| Project Nightshade. Message #19. |
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| 11:50am 05/03/2003 |
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Gothor here.
This past month has been a blur. I know you're probably expecting heroic tales of how I saved the world, but the truth is I've been laying low, hanging with Samantha, playing Vice City and learning my way around the farm. Hard work is great at distracting me from my real problems, which until now I've successfully avoided. I just got tired of running, you know? It was too dangerous. And my feet were starting to kill me.
Eventually Samantha cornered me against the wall (literally, one hand on either side of my head) and demanded I tell her how a "grown boy gets to be afraid of a vegetable." I thought about lying (some story about my uncle tormenting me on Halloween with jack-o-potatoes came to mind) but when I looked in her green eyes, I just couldn't bring myself to lie.
That, and the uncle thing was pretty fucking stupid.
So I told her. About the agents, how they got my father, and about the crazy Doc ("Bet you can't eat just one!"). I told her about everything -- except the mysterious silver box that Doc gave me. Something made me leave that detail out... just in case.
"So?" I said.
"I believe you," she said.
I blinked. "Really?"
"No! Of course I don't! That's the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"Hey!" I said, a little too loudly. "Yeah, well, just because you don't believe me doesn't mean I'm lying. And I'm not crazy, either." I ducked out from under her arms and stomped off.
"Hang on then, don't go off in a tiff. I don't think you're crazy, but can you blame me? It's all a bit of a horse's hoof, I think."
"No," I said. "Nothing was exaggerated."
Samantha raised an eyebrow.
"Well fine, so there was only one shark... and I guess I didn't really kick anyone's ass with Karate. But the rest of it is true. Here, I can prove it."
So I showed her the webpage, titled "Reinterpreting the Great Famine". It wasn't very impressive, the sort of drab mid-nineties web design you'd expect from an academic named Simon J. Quinn. It suggested the Potato Famine may have actually saved the Irish, that the British-enforced potato diet was a rudimentary form of mind-control. There was more, newspaper reports of potatoes come alive. But scariest was a drawing of a woman stabbing at one of the alien potatoes, "Finishing the job that the blight started."
"I dunno," Samantha said, peering at the screen. "It looks to me like she's fighting a toad."
"That's it!" I said, dragging her by the wrist. "How far away is Blackfoot?"
"Twenty miles," she said, allowing me to drag her along. (She wasn't kidding when she said she could take me. Sam didn't look it, but she was freakishly strong.) "Hang on then, let me grab my purse. If we're going into town, we might as well do some shopping."
The closer we got to Blackfoot, the more uneasy I became. It was like, spook central. Potato crops as far as the eye could see. Huge factories billowing black smoke that smelled like something dead.
We stopped at the first store we saw, one of those gas station/general store/hospital/funeral parlor deals. On the front porch sat a middle-aged man with a close cropped haircut. He was hunched over, muttering, and even though it was 90 degrees outside, he was rubbing his hands together, as if for warmth. We walked as far from him as humanly possible and entered the store.
"I still don't know what you thought you'd find here," Samantha said as we walked down aisles crammed with cereal boxes and bags of chips (which I also avoided).
"I don't know. Just something out of the ordinary. Like, what about those smoke stacks? What would farmers need with factories?"
"To mass-produce an army of invincible tayter warriors, naturally," she said, smiling crookedly.
"Har-har. I'm thirsty, let's grab a soda."
The soda fountain was behind the counter, one of those paranoid, cheap bastard deals, where you had to ask the clerk to get you a cup. Above the machine was a sign: "ABSOLOUTELY NO REFILLS."
"Hi," I said. "Do you guys give refills?"
The clerk, a huge woman who looked like someone shoved an overfed pug dog in an ugly dress, stared at me with beedy eyes.
"Um... yeah." I said. "Two cokes, large."
Instead of going to the soda fountain, she ducked under the counter, rummaged around, and returned with the cups. Each was now filled to the brim with a rotting potato.
Me and Samantha exchanged glances.
The woman shook her doggy face as if confused. Then she lit up with an idiot grin. "This is soooooo much better," she slurred.
This time, Samantha did the dragging. She pulled me outside, all but running towards her van. Being Irish, she normally looked pale, but now she looked dead white.
As we passed the man on the porch, he looked up and called after us, "I like them french-fried potaters, ayup!"
Samantha slammed her door and fired up the truck. "Fine," she muttered. "So maybe you aren't a header after all. Let's get the hell outta 'ere."
(By the way, I moved Project Nightshade to Live Journal so people could comment on my adventures and share their own paranormal experiences with the Potato Conspiracy. Feel free to say whatever's on your mind -- there is no censorship here. Truth is a weapon. Wield it wrecklessly.)
Gothor out.
Expose the truth. Even if the truth is silly. Sign the Potato Petition!
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