Hey Y'all!
So I thought it would be fun to do a recurring post sharing short stories. I hope to get more local writers and artists in on this so if you know anyone that would share their work, let me or them know!
I only thought it fitting to have my brother do the first one! Chad Marriott just wrapped up grad school, coming out on the other side with TWO master’s degrees. (hold the applause please) His true passion lies with Shakespeare and the theater. He seemed a little hesitant providing his work for this blog but I eventually wore him down. (By doing what any good little sister does and asked him 10 billion times until he agreed)
Here we go with "Billy and Jake the Raccoon", please enjoy! (and share if you like it!)
One day Billy was doing his regular old business of taking out the trash and cleaning the parking lot. You see, he was a hard-working member of society. He worked at a Wendy’s. Billy walked around the parking lot and swept up all the miscellaneous trash. How could people just leave trash everywhere? Like the trash can is literally two feet away? Furthermore, why come to a Wendy’s parking to eat a bag of potato chips? The alternative to that is that they used this opportunity to clean out their car by throwing trash on the ground before going into the store. Hold on, there is a trash can between the counter and their car. So why? Never mind that is not the point of this story.
Billy persevered through this unfortunate hardship and I, the narrator, through this philosophical conundrum of distribution of trash. After finishing sweeping the trash, Billy had to scrub the drive through-lane. As he shuffled around the lot, laboring, Billy didn’t know that his doom was ahead of him. When Billy finished this task, he began taking the trash from inside the restaurant to the dumpster.
Billy always listened to music while performing these tasks. Blink-182 came on. Not the top 40 though. We can only hope for Billy’s sake that it was something from Dude Ranch. No one wants “All the Small Things” to be the last song they hear. Of course, I, as an outside observer, must note that Billy would probably like that. All music criticism aside, Billy began putting the trash in the dumpster. He threw the first couple of bags into the dumpster and heard a noise. If his fate was not so harsh, he should have considered himself lucky to have the nasally ballad interrupted. Rather than relieved, he was concerned. He paused a moment and then thought to himself, “I’m just being paranoid. I’m a hard worker and bad things won’t happen to me!” Who thinks like that? Maybe Billy deserved what happened next.
He continued his work and threw in the bag of gushingly gross, grimy grease. Wait! What is this? A child’s story? Who writes like that? Whatever, back to Billy. The bag full of grease began its descent and landed in the dumpster. At this instant the horrid event occurred. Jake the Raccoon shot out of the dumpster, straight into the air, grease soaked, and eloquently said, “RRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOO!” Billy calmly retorted, “HOLY @#*(&$@(.”
As Jake the Raccoon ran off, drenched in grease, Billy also jumped into the sky like he had never done before, turned around, and performed a sprint that would put Usain Bolt to shame. That is an exaggeration. Billy is not that fast. A more accurate description would be, “Billy ran fast for a Wendy’s employee.”
At some point during Billy’s labors another coworker had come outside to work and witnessed the heinous acts of Jake the Raccoon. The rascally raccoon had nearly scared Billy to death. When Billy noticed this other observer he thought, “Yes, a witness, now this evil raccoon won’t get away with giving me a heart attack.” The other coworker would not cooperate though. He feared Jake the Raccoon, as many did. Yes, many feared Jake the Raccoon. Chances are that it was several local raccoons, but there is not much interesting material happening during a typical shift at this Wendy’s. So, the raccoon was named and thought of as harmless. Jake was not really that threatening. Imagine having day old burger grease dumped on you while you are having your breakfast. Billy had other, less rational thoughts.
“Jake has to pay!” Jake scares the populace of the Wendy’s. So? The customers and the employees, I guess. According to Billy this did not compare to Jake’s most heinous act, he was a total mooch eating all that food for free without ever considering to pay for it. “How dare he!? Does he think because he is a raccoon that the law of humans doesn’t apply to him? If so he was sadly mistaken!” Billy needs to calm down. It is literally just a racoon. Billy was just mad because he almost defecated in his pants in front of his coworkers, but he will always believe is was a matter of principle. Yes, Billy, the principle of pride.
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