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Untitled Document
A brown-haired girl in a snowy white dress and matching
gloves stood uncertainly outside of an office building. Clutching her pearly
white purse, she looked more like a bridesmaid than the new editor of the Neopian
Times. But the new Times editor she was, and she wasn’t all together pleased
with that prospect, for she had heard strange things about the previous editor.
Finally resolving that the office could not possibly be as bad as she had heard,
she drew up her courage and entered the building.
Unfortunately, it was as bad as the stories,
and possibly even worse. The room was filled with Neopets wearing whole roast
chickens instead of decent clothes and sipping dung slushies. The fashion conscious
part of the girl nearly fainted from horror when a Nimmo in a donkey suit stopped
in front of her.
The Nimmo looked her up and down. “You must be
our new boss, Miss Snowflake,” he said finally.
"Y-yes,” Snowflake stammered.
The Nimmo nodded . “Good luck cleaning up all
of the dung.” He went on without another word, leaving poor Snowflake even more
horrified and confused than ever.
After looking around for a while, she came upon
the door to her personal office. “Editor in Chief: Mr. Shankly Snowflake”
read the sign on it. The “Snowflake” part was dripping as though it had just
that moment been painted on. She did not think that was a particularly good
sign.
The moment she opened the door, Snowflake was
hit by a horrible stench. There were dung shelves all around the room and they
were filled with dung slushies, chewing dung, battle dung, dung cheese, and
piles of dung from Pick-Your-Own. There was a dung chair at a dung desk with
a dung bin sitting next to it. The only things in the room that did not appear
to be dung were the computer and papers on the desk and a great big shovel in
the corner. The shovel though, of course, was used to move the dung, and thus
was covered in it itself.
Snowflake now found herself in a rather unpleasant
predicament. If she wanted to get the dung out of the office, she was going
to have to touch it. She looked down in dismay at her nice white gloves
and gave a sigh before going off to gather some trash cans to shovel all of
the dung into. Her only consolation was that the battle dung and a few other
items were worth something, so she could probably get some of her new employees
to move them out for her on the condition that they could keep them to sell.
Even so, she figured she had a long, dirty job ahead of her.
* * *
A few hours later, all of the dung was cleared
out of the room. Unfortunately, poor Snowflake now had some very nasty stains
on her clothes. And with no desk or chair she would have to get even dirtier
sitting on the floor to work. Never the less, she sat down, rather uncomfortably,
and read the note Mr. Shankly had left for her.
Dear Snowflake,
Welcome to The Neopian Times. I have left
part of my dung collection behind to help you feel more at home-” Snowflake
gagged “-and if you have any questions you can ask the Nimmo in the donkey suit.
When you turn on the computer it will open up your Neomail, and prepare for
a very, very long day of sorting through what I like to call ‘the dung heap’
trying to find some gems worth publishing. If you need to take a break, feel
free to look through my poetry that I have attached to this note. Good luck!
Sincerely, Mr. Shankly.
Against her better judgement, Snowflake began
to read the poems. “Ode to Chewing Dung,” the first was called. “Chewing dung
tastes oh so dungy/ It is very very funny/ Squishy squish beneath my teeth/
It sticks to my teeth. . .” Snowflake screamed and tore the paper into tiny
bits before she was bewitched into reading any further. So that was what
people meant when they referred to Shankly’s “bloody awful poetry.”
Sighing, Snowflake decided there was only one
thing left to do. She turned on the computer, determined to get her work done.
She was greeted with a desktop background containing a picture of a black-haired
girl, a female anthro-lizard with long brown hair, and Mr. Shankly, all three
dressed in a way that would make even Uni Spears cover her eyes. She was relieved
when her Neomail box popped up and covered the picture, but that changed when
she saw the first story.
”how i savde noepia by: 2kewl4grammar dis iz
a story bout how i saved niopia it iz relly exsiting.” Finally unable to take
any more, Snowflake fainted dead way.
When the Nimmo in a donkey suit found her, he
sighed and called for some of the whole-roast-chicken-wearing pets. “The dung
scent must have been to strong for her,” he told them. The Neopets nodded; it
would not have been the first time someone had passed out from it. Without another
word, they picked her up and carried her back to her NeoHome, drawing some rather
odd looks as they passed by on the streets.
***
The next day on her way to the office, the fully-revived Snowflake resolved
that she would actually get some work done. She would just make a point to send
the bad stories to “The Land of Delete,” as Mr. Shankly liked to call it, before
her brain melted from reading too much of them. Also, there would be no dung
to move this time, and she would know to stay away from Shankly’s poetry. Okay,
there would still be those fashion-impaired pets walking around in chicken skins
and donkey suits, and that horrible desktop background would still be there
(she shuddered at the mere memory of it) but she could handle it. Telling herself
so, she opened the door to the office building and nearly fell back with surprise.
The panel of pets working at the office were
now wearing white blouses or collared shirts with white skirts or khaki pants.
There wasn’t a dung slushie in sight, though a few pets sipped on snowberry
ones as they pinched and pulled at their new clothes with puzzled expressions
on their faces. Where there had once been various dung items on shelves and
desks, there were now white vases filled with sponderolas, white lulus, white
daffodils, and various other white flowers.
Happy and yet confused, Snowflake half-ran towards
her private office. The sign on the door had been changed to show her name in
flowery script, but she barely noticed it because of what was inside the office.
Where Mr. Shankly’s dung collection had once been, there was now a shelf with
a set of Uni plushies. In place of the dung desk there was a whitewashed wooden
one, and in place of the dung chair there was a white velvet one. The computer,
back up on the desk now, sported a desktop background showing a small group
of Unis prancing in a winter wonderland. But most surprising of all, a handful
of human kids of various ages was clustered around the door. “Surprise!” they
all shouted.
Snowflake was taken aback. “Who are you?” she
asked.
"I’m Ember188,” said the girl in the middle.
“And this is Poy222, Hippiesoul, Rishiy, and Adoriblelapin, Leb388, and Sol_Luna_Estrella.
We are Neopian Times writers.”
"We wanted to make you feel at home’su!”
said Adoriblelapin, who appeared to be the youngest. She was jumping up and
down as though she had just drunk 5 cans of neocola.
”So we fixed up the office for you,” continued
Poy.
”We made it less dungy” added Hippiesoul. “Even
though that isn’t a real word.”
At that moment, they were briefly interrupted
as the Nimmo in a donkey suit peeked into the room. “Good,” he said, “You haven’t
fainted again.” With that he closed the door.
”We tried to get him to change his clothes,”
Leb explained, “but he just said ‘The donkey suit is part of who I am,’ and
walked away.”
”Anyway,” said Rishiy, “We hope you like it.
The new look of the office, I mean.”
”I love it!” said Snowflake, feeling very flattered.
“Thank you very much! Is there anything I can do for you?”
The writers gave each other sly looks, then simultaneously
began digging in their pockets. They each pulled out some crumpled up paper,
unfolded it, and held it out to Snowflake. They all spoke at the same time.
”Can you publish our stories?”
The End
Author’s note: This story is dedicated to Snowflake, the new editor of the
Neopian Times. If you find this story rather queer, try reading the auto-response
you get after submitting a story. You’ll still find it rather queer, but at
least you’ll understand where I get some of my crazy ideas about what the Neopian
Times office is like.
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