ElmoFromOK not a muppet

Tiffany hit the pause button on her iPod as the car slowed to a stop. She gently tugged the hot pink buds out of her ears and tossed them onto the leather seat next to her sparkling green gym bag. With a start, she closed her eyes, twisted up her mouth and then shoved a finger in her ear and wiggled it violently.

The driver of the car watched her in the rearview mirror, his dark thick eyebrows raised. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tiffany opened a single eye and grinned, “It tickled!” She pulled her finger out and looked at it. “I love my skullcandies but they tickle like hell.  Major when cranked!”

She rubbed her finger on the seat in front of her and beamed into the mirror.

“We are here.” The door opened and the big car tilted as the driver stepped out onto the gravel.

“Duh” Tiffany said to the closing door and reached for her gym bag. She lifted it with a groan as her door opened and sun flooded the interior of the car.

She hopped down onto the gravel drive and strode around the big man towards the front of the car.  She heard the door shut behind her but did not look, instead focusing on the huge hulking building before her.

The ominous brick building was three stories tall and surrounded by a bent chain-link fence that had more sections on the ground than standing. There were only a few windows without boards and planks across them and at least one entranceway with faded police tape. There was a sign a few feet away that may have said CONDEMNED at some point but now just read CONDEM with the rest scratched out. Tiffany pointed and laughed but the driver said nothing.

Tiffany frowned, “Are you sure this is the place? This place is gonna fall over if I breath on it.  Maybe you should wait out here, cuz your way heavy.  What is that? ewwwww! If I get anything on my shoes your buying me new ones!”

The driver walked past her towards the building, “Just do the damn job so I can get you home”

They did not see anyone else as they entered the building and made their way past the lobby and into the dim hallway beyond. Looking left and then right, the driver turned and followed the hallway left, startling a cat which streaked past them farther into the building.

Finally, the driver stopped and pointed to a door that was covered in chalk writing that warned them to STAY OUT, and to beware the KILLER DOG. There were numerous crude homemade posters stuck on the door and the surrounding walls, telling them how unwelcome they were and to GO AWAY.

The driver turned and looked at Tiffany.  She gave him her biggest smile and set the bag on the floor. She reached inside and pulled out a large box of Girl Scout cookies and walked up to the door.

As she knocked loudly, the driver quietly walked back down the hall the way they had come, turned the corner and was gone.

There was sound of commotion inside the apartment. Followed by silence.

Tiffany held the box up towards the peephole and wiggled it.

“Helllloooo. Pleease buy my cookies! Yum Yum Yum”

Silence.

“They are soooo good. I may eat them myself!”

She wiggled the box again.

The sound of bolts turning and chains falling lasted for a few moments, until finally the door opened a few inches.

“Who are you?” Came a small voice from within.

“Hi Sir! I am Tiffany and I am a Girl Scout! I have some cookies. Please buy my cookies!” Tiffany sang as she thrust the box of cookies up towards the opening.

“I.. I.. canna buy them.. them will poison me! Them will letta them know where I am! The..the.. dark men will come. The machines will come.”

“But they are soooooo goood! And they are the last cookies! Last ones!”

The door opened further and a small head pushed out to look around. Tufts of black hair sprouted haphazardly around glasses that were made for a larger person. The dark eyes floated huge behind the thick glasses and they never stopped moving. The eyes moved to look left down the hallway, then floated over to Tiffany and then continued to gaze towards the right hallway, then back towards Tiffany again. This pattern repeated three or four times before finally stopping on the cookies.  The head bobbed and swallowed.

“Hi I am Tiffany. What’s your name?”

The head jerked back into the doorway for a second then quickly replied in a whisper, “Ro.. Ro.. Roger.”

“Ho Roger! You want my cookies, I can tell!”

The door opened and Roger looked out at the cookies once more, and sighed, “yeah...yeah.. do. How..  much?”

Tiffany bounced and smiled her big smile, which caused Roger to smile in return, and then she said, “A 1 Terabyte Toradyne portable memory stick with lots of dirty little secrets please.”

Rogers smile turned round like his glasses and then he was flying backwards into the apartment. Tiffany lowered her foot from where she had kicked the door and leaped into the room landing squarely on Rogers dirty round stomach.

“No coookies for you! You have been baaaaad!” She giggled and slammed her palm into his chin. His round head bounced against the floor hard and his glasses slide away, and he was still.

The driver appeared in the doorway, holding a long narrow pistol. He slide into the apartment and began moving from room to room quietly.

Tiffany sat on Roger and looked at her shoes. There was a black smudge on her left shoe and it covered almost all of the Hello Kitty there. She stomped and then kicked Roger in the side, pouting.

“I have it. Lets go.”

“You owe me new shoes!”

The driver said nothing and moved into the hallway. Tiffany followed him out, bent to grab her bag and then stopped. She turned and looked at the box of cookies in the apartment next to the unmoving Roger. She quickly strode over and picked up the cookies, stuck her tongue out at Roger and then walked away humming.

Tiffany and the Cookies by Chad Henderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.