Excerpt: Rat Race

CHAPTER THE FIRST, IN WHICH THERE IS INDEED MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

And to think, it all started with a smashed cantaloupe.

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The mangled melon in question had in fact originated more than two centuries previous, in the grand oulde Victorian times of yore.  There had been a King (of some microscopic and generally insignificant country to the northeast of France) and a Vassal (who may or may not – and you all should know which of the two he was – have been wealthier, more prosperous, and generally more well off than the King), a Grievance, an Oracle, and a – Cantaloupe?

Today, no one is completely sure about the origin or the eventual fate of that Cantaloupe.  It is the subject for much debate, mostly by that one class of historians consisting of only those who don't know anything at all.

The consensus is that the Vassal, in a fit of rage that was never really ever explained to satisfaction, had thrown the Cantaloupe in the general direction of the King.  The Vassal had lived before the time of that strange ball game that had something to do with peach baskets in Massachusetts, and he had been therefore an absolutely rotten shot.  He'd missed the King by at least a meter, so that the (rather unclean already, if those finicky courtesans were to be believed) floor – as well as most of the courtiers, actually – had been decorated with a lovely shade of orange, and the King had gotten a few splatters of Cantaloupe on his shoes.

Well, the Vassal had been so overcome by astonishment at how lousy his aim was that he promptly dropped dead.  He must have ruptured something pretty important, because the last that anyone heard from his mouth had been a phrase that simply cannot be translated into text.  An attempt at romanizing the spelling has been made since then, and most translators today agree that "ngroughkt" is the most accurate representation.  The Oracle had immediately taken this as an Omen (having nothing to do at all with sixes, or the anti-Christ, or tricycles, for that matter) of sorts, and he dedicated the rest of his life (which happened to comprise twenty days, four hours, and thirty-two minutes) to finding out what it meant.  Needless to say, he had not been particularly successful – he eventually became so frustrated that he could not figure it out that he committed suicide, joining the ranks of such celebrated broads (oh yes, I went there) as Homer and – well, just Homer.

As for the King, he had not been so much aghast at such the senseless loss of human life as vaguely miffed that the Vassal had died in his throne room, and that therefore he would be responsible for getting rid of the body. He had also been a little angrier about the fact that he had never gotten his revenge on the Vassal for ruining his favorite pair of shoes (platform shoes, in the style of a current Korean dictator whose name might begin with a K and end with an “im Jong-il”), and therein lay the origin of the Grievance.

The Vassal's son had been more than happy (he was absolutely giddy, in fact*) to seek revenge on the King for his father's death, and the King's son had done the same to the Vassal's son until the whole thing had become nothing more than family tradition. All of the sons of both of the lines had really all been decent people in their own way; seeking revenge had just been what they did on the weekends, when they had nothing better to do (which was often). The retributions had once actually been on the vindictive side (back in the day), but over the years, they gradually degenerated into paltry shenanigans and oh-no-thou-didst-not! It must have been a hundred or so years after when the two lines finally stooped so low as to use a rubber chicken! that they came to a mutual agreement for a ceasefire, citing just how absurd their “rivalry” had become as their prime reason.

That was then.

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* It should be noted here that nothing ever really happened in those grand oulde Victorian days of yore, and that seeing the development of a Grievance over the years had an excitement level just between that of the opera and a car accident.