----------------------------------- Note 16 Got a stamp? *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:25 pm brian dear / udnondev "Only a little time left! Time's running out! Order before midnight tonight!" Waldo ran in circles in front of the television. He couldn't be late! He had to get his order sent before midnight and it was eleven o'clock already. He wrote the check, put it in an envelope and wrote the address on the front. Then he looked for a stamp. "Goddamn it!" he shouted, pulling his papers out of the cupboard, "I thought I left some stamps in here!" Waldo was so frustrated with the uncooperative cupboard that he kicked it, stubbing his toe in the process. The pain made his frustration all the worse, and he used the fire-axe on the wall to smash the cupboard to bits. The cupboard lay in shards on the floor, but still there was no stamp! Waldo looked at the clock and silently read "11:28." He ran upstairs to his friend George's apartment (George was on a vacation in Bermuda). BASH went the flimsy tenement door as the fire axe busted through it in a single stroke. ---------------------------------------- Response 1 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:25 pm brian dear / udnondev "STAMPS! STAMPS! THERE HAVE TO BE SOME STAMPS IN HERE SOMEWHERE!" Waldo shouted, hurriedly turning on the lights. He rushed into the apartment's living room. "Damn it, maybe he keeps his stamps in his television!" Waldo said to himself, immediately axing George's tiny portable. None were there. On the wall, or rather against it, he saw George's set of great books. "Sure," Waldo reasoned, "they have____ to be there." The weighty axe felled every single volume of Melville, Plato, and Dosteoyevsky but still revealed no stamps. Waldo was about to see if George kept his stamps in his bathroom mirror when he remembered where he kept his own stamps. "Behind the stereo!" he shouted aloud, and off he went back down the stairs to his own apartment. There, in the apartment, he found a Negro stealing his stereo. The Negro was very surprised. He said, "Hey look, man, ah, ah... I got a gun!" ---------------------------------------- Response 2 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:26 pm brian dear / udnondev "Put that stamp down," Waldo said threateningly. "Stahmp? Whut the hail you talkin 'bout?" The Negro, frightened by Waldo, took a step backwards. Waldo took a tremendous swing at the Negro but missed him. The Negro dropped the stereo and jumped out the window to the fire escape. "The stamp! The stamp!" Waldo said, bashing apart his stereo. The stamp was gone. The Negro must have it! Waldo looked quickly out the fire escape. The Negro was almost to the ground. Waldo went out on the fire escape, held the axe over the edge, and dropped it. Waldo realized that when the Negro finally did reach the ground, he would probably take a look up at Waldo's apartment. That would be about 2 seconds from right then. He also knew that the axe would hit that particular vantage point at about the same time. Sure enough, he (the Negro) looked up just as the axe (going fast) came down, hitting him very hard one the shoulder. Not a bull's eye, but close enough. ---------------------------------------- Response 3 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:27 pm brian dear / udnondev Waldo was down by the Negro in no time at all. "THE STAMP! GIVE ME THAT STAMP!" Waldo shouted at the unconscious would-be thief. Even after searching the fellow, he wouldn't find the stamp anywhere on him, and it was 11:42! The Drugstore! They always had those stamp machines in drugstores. Waldo hastily disloged the axe from the Negro and ran around the corner to Nelson's (the local drugstore). Nelson's Drugstore was a real inner-city drugstore. It closed at 3 in the afternoon, well before dark, but had no alarm system. Nelson (the owner) instead used a mean dog (named "Thug") to guard it. He let him loose in the place at three when he closed up. Thug was an extremely viscious dog. He was a Great Dane/German Shepherd sort of thing, with a collar with spikes on the inside______ so that the thing was continually in pain and always eager to take out its frustration on drug addicts who tried to get in at night. ---------------------------------------- Response 4 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:28 pm brian dear / udnondev Nelson (the druggist) also fed him laxatives all the time which gave him an incredible canine case of diarrhea. It made him even meaner. BASH went the window of Nelson's (drugstore) as Waldo's big fire axe went through it. Thug, busy chewing on a table leg, heard it and silently went stalked into the magazine section. He always liked to wait until the thief was really in__ the store before he attacked. That way he had a better chance of really______ hurting him. "DAMN!" Waldo shouted, "11:51!!" He smashed out an entire window panel and stepped in. He cautiously walked through the dark drugstore (named Nelson's), searching for the stamp machine. "Oh yeah," he said to himself, "it's all the way in the back." Further and further into the back he went, more and more into the dark. Thug patiently waited, letting this one get father in than any other one had ever gotten. He had had a particularly bad day and would settle for nothing less than killing this one. ---------------------------------------- Response 5 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:29 pm brian dear / udnondev Waldo reached out for the stamp machine and found it. He pushed the stamp release lever but it didn't work. He had to put a quarter in. Waldo searched his pockets and couldn't find a single quarter. Thug quietly approached his victim. "DAMNED MACHINE!" Thug prepared to spring. Waldo pushed the machine back, lifted the axe and swung at it. Thug sprang. The axe hit the machine, sending it flying into Thug. It struck him (Thug) relatively hard, causing him to rebound into a stack of model airplane kits. "Turds," Waldo said to himself, "can't see the stamps now! Better turn on the lights." He felt his way into the druggist's booth and searched for the light switch. Thug recovered quickly and ran after Waldo's scent. "Where's that damned switch..." Waldo (rhetorically) asked. ---------------------------------------- Response 6 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:30 pm brian dear / udnondev Thug could hear Waldo but couldn't get at him. His simple brain reasoned, "He must be in the druggist's booth, the only place in the store where I can't reach an in- truder!" After that brief moment of cognition, the dog's mind became overwhelmed with frustration and expressed itself in the most obscene barking fit capable of a dog. "Huh?" Waldo thought, "Must be a dog in here!" He (Waldo) found the light switch and turned it on. Suddenly, just inches away, he saw Thug barking insanely at the base of the tall wall of the druggist's booth. Instinctively he recoiled from the hideous animal, landing on a filing cabinet. The cabinet fell open and out fell sevaral dollars' worth of stamps. "STAMPS!" Waldo said aloud. Thug heard it but couldn't understand. Looking at his watch, Waldo saw that he had only 5 five minutes left in which to mail his order. But the dog seemed to have him pinned! ---------------------------------------- Response 7 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:31 pm brian dear / udnondev The axe lay on the floor beside the stamp-selling machine (which incidentally did not break, or even dent that much from Thug's attack), and he dared not try to outrun Thug to the window. Frantically, he searched the druggist's booth for something to fend off Thug with. He was in luck. Nelson (the druggist) was an extremely hostile druggist. He didn't really care at all for his inner-city clientele, and out of fear and loathing for them he kept a 12-guage shotgun in his druggist's booth. He kept it there because robbers would most times hold up the sales- register person in front, and never notice him back there behind the stamp-selling machine. He would be able to kill them from behind there. Once two white motorcycle gang types came in and demanded money. The register keeper gave it to them, and as they left Nelson blew the head off of one and crippled the other, sending head and leg parts all over the tooth- brush display. (Nelson later took the bloodied toothbrush ---------------------------------------- Response 8 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:32 pm brian dear / udnondev display and threw it into Thug's cage to make him even meaner.) Well, Waldo picked up the gun, pushed that whatever-you-call-it back and forth to put a shell in the chamber, and blew apart Thug. Just like that. No more Thug. "TWO MINUTES!" he said to himself, leaving the druggist's booth and jumping back out the window. Still running, he affixed a stamp to his letter and headed for the post office box on the corner. He reached it, looked at his watch (which read 11:59) and with a smile pushed the letter into the slot. He had made it. He walked back to his apartment, a lilt to his step and a smile on his face. He passed the busted-up drugstore, glanced at the busted up would-be stereo thief at the foot of the fire escape, and finally arrived home. ---------------------------------------- Response 9 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:33 pm brian dear / udnondev He found his apartment just as he had left it, door still open, stereo still on the floor, television still running. Later an ambulance arrived for the poor stereo thief at the base of the fire escape and took him away, and the excitement of the evening was over. [The poor fellow, truly the least developed character in this story, actually benefitted from the incident. The subsequent fall from the blow to his shoulder made him bump his head on the edge of a cinderblock, causing him to come out of his state of amnesia and finally remember that he was in reality the president of a multi-national corporation. He lived happily ever after.] Waldo settled back into his chair to watch his television again. He was watching "The Fall of Franken- stein" when that same commercial came on that had earlier made him run so frantically about in search of a stamp. "THE BEST OF THE GREATS! The biggest hits, now brought to you in a complete, two record set for only $7.98 ($8.90 for 8-track or cassette tapes)..." ---------------------------------------- Response 10 of 10 *** A Story by Dr. Graper *** 10/9/80 10:40 pm brian dear / udnondev Waldo watched with interest. "...only a little time left! Time's running out!..." Waldo smiled. He had met the deadline. "...Order before midnight tonight!" "What?" Waldo thought. He thought it was midnight yesterday_________ night. Now it was midnight today_____ night! "Well," Waldo said to himself, "I guess it wasn't really so urgent after all!" Still, it was a good idea to send it as early as possible. THE END