Chapter 12: Clancy's Canadian Cooking
"You've got to be kidding me!" Blk exclaims, staring down the hall in horror.
"I didn't think he'd take it seriously," mumbles R2, disbelief showing in the pitch of his robot voice.
They’re gawping at a stand that Clancy set up himself. At the stand is an assortment of cooking appliances, including an oven, stove, blender, toaster, and waffle maker. At the front of the stand are free samples in small plastic containers. The samples look like fries topped with gravy and cheese curds; not very appetizing in general. Above the stand is a sign that proclaims Clancy's Canadian Cooking in livid blue letters. However the strangest thing is that there's actually a crowd - a real one, not another hallucination - around the stand.
After exchanging a bemused look, Blk and R2 walk over.
"Clancy!" hollers R2.
Clancy glances over. "Oh, hey guys. Man, I have to thank you for suggesting this to me. Have some poutine." Clancy gives them both cups of the fries topped with syrup and cheese curds.
Both Blk and R2 stare at it.
"You try it first." Blk sniffs his dubiously.
"What?!" shouts R2 in a feminine, squeaky voice. "You eat it!"
"AGH!" roars StormWalker from the line. " Shut up and just eat it!" (just beat it) As they start to turn to look at her, she stalks over to both of them and shoves the poutine down their throats, plastic cup and all. They both start choking on the cups as Storm walks back to her place in line.
"How was it?" Clancy smiles angelically.
"It was good." R2 coughs and spits up a piece of plastic. "Except for the cup."
"Well you're not supposed to eat the cup." Clancy rolls his eyes. Blk and R2 both glare at Clancy, who persists in ignoring their dirty looks.
"You know Gantic won't allow your stand in the hallway," says Blk, almost smugly.
As if summoned, Gantic appears and walks over to the stand.
"Hey," says Gantic, and everyone turns to stare at him. "I just want to thank you for the poutine."
"You're very welcome." Clancy beams.
Gantic takes a cup of poutine as he continues. "You keep making more stuff like this and you'll get a place in the cafeteria for your stand."
Blk and R2 stare at Clancy, their mouths agape as Gantic vanishes, humming.
Clancy twirls and claps his hands in delight. "Wow! My very own place in the cafeteria! Isn’t that amazing?” Sparkles are all but manifesting themselves in the air around him, and Blk and R2 take a step back to avoid being contaminated.
"I guess you're going to be a big shot now," mutters R2, trying to hide his sullenness.
"Oh, c'mon R2," Clancy says nicely. "I wouldn't call having a stand with Canadian food in the cafeteria a big shot job."
"I would!" R2 bursts into tears and buries his face in Blk's shoulders.
"There, there." Blk pats R2's back softly, trying to comfort him, and Clancy picks his nose and wipes it on the offended robot. Everyone applauds.
The Canadian makes a guilty face, but brightens as he formulates a plan. "R2!" exclaims Clancy. "Why don't you help me make the food?"
R2 looks up with a smile, wiping off his oily tears. "Really?"
"Of course!" Clancy claps his hands. "I'll always allow my white buddy to help me make Canadian food!"
"Hey!" shouts Blk after attempting to wipe R2's oil tears off his shirt-sleeve. "What about me?"
"What about you?" asks Clancy.
Blk looks at Clancy annoyingly. "What am I going to do?"
Clancy looks around. "Oh, uh, right... You can post these flyers around the school."
Clancy drops a heavy pile of Clancy's Canadian Cooking flyers on top of Blk. After Blk recovers his senses, he walks off mumbling about how he got the bad job.
"Alright, who's next?!" shouts Clancy as Pick sneaks a cup of poutine and runs away.
Balloon_Girl approaches the stand while holding her best friend, her balloon.
"Why do you make people wait in line just for free samples?" she asks.
"Because it's Canadian," R2 says helpfully, interrupting Clancy before he could say anything.
"I guess that makes sense." Balloon_girl purses her lips in thought. "Anyways, me and my balloon here would both like one."
Clancy hands two cups of poutine to Balloon_Girl. She eats hers and sighs dramatically, smacking her lips like she was in some sort of commercial.
"That was really good," she says, and hands the second poutine cup to her balloon's string. The poutine immediately falls on the floor.
"Seems my balloon didn't like it. She's always picky about what she eats. Anyways, thanks." She walks away with her balloon.
---
In the same hallway, Ernie is watching the stand. He's glaring at the stand with rage and anger and angry rage.
"So Gantic will give that junk pile a place in MY cafeteria?" Ernie says angrily, while keeping a smooth voice. "Not while I'm around."
He hears the sound of tape being torn and turns to see Blk apathetically taping a flyer to a wall. Ernie walks over to Blk to confront him.
"You!" shouts Ernie. "You were over at that stand, right?"
Blk looks up, confused. "Uhhh, yes. Hello to you too, Ernie."
"I need you to wreck their stand," commands Ernie.
Blk shakes his head. "Are you crazy? I'm not doing that, Clancy's food is great."
"But didn't he give you this job?" asks Ernie insidiously.
"Well, yeah."
"And didn't you complain when he gave you this job? You aren't even being paid for it."
"You don't know that." Blk frowns.
"Are you kidding me? He's giving out FREE samples." Ernie rolls his eyes.
"M-maybe he's being paid by advertisers?" stutters Blk. It comes out more like a question than a statement, but it’s undetermined whether it as actually a question or a statement so no one really cares.
"Face it, Blk." Ernie puts an arm around Blk's shoulders. "You're getting nothing out of this. Not only that but you hate doing it. So I suggest helping me."
Blk pulls away, facing Ernie. "What's in it for me?"
Ernie pulls a $20 bill from his apron.
Blk's eyes sparkle. "I'll take it!" He reaches towards the bill, but Ernie smacks him in the face.
"Stand first, money after," grunts Ernie. "Now go!"
---
"Thanks for the awesome poutine, guys," says StormDragon.
"No problemo, Storm." R2 clicks his tongue. "It's all thanks to this guy." R2 puts an arm around Clancy.
Clancy chuckles as he slowly takes R2's hand off his shoulders and flings it away from him rapidly. "You helped."
"No I didn't," says R2. "I stared at the food and tried to put poisonous cookies in the fryer."
"You at least made an effort." Clancy pats R2's head.
"Riiight, I’ll be going now…” StormDragon edges away.
When StormDragon is gone, Blk walks over nervously.
"You're finished with the flyers already?" asks Clancy.
"Yeah,” lies Blk. "It didn’t take long."
Clancy stares into Blk's eyes for a moment, crawling around in the inner depths of his soul. The Canadian kind of wants to puke, but he’s too brave to puke, so instead he clenches his throat shut.
"Well, all right, R2 and I are going to count how many cheese curds we have." Clancy says at last and walks over to the other side of the stand with R2.
Blk looks around on his side of the stand. There’s a fryer and it's currently on. After staring at it like a hypnotized duck, he exclaims, "I could make the food taste bad!"
"What?" says Clancy absently, looking over his shoulder at Blk.
"Nothing."
Blk waits for Clancy to turn back around and looks at the fryer. "I guess I'll use the dragon fruits Ernie gave me."
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dragon fruit. It's wearing a hat. A fedora, to be precise. He places it on the stand and rummages around in his pants. "I should have one more..."
However, the moment he puts down the dragon fruit, the part of the counter that had the fryer on it slips and crashes down, splattering its contents all over Blk. In the next moment, Blk is cursing rapidly.
"Oh my gawd this is hot!" shrieks Blk.
"Yes!" shouts Ernie from down the hallway.
Clancy and R2 rush to Blk, who’s rolling on the floor, screaming like a wuss.
"You shouldn't be playing around with the counter,” Clancy admonishes severely. He looks at R2. "Can you fix the counter?"
"Sure." R2 eats a fry off the floor.
"You're lucky we were already cooking extra fries." Clancy points to the other side of the stand, where there’s another fryer.
"No!" shouts Ernie.
Blk walks away, muttering that he needs to change his shirt.
An hour later, Blk is across the hallway from the stand, straddling a motorcycle. He smiles as he watches the stand, the target he'll crash into if everything goes to plan.
"This will be perfect!" Blk exclaims to himself. He revs the motorcycle. "Oh yeah! Listen to that baby purr!"
Blk floors the thing that makes the motorcycle go vroom vroom and speeds off down the hall towards the stand. As the distance closes, his smiles growses. Then the right side of the stand's counter collapses at a 45 degree angle, making the stand the perfect ramp for a motorcycle.
"Oh, sh-" Blk is thankfully cut off by smashing head-first into the wall. His motorcycle is twisted like a twisted pretzel doing yoga.
The stand, however, is still intact, apart from the countertop’s collapse.
"R2," sighs Clancy. "I thought I told you that you needed to fix the counter."
"I forgot," replies R2 with a mischievous smile.
---
Blk comes back to the stand, crutches at his side.
"I just can't succeed in tearing this stand down." Blk mumbles. Then he suddenly gasps. "What if this stand is immortal! Like some kind of god!"
Blk smiles. "Well, just like religions, if I can't destroy it physically I'll just spread rumors about it! Then people will stop going to the stand! Then they'd have no reason to have it up anymore! Just like religion!"
Blk then runs off and starts writing on a piece of paper.
I had been walking through the commons, when I noticed the strange absence of anyone else. A solitary figure sat hunched over a table, in the center of the area. He slowly moved his head, jerkily, almost inhumanly to meet my gaze. As we locked eyes, he began to wave. Sitting on the table he was so carefully studying was a glass of some viscous brown liquid, not syrup but not coke. Before I realized what was happening, I had begun to choke on it. I fell to the floor, unable to move any of my limbs. Standing over me, almost hovering, was Clancy, the one at the table. Waving at me, with that freakish smile of his.
I woke up chained to a maple tree, syrup running down across my face. Clancy stood in front of me, motionless. His smile was even wider now, and I thought for a moment that his face would tear apart from its breadth. That was when he took out the plate of fries, which he had hideously slathered with maple syrup. I almost voiced my alarm, because that wasn’t how poutine was made at all. And then, to my slowly mounting horror, he inserted one of the fries into my mouth. This was when the changes began. My hair began to turn to fur, my feet became padded as well. Another syrup fry, and my whole body convulsed, and claws sprouted out of my nails. I was now completely covered in fur, and a pain came from behind me now.
Slowly realizing what was happening to me, I tore at the chains that bound me to this tree of evil. But it was far too late to escape, as a pain came from my mouth, and I knew what was about to happen to me at this point. Terrified, I closed my eyes, but Clancy forced them open. His smile was so large, I was almost distracted from my current situation. He then turned his head sideways, and snickered, as a tail sprouted from my back. Two absurdly large teeth then extended from my upper lip, and the change was finished. I was the beaver, and Clancy rode away on his moose, leaving me to chew the tree to pieces and free myself. But it was too late, and I could never go back to my family. [Storm’s note: I did not touch this piece of work: it was all Blk.]
Blk looks at his masterpiece with pleasure. "This will ruin him for good!"
He immediately runs for the copier and copies about a hundred of the flyers and grabs a roll of tape. Blk then runs out the door and accidentally bumps into Clancy when turning a corner.
"Clancy!" Blk hides the pile of flyers behind him. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm going to get a hammer." Explains Clancy. "We're tearing down the stand."
"What?! Why?" Asks Blk, who is surprised and a little disappointed, as he didn't even post a single one of his flyers.
"I just don't think I can take the stress," says Clancy gloomily.
"That makes sense." Blk nods. "Especially those young story writers that constantly type up stories for a website."
"Blk please, try not to break the fourth wall," says Clancy sharply. "It'll make us look desperate."
"I'll stop, I promise." Smiles Blk.
"So after tearing down the stand, R2 and I were going to get some drinks from the cafeteria. You wanna come?" Asks Clancy.
"I'll be there, but first I have to do something." Says Blk.
"Alright, see you there." Clancy walks off.
Blk looks at the piles of flyers in his hands and then tosses them into the nearest trash can. He then walks away, proud that he didn't hurt his friends and still got $20 bucks out of it.
---
Later at night HecticHermit is digging into a trashcan.
"What's this?" Hectic stares at one of the flyers. "There's a lot of these little story things."
Hectic's eyes then gleam at a sudden idea. "I could sell them and get money off of them!"
Hectic quickly gets out of the can and starts rolling it to his alleyway home.
Editor: @StormWalker
Blk's little story: @blk2860
Characters: @Clancy12, @blk2860, @R2D21999, @Ernie15, @Gantic, @StormWalker, @Stormdragon, @Balloon_Girl
