Fanfic Short Stories

Calvin & Hobbes: Now You're Talking

Summary: Calvin is in college, struggling with writing a novel. Hobbes to the rescue!

Spaceman Spiff set the coordinates for his destination and blasted off. Dodging hostile craft, he zipped into the wormhole and out the other side.

"Target acquired," his nav system informed him as he hovered over the planet.

What a strange world this was! Creatures loomed over him, shoulder-to-shoulder so that they looked like one solid mass instead of individuals.

"Arrived."

Calvin grabbed the insulated container from the passenger seat and ran up to the door of a row house. He knocked and pulled the bag of food from the container. "Order for Millicent," he said to the woman who opened the door.

She peered into the bag and sniffed. "That's not what I ordered."

Calvin glanced at the order on his phone. He showed it to her.

"Yeah, I ordered the chicken salad. This is the tuna salad. I'm allergic to tuna." She shooed him away. "Keep it. Toss it. Whatever. Just get it out of here."

Spaceman Spiff evaded the grumpy denizens of Row House World, clocking off from his shift of hauling cargo. At last he could head home and enjoy —

"Fuel reserves dangerously low," announced his spacecraft.

He'd stretched the limits by taking on this last cargo run. Would this be the end of Spaceman Spiff — spiraling uncontrollably down toward a hostile planet?

He pressed a button on his navigation panel.

Yes! There was a charging station compatible with his craft minutes away! He arrived just in the nick of time.

Calvin plugged into the charging station and returned to the car. He glanced at the rejected tuna salad sandwich. Why not? He munched the sandwich and tore into the accompanying bag of chips while he waited.

An hour later, Calvin trudged through the door of his apartment. "Do gig work," he muttered. "Set your own hours. It'll be fun, they said."

"Rough day?" asked Susie. They were roommates. Susie was attending State College on a scholarship. Calvin was taking writing classes at Community College.

"Well, I got a tuna salad sandwich, so it wasn't a total loss," Calvin said. "But my dreams of plotting a best-selling sci-fi novel are crashing and burning. I thought I'd be inspired by driving around doing deliveries." He shrugged. "I'm just rehashing the same old ideas."

"I've got just the thing to cheer you up," Susie announced. "Your mom sent us a care package. There were cookies and..." She held up a stuffed animal. "Hobbes decided to join us!"

Calvin reached for the tiger. "Hobbes! I know exactly where you belong." He placed Hobbes on the shelf over his desk.

Later that evening, Calvin sat at the desk, pecking at his laptop's keyboard. "What if Spaceman Spiff was a shapeshifter who could turn into a tiger?"

A deep growly voice said, "What if he was a tiger who could shift into a human?"

"Now you're talking!" Calvin said, his fingers racing along the keyboard as they tried to keep up with the ideas finally flowing from his mind.

A couple of minutes later he said, "Wait. You're talking!" He looked up at the shelf, where Hobbes was stretched out in a very cat-like position. Hobbes had been silent the last few years. Calvin hadn't expected to hear his voice again.

"You're listening," Hobbes said.

Calvin stood up, pulled Hobbes from the shelf, and hugged him tight.

A/N: Written for Flufftober prompt: Love of my life