6. A Break

Ok. Sorry for not posting something on the FOURTH!, but I was otherwise engaged until mere seconds before I was incapacitated for about nine hours, so I also didn't manage to make you a spankin' header for the fourth. Anywho. *hands out flags and sings the Star Spangled Banner at the top of his lungs until he blacks out*

Also, sorry for not posting something after the most recent chapter of Ketchup, but I just had to start writing again, as I managed to come up with an entirely improbable, and, now that I decided to try putting my finger on it, it seems rather vague, too...alas. Someday, maybe I'll have a direct link from my brain to my blog, so I don't have to use a computer. *sigh*

I give you: the currently not even started sixth chapter of Ketchup, Chronicling in Gory Detail the Life of a Young Lad, yadayadayada. Thank you, thank you. *switches to Blogger in Draft for the superlong post composition area*

6. A Break


Jack was sitting at his table, contemplating the few and uncommonly improbable ways of approaching the girl, when his doorbell rang. More accurately, a doorbell rang. Jack had never had a doorbell, and had never needed it, until now. Seemingly.

However, Jack took about one and a half steps before he noticed this fact. By then, he was well into his third, and world-record-breaking trip. Because, of course, he just broke his own record. Backward. Sort of. I'm so not making sense, am I? Anyway.

Jack was about one and a half percent into his third trip in his lifetime when he thought to himself, "Gah, I've really got to stop doing this." Around one and five ninths percent, he thought, "Jack, you're tripping. Quit it." Around two percent through his third trip, he thought, "Dude, are you in love?"

Jack immediately regained his balance, overly perceptive attitude toward his surroundings, and also an entirely new attitude, toward himself, or, at least, whatever part of himself that had thought that. It was only at approximately ninty-eight percent of the distance from the location of his third trip to the door that he stopped inwardly yelling, "NO!" at himself, and remembered that he didn't have a doorbell. At this, his mind temporarily gave the girl a well-shined back burner.

Now, for reasons yet, and probably ever unexplained, Jack's door had two peekholes, one for looking out, and one for looking in. Jack reached into his pocket, grabbed a gun, and shot out the one that some part of him thought was the right one. Unluckily, Jack still hadn't regained all his wits, and he had, in fact, forgotten which was which. Jack, upon finding out, growled and slapped his face. He grabbed a laptop and looked at the security cameras. He narrowed his eyes. Nobody was there.

Now. At this point, I've decided to lay before you the many ideas I've come up with in a measly amount of time of who could be at the door. First, the girl. Of course, she's got the ability to disappear. I didn't like this one because I just don't want Ketchup to go there. It's too weird. And I feel like I'd do a way too good job if I tried that weird inter-genre concept. Second, I thought there might be a trickster. Still, this doesn't explain the ominous, and, until now, entirely nonexistent doorbell. A little kid could have easily rung a doorbell, given there actually was one, and run off, to watch his terrible torture unfold. Still, the fact that I made a dumb doorbell made this quite improbable. Installing a doorbell system isn't really the job a six-year-old would do everyday, but I digress. Third, I thought I might have some improbably unrealistic villan, who Jack knew all this time, and never mentioned, duh, would have somehow hacked into Jack's entirely unhackable security system, replaced a simple sound file, and set of an alarm. Still, improbable. Xink knew her stuff, and, if someone tried to hack into Jack's system, they'd have a fried computer on their end in less than a second.

Now, sadly, Jack noticed milk standing on his doorstep. Jack never managed to explain the doorbell, and never found out how it happened. Well, by, "never," I mean, almost probably never. Jack actually will manage to find out someday. Don't worry, it'll be anticlimactic to a degree which will make you want to kill me. Thank you, thank you.

Jack opened the door, took the milk, and went inside.

Now, if anyone's wondering why Jack had milk delivered, old-fashionedly, to his doorstep, really, I have no idea. It's one of those things writers do to tick readers off. That's not the last of them, by the way.

Now, if you thought I'd end this chapter on that miserably anticlimactic tone, without having accomplished anything but delivered Jack his weekly supply of milk, you're mistaken. Now, I just noticed I've used the word now at the beginning of fairly short paragraphs twice in a row. Gotta quit that. Anyway, there's more to happen in this chapter, and, if you were smart, you'd have already skipped this paragraph and moved on to what will hopefully be more writing. However, as you are, in that aspect, like me, you didn't, and good for you. I like reading the whole book, instead of most, almost all, or part of it.

Metaphorically speaking, Jack then blacked out. That isn't to say he literally blacked out, of course, because I insterted that handy, vague word, "metaphorically" in there. Most of Jack's thought process was instantly reengaged in thinking of the strangest ways in the world that he could approach that foreign, strange, abnormal, and, above all, alien species, girl, or, more generally speaking, woman.

Jack blacked out more literally several minutes later. He hadn't slept for several days. The idea of a girl draping a blanket over him in an overly caring manner sprouted in the gardens of his mind, and he slept.

Now, when Jack programmed Xink, the one function he decidedly didn't program into her was the ability to change channels for him. Simply put, previous experiences had made him detest this idea quite avidly. However, Jack had inexplicably allowed her the ability to turn the TV on. It was to the low humming tone that his boat anchor of a TV made that he now awoke. This sound was uncommonly intolerable to Jack, at least when it went unaccompanied by a TV program to his ears. Jack was at first drowsy, but the annoyance this infused his tired head with at this time, and more before, I might add, was not something he wanted to tolerate.

"Xink, if you don't stop that," he said, in a tone so menacing, that, on other occasions, Xink had, by her few outputs and displays, emulated what could seldom be described as anything but fear, as one caught after such wrongdoing. However, no such emotion could be detected now.
"I'll..."
"Channel twelve, Jack."
"Say what?"
"Channel twelve." It wouldn't be entirely honest to describe Xink's tone as also menacing, but it was something between that and dead serious. Begrudgingly, Jack picked up the remote and changed the channel to twelve and unmuted the TV. Immediately, Jack cringed in a way that would make anyone who didn't know him think it was his bullet wound. On the contrary, the TV had just begun to make a loud noise. By loud, let's just say Jack had half a mind, almost literally, but not quite, to toss the TV out the window.

As it was, Jack didn't toss the TV. He'd tinkered with it many times, and tossing it wouldn't be unlike someone tossing their wallet into Anvil Drop. All you need know about Anvil drop is that it is deep enough that several decades and a few centuries of tossing anvils into it hadn't made any noticable change to its depth.

On the TV was a video of a carchase, apparently currently underway. Jack sighed, grabbed his backpack, and raced through the clock-hole again. Xink helpfully gave him an earpiece so she could comment occasionally in as annoying a way as possible.

Car chases, to Jack, had become annoying and tiresome, by this time, except when highly stylized and inserted into a film with no concern for safety. The main reason for this was that, with the Hyperjet, locating, persuing, and stopping a high-speed persuit was more than often the task of less than a minute. Jack actually longed for the day he'd be able to drive legally, just to make it more exciting. Technically, the Hyperjet was capable of much, much more than flying, but Jack seldom took it to the streets.

Flying, for Jack, had once been something wonderful. Now, it was much less so. He used to wish the city was less destructable, so he could do stunt-flying at will, but he couldn't, obviously.

High-speed persuit was Jack's specialty, even if he didn't like it. Nevertheless, the occasional oppertunity to listen, glaze-eyed, to the hum of the Hyperjet, wasn't something Jack didn't like. On occasion, he fell asleep to it.

On this occasion, he was fairly close to that. More specifically, he was close to falling asleep, until a few seconds after the guy's car was conveniently relocated in front of the police station. Around that time, he spotted, several hundred feet away, the girl.

Now, if anyone should question Jack's abilities as a spotter, let it be known that he spent some of his time earlier in life watching birds. It's been said that the difference between watching birds and bird watching is the difference between a Mac and a PC (ok, maybe not exactly that...), but, anyway, Jack spent a good lot of time, at one period in his life, peering at objects hundreds of feet away from him. He thought this was one of the better reasons his sight was fairly good.

The police cheif, who happened to be named George, was left with his mouth half open, also half through saying, "Thank you." Jack raced off, flipped a big black switch, and couldn't be seen.



Yay! I like it! Sort of. Enjoy! *wonders why he said that at the end of the chapter...*


!Noah!