(We’re off on the) Road to Morocco

So, there’s this orb-y thing we got to get. It’s at this undisclosed place that’s quite far (but not that far). We were the trip, me and my buddy. He is the flourished purple-totting character that the audience eats and I’m the straight man — I don’t get as popular as he does, but his comedy only works with me. We’re like a quaint Abbott and Costello.

So buddy and I got this quest, and, as Thomas Foster said in How to Read Literature Like an English Professor, our journey is more important than our goal. In fact, buddy and I forgot what the orb-y thing is for. Was it to cure some disease that is incurable in our time? Is it to make us rich beyond our author’s wildest imagination? Or is it just some lame plot device to keep the narrative moving?

With the most unlikely source of transportation (an external hard drive), buddy and I set out to retrieve the semi-useful orb-y thing. As this is a quest, hindrances are expected, just as Odysseus had his Circe, his sirens, his…well, I didn’t do that much research on Greek mythology — after all, reading about it is against my character profile. The first obstacle we faced was this screechy little bald man in a golden dress. Buddy and I had a lovely swordfight with — oops, sorry. Fight scenes are out of place in a short story.

We decided not to have any external conflict, and decided to focus on character development. For the rest of the journey, buddy and I fought about who gets to hold the water bucket. After countless hours and pages, we decided that we were just bickering and not using conflict to forward whatever motif we needed. Buddy says fuck it, let’s get this done and over with and go home.

While we were miles away from our goal, we decided to skip paragraphs five to twenty-three and head straight to the end. We got to our prize, buddy and I reconciled our differences, realizing that no matter how much we fight, we’re still friends. We met with the big, bad boss, the melodramatic villain, who, to be honest, just seemed happy we arrived (he didn’t seem to have much of a life). Buddy and I saw the orb-y thing and he automatically recognized it as a deus ex machina. I scoffed, arguing that such stupid  devices do not exist in modern literature.

I woke up.

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This is the 100 Songs Project, a 100-day writing challenge based on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs. Every day, I write a short poem, prose piece, or play based on, reacting to, rejecting, accepting, or doing something related to one of the songs in the top 100 list.