Short Story #2: How Melvyn Martin Came to Develop an Unfortunate Rash on His Forearms

So, guess what? I'M STILL ALIVE!


No, really, I am. I haven't posted in a month and a half, and trust me, I feel quite sheepish about the whole thing. I do have a lame explanation, though.


See, remember how I was doing that thing where I asked people to give me suggestions for short stories with every intention of taking their brilliant ideas and making them into full-on narratives? Well...... I received two wonderful suggestions from some very good friends of mine. Suggestions so wonderful, in fact, that, frankly, they scared me a bit. I looked at them and I said to myself, "Pearl, how are you ever going to do justice to those suggestions?"


But it's been too long now, and I've finally decided that, regardless of my ability, I need to buckle down and get these stories written. So here goes.


This story is written from the prompt, "write about two people carrying a sofa running through the middle of a big city chasing a van", courtesy of my very dear friend Aloisa.


Keep the ideas coming! I'll write them all eventually, I promise! :)


Ahem.


How Melvyn Martin Came to Develop an Unfortunate Rash on His Forearms


It was at exactly twelve minutes past noon on the third day of a swelteringly hot July that the whole debacle began. Melvyn Martin, a short, bookish sort of a fellow with wispy hair and cumbersome eyeglasses, would remember that fact for the rest of his days, as he'd just been amusedly noting the delightfully symmetrical time when he heard Jason come out of the house.


12:12, Melvyn thought as the door slammed. There's just something about that number that's so... nice.


It would be the last time Melvyn ever thought something so naïve.


Jason walked up and stood next to Melvyn, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting down at the driveway. Jason Lunt was Melvyn's roommate. This arrangement had originally been set up because Melvyn lacked the funds to get through college and rent a house. At the time, sharing a house with the six-something, boorish, outdoorsy Jason had seemed to Melvyn rather like penance for some unspeakable sin, but as time passed, they'd grown quite used to each other's company. They were so accustomed to each other, in fact, that when they had an intense discussion of their finances in which Melvyn did most of the talking and realized that, now that Melvyn was out of college and had gotten himself a job of reasonable respectability, they were collectively bringing in a great deal more money than they had at first, instead of joyfully deciding to move out and finally get his own place, Melvyn suggested that he and Jason get a bigger house.


Today was moving day. Melvyn, Jason, and Jason's two older brothers had finally finished loading the last of the furniture into Jason's oldest brother's van, and the two elder Lunts were getting ready to set off for Melvyn and Jason's snazzy new downtown apartment. Melvyn and Jason would follow later. It was 12:12 and all was right with the world.


Except that the way Jason was squinting down at the driveway was making Melvyn nervous. Melvyn was constantly telling Jason that he needed glasses, but six years of closely observing the damper that Melvyn's truly daunting spectacles seemed to put on his social interactions (particularly those involving the participation of the opposite gender) had permanently turned Jason off of the idea. When Jason raised these objections, Melvyn would reply that wearing glasses couldn't possibly be more damaging to one's social career than the inability to see, especially considering the way that Jason was constantly having to squint at things in that highly disturbing way...


"Say, Mel, d'you think they're gonna load up that sofa?"


Melvyn blinked in surprise as Jason's interjection interrupted his musings. Slowly, he turned his attention to the driveway. There was the van, the front seat occupied by Jason's brothers (whose intelligence, or, rather, lack thereof had taught Melvyn to be far more appreciative of Jason's high-school-educated approach to life). Positioned directly behind the van was the maroon-and-cerulean-paisley-on-taupe sofa, a housewarming gift from Jason's mother. Melvyn hated that sofa. For one thing, it didn't match any of their other furniture, and then there was the fact that it was made of some horrid fabric like polyester or rayon only more evil that gave Melvyn a rash if it touched his skin, so he couldn't wear shorts if he was going to sit on it, not that he ever wore shorts, he couldn't understand why any men ever wore shorts, they looked so silly, but anyway it's not like Melvyn could say anything negative about the sofa because Jason was so childishly attached to his mother that Sigmund Freud would've wept for joy if they'd been introduced...


"Well, I assume so."


"Okay. It's just... doesn't it look like they're gettin' ready to go?"


"Well, yeah, but I'm sure they'll jump out and shove it in before they go. Relax, Jason."


No sooner had Melvyn said this than the van's engine was revved and the van began to pull out of the driveway.


"Mel, look, they're leavin' the sofa!"


Melvyn shrugged. "I guess they ran out of room. They'll probably come back for it-"


"No, they won't!" Jason interrupted, in a voice far more tinted by panic than Melvyn considered to be necessary. "Mel, this was 'sposed to be the last trip! Oh, you don't know my bros, Mel. When they say somethin's gonna be the last trip, it's gonna be the last trip! There's no way they'll come back for that sofa!"


"Oookaaaay..." Melvyn replied slowly. "Um- I see the problem, but what exactly do you intend-"


"We've gotta grab it and catch up with 'em!" Jason yelled enthusiastically as he ran toward the dreaded piece of décor.


"Whaaat?"


"C'mon, Mel!" Jason had already lifted one end of the sofa and was looking at Melvyn with a desperate urgency that was massively disproportionate to the scale of the problem at hand.


Ranked only slightly behind "Stubborn Refusal to Get Glasses" on Melvyn's list of Jason's more regrettable tendencies was "Unchangeable Belief in Action Hero Status". Jason seemed to be of the opinion that taking things far too seriously would make him cooler and would, ultimately, turn him into the type of man that violent shoot-'em-up movies with twist endings tended to center on. Melvyn, meanwhile, firmly believed that Jason wasn't remotely the sort of person who ends up running from the government with a beautiful girl in tow and more the sort who... well, who ends up chasing vans while carrying paisley sofas.


"Jason," Melvyn said remonstratively as he ran up to the other end of the sofa, mentally preparing his hugely logical rebuttal to Jason's hugely illogical plan. "You-"


"WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO TALK! PICK UP THE SOFA, MEL!"


Considering the circumstances, Melvyn can certainly be forgiven for reflexively lifting his end of the sofa. And really, once Jason had inexplicably squeezed his eyes shut and then began running backwards after the van, Melvyn didn't have much of a choice but to come along.


Right off the bat, the two ran into some problems.


The difference in their heights, for one, which made the sofa's balance awkwardly lopsided. It also made it difficult for Melvyn to see over Jason's head, which caused a few steering complications. But after running into (and upsetting) three trash cans, Jason finally opened his eyes and turned his head so as to watch where he was going, which made the whole process go much more smoothly.


But even after that, there was still the problem of Jason's bad eyesight, which resulted in the pair (or rather the trio, if you count the sofa) ramming into a few walls and also a cat which Jason afterwards swore looked just exactly like a blanket until it yowled in anger and attacked his legs.


Then there is the generally known fact that carrying a full-size overstuffed sofa while running is slightly exhausting, especially, and note that this is not meant to insult anybody, when one is a short, bookish sort of a fellow, i.e. someone not much accustomed to exercise. This special dilemma of Melvyn's was somewhat exacerbated by his continuing attempts to talk Jason out of the whole "catch-up-with-the-van" idea.


"Jason, couldn't we just bring the sofa in our car when we go up later?"


"THERE'S NOT ENOUGH ROOM! THIS IS THE ONLY WAY!"


"Well, we could ask to borrow your brother's van-"


"HE'LL NEVER AGREE! YOU DON'T KNOW HIM, MEL, HE KNOWS NO REASON!"


"Jason, I am right here. You don't have to keep shouting at me."


"GO FASTER, MEL! WE'RE LOSING THEM!"


They had, in fact, already lost them, due to the fact that vans, in general, move more quickly than people on foot, especially when those people are carrying sofas. But Jason Lunt was nothing if not persistent.


Luckily for all persons and sofas involved in the debacle, Jason and Melvyn's original home was not very far away from their new one, and was even nearer to the first streets that could theoretically be considered "downtown". And, as everyone knows, no matter the day of the week or the time of day, downtown streets will invariably, inexplicably, and inevitably be more difficult to traverse than suburban ones.


And so it occurred that, within a few more minutes, Jason and Melvyn caught sight of Jason's oldest brother's van, now moving much more slowly than it had been when it left the house.


They then immediately lost it again, because it turned a corner.


"C'MON, MEL! WE'VE ALMOST GOT IT!"


"Oh, my back," Melvyn moaned in response.


That was about when they met Janie.


Well, actually, they met Ms. Anderson first.


Well, actually, first Jason said, speaking in a normal (if rather breathless) voice for the first time since the commencement of their grand adventure, "Yikes, I wouldn't want to be on her bad side."


Melvyn was rather surprised, equally by the quietness and the randomness of Jason's comment.


His surprised was greatly increased by the abrupt and rather painful collision between his head and a large jonquil-and-magenta-plaid handbag.


"Dirty thieves!" came a screeching voice from far too close to Melvyn's ear. He turned to see the heavily-made-up face of a female of uncertain age who was wearing a mauve dress with teal polka dots and wielding the aforementioned mercenary handbag. She proceeded to hit Melvyn again as she demanded, "Who do you think you are, running off with a helpless old lady's couch? That couch cost me good money, you young rapscallions!"


That was when Janie showed up, bouncing along beside the two men, the sofa, and the gaudily dressed lady. Janie was a small, bookish sort of a girl with large horn-rimmed spectacles and messy, wispy black braids. Perhaps Melvyn would've detected a sort of kindred spirit in her, if he hadn't at that moment been so distracted by the cacophonous explosion of breathlessly simultaneous talking that had broken out right around that time.


"Ma'am, this isn't your couch, it's ours," Melvyn said.


"Mel, what's a rapscallion?" Jason asked.


"Why would two young whippersnappers have a couch like this?" Ms. Anderson demanded.


"Some people have uncommon tastes, Ms. Anderson." Janie explained sagely.


"Is it a kind of vegetable?" Jason asked.


"Where did you two come from?" Melvyn asked Janie and Ms. Anderson. (At the time, Melvyn was wondering how this plump lady and skinny girl were keeping up with him and Jason so easily, having apparently forgotten that he and Jason had been running while carrying a sofa for several blocks and were thus moving at a rather easily kept pace.)


"There's an apartment complex a few blocks behind us. Ms. Anderson saw you guys running by as she was coming home from her jazzercise class and she thought you must've stolen her couch," Janie explained (she was quite an adept explainer).


"Who are you?" Melvyn asked.


"Are whippersnappers food, too?" Jason asked.


"I'm Janie," Janie explained.


"Okay," Melvyn said.


"By the way, it's a sofa, not a couch," Jason said, having given up on getting the definitions of rapscallions and whippersnappers.


"Oh," Ms. Anderson said, pulling up in surprise. "Well, if it's a sofa, it can't be mine. I have a couch."


Janie stayed behind with Ms. Anderson while Melvyn, Jason, and the sofa (which was not a couch) ran on. "Maybe we'll see you around," Janie called after them.


"Yeah, maybe," Melvyn called back, realizing how close he and Jason were to their new home.


This episode had rudely shattered Jason's glorious action hero ideal, as action heroes generally aren't attacked by colorfully attired ladies and their helpful explanatory companions. And so it was that the latter leg of the roommates' trip featured a lot less yelling and running into things than the former. Of course, there was still some yelling and running into things, most of it occurring when Jason briefly stopped looking over his shoulder and they consequently bowled over an old man who, as it turned out, was a sailor, and who, incidentally, spoke and acted in the way that the most depressingly stereotypical sailors do.


But, at last, Jason and Melvyn stumbled into the parking lot of their new apartment complex. Jason's two brothers were there, awaiting Jason and Melvyn's eventual arrival in their car. They expressed the appropriate amount of shock and confusion, gave Jason the proper amount of meaner-than-necessary brotherly teasing, and went on with their mundane lives.


While Jason's brothers fulfilled these responsibilities, Melvyn and Jason sat sprawled on the sofa, panting. When the brothers had finished and wandered away, Melvyn panted out, gasping after each word, "I. Hate. You."


"Well," Jason replied, gasping in turn, "We. Couldn't. Just. Leave it. There. Now could we?"


Melvyn sat up, stared deep into Jason's eyes, and said, "YES. We could've."


Alas, Melvyn had donned a short-sleeved shirt on that fateful morning, and the prolonged exposure to whatever absolutely wretched fabric covered the sofa had resulted in the worst rash Melvyn had ever had. To make matters more humiliating, the following day the local newspaper's front page sported a photograph of Melvyn, Jason, and the sofa running through the crowded city streets underneath the headline "TWO MEN AND PAISLEY SOFA RACE THROUGH DOWNTOWN". Melvyn wanted to find as many copies as possible and burn them; Jason had the front page framed and hung in the living room over the sofa. Melvyn vowed he would never forgive Jason for the episode. But the simple fact of the matter is that no two people who had such a symbiotic mutual dislike as Melvyn and Jason could possibly stay mad at each other for long, and Melvyn ended up forgiving Jason long before his rash had faded.


THE END.