The Bureaucratic Nightmare

Once upon a morning dreary, as she drove tired and weary, Franki Button Shoeshine made her way to Madula Oblongata Community College. It was a mere seven days until her second year attending MOCC began. She wondered what wonders and/or horrors awaited in the near-future. She was sure any experience could be made into a good one.

Riding shotgun while cradling a bazooka was her Invisible Friend, Chuck, who had taken up the role of pessimist. "Are you sure you have to go back?" he asked, aiming at the motor-carriage off the Starboard bow. "I dislike having to stand around, watching you study, being quiet... Do you have any idea how hard it is for an invisible person to be quiet?!"

Franki, who was never without some choreographed ensemble of loud design, responded, "Don't lecture me, Chuck, I'm practically invisible, myself. It's not like people actually talk to me."

"Hmm... Granted. But that doesn't change my foreboding on the fact that this year is going to be pure, imitation lethar bollocks!"

"Of the dog, my dear Chuck, of the dog."

There was a chore list a mile long for Franki and Chuck once they'd arrived, so they took a moment before entering to knock off the things, such as schedule tuning and scholarship hunting, that were less imparitive, so that more time could be saved for the important things, like stalking the vending machines and chatting up flourescent sculptures of acryllic. Once the list had been shrunk to nine-sixteenths of  a mile, that was deemed "Okay enough" and the two went inside.

Running here, there, and all around the square in manner of a Scooby-Doo chase sequence, Franki became re-aquainted with such things as "public toilets," "rude receptionists," "lawn-gnome hazards," and "wet floors." Each of which were thoroughly unpleasant experiences (especially given the painful, pointed hats of those receptionists).

Chuck, secure in his insecurities within the Community College environment, was quick to tell you so at every unpleasantry, though Franki was still determined to stay positive. Even if it meant ignoring her inner-turmoil to do so.

Finally, moments before sunset, Franki arrived at her final chore of the day: filing (again) her family financial information with the aid of an unenthusiastic woman in a misleadingly cheerful dress. When Franki announced herself, Lady Paradox stared for several moments through heavy-lidded eyes that suggested slumber. Then, as if speaking through a fog, she bade Franki to "Please fill out this form."

Franki did as she was told, filling out her name, age, address, phone number, eyeglass perscription, bra size, potential net worth of her harvested organs on the black market, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. Afterward, she turned the form in, and, pleased at being done, started to leave, when the woman droned, "Auxillury Preliminaries, QL-2's," while shoving a stack of papers, booklets, sticky notes, and recipe cards into Franki's arms, spinning her around, and pointing her in the direction of the piniata where she was to continue filling out information.

Chuck giggled uncontrolably as, just before she was about to sit back down, Franki's stack exploded in a flurry of skin-slicing flakes. Lady Paradox suddenly towered above her cubicle, eyes wide-open and glowing red, and demanded in an unearthly voice, "NO LAUGHING!" then slowly sank behind the carpeted wall.

Six years later, Franki was finished, having muttled her way through such questions as, "What is your family's gross annual income?" "What is your family's hygenic annual income?" "Do you posess both of your parents?" "Who does most of the grocery shopping?" "What are your destinguishing characteristics and identifying marks?" "Do you have any false limbs/artificial organs/tooth fillings? Please specify where." "What was your first word as a baby?" "What is your dying wish?" "Who is to be called upon the event of your death?" "Who is your heir, and what will they win?" "How are your dancing skills?" "What is the meaning of Life?" "Where's Waldo?"

Franki turned the mountain of wasted tree bits in to the mildly frightening woman, who had somehow managed a costume change, and was now wearing pajamas. "Good. You have finished the Preliminaries. Now here are your forms."

Franki's optomism wavered and cracked as she went back to her seat with the little red wagon filled with questions and future papercuts. Chuck had fallen asleep in the chair next, and was snoring away to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth.

"Lucky sprite," she muttered, then set to work. But, when looking upon what had been page one of 100,000, the ink dribbled, and the words bled, and it became completely unreadable, until the new message appeared: DEATH TO ALL BUTTONS.

A hand in a dreadful need of a manicure reached out of the pooled ink, grabbing Franki by the hair ribon and pulling her in. The paper edges scraped at her legs, drawing blood that floated in midair as she fell through the surprisingly dry blackness at a rate that would be leisurely to a sloth. When she landed on her face on the checkerboard floor, she felt the tallons of a large bird landing on her feet, which remained in the air, counter-balancing her enough that she spun to horizontal. The large blue-black bird hopped up her torso to her chest, and glared into her eyes.

"Well, aren't you a pretty birdy?"

The bird twitched its head. "Nevermore!"  It then disappeared in a puff, sending Franki spiralling back to the floor, which was now made of snow, mostly white, but with large, chunky paragraphs of oversized, made-up words travelling over its surface, the sound of confused babbling swelling in its wake. Franki stood as quick as the snow would let her, and started running in the opposite direction of the travelling jargon. As she ran, she glanced down at the shadow running in front of her. Her shadow was made of more words.

The incessant babble! She couldn't outrun it! She couldn't escape! But she had to try....

She was suddenly grabbed by the scruff of the neck with a large, cold fist. Spinning around, she found herself face-to-face with a living snowman. They stared at each other for a moment, before the snowperson lifted his other hand, a false limb made of a limb, holding a yellow-colored snow cone, offering it to her.

"Uh, no thanks. I was always told never to eat yellow snow."

Insulted at her refusal of his offer, the snowman's entire head opened up, revealing sharp teeth and a firey throat, into which she was promptly shoved.

She didn't realize she had her eyes closed until she re-opened them. When she did, she was in a large, white room, with words scrawled all accross the walls, cealling, and floor. But there, in the corner, was one small space, void of the ink-black scribble. Instead, the words were in red: DO NOT END UP LIKE ME! DO NOT FILL OUT THE QL-2'S! AVENGE MY MURD

Unfinished words and sentances had always bothered Franki a bit. On the floor, beneath this message, was a pen and a pool of red ink. She dipped the pen and wrapped up the final word: ER!

She smiled at the completion, though the smile faded when she noticed the walls were suddenly bare of blackness. She slowly turned around, and came face-to-face with a large, hideous creature of the written word. Though frightened, she calmly turned back to the message corner and added a quote of her own: YEAH... MINE, TOO!

Turning back to the creature, Franki quietly accepted her doom. "Alright, Lady Paradox. I'm all yours."

But before the creature could rip her to pieces, something grabbed her shoulders and shook her, pulling her back into the financial aid office.

"Franki, are you okay?" asked her faithful Invisible Friend, Chuck. "You disappeared!"

"I did?" she shook her head. "I thought this whole sequence was a cliche` nightmare, based on my fears and insecurities about the unknown; my inner-pessimism manifesting itself in a way I couldn't supress."

"Are you being serious, right now? I just pulled you out of a glowing piece of inked-up paper, and you're using self-psycho-analysis? I think it's time we start heading home."

"You're right, Chuck, about two things. That, and this year is bound to be pure, genuine, artificial, imitation dogless bollocks.... I should've let the Lawn Gnomes get me."

And thus, Franki learned that, while pessimism is not entirely pleasant to experience, nor to listen to, it is sometimes worth it, to prepare for the worst.