Two hundred fifty-seven years ago, on this very day, at this very time, there was a strange creature which roamed the dark places in tiny villages, looking for little children to eat, yum yum. This strange creature was called the Evil Creature of the Depths (or Billy Bob for short), but this story is not about this strange creature; this story is about applesauce and something else.

One day many seconds ago, Footmonster was sitting in front of a computer, listening to “Wicked Dickie” and wondering whether the rain was still pouring from the bright, sunshiny sky. My neck hurts. Anyway, I suppose that this story must have some sort of a plot….

Suddenly Footmonster noticed something quite strange--so strange that she leapt up from her chair, which had a tendency to fall over when someone would lean too far back in it, and flew to the kitchen. (Of course, in our last tale, Mel Mar and Footmonster lived in an urban castle. Well, in reality Footmonster lives in an apartment and has a very nice kitchen, and Mel Mar lives somewhere else– no one knows where…. For the sake of simplicity, we shall say that Footmonster and Mel Mar still live in their lovely urban castle.)

“Oh my Allah! Mel Mar, come quickly! We done be in trouble again!” shouted Footmonster as she got up from the floor, having fallen backwards in her chair. (Had she fallen over, or have I made that up? No, she had not fallen; she had leapt up from her chair, and so…never mind.)

Mel Mar rushed into the room as quickly as she could (Because Footmonster usually left things messy in her study, Mel Mar thought of rushing into the room as an obstacle-course.) and said, “What? What’s happened?”

Footmonster narrowed her eyes in thought and stroked her imaginary beard. “Hmm…I don’t remember….”

“Well, that was a wasted work-out.”

“Ooh--good alliteration.”

“Thank you. So do you have any idea why you called me?” asked Mel Mar, obviously a bit annoyed as anyone would be after having been called in as if there were an emergency only to find that the person who had called was the idiot Footmonster.

“Ah, yes, now I remember. Suddenly, Windows Media Player just skipped to another song. It went from Rasputina right to the Wallflowers. Isn’t that odd?”

“No.”

“What do you mean? Hey! There it goes again!” Footmonster said as she pointed her diseased finger (She only has one finger. So how does she play the piano and type? “It‘s still a mystery!”) at the computer. “It’s randomly choosing songs to play! No, now it’s Third Eye Blind.”

“Footmonster,” Mel Mar said, sighing, “it’s supposed to do that.”

“It is? Oh, that’s right; it is. Sorry about that.”

Then something even more sudden happened: there was a boom of thunder.

Crash-boom, yip yip!

“Hey, it’s thundering,” said Mel Mar.

“Yes, but it’s not lightninging, is it?”

“What?”

So anyway, eventually they thought of a brilliant plot, and the story continued….

“Something strange happened to me the other day, Mel Mar,” Footmonster whispered. “Something very strange.”

“What was it?”

Footmonster glanced around the room quickly, checking for spies, and replied, “Listen very carefully; I shall say this only once: I discovered that I am not eighteen years old anymore.”

“Why? Are you nineteen now?”

“No…I am sixteen.”

Mel Mar gasped and threw her hands to her mouth. “How horrid!”

“Aye.”

“So what makes you think that you’re sixteen now?”

“Well, I was looking at this profile of a certain person--a certain person named Stephanie--, and her profile said that she is sixteen.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

Footmonster swallowed some toenail-clippings and replied, “Stephanie is older than I am…by seven days. That means that I’m sixteen, too!”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah, and you know what that means….”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do.”

“What does what mean?”

“Oh, it’s an interrogative word.”

“No, I mean--what did you mean by saying, ‘You know what that means….’?”

“Applesauce.”

“Oh. Right. I still don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.” Footmonster picked her chair up from the floor (Had the chair fallen over, or have I made that up? No, it had not fallen over; I had only mentioned its tendency to fall over, so…never mind.) and corrected a few typographical errors. “Wait--yes, I do!”

“You do?”

“Aye, that I do, lassie.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Nyaf a wokka gnya.”

“Oh, that makes sense, but do elaborate.”

“Well, you see that this situation has to do with numbers. With what subject are numbers commonly connected?”

Mel Mar sat in thought for a moment and then answered, “Basket-weaving!”

“YES! Oh, wait--I mean no.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“Numbers are commonly connected with--” At that moment, Footmonster sneezed.

“Ah, sneezing!”

“No. Yuck. Numbers are commonly--ugh, I’m getting this all over the keyboard. Hang on--let me get a newspaper or something. Ugh.” Footmonster wandered off and returned some forty-two hours later.

“So what were you saying?”

“Numbers are commonly connected with…MATH.”

Mel Mar gasped, screamed, and then came to her senses. “Well, we’ll just have to destroy math, won’t we?”

“Yes, of course.”

So Mel Mar and Footmonster jumped into the Goatmobile, which really ought to be called the Devilrubberduckyonwheelsmobile, and sped off into the distance. Then they abolished the evil known as math, and all was fine and dandy.

“So…” said Mel Mar on the way home in the Goatmobile, which really ought to be called the Devilrubberduckyonwheelsmobile, “does this mean that you’re eighteen again?”

“Hmm…I should think so. Let’s check when we get home.”

Footmonster ran to her computer when they arrived home and checked Stephanie’s profile.

“Oh no!” she moaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m still sixteen!”

“Well, I guess that we’ll just have to destroy math again, shan’t we?”

“Sure.”

So they abolished math again….

And again…

And again…

And again.

“Well,” said Footmonster, “I give up.”

“Me thirteen,” said Mel Mar, collapsing onto a couch which had appeared suddenly.

“Let’s blame this one on Stephanie.”

“Sounds good to me.”

The End