No Rain

"Never say never" said the blind man to the watermelon. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." he carried on. "What goes up, must come down" he tried. "In the kingdom of the blind, the watermelon is king" he chuckled to himself.

Sitting in a hole in the ground, John had been talking to the same watermelon for well over a year. Well he hoped it was the same watermelon, or it could be quite an embarrasing situation, he crazily mumbled to himself. "You are the same watermelon aren't you?" he asked his "friend" as he gingerly stroked it's surface. "I mean, you haven't been playing some sorta shell game with me have you?".

"Shut up old man" said the watermelon "You're off your rocker. Do you think there are two watermelons in the world who would put up listening to your nonsense day and night without caving in your skull?"

"No" John said quietly "I suppose not. Well where were we...oh yes...a bird in the hand is worth two in the..."

"We've done that one John." said the watermelon gruffly

"Well yes, maybe, but I wanted to be thorough...you said you wanted to know everything I know, so I must be thorou..."

"Not the fucking platitudes John" said the watermelon, "No one needs to hear those. You know something, and I want to know what it is. You're wasting my fucking time here John, I think it's time we moved on a bit"

"No please" begged John, suddenly and desperately "I'll tell you everything. Please! I don't know anything worth knowing, I've been trying...please, please just let me finish." John was trembling with fear as he reached out to stroke his old "friend".

"It's been over a year John. How long do you think I can wait? You need to tell me what you know now" the watermelon said, more forcefully than John had heard in several months.

"I'm trying, I really am. I've been telling you everything. If you told me what you wanted to know then maybe I could think of it, but you won't so I can't. Please be patient, I'll get there in the end, I must do. I've almost worn out my voice I've told you so much, but I'm sure with a bit more time we'll get there" John said in a small, hopeful yet afraid voice. He patted the watermelon on the "cheek" in what he hoped was a friendly gesture.

"NO! NO MORE WAITING! NOW JOHN! TELL ME NOW" the watermelon exploded, the seeds and flesh splashing all over John's face and hand, the sweet juice hitting his lips and dripping off his brow. "Enough of these fucking games" the watermelon continued. A slab of pain his John's foot as an invisible hammer smashed down on him.

"Where is the girl John" the watermelon's disembodied voice said to him "Where is Emily?"

"I don't know anyone called Emily" said John surprised and confused. The watermelon juice was in his mouth, a sweet and delicious flavour like he hadn't experienced in over a year. It clouded his senses far more than the pain in his foot, or the surprising "death" of his only companion this past year.

"You know her John! I saw you with her. Talking and laughing. Smiling. You're not smiling now though John are you, so why don't you be a good wacko and tell me where she is". The watermelons voice was calm but filled with threat.

"When did you...I mean who...you do know I'm blind right? I'm not mad, I'm just blind. I mean...sure I thought the watermelon was a person to start with, but then you stood behind it and spoke, so what was I supposed to think? And when I found out...well I was just lonely by then and you kept asking questions. I thought I was....I knew I was going to die here so I thought I'd enjoy myself what little I could before then. And the watermelon was a good listener!" said John, instantly regretting the levity of the last part.

"WHERE IS THE GIRL?" roared the watermelon as a huge hand battered John across the face. A bruise was sure to rise from this, but John new it was unlikely that he would.

"I might have talked to a girl called Emily at some point, but I didn't know her name. I've never met an Emily that I know of. And I'm blind, so where she, or anyone went, I have no idea. She could be in this room for all I know." John said flatly. He probably would have known if there had been a girl in the room though - he had dreamt about their smell often enough in the last year that he could be fairly sure of that.

"This isn't a room, it's a grave. Bye John." the watermelon voice said strangely melancholic. Footsteps receded in the soft mud and a door closed awkwardly in the distance. A buzzing sound ceased, and John assumed he was in the dark. And alone.

"So this is it I suppose" said John to the smashed watermelon. "I wouldn't have told you were she was even if I had known. Smelt like cherry blossoms she did".

The reason for vegans

Several mice have thought to themselves in the past 20 years that someday, somehow, cheese is going to kill them. And they'd be right - it is in fact deadly to mice in several ways. The first being obesity, the second being cancer and the third being murder. You see cheese is cancerous to mice, which is maybe why they love it so much - all mice are filled with crippling self loathing (which probably explains why they are such assholes). It's also why they lead such shitty tiny little lives, scurrying into holes, eating garbage and living in the sewers.

The third reason being murder is because cheese in fact hates mice. It was invented to be the ultimate mice killer by a farmer who was sick of finding mice swimming in his milk. One day, long long ago, he did some freaky ass spell and created a little guardian out of the milk to defend it. The first cheese guardian the farmer called Magnificus the Defender of Milk, and he was beloved and honoured by the farmer - always getting the pride of place at his table, and the choice of his daughters to bed with. Of course due to the success of Magnificus, the farmer started being able to produce more milk, which in turn meant he needed more cheese guardians.

The second one he called Amazing Warrior of Legend, and he was treated with respect and admiration by the whole farm. The third cheese guardian he called Vordrid Destroyer of Mice, and because his head had come out a bit wonky, he was given slightly less respect than the previous two cheese guardians, but still a good amount. The fourth guardian he called Steve, because he had stopped caring that much, and then after that he didn't bother naming them individually at all anymore. He lazily just started naming them in groups by region - by this time the farmer had long since stopped having milk as his major product and was instead churning out these cheese guardians by the dozen and sending them to milk farms all around Europe.

So the Brie battalion was born, and the Cheddar legion formed, the Gorgonzola guerillas were set up, and the Stilton standing army were given their orders. These mighty guardians would defend the milk in their region day and night, just as their forefathers had, but unfortunately they were not given nearly the respect or honour that they had been in previous generations. In fact, mostly they were thought of as slaves - being as they didn't have to be paid and would always do as they were commanded. It was a rough old life for some - there were even rumours that the Emmental division were forced to work in the milk bottle factory in their downtime, and that the toll of never having a moments rest was literally tearing holes in them.

Magnificus the Defender, still being an honoured and seemingly highborn noblecheese, went to Switzerland to investigate this foul and disturbing rumour. He was shocked to find it was indeed true, that the cheesefolk of Emmental were literally filled with holes, but he was even more shocked to find that they didn't care. They had lived this way so long that it had become a part of their culture - they even smoothed out the edges of the holes to form bubble shapes within themselves as a sign of cheese affluence. Magnificus was disgusted and distraught, so he went to the mayor of the town to talk out a solution...and never returned.

Some say that the mayor convinced him the local cheeses were happy, and that Magnificus was too messed up by the idea to accept it, and took his own life. I know differently though. The mayor of that town was greedy for more power and more cheese - so much so that he had secretly been collecting up the cheese that fell off of the Emmental division and had been trying to mould it into new cheese guardians. His new cheese guardians did not actually live however and he had become obsessed with learning the farmers dark spell to bring these creatures forth. He tortured poor Magnificus day and night to get him to reveal the secret, but Magnificus held strong and said nothing.

7 nights into the unholy torture, the evil mayor played his trump card. He released dozens of crazed mice into Magnificus' cage to terrify the poor cheeselord. The mice swarmed and ravaged him, leaving only his once beautiful face as a warning to others of what mice could do to cheese...if it were shackled and outnumbered of course. One particularly mean mouse stayed behind to torment Magnificus face - which was still quite alive. The bastardly little mouse worked over Magnificus' mind and threw insult after insult at him. He wove stories of such perversion and disgust that Magnificus threw up over and over at the things he heard. This went on and on until one day - three months later, the mouse died of cancer.

Magnificus, mad from the torture he had endured, understood at once what had happened. The farmer had called forth the ultimate cheese guardians to defend against mice, so on some molecular level even, his people could defend themselves from these furry motherfuckers. He called upon the last of his strength and used the psychic link all cheese has with each other to tell his people to commence the stupidest plan of all time - mass suicidal passive resistance to the mice. There was no need to fight them in combat, Magnificus told all the cheese in the world, if we just lay down and let them eat our cheeseflesh, they will die a horrible cancerous death. Mad he was by then. Totally nutbags.

Amazing Warrior of Legend and Vordrid Destroyer of Mice tried to countermand this plan, but they were unfortunately betrayed and killed by Steve, who had unrelatedly gone quite mad himself by then, and was certain that he was in fact butter (and he just had to shut the other two up about him not being...butter). So all the cheese in the world followed the plan and became passive to the point of letting the mice just eat them until they died. The farmer's security business went down the toilet and he sold the cheese spell to everyone and anyone who wanted it, being as it was no use to him to have security guards who wouldn't even stand up. Cheese became ubiquitous and worthless, lumps of all shapes and sizes littered the streets of the world, like little landmines for mice.

143 years later, during a particularly bad winter in Camembert, some peasants decided to turn to cannibalism to survive, but were convinced at the last moment by a somewhat dubious "man" called Steve that they should eat the cheese guardians first. The people of Camembert survived the winter and rejoiced, secretly continuing their sick practice every year during winter, and eventually more often than that. Of course, as these things go, eventually their secret got out and after a lot of finger pointing, moral quandry's, debates (and purposefully ignoring the facts), people started eating cheese every day as if it were perfectly normal. And that brings us to today.

So next time you load a mouse trap with cheese, you might want to put a little knife or gun within reach of the little yellow lump, just in case he wants to do in a mouse the old fashioned way.

Also, eat less dairy, it's kinda f'd up.