Mum is the word. Actually bird is the word, but bird says mum, so we're gonna so with that

Hello my faithful followers.  Chill is the word around town as I turned in my last project today of the Great Project Rush.  I get about two weeks to casually work on new projects before anything else is due.  Tonight is supposed to be my night to sit in front of the TV and do nothing for hours, but something seems to be wrong with the cable.  Instead I've been writing a screenplay, so not a bad exchange I'd say.  It's currently titled The Brothers Coral and is being co-written with my brother, the Baron of Pumpky.  We started last summer but put it on hold for a long time.  I decided it was time to pull it out, dust it off, and finally finish the thing.

I really have nothing else interesting to sell.  Tomorrow is my birthday, which is pretty cool.  My creative juices are flowing though, so maybe I'll make up a quick short story on this cold and rainy sixth of May.

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"What's the date?"

"Huh?" The old man was working on his daily crossword puzzle and anything anybody had to say to him clearly took back seat to this love affair.  What's with this guy?  the young man thought to himself, he works on these things like it's a kind of religion.  "The date.  What's the date today?"

Finally the old man lifted his head, scanning the room to find the source of the question.  Of course there was only one place the question could have possibly come from.  Every morning Henry James Fonda came into the Cafe Guillermo and every morning he was alone with the old man.  By now he had at least learned his name was Bob.  Simply Bob.  No surname had ever been given, and none required, since this Bob could certainly never be confused with any other Bobs Henry may have known.

After staring at the young man for a moment, Bob responded.  "Sixth of May" he said with perfect confidence.  The young man's eyes lit up for a brief second, then reverted back to their normal latent blue, as if trying to hide his surprise.  Henry gulped down the rest of his coffee and fished into his pocket for some change.  Whatever importance the date held to him, the old man apparently would not be finding out.  His curiosity spent, Bob went back to his puzzle.

Apart from a dazzlingly unfortunate name, Henry James Fonda was actually a relatively fortunate guy.  He had wealthy parents and a comfortable family life.  He was a successful tennis athlete in high school and got a full-ride scholarship to Penn State.  He was president of the Student Government and captain of the tennis team.  After receiving a degree in Biomedical Engineering with a grade point average of 3.54, he was accepted to do research with the Internal Association of Medical and Biological Foreign Studies.  No matter what you said about him, you had to admit that Henry Fonda was a fortunate guy.  That is, up until now.

After paying for his mediocre coffee, Henry bolted out the door and walked to the bus stop faster than he would have enjoyed.  He never liked to seem in a hurry, even if he was.  One time he was forty-five minutes late leaving for an Organic Chemistry final exam and casually walked the entire 2.2 miles to the lecture hall.  He even stopped to chat with an old professor on the way, causing him to have to finish the exam in only sixty minutes.  But this was no chemistry final, and Henry didn't have the time to walk. 

If it was really May sixth than that meant it worked.  And if it worked than the boy was right and Henry would have exactly forty-three minutes to get to his lab.  Suddenly, just before climbing onto the bus, Henry pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket and scribbled a note onto it.  The driver, thinking he was digging for change, waited impatiently.  When he finished, Henry dropped the note on the ground then jumped on the bus, paying the dollar forty for the ride.

He took a seat towards the back of the bus, away from most of the other passengers.  As he waited for his stop to come (thirty-nine minutes now) Henry found himself not thinking about what had happened or what was about to happen, but of Cheerios and grow capsules, the sponge-in-a-pill toy that grew into shapes once they were added into water.  The particular ones he was thinking about were monster shapes.  Monster shapes and Cheerios.

As his considered the fate of these everyday items and what place they would have in a world thirty-seven minutes from now, he found himself wishing he had a bowl of Cheerios right then and there, on the bus.  And a glass of water to throw some monster shapes into.  I'm going insane he thought to himself as he pushed these irrelevant ideas out of his head.  Cookoo for CoCo Puffs.  Right out the window and down to the old Looney House.  

A loud buzz interrupted his daydreaming.  He looked up and saw an old woman making her way to the front of the stopped bus.  She had just needed to get off.  He watched her climb all the way down the steps and up to the door of a townhouse.  He watched her as she rung the bell and waited for someone to come.  He watched her--then the bus moved on and he was again just stuck with watching the blurred shapes of random people and buildings go by.  He checked his watch. 

Thirty minutes.  Thirty minutes and it would all be over and done with, one way or the other.  

* * *

This story doesn't really make any sense on its own, so I guess I'll keep it going when I feel the urge.  I'm open to suggestions for a title.  Hope that kept you entertained during my lack of interesting non fiction.