zone under the sink, RJ snickers up his face. His petrified children nod at the exact same time.
There RJ goes, strolling, meandering over the tiles into the death zone created around Verne. He rummages in his bag all of a sudden, catching Verne's confused attention. RJ comes out with pom poms, a stolen tutu, and pounds of makeup. "Eh-hem - We're gonna need you to wear this."
"Okayyy. What for?"
"Fanservice DISTRRRRACTION!" he rolls off his tongue.
"We love you, oomfie." So Heather says as she hands Verne his script, and RJ boots him through one of the many swiss cheese holes in the wall, bare-shelled in a cheerleading fit.
Into the outdoors, the Goddamn Issue scares all five of Verne's senses to jump over his head, overlapping him in fright. It consumed the entire area of the neighboring house, the wood fence sprayed beneath the wheels. Disgusting and loud, bigger than life itself, Verne skips like a tap dancer about to trip when he realizes the tracks of those conveyor feet are right in front of him. He had to look so high to reach the cockpit that it hadn't become apparent the tires alone were over twice his height.
"Uh…" He reads off his script: "'Mind if I… BUTT in?'- I'm gonna puke, Heather."
"Ouch. That pun was so bad I could hear it through your DUMB, DUMB SQUEAKING!" Jack yells all the way from his seat.
"She better at least teach me her… 'rectal scream therapy' after this…" He recites as apathetically as the machine is heartless: "'5 6 7 8, you know who you wanna date.' '(Shake that bahooty like the bomb, dawg')- Oh wait." He does it as instructed. "'My butt. My butt. My butt.'"
When its belligerent reflexes kick in, Verne hugs the closest thing he can cradle, which happens to be a fire extinguisher posted on an exterior brick wall. He jumped on that thing so hard it snapped off the hook. Now it crashes into the concrete plates surrounding the perimeter of the house. A small spurt leaking out of the can ensures an entire set of typical Verne-antics too messy to describe.
"What kind of distraction is this?" RJ watches his jet-fueled performance coat everything in sight from the broken window. "Even if it works, it's stupid."
While Verne goes crazy flying on his foamy jetpack, RJ sends Hammy and Fred out there on a remote-control UFO to check it out. Only until the idiots abandon ship at the sight of a worker eating lunch. How wholesome - The man just politely provided the cute squirrel with his drink.
RJ fumes on the window frame. As he does, something… grows. A few things, in a few places. It quickly becomes many, and Hammy's hairs rip apart from his coat like a werewolf to the moon.
Ozzie checks for himself, and throws his hand over his chest. "Um… Anyone care to explain what happened to Hammy?"
A monstrosity?
"You mean aside from the usual?" Stella joins. "Oh, yup. Surprise. He drank somethin' weird again." Hammy's unusual not-unusual transformation brings up quite the crowd.
Meanwhile, RJ yanks the hair on the sides of his head in the corner by the trash can. Hammy punches his signature through the wall with his NEW, SUPER BUFF tail fist, among a thousand other muscles.
"Hey everyone." His voice turned… nearly pubescent. "I just discovered my favorite flavor of protein shake. All of them."
Yep. A protein shake.
"Talk about fanservice…" Heather jumps at the opportunity to sweat her fur all over him. "Now draw me with those nutty abs."
Fred slaps her nose and calls, "Can someone pry her off?"
"I made a mistake. Fanservice. It's FANSERVICE APOCALYPTIS," RJ writes in his notebook. "It's catching up to the bodies of everyone I love."
The first one of them he sees is a (currently) untapped Heather.
"Someone save the baby."
At THIS point in the fiasco, Tiger whispers to him, "I don't mean to be rude, but you're letting this climb into absolute idiocy."
"Yeah. Almost… tactical idiocy… THAT'S IT!" he exclaims louder than Charlie Brown.
Is anyone taking this escape mission seriously anymore?
So anyway, it's a thrilling, idiotic 3-step plan. ULTRA-BUFF HAMMY must bend the porcelain toilet so far in on itself that he completely jams the thing. Then, the NOT-BUFF KIDS stack onto each other and flush the poop deck. The toilet gurgles, the fuse lit.
And now, with the appropriate musical selection of Indiana Jones from Heather's phone, the Hedgies adventure into the kitchen area and throw themselves into one of many empty fridges. Hammy - with his giant pecs - crushes everyone into the corners barging in with them and slams the door shut with so much force that, a bit too moronically, the door breaks right off and leaves them exposed.
The toilet gets feisty in the bathroom. It sounds like somebody puking.
"Good thing I cannot smell." It's a very good thing for Tiger, the only one not screaming over the threat of nuclear fallout.
Unable to flush, the toilet combusts on itself and rockets from its bolts. A magnificent, opaque spout of weirdly-toned water blasts it into space, taking the entirety of the house springing with it. All but that fridge, conveniently enough. At the ground zero of a launch pad, yucky gross toilet water exploded in surges over everything in the ghost neighborhood - animals, people, and construction wreckage included.
And thus, as the second house the gang has blown apart (so far), Toilet Apollo completes the house's heavenly ascent to space and collides with a satellite over the United States. As if the giant bandage wrapped around it from one prior incident wasn't enough.
As it turns out - and despite the absolute toilet-water-drenched chaos of the suburbs around them - their ingenuity accomplished nothing. Paired with what Verne somehow accomplished with a fire extinguisher though, it's a disaster. The humans glare at them.
From his arms, RJ flings Verne's shell somewhere into the wet crowd and points fingers. "…He did it."
The workers pounce onto the tiny green cheerleader as the Hedgies flee to a manhole constructed in a strip of turf by the sidewalk.
Verne pries himself from underneath the pool of human flesh unnoticed as they continue to tackle each other just for fun. He rips his dumb costume off, smears the oversaturated makeup over his face, and turns his head right before getting into a turtle's clothes.
RJ waves timidly from the sharp grass trench. "Tooda-loo." For now, they just try to clean off the substances soiled into their fur and forget it ever happened. The kids blow the all-expected raspberries at Verne, and they clap the cover shut without him.
"Don't treat your uncle like this! I apologized!" Either way, Verne must find more cover. Before he alerts a single human being, Verne runs for the nearest shade far from the congested plaza.
Jack snares those vibrations of a turtle's feet moving into the muddy outskirts of the site. In the cockpit of Goddamn Issue (appropriately abbreviated as G.I. from now on), he switches off the engine in a snap.
Beyond there, Verne hustles between a silent alley of houses stripping themselves to bare bones. Past the darkness slowly diminishing, sunlight returns very briefly before being suffocated by thick dust. Giant concrete pipes are piled in a stack like the log trucks nearby. An endless graveyard of lost forest leaves no hedge in sight. Tan, dirtier, and certainly dustier than the woods, the marks of man grind up all those berry bushes and hollow cavities. He reaches loose dirt once again - the first sand dune in a vast desert. The further he treads, the more it becomes clear that this influence may as well be limitless.
He comes across a rusty, immobilized crane truck. A wrecking ball is unlatched and buried beside it, hardly recognizable as steel anymore. And to think it only could've been here for what, a couple weeks? That's when all this appeared. It rusts as quickly as it shines.
The second he hears an angry, massive voice behind him, he dives around the truck, expecting to be shot through the shell at every… single… moment.
A car screeches somewhere nearby. The thud of a door.
The voice draws closer, and the enraged shouts louder, but soon a woman's barking breaks in. The two deflect back and forth for a while, and Verne attempts to dial in. The clouds, the wind, the apocalyptic haze - they forbid him from doing so. But they seem to fade. For now…
The voices silence themselves. Confused, Verne takes his head around the corner of the wheel, where a tall gray-suited woman wearing black sunglasses has a round plastic bucket to promptly encapsulate him.
"Marco…" Heather whispers through the pitch-black sewers. Her voice carves a path. Water drips into foul-smelling pools between the ends of everyone's words… of which, there are few.
"Polo…" RJ responds.
A second passes.
"Marcooooo…"
"Polooooo…"
Stella eradicates the uncomfortable quiet by yelling "Could you two CORK IT?!"
"It's echolocation, Stella," RJ explains, "If she says 'Marco', 'n I say 'Polo', we can't get lost…"
…A second passes.
"Marcooooo…"
Everyone but Stella comes on board, echoing "Poloooooo…"
"OHHHH MY GOD."
"Wow, this place REEKS," Fred comments.
Hammy laughs, "Yeah. It makes Stella smell like a basket of roses." In an instant, a painful punch is heard. "OWWWWWWW! My comical AAAAABS!"
"I do not smell anything," Tiger makes another point of.
"You're an inspiration to all of us," Stella snarks again.
XXX
Kept in a capsule, several thuds over Verne's head vibrate the walls of the white bucket and harden their reserve against his resistance. They sound like a sack of potatoes spilling loose. The weight placed upon the roof becomes unconquerable. The one thing left of the world around him - aside from his rapidly-depleting oxygen - is sunlight flaming the rims and outlines of his unfriendly cage.
"LOOK, LADY." It's the hairy beast who's out for his guts. "I don't know yer name, I don't know yer reason, but sign-ups for the hands-on deforestation tours were back at the front."
"Rebecca," the lady in question immediately replies. Precise and shrewd, she could challenge Verne for his punctuality. "Rebecca Wright. Spokesperson on public health. Acknowledged by the local government…"
Jack drops into a snooze halfway through the tall lady's speech.
"…HOA president of 14 months. Self-proclaimed investigator in the…" She yanks him by the suspenders. "...animal situation."
Jack yawns through his beard and stretches his back over the wrecking ball lying in the sand. "Jack Sawood. MAN. So whaddya want?"
"You called me."
"…"
"Yes. You did. And by the way, I know your tours are just a cheap ploy to get my people to do your work hands-on."
"…THEY'LL NEVER KNOW IT'S A PLOY IF IT WORKS!"
A second set of laughter never returns.
Another vehicle arrives, this time with the whacking of a hammer that truly makes Verne tingle.
Rebecca watches Dwayne practically trip out of his truck door. "What'd I miss?" he yawns too. "And which one of you two smells like a turtle wearing mascara?"
The construction disaster nearby answers his first question, at least.
"…My advice? Call a lawyer." Dwayne tries to leave it right there for the sake of his half-dead eyes. "That looks like a loooot of property damage." Except Ms. Wright sidesteps between him and his battle bus.
"This is unacceptable. For what I'm paying you? The ANIMALS knocked back our expansion progress by at least a few DAYS."
A few days? Verne lets that soak in for a bit of needed rejuvenation.
"Are you hosers gonna keep HOSE-Y-ING," the construction man yells, "or are you gonna let me SWING AT THAT TURTLE ALREADY!?"
A ferocious strike knocks the bucket - and the bricks holding it down - off Verne. That's the last thing he sees before his blinding exposure to the open world burns his sockets like a vampire on TV. Nothing important, nothing that could SAVE him from his terrorizing fear returns, because he's in no position to make a break for it against the trio of human creatures circling him.
The construction man acts particularly belligerent. His leather boot pins Verne's shell before he could even crawl. And he tries to attack with a chainsaw. Instinct squeezes Verne tightly out of his shell. Nude, he starts to run.
Turns out, that heavy thing is what's making turtles so slow anyway. The muscles in Jack's bearded face unwind. A swarm of workers desperate for instruction and consolement flood him.
He shakes his fist. "This is the LAST round you'll win, Velma! I don't even want your stupid, STUUUUU-PID, plastic toy trousers!"
The shell comes hurling to the ground a few inches in front of Verne. He accepts it without thought.
Meanwhile, the Verminator slips out a little "Whoops" at the opportunity. He points a black handgun nowhere farther than the belt on his hip it was holstered in. He shoots. It's almost silent. And what comes out flies slower than a bullet, but still subtle.
Just before Verne gets himself fully covered, a weird clump of air shoves him in his back, like a paintball - or a blueberry substitute - that doesn't make a splash. It must be a bad memory of the kids. Because there's nothing there when he rubs where he thought it hit, between the backs of his arms. It could've been a bit lower, but he can't reach far enough to know for sure.
Something ticks red inside his shell for a couple seconds before going still.
"Go after that thing," Rebecca tells Dwayne, leaning off her heels but not making a full effort herself.
"I'm gonna need you to take the loopiness down between a 1 and a 0. Your vermin-killing sensei just marked the whole pack for death." Dwayne opens his little handgun and takes one of the purple and black discs - no wider than half-dollar coins - from its case. "You got no idea how much anesthesia you can pack into one of these bad boys."
"Our rabies cases are off the charts, property values lowered, there's C8 in the blood of EVERYONE in this town, and you have the audACity to tell me I'm paranoid," she rants in response. "I'm telling you to up your game."
ACT II: Deja Vu
No matter what kind of trip his family endured next, Verne doesn't find them in his initial line of sight when he returns to the Log with no breath to spare.
Do the tufts of mud spot more of the ground than usual? Shorter puddles of grass? Verne can't place his finger on it, but something's changed here. The wind whispers gossip. A big duck floatie in a kiddie pool bumps into the edge. Somewhere behind the Hedge, a truck shuts its doors and whizzes into a higher, quieter pitch. A lawn sprinkler runs without supervision.
"Uh, helloooo? Rise and shine, I've got great news. The humans said we pushed the construction back by a few days! A few DAYS! That means we-!"
"Oh that is great news," RJ snorts from far away.
"RJ?"
"KING RJ." His family advances into view carrying the back of the purple seat from the TV set. They show their tails, and RJ sits decked out on the 'throne', 'crowned' by a tall can of Spuddies taped around his head. It covers him like a dunce cap. He looks moronic. "Hello, dear friend. You missed the coronation."
"I had 15 different outcomes I was planning for… and this was not one of them."
"Hey, check me out after you show your face in COURT."
"HEYOOOOOOO!" his subjects jiggle.
"…What is going on?" Verne begs to know.
De-buffed Hammy smacks himself in the face with a 'gavel' (more like a party popper jammed onto a popsicle stick). Apparently, he sounds just like wood.
"You will now appear in court, dear friend," RJ reveals, "as established by Article IV of the forager rulebook."
"You made that up."
"Hmmm… Can't argue with that. EXCEPT I CAN! Good luck in court, dear friend." He snaps his fingers twice. Those under the seat begin to carry him to the 'court', set up between the food forts.
Verne strikes his neck outward. "Stop calling me 'dear friend'."
Heather scurries to seize him gently by the arm for the short travel. Her fur orders his shell at least a brief sheen of protection, for the checkered plates on the one he's rented are mushy and hurt.
Glancing around - the same way a gnat flies - worries Heather immensely. Every animal hurries to judgement day, mesmerized by the light of the event. Like a game. They're fixated on a mimicry of Awesomeland built with Verne's so-called 'atrocities' in mind. The court consists of two food-stacked towers and one central image behind the purple throne - a pink flamingo.
Her ears grief themselves into shriveling up. "I kinda, so don't wanna do this either. But you gotta. So gotta. I'm starting to get (like) this kinda feeling, y'know, that they wanna kill you. For real."
Verne takes her word for it, and follows.
Heather sneaks as far back into the semicircle as she can. It curls around Verne once he arrives at court. A million familiar faces - once his to feed - judge every movement his cautious pressure forces from him. Their feet angle in towards RJ's smug, brown, wiggling toes. When they're grouped up, the look and smell of gunky residue over them exerts to a degree he notices. Verne's back faces the direction of the Hedge, and he stares into the woods beyond this insultingly-playful courtroom as if it'd help to think of his homeland right now. They stare the opposite way because all they care to see is the land with the open sky.
Hammy sits in a baby's dinner chair, carrying a weird accent. "The cooourt will now proceeeeed." He assaults his nose with the gavel multiple times.
"OPENING STATEMENTS FROM THE DEFENDAAAANT!" Fred, on his shoulder, screams so that everyone can hear the tiny wood tick. Also, screaming is funny.
"I-I don't even know what this is about," Verne begins a little weakly in his defense.
"Dementia - 1st offense," rules RJ. "Can I get a donut?"
Tiger brings it.
"For every offense, I become a greedier, greedier pig. Do you really want my thighs fatter than Stella's, Uncle Verne?"
Verne watches RJ indulge worse than a dog.
"Oh yeah, remember that lovely demonstration you gave us this morning? Well guess what: We didn't do anything wro-ooong. Gaslighting the family - 2nd offense. Another donut, please."
"Are you sure this is okay for your diet-?" Tiger asks.
"DO-not keep me from my DO-nut!"
Tiger gets it.
RJ switches to sitting on his back instead of his bum like the old geezer's already bored him, or his gut and thighs are just too fat from donuts to stay upright. "Alright, opening statements are over-"
"OPENING STATEMENTS ARE OVEEEERRRRR!" Fred repeats.
"Hey Heather, say somethin' stupid."
"Uhh, like-"
"Good. That's what our dear friend here sounds like. And he's already at 2 offenses. (Who's keeping track)?"
One of the kids screeches a dry erase marker over a board to tally them.
RJ smashes his hands onto the armrests. "NOW, Uncle Verrrrrne, let's cut to the chase:"
He flings a handful of printed photographs into Verne's face, knocking his new psychological prisoner to the scraggy mat. These tax forms to his worth explode off his nose and settle near his fallen side face-up. Stella runs to help him up. Together, all heads shift towards the evidence.
'Evidence' points to Verne using a paintball gun to pelt RJ with blueberries, putting a big smelly pair of underwear over RJ and Heather's heads while they snuggle, getting RJ to burn off his armpit after turning his body spray into a flamethrower, and - evidently - choosing to print out every one of these things that would incriminate him. Although he's seen in each photo, his shape is jagged, even a bit chipped, and the lighting on his shell and skin never matches the crime scene exactly. The photos have an incredibly shifty quality… down to the traces of white glue seeping from Verne's devilishly enraptured poses in the acts.
Some patches of the grass-work are tenderly green or yellow. Here's what it is: the Log. The Log's filled with dead leaves - in all of them. Winter's not over yet. He's still asleep. Even though Verne wouldn't be lying to point it out, for his first reaction, he can't figure out what kind of fear or disappointment to put on his face.
The moment Heather recognizes the faulty quality of the photos off of memory rather than logic, something comes over her. She barely tries to speak up, though. Her throat makes a cracked effort.
"Sooooo… What've you got to say about this?" RJ chuckles maniacally.
"Wait," Verne thrashes, "those must've been pictures the kids took when they were pranking you! Count the number of leaves missing from the trees! That was still a week before spring!"
The kids, of course, have to bury it behind their quills.
"Ooo, yeah. He's a real hibernator. Hibernators sleep like that." Lou has to be silenced by Penny for not keeping in line.
"We have to let RJ win, dear."
"I think the conclusion is clear…" RJ sits up. "You're trying to trash me."
Everyone gasps, half of them faulty in their own quality.
"Wha-!" Verne nearly made that a laugh. "WHY would I be trying to trash you!?"
RJ emerges from his throne like a king ready with a gambit. The thrust of his arms into the armrests is abrupt and noisy.
So Heather acts off intuition. She nervously but hurriedly sneaks out her phone, hits the record button on the camera, and clutches it behind her back. It picks up every sharp word, initiated by his dramatic diatribe:
"Because you did it LAST YEAR and you're doing it AGAIN!" RJ swipes one hand near Verne's nose, swatting what is a fly to him. He stomps Verne back up his paces. Prancing, 'enraged', he slips hardly a squint of relaxation into his smoky hiss.
"And I had good reason last year! You used them so you could-"
That 'insults' RJ. "And are you still calling me a LIAR?!"
RJ puts on an intriguing show. An imitation of Ozzie that the group is heavily invested in. Stella's flame finds itself nailed by RJ's foot as well. His tail spikes up like Tiger. Heather sneaks her eyes an inch. She gives in, bends her whole head around to check on the phone, make sure it's still recording, until one of the rivals speaks again and nearly puts her heart into paralysis.
"No! RJ, I-I-I don't know what you're talking about-!"
Even the thickest of tree trunks rattle when RJ stomps again. Verne flinches back to hold his hands far in front of himself. RJ accelerates his footsteps until he's chest-to-chest, competing for territory, surrounded by the things each of them call home on their own, nudging him back over his feet at a rate of a rush hour.
"Last year I came in and changed all of your lives for the better," retells RJ. "You think we'd be living like this? Eh? Free to live like ourselves and have the same cuddling joy as those humans? Wanna go back to being on the verge of DEATH all the time?"
Ozzie dies.
"I had to live too, Verne. Crossing your poor family was just a fluke. A FLUKE! And that RJ's GONE. But you're still LOOKING for 'em: The cheat. The liar. Some savage, rabies-holding BEAST!" More tirelessly than Hammy, he brays, "Hide the chips! 'HE'S COMING'! 'HE'S COMING'!"
Verne watches RJ grip his eyes and crash to his knees to pretend to hide. They thump into the dirt. But behind his back, his tail repulses, stuck upward. One side masks the other, and the one chilling smoothly away from the sun is one only the family can see. To them, it's obvious that he wants to keep it held up like his seat is from the ground, and his ears rounded backward to pick up any of their subtle cues.
The crowd appears benign at heart, but almost entirely uneasy. Except they can't find any reason to act during the rest of the argument. It'd be for the worse, ultimately. Their toes bend them forward, and their paws lean up.
Verne's feet freeze for a second. This means RJ's unbreakable determination will crush his toes, rolling him onto the curved face of his shell with no means of getting back up. His limbs are frail, helpless, and soon enough, everyone surrounds him in his vulnerability, boxing him in with frowns tantalizing him with the hope of friendship.
Stella makes up her mind, lowering her eyebrows underneath her hair and nodding to herself.
"RJ, you are selfish," Verne decrees like a king himself. "Stealing the family away from me so you can have YOUR way-!"
"Dat's been your plan all along, hasn't it?" A voice he wasn't expecting to object.
Stella, who could've once been thought of as his right-hand skunk, shoves RJ out of the way so she can put up a stout block in front of Verne herself.
Verne drains into a paleness greater than her stripes and hair. His hands and the inside of his shell feel clammy. He rocks on his back faster in the wake of her dark arrival. Beside the Log, he loses his last feeling of companionship, and for a second he loses his ability to speak, preoccupied with tasting spoiled air seeping from her as a skunk's stench does. He didn't mind it then, but he dreads it now. "St-Stella?"
"Verne, I've known yuh longer than anyone here. You're actin' older th'n dirt 'n got the muck of a dump truck. Get with the tiiiimes!" Her foot claims his shell, and she jabs him a few times in the neck. "I think we all agree that our lives mean more than sum dead, smelly, wrecked up ol' MESS OF A LOG!"
Her life and her motive feel threatened by him at once. She turns around in not a second and immediately sprays whatever ammunition she has stored, knocking him ruthlessly onto his helpless shell again right after he got his hands on the ground and head faced frontward into his fate.
No one helps him up this time. In fact, they freely enforce the opposite. Opinions let loose from the dam clogging their mouths:
First, Penny. "Think of the kids!"
Next, Ozzie. "We can't stay here, Verne. Do you reckon it'd be any better than lining our graves with flowers already?"
Then, Tiger. "It's 'we' or 'it'. Make your choice."
He feels like he's heard things like this a million times, even if the voices and harsh attitudes are quite new.
The quirky horn of a truck parades their way.
"What's up, party animals?" The Surfer-Lookin'-Guy jamming out in his delivery truck comes by for his second visit this season.
"Oh yeah, we ordered these yesterday," recalls RJ (also known as 3 chapters ago by this point).
"P.-U., this rig smells AWFUL. Here's a MEGA load of come-and-get-some rubber duckies, yo!"
Surfer-Lookin'-Guy backs up right behind Verne's head and summons an avalanche of rubber duckies to be the next hungry pack to pile onto him. The family goes crazy feasting their hands on the hilarious human collection. They treat it like a game, and horrifically, they win it.
Within the chaos, RJ finally hammers his verdict: "The court sentences you to-"
Hammy prematurely unleashes the celebration, blasting the party popper on the gavel into his face.
"…-exile."
Everyone pipes up, at least in Verne's ears.
Once they've hoarded enough duckies to get him free… not that they meant him to… the abandonment settles in. They progress past the willow, and on to the TV set. Once desolate, now brought back to life. At the cost of a life.
Verne shuts himself for good inside his cardboard fortress gates, where he stubbornly resides to bring the sick Log its tea. He sips up his own back pain, snaps his spine into place, swats at his tail for its tingling, and grabs the bars of his voluntary isolation to shout: "Ok. Fine. Go back to blue-blinding your eyes so you can act like these humans AREN'T the problem!"
Marshmallows pop out their furry pockets and into their ears.
"They think they own you! They do not! JOIN THE REVOLUTION!"
"Shut up, Verne," Stella grunts back.
RJ tries to skim past.
"RJ." Looks like Verne stops him in time.
The turtle - he's bruised in all the spots between his shell and limbs. Smells like a sewer too, and RJ would know. "I thought by now…" The brim of Verne's mouth shudders like he stepped on a tack. "...you'd know what family's about."
RJ rolls his eyes after Verne stakes a sign next to the Log: 'Home is where the heart is'. "I'm just keeping my family safe," RJ says. Some genuine depression is enkindled. It's not a front anymore… "If you're in the way… whatever. No one ever died being too careful. Isn't that what you've always said?"
Even if they plan on returning to 'Awesomeland', as RJ hypes up for the others just now, Verne vows to anchor his trembling tail into the same gravelly dirt as that sign. Swear his life by it. Sign his name in red marker. They can return to the land that brings them no pain, but take a glance back just to feel one more thing. One comes from Stella. Heather, two. Nothing else comes served. Except for Hammy and Fred, who wave bye bye a bit too somber to not come off acerbic, and rustle Verne more.
A rally later, they bounce up and down and prepare for departure. They tear apart both freaks of food fortresses, for no 'teams' survive that day. They take the blue umbrellas - every single one. They pack anything and everything edible into one gargantuan mountain atop the red wagon, tied and plastered together in a Seuss-like contraption. Mt. Feeds-a-Lot too. They leave him scraps that he can hardly even stack. Verne is only left in the damp mud left by the eroded grass underneath the foundation of his fort's grave, along with the Log beside him, aging every second. He becomes distant from it. He's losing his grasp - on everything.
"What'd I do wrong?"
Rolling back into Awesomeland feels oh so new - a cliche of yesterday. The trees stagger an impressive, authoritative height above them. They accept it that way. Helicopter seeds fall, fertilizing the creek's arch and its tulip cliff. The edges past the moat and in the camp on the other side sprawl with berries and bounty. Light grass carpets muddy roots, as do layers of leaves over silk-woven bodies of trees and other plant life.
"Ahhh. The spring pollinator smell. It brings me back," Ozzie admires.
"But now it's full of rubber duckies!" Hammy exclaims. "It's a haven! It's a…"
"Rubber ducky haven!" Fred decides for him.
"Yeah!" Hammy laughs himself to death.
Still… Heather moves her feet in horrible sync to the tempo of every critter. Naturally, that weirdness - the weirdness all the way down the tip of the tail, to her sheer existence among them - keeps her lagging behind as quiet as her little toes. But her beat itself isn't consistent. She frequently glances behind her, and even though there's nothing but a brush by the time she enters the beautiful clearing, something must be compelling her to have her body language be so discordant.
Her expression fights itself. It squirms. Her teeth stick somewhat apart from her mouth because of an uneven bottom jaw. Tension in her cheeks presses up the bottoms of her eyes. She combs beneath her arms as if to stimulate her senses among her own form instead of the new future she unknowingly helped to create.
Well, she knew what she was doing all along, it's just…
"What'd I do wrong?" she asks herself in petty denial.
She unpacks nothing of her own like the rest of the foragers do - it's all RJ's doing.
Regardless, the family acts especially eager to show her something. Her specifically. Around the cliff, bushed up in the back corner, a relic of the Log's agents is revived. Then again, if RJ and Verne are apples to oranges, it's hardly affiliated. 'Welcome home', it greets. A string of gold lights hugs the ground and orbits the freestanding TV. The blue cooler. A smooth tan rug for Stella and Tiger. A golf bag houses Ozzie as a bouncy chair. Hammy and kids rounded up on the closest dock. The parents guard the food hidden in cardboard boxes underneath a big blue umbrella. A purple chair. RJ sits there.
Ok… she can't tell what they're so excited about. Nothing's changed about their television setup. She knows every piece by heart like she'd put it there. She can tell it's suffered no loss of spark from the move.
That wave of yard lights runs around the setup and cleans dark corners to create a nostalgic, unbelievable atmosphere ready for her. As familiar as it is, her attracted eyes draw not-so-familiar colors into the irises. It's never been from her short-legged perspective that the family's fur conjoins. But RJ's lived the initiation already.
She still can't tell what they're excited about. And now, her feet nudge closer together below her, shrunk in the friendly grass. The influence of everyone's undivided attention seeps into her face. It takes her heartbeat into her cheeks, then her brain. She plays with her fingers near her chest as a distraction.
Then they tell her, through Spike first: "We want you to be the queen!"
"Wait wait wait…" She points at King RJ, unsure. Despite such an abrupt reveal, surprisingly, her first question is: "Is this seriously like, our home home now, or what?"
"You made us feel things we've never felt before, there," Lou hums. "Like puking out carbonated beverages as we hurl down a rollercoaster hill in a cereal box."
King RJ smirks. "C'mon. Y'know why we're doing this." He takes a microphone and a green CD player from behind his back and drops them at the foot of the throne.
Heather carefully backpedals until she can quit staring at an excerpt of her crude decisions. "I- I mean, I was just here to have a good time, y'know, I had no clue you guys really think I'm some kinda head honcho with this. I'm totally not cut out for that. I don't got that kinda responsibility, right? Do I?"
RJ steps over the lights to bring her comfort inside the golden ring. Hardly in her own will, he hooks her hand and steers her in the right direction, from her guilty isolation into the face of the laudatory crowd. He hardly expresses any knowledge of the significance of her reclusive posture. He just tips up his crown, puts himself on the throne, and makes as much room as he can.
"Awesomeland needs a queen," Tiger urges. "That queen needs to be you, my friend."
"Didn't you leave a little… personal pizazz somewhere? Oh yeah, I remember…" RJ gives her no time to react before the universal remote hits her chest.
She turns it to the back. Sure enough, over the battery slot, she left her name in black sharpie. Of course, what an idiot she had been back then. The remote's dark gray, for crying out loud. Look at the awful handwriting. It was probably the first time she even held a sharpie. There's no way anyone would be able to see it unless they know it's there. It doesn't matter. Everyone does.
"This's been your gig from the start, sweetheart. I don't forget, 'Possum Pal," RJ ensures she remembers.
She put this together, last year.
"Get yo bum up there, kid!" Stella smacks her back and sends her forth. Heather keeps the remote tight against her torso, unsure of where her eyes should be headed. The others have direction - concentrated on her, of course - that leaves her lips uneven.
Alright. She sits down.
"Tell me… You want chocolate or vanilla icing on your birthday cake?" is RJ's first question in the interview.
Instead, Heather brandishes her hair on the spot, unusually loud and sulky. "Nuh-uh, I can't DO this, guys. Can't you at least go with 'princess'? You see any of those like, collectible cereal rings on me and RJ's fingers? Nah! You guys are weirdos!"
Ozzie gets her to breathe for a change.
Tiger flicks his head. "Is that the only cause for alarm… princess?"
"Totally, um, n-no, but-"
Hammy pleas, the adults (appear to) threaten, and she looks into the woods as if it'd help to be thinking about Verne right now.
Her torso sinks, she grips her hand, and her tail sort of hides itself behind her uncomfortably. "…Um… Yeah. Yeah, that's the only… whatever," she frowns, dismal.
"Lookin' a bit Verne-y there." RJ pops up in her face to smuggle that attitude with his charm. "Don't need any o' that! Now put on that dorky grin 'n let's make YOU suburbia's next hottest vermin gal!" He stretches her lips past her dorky teeth into the gaping width that corrects her.
Heather keeps her shoulders tense when the kids come and fwoop a pink, stickered paper crown over her head. Her face drops the second it hits. She feels terribly loose in her coat. Celebration ensues, which she, obviously, does not take part in.
But then Hammy brings her a soda. "It feels like Groundhog Day for some reason. But I haven't seen one today."
Unbelievably, it took this long for her stomach to speak of a wish. Her head darts into the sky as a response. Where else would they keep all the food? Incredible peaks - heaps and heaps of supermarket treats disorient her. Their attention showers upon her like if glazed donuts were poured abundantly into a cereal bowl. She breaks apart her crunched limbs for this kind of acknowledgement.
"Aaaaand cut." RJ lets his mask down. "What do I have to put on the table to keep your negativity at bay right now?" he whispers urgently into Heather's ear.
"Binge-eating tends to do the trick."
The cracking open of Hammy's soda cap spurts bubbles up her neck. She grabs everything they present. Her tail works double time. She heists from them herself, starting to giggle like a kook. When she asks, they spoon-feed her 'til there's no room left in her mouth. She eats so much at once that she gets a hiccup.
They're eager to please her at a hastier pace in line with the delight she exerts. The kids plug in the TV as that simple, animalistic exuberance wires between all of them. It's her part in a blissful circle she can't let slip away.
And it's the food that removes Verne completely from her life.
"Oh yeahhhhh, YEAHHHHH, SPOIL me to DEATH. I NEED this!"
Ozzie, beneath his breath, realizes that "Heather with RJ's ego sounds terrifying."
Stella overhears, so she bumps him in the hip. "Let her insecurities have their break, hun."
"Her 'insecurities' are the only thing keeping her away from death. DEATH."
RJ really has to herd the others back to their places, as much as Heather demands to be pampered. "Today, my friends, we claim back the lives that are rightfully ours. The sun is shining, the breeze is breezy, and there's enough time on our hands to build Awesomeland as high as it started! Best of all, someone's special day is coming up. Heather… Wanna handle the remote?" the king offers, this time.
"Yes I would like to handle the remote, RJ," the princess (not related) puckers out of her dignified gills. "With you guys around, these channels are never gonna get old."
She clicks the TV on.
XXX
He's deciphered what the doomsday scenario is. It's here.
Surprisingly, the family was organized enough to take the bulletin board, its maps, diagrams, and its calendar with them - something only he… and RJ, he supposes… ever made full use of. But he knows it's coming.
Eventually, Verne finds a bit of uneasy company, something that feels like a relic already - those photographs. The evidence. Before a breeze can take them from him too, he runs sluggishly to retrieve them from the ground.
The jagged cutouts of Uncle Verne lift slightly from the edges to reveal shadows. Once he can get them pried off the glue, the culprits behind those pranks - the kids - don't surprise him. But deconstructing those blatant lies brings a whole new misery.
He has a plan.
He digs deep in his shell to find it. It's practically a memory book. Deeper, older, until he finds a photo dated back over a year ago. Stella still had her bangs… before they cut them, and she grew them back later on into a sort of nest-y, proud mess on her head. The kids were shorter. Heather was a bit less quirky, in look and attitude, before RJ really hooked her by the tail. Speaking of which…
No, forget him.
As for himself, standing grumpy in the back, out of frame… He pastes one of those happy cutouts over himself. He is now one of the pack. They have one mind, and one thought at a time. They'll all take turns with the brain cell. It's simpler like that.
That might not be true anymore. As humanity progressed, famine lost its ring. Leisure time allowed everyone to explore their creative potential, become individuals rather than animals, and there's no reason the same couldn't be said here. Overall, they've lost their forager dialect. They talk with a distinct attraction for human concepts and redundant abstract philosophies that Verne doesn't see fit for himself.
They don't act like animals and they don't act like humans. They're playing Twister trying to decide who's the status quo here. They're so indecisive. Maybe they prefer the side that needs less argument, then. Conform to the will of the mighty.
Verne finally figures out where this one creaking noise is coming from. The father tree behind the Log drips a concerningly large branch right over it, starting to snap loose. The part at the body where the shoulder has splintered croaks in pain. Invasive insects have eaten apart most of the old tree's support. The thread holding the branch makes it a gallows over the Log, puppeteered by the wind.
His stomach rumbles. They hardly left anything for him to scrap up. Bark will have to do… only for so long.
He rummages through the garbage somewhere - he doesn't care where - but the diapers he finds only make him more sick. There's only 1 option left. A far walk, though - for his unsteady legs.
Night falls. Trucks rush over the street through the forest, blowing empty bags of chips off the road and onto Verne.
Verne hears a soup of angry grunts and poundings under the dirty, buzzing light. Turns out, he can't escape the guy. RJ's already occupying the vending machine, and when Verne rounds the corner behind his back, he immediately falls backward onto himself.
He waits for RJ to be done - no luck for him, as always - and hides in the trash until he's miles away from the rest area.
Verne takes his turn. As always, the quarters are in his shell, they slip into the slot without problem… but those Snazzy Ranch chips remain stuck on the edge.
He knows how it feels now. It makes him want to smash his giant nose into the glass. And he does. Over… and over. It's never been that way. He could've been accepted for those chips even last year.
For once, he shares a boat with the younger guy.