Photo by Jon Sullivan on Pixnio
Believe it or not, I won an actual contest with this one. Previously published by the now defunct Zizek Press, the goal was to write a bad story. Atrocious. Borderline unreadable yet entertaining all the same. With my pulse-pounding thriller, I included a query letter from the author and that might’ve been what pushed me over the edge against some equally terrible, and hilarious, entries.
GRANDPA IN A BOX
by DIRK MASTERS
I am aroused. I’m glad, because I was having a very bad dream. It was about my grandfather. He’s been dead for two years.
I struggle to get my body out of bed and I drag myself to the bathroom and rub my eyes and stare in the mirror.
The mirror is dirty, cause I don’t clean my bathroom much.
Splash water on my face. Sploosh! Sploosh! That’s better.
I wish my grandfather were still alive. I wish he hadn’t died in that accident at the dock with the cement truck and refrigerator. Freak accident.
GRANDPA!
Oh well. I need to consume breakfast.
I walk to the kitchen on my feet and open the cabinet with my hand. I have a bunch of organic cereal boxes because I don’t eat over processed foods, even though I could. Nothing could corrupt my body, because it is at peak condition. My doctor says I am the next step of human evolution. I don’t know if he’s right, but everyone else seems to think so, so I guess maybe I am.
I’m masticating cereal with a spoon when the phone rings. The name pops up, Jennifer Lawerence, my ex-girlfriend. I let it go to voicemail because I can’t stand to listen to her beg right now.
GRANDPA!
I’m at work for an hour before I realize I never went back to my bedroom and put on clothes or got in my limited edition Jag to drive here so I have no way home. My boss doesn’t seem to care, she keeps staring and I say “What” and she says “Nothing. Well, maybe something.” “What?” “Are you going to trip on that?”
I blush and run home. I then go to my bedroom and put on clothes. I wear a tailored Italian suit I bought with my inheritance.
GRANDPA! I am screaming. Standing on my private heli-pad on the roof next to the pool.
When I get back to work, my boss says, “That’s better, no not really.” She winks at me. She’s really hot.
“I don’t want to get involved. My grandfather died recently.”
She looks really sad.
So, I go to my desk and turn on the computer and it hums. All these files open and then an email pops up on the screen. It says “YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE BUILDING” and I freak out. I don’t know what to do. Why do I need to leave the building? I look outside and make sure there isn’t a cement truck and refrigerator in the parking lot but there isn’t only a bunch of other cars driven by my co-workers, and boss and the maintenance guys. My jag too.
“LEAVE THE BUILDING NOW!”
I keep looking out the windows and I see a smoke in the sky. I run! I grab my hot boss whose name is Becky and she says “OH!” We keep running and down stairs and I shout “leave the building!” as I run down the hallway, through the stairs, over the front desk, ramming through the front doors. Everyone is running behind me and I tell them to keep running. They run and hide in the woods. There is a missile.
“Go!”
“No, I want to stay with you!”
I dont have time to argue so I explain what I’m doing while I work. I tell Becky how the missile is a cruise missile and uses Global Positioning Systems to find its target.
“GET IN!”
She gets in my car and I pull out wires and re-wire them.
“Hello, this is onstar!”
“I’m busy!” I say.
“You sound hot?” says the onstar voice right before the speakers cut out and I finish all the complicated wiring.
“Hang on, becky. I used to race formula one.”
I drive off and the missile is right behind us.
“OH MY GOD!” Beck says as she squirms in the seat and her skirt shows her really hot legs.
We smash through the gate and the guard walks out. He spills his coffee and the missile flies over his head. Then his hat flies off from all the smoke.
“Where are we going?” Becky asks.
“We’re going far away. I know one place where everyone will be safe from this. The docks.”
We keep driving through streets. People are honking and then getting wide-eyed and stop honking when the missile flies by them. A car explodes.
“Get out of the way!” I scream to a pregnant woman pushing a stroller with twins. She hears me just in time and dodges the missile.
I keep driving really fast.
Becky unbuttons her shirt with her hand and fans her cleavage with her other hand. “How fast does this go?!?”
“As fats as you want it!”
She smiles; we both smile. I power slide around a building and do more power slides, in circles, making smoke to disrupt the Global Positioning Systems because the missile has been getting closer. TOO close! I then fly off to the docks.
LOOK!
I aim for a dock. I put the pedal to the metal and unbelt my seat belt then grab Becky. “Ready to go for a swim? I wink”. I then fling the door open and we fall BLAM! Into the water. My limited edition jag flies off the dock and explodes!
“You look hot wet.”
“Thank you.”
I swim to shore with Becky on my back. When we get there on the sand a crowd gathers and I give Becky CPR. She lives after I get an award.
I have to go back in the water. Becky tries to hold me back and I sooth her. “I have to go, I saw something under the water.”
Two miles off shore, I find my grandfather. They never found his body but there it is in the refrigerator filled with concrete. I swim back to the surface and cry in anguish, “Grandpa.”!
I swim 50 meters down and put the refrigerator on my back and swim back to shore. “Becky?”
“She’s been Taken.”
It is a man in a black suit with dark black sunglasses and wool socks with cashmere piping.
“If you hurt her, I will open up my skills on you.” I tell him with anger on my face.
“No, I didn’t take her. I sent the email to tell you to get out of the building. I’m very impressed you saved everyone and kept property damage from happening to. We will be in touch.”
I set down the refrigerator and when I look back up, he is gone. Which is fine, I will remember him because I have a didactic memory. But he does remind of something I can’t place my finger on. I think of photos on a wall. In my single mother’s house where I grew up, just the two of us together, that’s it. Nobody else.
Becky runs up to me, her wet clothes are like see-through. “Oh, you’re fine!”
“I’m fine. For now.” I say.
<<END>>>
Dear Soon-to-be-rich Agent,
“Grandpa in a Box” is a thriller set in a modern times designed to be sexy, amazing and leave the reader on the edge of their seat turning pages. It is the first book of a trilogy of books called “The Grandpa Protocol”. Book two, “Becky in a Box” will be where our protagonist loses his heart. He lost his soul in book one after Grandpa died. In book three, he will then become a vampire.
This book will be called “Hero in a Box” because he will have to shop for a coffin. He also finds out the man in black is his father who disappeared when his grandfather died.
These books would make a great action movie. I would name titles of books that were similar but there is nothing at all like this anywhere. By the time the third movie comes out, you will be a billionaire. I have ideas for seventeen other books. I will even give all the profits from the first movie to a charity for battered grandpas.
I am a first time novelist but have lots of publishing credits to my name. The Willbourne High Year Book published my name and several captions I wrote when I was only seventeen years old. Since then, I decided to be a writer ever since. I have written 138 checks (it says 1138 but that’s wrong), inside greeting cards, and many papers for school. My grandmother reads all the time and says this is the best book she has ever read. She did cry but I think that’s only because it made her think of Poppy who died of cancer – TWO YEARS AGO!
Please do not steal these ideas. I took the LSAT.
I have sent a SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) in case you don’t like to email or want to mail my first check without having to pay postage because it doesn’t make sense to pay so much postage to mail money to someone even if it is only a tiny fraction of the total amount on the check.
Thank you, I hope you appreciate reading this masterpiece of stories. I’m sitting by the phone, I know it won’t be long before you call.
Dirk Masters (this is my pen name. I don’t want rabid fans figuring out where I live.)
Categories: Free Fiction
RUSS LINTON 
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