Miseryville
The uncharacteristically cloudy and grey day of Miseryville was mirrored by the attitude of people living in it. People were miserable, as it should be in Miseryville according to that of Lucius Heinous the Seventh who is sitting on the top floor of his factory called Misery Inc. With his delicious hot chocolate in hand he went to the windows overlooking the city, happy with all the misery from the populace below.
He took a sip and said, "Ah, misery." Such beauty, such magnificence, this glorious day couldn't possibly get any worse, right? His moment of leisure was interrupted however by an urgent call to him. "Boss, Boss." Came a certain voice that had a lisp. And just like that, his mood has just soured.
"What is it now?" said Lucius. "The toilet's been clogged… again." came a timid reply. Lucius gave out a sigh and turned to the source of the voice: it was none other than his milquetoast servant, Samy Garvin.
"And why exactly haven't you unclogged it yet, you do realize that that is part of your job?" Questioned Lucius. Samy was shaking now, "You see about that."
A flashback shows Samy in the bathroom trying to unclog the toilet. He pushed down on the plunger several times before the plunger got stuck in the toilet bowl. Samy tried his best to pull the plunger out but no matter how much he pulls, the plunger would not come out of the toilet. He tried jumping off of the toilet while holding the plunger handle hoping he could free it with gravity.
Unfortunately the plunger didn't comply, instead the handle bended and rebounded swinging Samy back and forth until it went back to its original position. After the rebound, he accidentally hit the flush trigger and the toilet flushed both the plunger and Samy with it. The toilet shot Samy back up with a gush of water before flooding the bathroom, the plunger was nowhere to be seen.
The flashback ended with Lucius peeved at his assistant's incompetence and his mood being ruined by said incompetence.
"Now Samy," Lucius said. "Why don't you go and stand over there? You're blocking the view of the washroom." Samy moved to where Lucius was gesturing to, his entire body was literally shaking. "Now, GET A NEW PLUNGER!" Lucius yelled as he pushed a button, the floor under Samy sprang ejecting him out of the factory.
Lucius, not wanting to have his day ruined, went near the ejected floor and with the pull of a lever an elevator revealed itself. The elevator brought Lucius up to the roof placing him near the hole on the roof where Samy crashed through. He moved to where a machine is situated where it was puffing out clouds making it the source of the cloudy weather. The machine was being supervised by none other than its maker Heloise.
"Heloise" Lucius said. "Tell me, what can this machine do other than just make clouds?" Heloise was miffed at that question. "Seriously, you forgot already?" came her reply. "I just explained it to you 10 minutes ago."
"Yes, but I was so enraptured by the misery it was making" Lucius said bubbly.
Heloise scoffed and proceeded to go over the capabilities of the machine again. "The Cloudomatic 1000 makes clouds in its default state and when you have enough clouds." She then gestured to a bunch of buttons. "From here, you can make any storms you want, from a light drizzle to a giant thunderstorm." She suddenly became increasingly giddy again as she continued to explain the device even if she was doing it for the second time.
As she finished explaining the device, Lucius immediately asked. "You said this can make rain?" Heloise nodded in response. "Lots of rain?" she nodded again. "Lots and lots and lots of rain?" Heloise can't stand her boss' "stupid" questions anymore "YES, ALL THE RAIN IN THE WORLD" she yelled.
"THEN LET THERE BE RAIN!" he loudly proclaimed and did his evil laugh all the while the background blackened showing only Lucius and lightning. His all-powerful moment was cut short however as one of the lightning struck him. The background immediately went back to normal and a little rain cloud was pouring rain on him.
Lucius and Heloise, the former burnt to a crisp, looked around and saw Samy next to the machine pressing a button. He waved nervously at them. "I got another toilet plunger like you said." He spoke as he showed him the plunger. Lucius, back to normal, came to him and angrily grumbled "back to work" to which Samy shuffled and then ran not wanting to feel Lucius' ire.
Lucius then looked at Heloise who now has a moustache and said. "You can go home too." "Finally" she said as she walked away putting on a fedora and a suitcase in hand leaving Lucius alone.
He proceeded to the control panel of the cloudomatic 1000 and pressed the best option that being the most torrential of downpours. Lucius could practically feel the misery of all the inhabitants now as he smiled a sadistic glee filled with satisfaction.
A storm is about to come to Miseryville.
…
Three bells - The Browns [0:00 – 0:54]
Cicero, Illinois. Oct 1st 1977
It is a sunny yet chilly morning in Cicero, the onset of fall has started to turn the leaves orange. The chilly temperature was made worse by the occasional biting breeze that blew away the last vestiges of summer. Residents came out of the rows of houses went about their daily routine dressing in their proper attire to combat the freezing cold that befalls them. From the edge of Cicero, a bus was coming into the city carrying a particular passenger.
Jimmy McGill was sitting alone on the bus, he was coming back from rummaging through what used to be his father's store. Since its closure, Jimmy would at times go back to that store taking anything he could get his hands on for his next con. To say that Jimmy was tired would be an understatement, he was fighting to stay awake from the trip to that run down store. He had to wake up as early as 3 am for this trip since he couldn't drive yet and he didn't want to lose daylight.
The con he will be pulling today involves a bunch of candles he found still stashed at the back of the store along with a piece of coin as the cherry on top. The convenience store had made up much of Jimmy's childhood as he spent much of his time there helping his father. Way too often he would witness con artists exploiting his father's good nature and scam him out of his money. It got to the point to where it became irritating for him as his father would constantly reject his suggestions and stubbornly continue his ideals.
One day, Jimmy would make a fateful encounter that could perhaps set the course of his entire life. He was sneakily reading a magazine while pretending to do his task when a grifter came into the store. The grifter, with the pretense of a broken down car and his ailing son, asked his father for money.
Seeing this going down, Jimmy called to his father telling him that this was another scam, but yet again he refused to believe Jimmy. His father ended up giving him more than what the grifter had asked for and got Jimmy to man the cash register as he went to retrieve some spark plugs.
Being left alone with the grifter, an exchange went down between them resulting in the grifter giving him a piece of advice. "There are wolves and sheep in this world kid, figure out which one you're going to be" the grifter said.
Jimmy took this advice to heart as he started to embezzle money from his own father's business. His path was set, he will not become a sheep like his father for he wants be a predator in this world, not the prey. Jimmy continued to embezzle money until the business ultimately went bankrupt and tragically, his father would die shortly after. This, unknown to Jimmy, has sown the seeds of resentment from his brother Chuck, who would never looked at him the same again.
Now in his high school years, with his partner in crime Marco, the two began hatching their own scams to earn money. They started from selling fake scratch cards to the gullible on the streets, to selling fake IDs to their schoolmates. However, on January of this year, Jimmy would concoct a scam that would make him infamous and would earn him the moniker of Slippin' Jimmy.
He is currently sitting at the back of the bus with nothing but his bag full of "vintage candles" and one of the "rare" coins he had secretly stashed in the ceiling. He looked at his watch, it is almost 8 am, and he had big plans for the weekend and want to make the most of it. But he still has a while before meeting up with Marco so he decided now would be a good time to take a nap. Shutting his eyes he gave in head first for his desire to sleep, the last thing he heard was the bus driver coughing before finally dozing off.
…
Miseryville
It was pouring rain in Miseryville, something that would be considered phenomenal, it was rare enough for them to have a light drizzle let alone this raging thunderstorm. The thunderstorm has been going on for several hours now with no signs of it ending. The rain has already accumulated to the point where it threatened to flood the entire city.
The monsoon hammered the misery into the inhabitants compounding from their already anguish mood. The monsters that were hiding under the tarps of various buildings got soaked when the tarps caved and released the puddles of water they were holding. One monster who was holding an umbrella was struck by lightning and unintentionally powered a street light next to him. The monsters in their cars weren't faring any better as the glass on their sun roof broke from the pounding rain.
Everyone was having a hard time as is typical of Miseryville, everyone except for two individuals. They were of course Jimmy two shoes and his "one-of-his best friend" Beezy J Heinous, both of whom are street-racing in their bathtubs. They are running their bathtubs without any engines, because they didn't need an engine as they are the engine. Using the power of their burping, they ripped through the wet and slippery streets in a blaze.
The two friends were having the time of their lives as they were racing. They were neck and neck and when one threatens to get ahead, the other would catch up and sometimes get ahead as well. They stopped at an intersection as the light turned red with a ding, and as they stopped they drank their fizzy drinks they brought with them to keep on burping. They finished just in time for the light to go green (with a ding) and continued their burping bathtub race.
They raced throughout the city streets to and fro splashing water on the unfortunate pedestrians on the sides. This kept going even when they were no longer driving parallel to each other and the race devolved to them driving all over the place. They drove through the streets, they drove through the forest, they drove through the beaches and the sea, and even on the roof tops, it seems they will never be exhausted.
In the next moment, they drove onto the Misery Inc. factory rooftop and collided with each other finally ending their bathtub joy ride. With their ride finally over, they cheered high fiving each other with their hands and feet and ended with a belly bounce. Coincidentally, they are on the same spot where the hole was created by Samy from his ejection earlier.
"That was AWESMAZING" Jimmy shouted with joy. Beezy burped one final time before saying "aww I'm out of my fizzy sludge." Beezy was about to ask Jimmy if he still had some left when he saw something behind him.
"Jimmy, look over there." Said Beezy. Jimmy looked to where Beezy was pointing. "WOOOW" they said as they looked at the cloud machine amazed. "I don't know what it is but I want to try that." Said Beezy. "I want to push all those buttons" Said Jimmy. "Buttons!" Beezy said now more excited.
But before they could do anything, the roof cracked around them likely going to collapse with the already strained materials.
…
Samy walked tiredly over to Lucius after finally being able to finish the back breaking work of unclogging the toilet. Lucius is currently looking at the monitors viewing everyone being miserable, he barely noticed Samy as he was glued to the screen. 'You really have out done yourself this time' Lucius mused.
"Boss, your toilet… it has been… unclogged" Samy said sapped of energy. Lucius looked at him. "Finally, where were you, you're missing all the misery." Lucius angrily said. Samy groaned at the red demon's ungratefulness, but then a piece of roof with a bathtub on it fell on top of him. "I'm alright" Samy said gesturing with his one arm still free.
"Two shoes, Beezy?" asked a confused Heinous. "What are you two doing here?" His tone getting increasingly annoyed.
"Hi Lucy, we were racing until we crashed on top of your roof, but then the roof cracked and we fell" Jimmy said. "And now there's a hole on the roof."
Lucius face palmed and angrily yelled at them to get out, but it was at this time that both Jimmy and Beezy needed to use the bathroom. All of the fizzy drinks the duo drank earlier is starting to kick in.
They went to the washroom and in the next moment, to Lucius' horror, the bathroom practically exploded. "Samy, go fix the toilet." Lucius put another toilet plunger on Samy's free hand. The toilet that Samy had recently unclogged jettisoned both Beezy and Jimmy upwards towards the roof.
They landed on the roof and saw the machine again, Beezy was quick to act. "Come on Jimmy, these buttons won't press themselves." Beezy said with determination.
"I don't know, maybe we shouldn't touch something that we have no idea what it can do." Jimmy was having second thoughts. "What's the worst thing that could happen?" Beezy replied reassuring Jimmy. "Eh, OK".
Beezy and Jimmy raced over to the machine unable to suppress their excitement with all the fun they can have with it. They arrived at the machine and started seeing which buttons they should press first. They pressed one button which stopped the rain.
"No way, it can control the weather" Jimmy awed. "Say, what's this button do?" It was Beezy's turn to press the button. The button he pressed made it so it's raining Kool-Aid. "Oh yeah" Beezy said and stuck his tongue out to catch the droplets.
Jimmy eyed on another button and after a moment of thinking, he pressed it. It was now raining bees and Beezy's tongue suddenly bulged as it caught their stingers. Jimmy quickly pressed another button and pretty soon, it was raining Jimmy dolls, both users were understandably weirded out. So the button was pressed again and this time it was raining clothing pins, they were both pinched by them.
They continued to push whatever buttons that was on the cloudomatic 1000 progressively becoming more careless with it. One button made it rain money, hallelujah, another made it rain needles, another made it rain fizzy snail sludge. Buttons after buttons were pressed/banged on and the abused machine became more and more unstable until it eventually gave out.
Beezy pushed more buttons but nothing happened, "oh come on, why are you not working?" he shouted as he slammed the machine more.
"Um Beezy, I think we broke it" Jimmy pointed out the obvious. "Eh, I was bored with it anyways" Said Beezy as he chucked a bottle of fizzy drinks on the machine.
Before the two can do anything else they were interrupted by an irritated voice. "What is going on up there?" Lucius came to the roof trying to figure out why it stopped raining. He was shocked to see that the cloud machine was destroyed and enraged by the 2 certain people next to it. "What have you done?" He yelled at the both of them. "You have ruined everything all the work, all the misery, all its magnificence, all RUINED!"
"Hah relax Lucy, we were only having fun, all we need to do is just fi…" his attempt at comforting Lucius was interrupted by the machine now going haywire. The machine sputtered and flew up in the air, it was going out of control and as it ascended higher the clouds grew violent. "That cannot be good" he said.
Not good indeed as the machine spun and grew more volatile and was surrounded by clouds until it went out of sight. The wind started to pick up and whirled as the clouds twisted. The twister then touched down on land and in that moment, a tornado was formed.
Everyone on the roof rushed to get away but as the tornado touched down, everything was instantly sucked up, even the bathtub. Anyone else would have been petrified and screaming on the top of their lungs like Lucius right now. But not for the positive Jimmy and his dimwitted friend, for them, it would be one if not the greatest ride of their life.
They managed to fly right into the two bathtub crashed together which still haven't separated yet. They spun through the air and were actually enjoying the experience not even knowing of the danger - to them this was just another daring stunt. Lucius meanwhile, immediately contacted Heloise pleading for her help at his desperate hour being hit with several debris in the process.
Heloise was in her house when her phone started ringing. She went and picked her phone up wondering who's calling her on her well-earned staycation. She sighed, "What?" She listened on, "What?" now in an exasperated tone, "WHAT!?" now she was angry.
She scrambled outside picking up a water bucket and went to her front yard dousing the fire on her BBQ stand. 'Damn it Dorkus, not only you went to take a vacation without me knowing but you also left the grill on.' Her musing was interrupted by another call, this time it was from Lucius and he was pleading for her help.
Heloise looked towards the factory, the next thing she saw was a giant tornado carving a path of destruction through Miseryville. One would think that she would have noticed that tornado earlier. Heloise sighed as she went back inside her house to get her gear, Lucius seems to always screw up when left alone with her inventions.
…
A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the ground and a cumulonimbus cloud [source]. This force of nature sucks up and swallows almost everything in its path leaving nothing but ruin and debris in its wake.
Jimmy two shoes had heard of tornados before either in the news or from his science and geography classes back when he was on Earth. Now he has gotten the chance to see it and experience it and in a place where people would least expect it at that. Miseryville never had a tornado once in their life before, the only natural disasters were tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
To see a tornado for the first time ever had struck the average Miservillians into white terror, but Jimmy and Beezy weren't your average Miservillians. Both of them were screaming with pure excitement and bliss, completely oblivious to the dangers they were in. In contrast, Lucius who was unintentionally cradling Samy and joined the two friend's bathtub party was screaming in complete horror.
"Two shoes, I demand you to get me out of here!" Lucius yelled, but it was no use, jimmy was having too much fun.
"Come on Lucy lighten up a little, you'll never get another chance to ride a tornado" Jimmy said. Why did he even bother with him, Lucius went on his phone and called for Molotov just to see that he is in a helicopter faring no better.
Seeing how hopeless it is, Lucius continued to scream but as if the situation wasn't bad enough, the joint bathtubs are beginning to split and then finally separated again. "Mommmmmyyyy" Lucius yelled as he disappeared in the tornado
…
Heloise is flying with her jet pack into the tornado so she could clean Lucius' mess. The tornado sucking her in, she made her way upwards using the wind and spotted Jimmy and Beezy. She should have known they were behind this.
She flew to them and went into their bathtub "Oh hi Heloise, glad you're here to join this sweet ride of the century". "Whatever" She rolled her eyes and started steering the bath tub upwards until she's on the top funnel.
She rode the bathtub until she saw the source of the tornado, the malfunctioning cloud machine. With the machine in sight, she rested her laser weapon she brought along on the bathtub and took aim. She pulled the trigger and fired, 1,000,000 Kilowatts worth of energy was brought to bear against the machine and destroyed it. The tornado instantly dissipated with debris and monsters showered everywhere like a rainfall.
The bathtub carrying the trio crashed on the ground in the middle of town. "That was AWESMAZING" Beezy and Jimmy yelled after their probably once in a lifetime experience. "Let's do it again" said Beezy.
They all stepped out of the bathtub, their legs feeling like jelly. "Yeah I think it's time for a break, I'm starving" with that mention, Beezy's tummy growled too. "Now I'm starving too" it was now Heloise' stomach turn to growl. "Me three"
"What do you say go to a restaurant Jimmy?" Asked Heloise in a coy manner. "That'd be great", Heloise inwardly shouted 'yes' at Jimmy's acceptance.
As they made their way to a restaurant, Jimmy wondered about a certain someone.
"Say, where is Lucy?" Asked Jimmy "I don't know, he's probably in his house by now" Replied Beezy.
The scene shifted to Lucius and Samy both stuck on a tree surrounded by a bunch of schwarzentigers.
"Well boss, at least we're not in that twister any more" Samy said. "And you think this is better?" Lucius questioned his judgement of the situation.
"Come on down we just wanted to talk" one of the Schwarzentiger said, this was followed by everyone else making discerning words no longer possible.
No words, except for Lucius' cries for help.
AN: Hello there, I hope you enjoy this little story that I decided to make.
I would like to say this now, this story will serve as a test mule for some other works I have in mind both as to improve my writing skill as well as to get ideas while put ideas on here as well and see if it sticks. With that being said, I will still be giving this story my best effort.
I am looking forward to suggestions so feel free to put some criticisms into this... Or you could just insult... Either way see you next time.
