Chapter 3 - A night in the slammer

"So what are you in here for, buddy"
There is no way I can tell this guy that I am in jail for being caught with the tag off of a piece of furniture, Thought Bob. "Destroying property...And being a public menace. But I was framed! I never did anything wrong!"
"Yeah, I never strangled those people either" said the stranger, "I swear I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Bob's thoughts raced as he considered the situation. He must had stumbled onto something big for this to have happened. Luckily, Lucy had kept the rest of the contents of the envelope safe and away from the police when they came in. Unluckily, she had also thrown the tag off of the furniture at Bob, making him appear to be the guilty party. When Bob had fumbled for words, explaining that the tag had come in an envelope given by a shady character on the street, the police man laughed, assuming this strange story was just a cover-up.

As he was thinking about this, the door of the cell rattled as someone put the keys into the lock. "Come vif me" said the stranger in a thick accent. He led Bob down a long corridor to a small room with a chair in the middle of it. He sat Bob down in the chair and put leather straps around his arms, securing them to the arms of the chair. "Ve have vays of making you talk!" Said the stranger as he broke out into an evil laugh.

He left Bob in the room alone. As his steps and laughter faded down the corridor, Bob looked around the room. Aside from the chair that he was in, was a bright light that was shining at his face. The room was fairly small, with no other exit besides the door he had entered through. The walls were decorated with strange pictures. One picture was of a fancy-looking French dinner being eaten by hamsters. Another picture was of dogs wearing martial arts outfits while kicking each other. The third picture Bob saw was of a very angry looking penguin. The penguin seemed to be looking straight at Bob and it made him feel very uncomfortable. As much as he tried to look only at the other pictures, Bob's eyes kept coming back to the penguin. Its eyes penetrated Bob. It made him feel cold inside. It made him want to run and scream and shake his head.

As he felt he could take no more, the door opened and into the room walked a very well-dressed bird.

Chapter 2 - Developments

They came to Lucy's appartment. As Lucy unlocked the door, Bob tore into the evelope to find out what was in it. Among the contents he empited onto the kitchen table were the following: 20 paper clips, 2 pieces of string - one yellow and one white, a Breathe-Right strip that appeared to be used, a worn-looking piece of notebook paper folded tightly with "32" written in pencil on the exposed paper, a tag from a sofa that read "Removal of this tag is punishable under the law...", an assortment of Tic-Tacs, and a weather map that had been cut out of the newspaper.
They stood and stared at the contents, trying to make sense. After a few seconds Lucy turned red and exclaimed, "Bob, they are trying to frame us with that tag! We need to hide it so we don't get caught by the police."
Bob felt it best to ignore this train of thought and focused on the folded piece of paper. He inspected the outside. "Why do you think it has '32' on the outside of it?" he asked. He then slowly opened it up, revealing a hand-drawn map. "I have no idea what this map is of," he said. "It kind of looks like this is the coastline, and this may be a mountain range - but I am not sure what this is over here..."
"Hey, I think I hear some sirens. We need to get out of here" Lucy continued.
Bob started taking the string and laying it on the map. He was trying to see if it fit into the lines of the map, maybe giving a clue to the location that the map was describing, when there was a knock at the door.
Lucy gasped and hid behind the sofa.
Bob went over to the door and and opened it up. There was a police officer looking at him, rhythmically patting his club on his hand.
"So, you must be Bob," he said.

Chapter 1 - A stranger appears

As people go, Bob was just like any other. He was of ordinary height, weight, body mass index, density, specific gravity and even would emit radiation in a normal fashion when exposed to unstable isotopes. In short, he was just like you or me.
But Bob's normal existence was about to be rocked with something so immensely radical that even his wildest imagination could not come close to it. None of the books he read so voraciously - books about knights going on quests, about explorers, about penguins eating tacos, about people who committed minor traffic infractions - could prepare him for what was about to happen.
Let it now be noted that I, the author of this story, also have no idea what will happen to Bob. I am just making this up as I go along. I am shooting from the proverbial hip. It is my hope that Bob will actually have something interesting happen to him. If not, then this will be a long, dull trip for all of us. Yet things to seem promising, so let's keep our fingers crossed (I won't do that while I am typing, however).
It was the 5th of November. There was a little chill in the air, but not so much as one would expect. It had been a fairly warm fall, and the predictions were that the winter would also be mild. Bob found this quite fascinating, as he was part of the small band of radicals to fight the effects of global cooling. This was a fairly small movement - really just Bob and his girlfriend Lucy - which started when Bob noticed that December was a particularly cool month. Lucy noted that January was also fairly cool. This seemed to them to be a pattern worth noting. What is all of this talk about global warming when we have these obviously cool months every year??? Perhaps the global warming movement was a cover-up of the more insidious problem of global cooling. Perhaps major industries were conspiring to cloud this issue of global cooling by making the opposite problem a national issue. Soon both Bob and Lucy were searching the web for any mention of global cooling - they found nothing. It seemed obvious to them that someone needed to stand up and point out that the king was wearing no clothes (although Lucy did not know what this had to do with the weather).
"A warm winter," said Bob, "just what the conspiracy needs to bolster that crazy global warming theory."
"Yes" retorted Lucy, "It's a good thing that good thinkers like you are on the prowl. Without you, the world would be destined to turn into barren Tundra while big business rakes in millions selling cold-weather gear."
"You aren't so bad yourself, little chickie" Bob responded, "Your theories on the power of the snowboarding cartel were a stroke of genius."
This back-patting barrage continued as they walked down a street in their hometown of Cleveland.
"I think they should make you Czar of Ohio. I can't think of any Despot I would rather grovel under than you, Bob."
Just as Bob was about to respond in kind, a strange man wearing a long black trench coat came up to them and put his hand to Bob's chest. "Here, take this. This is from the Boss," said the man in a voice that betrayed fairly large adenoids as he handed Bob a plain brown envelope. "Don't open it until you are sure you know who isn't looking," said the man as he disappeared down an alley.
"He sounded like Tom Brokaw," Lucy said dreamily. "Did you hear how nasally he said the word looking? I sure do miss Tom."
"Lucy, do you realize what just happened? A man who had the nasal voice inflections of a TV anchorman just handed me a plain brown envelope from The Boss!!"
"Who is the Boss?" asked Lucy. "Is it Mr. Zucherman at the fish market? You worked there last year, didn't you?"
"No, I think this is bigger than Zucherman. This is not just A boss, it is THE boss!"
"You mean..."
"Yes, I mean..."
"No, it couldn't be"
"I think it is, it has to be, must be, surely is."
"Really?"
"Really!"
"What would Regis want with us?"
"Let's get to a safe place and find out."

Antarctic National Anthem

In getting started on this Blog, I was asked to do a national anthem with an animal sound in it. I wrote the following, but it was too long. Besides, it just mentions an animal, but does not reference the sound it makes. Anyway, I kind of liked this one better than the other.

Oh Beautiful, For Penguin's Pride that waddle on the ice.The Southern lights so beautiful and all that snow is nice. Antarctica Antarctica, God looked away from thee and filled thy night with bad frostbite At least there are no fleas.