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The Damned Cabbage of Gillingston
Nate Ricci - June 16, 2006
Somewhere in Hell, Satan was rummaging through his refrigerator.
"Where is my damned cabbage?" cried Satan, bits of Judas running down his chin. Satan was not exaggerating, the cabbage really was damned; that is how it ended up in his refrigerator. "It must have escaped. I'll have to send an agent to get a new one... I'll send... Tux!"
"Yes, sir?" asked a voice from nowhere.
"Tux, I need you to find a cabbage, get it to commit one of the seven deadly sins, then kill it. Okay?"
"Aye aye, sir!" said Tux, as he went off to seduce a cabbage.
"God, it's a pain to get groceries down here," lamented Satan.
• • •
Meanwhile, somewhere in Gillingston, Illinois, there was a man. This man, he said to himself, "You know, I think it's time I go on a killing spree." So, he went over to the fruit stand on the street outside his apartment, and he said to the merchant there, "Sir, please give to me your most lethal fruit."
The fruit-merchant stared at the fellow for a little while and then stated, "Well... um... This 'ere banana looks pretty lethal," holding up the banana he felt was most deadly.
"Thank you, good sir, and how much will that be?" asked the homicidal man.
"Hmm, I don't usually vend fruit based on lethality, but I guess a dollar'll cover it."
"A DOLLAR!!! THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS!" screamed the first man, as he pulled out a gun and shot the fruit merchant in the head five times. "There, now I've got the perfect weapon for my homicidal rampage," he said as he picked up the bloody banana. However, he also noticed a single cabbage at the fruit stand. "A cabbage? This is a fruit stand! That doesn't belong here." So, he took the cabbage as well -- it would have been wrong to leave it somewhere it wasn't wanted. Besides, it would make a good weapon of emergency should the banana fail him. Then, the first phase of his operation completed, he dashed off. The banana dripped a trail of blood behind him.
Several hours latter, a man in a tuxedo stepped out of a bus. "The Greyhound service to Hell is really terrible," thought Tux. It was true: Hell is supposed to be a miserable place, and Satan runs a tight ship. Thus, the buses only depart at precisely when ever you would most like to be asleep, the radio stations played nothing but "Hey Jude" backwards in angry off-key German (or, as they call it "Dotsedotsedot Aduhej Eh!!!"), and they always had stops in Istanbul no matter your destination (unless you were actually trying to go to Istanbul, then you were routed through Cleveland). Also, the ticket agent was extraordinarily surly. "Maybe I should have expensed some demonic transportation."
Tux, as an agent of Satan, had traveled the entire world in search of cabbage many times. He knew from experience that the cabbages of Gillingston, Illinois were both the sexiest and the sluttiest cabbages in the whole of creation. And, of all the cabbages in the Gillingston, the best were sold by a single fruit merchant.
However, upon arriving at the fruit stand, Tux had a bit a problem. The fruit merchant was quite dead, and the last of his cabbages was gone.
"Did I kill him?" thought Tux. He'd killed quite a few people, maybe he had killed this one and forgotten about it. "No, this man has been shot. I would have used tusks. But what to do then? " He could not get another cabbage. The last person who got Satan third-rate cabbage had to help him floss. This might not sound so bad, until you consider a few things about the process: First, it usually involved climbing into Satan's mouth with a pick ax, a chainsaw, and an assortment of deep-sea diving gear. Second, Satan had been chewing on Judas for over two-thousand years, and wasn't going to take a break just because you were in there too. And third, chewing on an arch-heretic for two millennia doesn't exactly promote minty fresh breath (this was only one of the reasons you had to bring an oxygen tank).
So, Tux could not bring back third-rate cabbage. He wouldn't even risk second-rate cabbage. It had to be the most sinful cabbage in the universe. Thus, there was only one thing to do: He followed the trail of blood.
• • •
By this time, our homicidal fruit wielder was several blocks away and had already found the perfect place for his second phase: a generic strip mall. It had one grocery store , a Chinese restaurant, a laundromat, and two former dollar stores. The former dollar stores were now a 25.34 cent store and a 25.56 cent store, due to vicious competition.
He'd also spotted his first victim: There was a man in a blue-shirt leaving the grocery store with nothing but a bag of cherries -- very lethal looking cherries! Blue-shirt was trying to steal his kill zone! So, the banana-man charged and swung his fruit with all his might.
"Fiend! Dare to try to kill my victims with those cherries! Take that! Oh, still standing eh? Well, how about this and that!!!" screamed the fruit-wielder, vigorously swinging his banana. The blue-shirted man had immediately dropped his cherries, and raised his arms in expert form to ward off whatever was coming. However, as the blows rained down, he gradually noticed that he was not being hit with something sharp, hard, or heavy but rather with something soft, squishy, and yellow. And so he fled in utter terror.
"Ah, he's escaped," said the lunatic, as he moved on to his next victim. After he'd been at this a while, someone eventually summoned the police. Now, the police didn't know quite what to do. This man was assaulting people with a banana, which was clearly a crime. However, he also clearly had the handle of a pistol sticking out around his belt, so they did not want to just rush in. Thus, it developed into a standoff with the revolvers of several police officers trained on a man angrily waving a floppy yellow fruit.
"Damn! That man sold me a shoddy banana! I'll have to use my backup." And so, our banana user switched to his emergency cabbage. He hurled it towards the cluster of police and their cruisers with all his might. The police, not having time to identify the object, would be in a moment preparing to either fire or take cover. It was at this instant, with the cabbage in mid air and trigger fingers tense, that Tux, wandered onto the scene.
"Shit!" cried Tux, seeing The One Cabbage in danger. He changed to the full fury of his demonic form. A blur of tusks and fur rended every police man, their cruisers, and weapons, while one furry claw caught the cabbage. "Got it!" said Tux, who was now back in his tuxedo clad form and standing immaculate in a circle of blood, gore, and scrap metal. He stopped at the 25.56 cent store to buy a pack of mints before taking the cabbage to a motel with hourly rates (true, it was rather sinful already, but best to make sure).
Our nameless warrior of fruits and vegetables, meanwhile, took several moments to pause and consider events. "Well," he said to himself, "that's not a bad run for my first time. Cabbages are much more powerful than bananas, I'll have to remember that."
