"This Stupid Pineapple Is..." Part THREE!

I'm running a blogfest! About stupid pineapples! Details here, or down below at the end of this post. And today's author/blogger who should enter this contest is...

... Michael Offutt, who blogs at SLC Kismet and whose sci-fi novel Slipstream comes out soon, so stop by
his blog and ask him about the pineapples!

The continuing saga of "This Stupid Pineapple Is..."

Today: Part Three: There's bigger problems to have than simply "too many pancakes."

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"This stupid pineapple is..." Other Sexy Cop began, but stopped, and without finishing her sentence, she stamped her foot in frustration and started at Templeton. She closed up her notebook and put her green marker away, ignoring the way this strange little man stared at it longingly. He hadn't even, she'd noticed, spent any time looking at her cleavage, despite the fact that her chest was more amply displayed than ever, given the heat and sunshine that was everywhere today, which was both to be expected and to be unexpected.

That heat and sunshine were everywhere was to be expected because, well, what else do you expect when you are on a tropical beach surrounded by seas filled with the kind of blue water that usually only appears on television commercials, where it almost looks as though they've specially treated the water to make it appear both crystal-clear and also a deep azure so alluring that the eyes can taste it, which eyes are not supposed to be doing, ever since the Great Senses Truce Of Houston, when all the senses got together and decided that what the eyes had started -- trying to do the job of other sensory organs, like hearing and smelling and sometimes singing, which had led noses, in turn, to decide that they wanted to hear, because why should ears have it so easy, with all the pleasant sounds in the world while noses had to smell things like feet or that particularly nasty bog down around I-80? The ears, meanwhile, had stopped doing any work, whatsoever, making negotiations that much harder until the Secretary of the Interior had convinced the kidneys to step in just temporarily for the ears -- so eyes should not be tasting anything, is the point, but that water and heat and sunshine and beach-ery were to be expected because they were, after all, all taking place on a tropical beach, albeit a tropical beach with camels on it for some reason,

And by the same token, all that sun and heat were unexpected because this was Trenton, New Jersey, which had previously not been part of the tropical-beach scene, let alone one with camels on it.

Other Sexy Cop had not been dispatched to Trenton, New Jersey, to talk to Templeton Freeney because Trenton, New Jersey had been transformed into a tropical paradise, though. That was not in Other Sexy Cop's jurisdiction, and, anyway, even if it had been, Other Sexy Cop wouldn't have necessarily gone to Trenton, she would have had to go everywhere, as currently the entire world had been transformed into a tropical paradise: Everywhere one went, there was nothing but beaches, surf, kids playing, palm trees, and the ubiquitous camels.

Even Antarctica was a tropical beach, which had confused the scientists who were down there to continue bothering penguins no end. They'd wandered outside for a day of nagging the wildlife and found the wildlife replaced by camels and kids surfing, something that was certainly worth studying but as these particular scientists' specialities was not science, as such, they had no real insight into the situation and so ended up playing a game of sand volleyball, which was won by Dr. Norbert's team, 3.14 to -i.

Other Sexy Cop could not have possibly responded to all the calls reporting that cornfields, rivers, mountains, Paris, etc., suddenly were beachfront property infested with camels, but she was sent to investigate Templeton Freeney's call, for two reasons:

First, Templeton had not even mentioned that he was on a beach, making him unusual for one of the callers, and

Second, Templeton had mentioned a stupid pineapple, which was the case that Other Sexy Cop was working on and so she'd caught the first flight to Trenton, New Jersey, having previously changed into clothing more appropriate for a beachfront investigation/negotiation.

The source of Other Sexy Cop's frustration -- which shouldn't have existed, given that she was standing on a beach holding a tropical drink in one hand and interviewing Templeton Freeney as the sun began to droop into a long wonderful tropical afternoon of the sort that had never before been seen in Trenton -- was that Templeton had just revealed to her that he had thrown away the stupid pineapple.

She stared off into the distance now, not because there was anything to see there but because she wanted Templeton to know that she was both frustrated, and thinking.

Templeton stood in front of her, holding his own tropical drink, and wondering about her reaction to his throwing away the stupid pineapple. He felt it important to clear up that he had not, at the time, known that the stupid pineapple could actually grant wishes, but as he thought about that he realized that he'd also thrown away a talking pineapple which, stupid or not, he felt in retrospect was the wrong move to make with a sentient fruit.

Before he could speak, Other Sexy Cop said "Look over there."

Templeton looked where she was looking, off over the ocean that now surrounded Trenton, which had been transformed from a rather dumpy city into a small tropical village on a peninsula surrounded by lagoons of clear water.

"What?" he asked.

"Shhhhhh..." Other Sexy Cop shushed him. "I'm trying to see something."

She stared off at the horizon, which was starting to reflect the sun above it and which was, farther out, glassy and smooth and blue and alluring and also, Templeton realized, sort of weird-looking.

"It's sort of weird-looking, isn't it?" Other Sexy Cop asked him.

"It is," Templeton agreed.

"In fact, it almost looks as if..." Other Sexy Cop stopped, and looked around to see whether anyone else could hear her. She paused in her thought and opened her notebook again, took a sip of her tropical drink, sighed a heaving breath that made Templeton's eyes goggle out, and said "... Before I finish that, tell me where the stupid pineapple is now."

Templeton finished up his story quickly, with the phone call and waking up here and then shut up. Other Sexy Cop wrote her notes and then closed her notebook again, and took another sip of her drink. She scratched her leg idly while thinking, and Templeton tried very hard to not look at her perfect legs as she did so, because Templeton was not entirely sure if he was again a married man.

Other Sexy Cop seemed to be thinking the same thing.

"And you say your wife is back?"

Templeton nodded.

"Her name is Ana?" Other Sexy Cop asked.

Templeton nodded again.

"Where is she?"

Templeton pointed towards the hut. "She's in there. Baking pancakes." As Other Sexy Cop looked at the hut, Templeton said "That's all she's been doing, all day. She just keeps baking pancakes. Over and over. When I suggested that perhaps the roomful of pancakes we already had was enough, she just said oh, go ahead and start eating, I know you love them."

Other Sexy Cop looked from the hut to the ocean and back again.

She took another sip of her drink, and put a hand to her head. Her concentration made her even sexier than she'd already been, as she chewed on her full, round, pouty lip and narrowed her slim eyebrows to focus her shiny, emerald green eyes on the hut.

"Something's not right here," Other Sexy Cop muttered.

She looked again at the ocean. Then at the hut. Then she walked barefoot across the sand to the window of the hut Templeton had indicated. She looked inside.

A woman, about 50 years old, was standing in the kitchen, spatula in hand. All around her were stacks and stacks of pancakes, on the table, the floor, the counter, even the windowsill. The woman was flipping a pancake on the frying pan on the stove. She looked up and saw Other Sexy Cop.

"Oh, hello!" she said, in a merry voice. "Who are you?"

"My name is Other Sexy Cop," Other Sexy Cop said. "Are you Ana?"

"I guess I am!" Ana answered.

Other Sexy Cop thought about that and looked at the horizon, then back at Ana. "What are you doing, Ana?"

"I'm cooking pancakes," Ana said. Privately, Ana thought that was kind of a silly question. What did it look like she was doing? But as she looked around, she realized that there were, after all, a lot of pancakes. She thought perhaps that was enough, even if this woman with her beautiful hair pulled into an amazingly sexy ponytail and her high cheekbones were to join them.

Ana decided that was quite enough pancakes, and so she set the spatula down and turned the stove off and went to get out some plates to set the table... only she actually did none of those things and instead flipped the cooked pancake onto a stack and then poured another one from the bowl.

Other Sexy Cop watched that and said "Why don't you take a break, Ana, and talk to me?"

"I..." Ana paused as she flipped the latest pancake. "I... can't."

Other Sexy Cop looked around the room one more time, and then turned to look back out to sea. Templeton had joined her now and looked from his wife to where Other Sexy Cop was looking.

"What are you thinking?" Templeton said, hoping perhaps that what she was thinking was that Ana couldn't simply move back in, make a thousand pancakes and make them be married again, and also that perhaps Other Sexy Cop wore that wedding ring for reasons other than being married, and would maybe want to go have a second drink with him while they sorted this out and/or enjoyed a tropical vacation.

Other Sexy Cop said: "I'm thinking that the world is disintegrating out there."

Templeton looked from her full chest barely contained by the uniform to the edge of the horizon where she was looking.

It was true: clearly visible at the very edge of the view were cracks and breaks in the sky and ocean, where the cool, smooth water and endless blue of the sky met, and in places where they met the water stopped being cool and blue and the sky stopped being endless, and instead they appeared to be simply cheap plaster of the kind you might find in a terrible apartment, and they were flaking off and cracking and pitch black could be seen behind them.

"Can you rescue us?" Templeton asked Other Sexy Cop, quietly.

Click here to go on to Part Four: Giant Blue Men are the LEAST of your troubles, you say?

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There's still time to enter "The Stupid PineappleBlogfest", a blogfest honoring author Patrick Dilloway, the Grumpy Bulldog of blogging, who got a book contract

The rules are here: to sum up, this Friday post your entry, which must include the phrase "This Stupid Pineapple Is..." I'll pick the winner Saturday morning by random chance.

Again: Details here.