About | Stuff | Links | Tandem Stories | Weblog | Forum
You are here: Kaedrin > Tandem Stories > The Fantabulous Adventures of Mark and Bill, Episode 3

Is this thing on? Testing... 1 2 3... oh! Ahem... We start this episode with a recap of the events of episode 2:

Stuff happened, some people said stuff to each other... I think someone got killed, or maybe that was that other story I read... you know, the one with the guy who did that stuff? That cool stuff? You know which one I'm talking about? Uh... the show's producer is trying to say something to me... what? I'm fired? Hey, I have 5 years experience in voice-overs and I'm a hell of a lot better than the guy at the end of episode 2! Hey! Let go! Let me go!

THANKS FOR TAKING CARE OF HIM, GUYS! WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, WE NOW BRING YOU EPISODE 3 OF THE FANTABULOUS ADVENTURES OF MARK AND BILL!

Episode 3-"Where's the beef?"

Bill and Mark walk down a country road, trading stories and jokes as the sun sets in the background.

"Whooo..." laughs Mark, wiping a tear from his eye, "That was a good one, but lemme tell you the one about the three women who escape from prison."

"Heh, sounds go-" Mark suddenly stops, noticing the cows in a field on the side of the dirt path.

"Bill," says Mark, slowly, "Is it just me, or are those cows armed with pitchforks and flaming clubs?"

"Indeed they are," notices Bill, nodding, "And apparently, they have stood up on their hind legs, and are now approaching us with less than friendly motives, I'm afraid."

Bill and Mark observe the cows for a few seconds, amazed that the bovines could have accomplished such a feat.

"Uh, Bill?" says Mark, tapping Bill on the shoulder.

"Yeah?" responds Bill, waving at one of the cows.

"I think it's time we go." says Mark, backing up slowly.

"Whattya mean? These cows won't-" Bill is interrupted by a sharp pitchfork being jabbed in his direction, accompanied by a loud moo.

"GAH!" shouts Bill, running off. Mark runs right after him as the cows give chase.

Mark screamed at Bill to run faster until they found a barn. They ran inside and slammed the door shut, shortly hearing the dull thuds of dozens of cows smacking into the door at once. Then there was the sound of confused "moo"s, as the now-dizzy cows tried to bring back their sense of direction.
"Wow." said Mark. "I had no idea hell was so weird. Even cows get their own level of hell!" "Stupid TARDIS still isn't getting us back to Earth." said Bill. "There must be a bug in the code somewhere..."
"How many levels of hell have we been through so far?"
"Seven. At least this level isn't as bad as the one for the tech support newbies."
Mark shuddered. "Don't remind me of that. I nearly went insane."
"We need to fix the problem with the TARDIS quick and get back to Earth. We're running out of urinal cakes!"

-

MEANWHILE:
The ice cream shop was still and silent. The ice cream server was washing an ice cream scoop diligently. Suddenly she heard the sound of the front door opening. She saw in the door frame the silhouette of a man, rays of sunlight dancing around his darkened form. He wore a long, dark trenchcoat which billowed out behind him with a suddent gust of wind. He took a step inside. The indoor lighting revealed his face for an instant before the shadow once again fell over it. It was Steve Jobs. The ice cream server dropped her scoop to the floor. Steve Jobs stepped closer, chewing a toothpick in the side of his mouth. His heavy boots made an ominous thumping sound as they connected with the floor one by one. He stopped at the counter, and paused a moment.
"Good morning." he said.
"W..what do you want, s..sir?" she was beginning to tremble.
Steve Jobs pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and tossed it to the floor. He turned his head slowly, looked at her again, and a slight smile cracked his face. "Vanilla ice cream with raspberry topping. And..."
She hung on, waiting for his final word of the order.
It finally came.

"put it in a waffle cone."

The ice cream attendant gasped aloud as the words escaped the stranger's mouth. She quickly covered her mouth as the stranger simply stared at her, the smile pasted on his face.

This isn't happening! she thought to herself, as she began to panic. Why did I have to get drunk last night and spill the container of arsenic into the Waffle Cone batter? But I'm not about to tell this guy no...he'll kill me!

"Well?" questioned the stranger, the smile escaping from his face.

"Um, j-just a second sir." she stuttered as she made her way to the back. What am I going to do? she questioned herself as she took the poison-laced batter from the fridge.

The attendant nervously went about making the cone, and when she had finished, she went over to to the vat of vanilla ice cream, still not sure what to do.

"Sweet merciful crap! What are you doing!? Don't you know who that is?" said the attendant's manager quietly, "That's Steve Jobs! We can't use just any ice cream batter for him..."

"You don't mean..."

"Yes. Yes, I do!"

"But... but..."

"No time for buts, do you have your key?"

Realizing that she wouldn't have to poison her customers, she pulled out her key and said "Right here, boss."

The two made their way to the back of the store to the freezer. Next to the rather heavy looking door, on both sides, was a small control panel with a keyhole. The manager and the attendant placed their respective keys in the keyholes.

"And... 3... 2... 1... turn!" said the manager as they turned their keys simultaneously.

The door opened slowly with a woosh of cold air. Inside was nearly 3,400 gallons of ice cream. In the center of the room was a special, vacuum sealed glass case - inside of which was the best looking waffle cone the attendant had ever seen.

"Its beautiful..." said the attendant, mezmerized.

"Over 40,000 man hours were spend designing and building that baby. See here - these reinforcing bars keep the cone from crumbling at inopportune times. The chocolate layer on the inside is perfectly proportioned for maximum taste...." said the manager as he removed the cone and handed it to the attendant. Now go make that man a good cone!"

***

MEANWHILE: Mark cowered in the corner of the barn, while Bill nonchalantly flipped a switch on the wall and began examining his surroundings.

"Its actually quite a nice place..." said Bill, ignoring the incessant mooing coming from outside. The cows were now trying to ram the door down, but it was a solid door and would probably hold them.

"Look! Bill, a laptop!" said Mark, rising from his hiding spot.

"Oh, yes. That," said Bill "Its a stupid Sony VAIO with Linux installed. Its of no interest to us..."

Mark scoffed and started to examine the machine. "If we can make it back to the TARDIS, I think we may be able to get it working again - urinal cakes or no urinal cakes!"

Suddenly a large crack appeared in the wood of the barn door. The cows were starting to break through. They ran to the back, but saw the barn's back door was throbbing back and forth as cows on the other side tried to break through it.
"They are coming." said Bill.
"We need some kind of weapons to use against them!" said Mark, looking around. He found two pitchforks stuck into a bale of hay.
They pulled out the pitchforks and held them in their hands, as the sound of cows grew louder. moo, moo, moo. The sound echoed through the walls of the vast barn.
Mark grasped his pitchfork tightly. "Let them come!" he said, trying to build up his courage. "They will see that there's a human left in this crazy cow level of hell with some fight left in him!"
The door cracked open and several cows spilled through. They clashed pitchforks with the herd of demonic cattle that surrounded them. Mark managed to take one of them down by tipping it with a hard sideways whack with his pitchfork. Bill used the weight of the cows against them, letting them charge him only to be skewered on his pitchfork. But there were too many of them. They were forced to the back of the barn by the cows, where the back door was beginning to crack through. Their only hope now was to run up the stairs to the upper level of the barn and hope the cows wouldn't be able to follow. Mark was caught off guard and a cow smashed him into the wall of the barn with its horns. Mark fell down and passed out.
"No!" said Bill, tipping the cow that had felled Mark. He grabbed Mark and the laptop in one arm and fended off cows with the pitchfork in his other arm as he walked up the stairs. The cows wailed at them from below, unable to manage the steps. moo, moo, moo. Mark's eyes opened and Bill dropped him in shock.
"I thought you were dead!" said Bill.
"Nope, I had a couple of urinal cakes under my shirt that stopped the cow's horns from puncturing me."
"What were you doing with urinal cakes under your..."
Suddenly the ground shook, and all the cows stood still. The ground shook once again and all the cows ran out of the barn as fast as they could (except for the tipped ones).
"What's going on?" asked Mark.
Suddenly two massive hooves plunged through the roof on both ends of the barn. The hooves came up again, tearing the entire roof off of the barn. There, silhouetted against the bright sun overhead, was the biggest damn cow they had ever seen. It let out a massive MOO! and brought its front hooves down toward them. They jumped back and the barn floor in front of them was shattered into wooden fragments.
"Fly, you fool! This is a foe far beyond you!" said Bill, pointing to a single wooden plank that went across an open space with the first floor of the barn far below. "Over the bridge! Jump out the back window!"

Mark ran across the bridge and stopped just in front of the window. He looked back and saw Bill in the middle of the bridge, facing off against the ginormous cow.
Bill held up his pitchforked and screamed at the cow at the top of his lungs. "You cannot pass!"
The cow bent over and roared directly in Bill's face. His hair blew behind him with the force of the deafening moo.
"Okay, you can pass!" said Bill, quickly running away and pushing Mark with him out the window. They landed hard on the grass outside and scrambled to their feet.

Meanwhile in the monkey level of hell things were getting a little odd to say to the least

It began when bananas II said "OOH OOH AHH AHH" These hideous coments angered the other monkeys who was he to say he knew the meaning of life? Then the monkeys turned towards wisebottom the elder monkey.Then he told them the meaning life "OOOH OOH OHH AHH AHH AHH AHH OOH AHH" The monkeys nodded in agreement.The was a sudden silence and then wwhat seemed like an earthquake.An elevator appeared seemingly out of nowhere.The psycho monkey "monkey who scratches his arse all the time" tapped the button marked cow.The other monkeys simply stared and said "ooh ooh ahh" as he rose into the sky

monkey gathering on their way back to the TARDIS.

"So Bill, whats with the haircut, I mean, no offence or anything, but its a tad dorky." Mark said, partly just to break the awkard silence since Bill "accidentally" touched Marks ass.

"Yeah I know," he replied, "the PR guys tell me its important that I don't appear to be distancing myself from all the geeks out there."

"Hmm, makes sense i guess." Mark said as he hoped back into the TARDIS and began hooking the laptop with Linux up to the control console once more. "Okay Bill, hook up the last two urinal cakes, this is our last chance, lets hope that the monkey level of hell isn't too far from earth."

------------

Meanwhile back in the ice cream parlor, Steve Jobs had just finished his third gallon of ice cream and was slumped over in a pool of partially melted pistachio ice cream.

"Sir, I think its time we head back to the office." Truman said.

"NAAOOOOOO" Steve gurgled as he whipped a spoonful of the green ice cream in Trumans direction. "We have to stay here and keep eating more ice cream until plan B is fulfilled and Apple takes over Microsofts consumer base."

"Sir, I switched Plan B out with Plan 8. Going out for ice cream was the plan for when the vending machine failed."

"BLASPHEMY!!!!" Steve screamed as he ran to tackle Truman. A simple sidestep however, was all that was needed to send Steve crashing into the waffle cone batter delivery guy who just walked through the door.

"HOLY %^@$" the manager yelled, "My waffle cone batter!"

An awkward silence pursued as the manager's eyes met Steve's. The batter began to ooze out of the barrel, forming a thin layer of beige slime on the tile floor.

Just then the TARDIS materialized outside the ice cream shop, and Mark and Bill wandered inside to find out just exactly where they were...

Continue The Story:

name:

email:

url:

addition:

Copyright © 1999 - 2001 by Mark Ciocco. No part of this page may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission.