The Pointless Pursuits of a Particularly Preposterous Person III

PART TWO

At the little pink cottage, Argyllmylsvouth sat in his basement, oblivious of the extraordinary events that were unfolding outside. Instead, he was dealing with his strangest feature- his addiction to melons.

            Very little people knew about Argyllmylsvouth’s crazy addiction, and those who did didn’t understand why on Earth anyone would actually have an addiction to melons. There had been a few theories; maybe it was the irresistibly smooth, green skin or the juicy flesh inside that had him hooked, or the satisfying squelch from when you hit one with a hammer. As addicting as these sounded though, they were all wrong.

            Slipping on a pair of goggles, Argyllmylsvouth selected his sharpest knife from a rack on the wall then selected a melon from the basket in the corner and took it to his workbench. Carefully, he sliced the melon in half straight down the middle. Inspecting the skillfully precise cut, he put back his knife and grabbed a pair of tweezers from the bench and prized out three seeds. He then put these aside and threw the rest of the melon away.

            The next step was tricky. After donning a pair of rubber gloves, Argyllmylsvouth selected a test tube from a draw in the bench and poured in lime juice. Setting this aside in a test tube rack, he then cracked an egg in a bowl and filtered it until only the yolk remained. When this was done, he added this to the lime juice. To finish the solution, he took a shot of Coca-Cola mixed with liquid caramel, added it to the test tube and then quickly put his thumb over the top and shook it vigorously until the liquid was the color of liquid gold. 

“Time to make you sparkle.” he whispered, picking up the three melon seeds and dropping them one by one into the golden solution. With a fizzle and a puff of pungent, sulfurous gas, the solution turned a sickening bright red.

            Argyllmylsvouth had come across this concoction when he was just a teenager. He had been very interested in science so had decided to make his own chemical solution, which he called ‘Melogyllbroth’. After taking one sip, he was out cold. When he finally woke after two weeks, he was in hospital with a patch over his left eye. The doctors told him that he was to never try Melogyllbroth again because taking more could not just blind him but it could possibly kill him too. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take their advice because when he was unconscious he had experienced the ultimate high. There was nothing in the world more powerful than the solution he had created- it was the ultimate anti-depressant, the one drug to rule them all. 

            Every day, he would take the tiniest drop of Melogyllbroth and momentarily pass out for that incredible and intense buzz of vibrant color and haunting images that floated around his cranium. He thought that this way by taking the drug in the smallest doses, he wouldn’t suffer any long-term effects, but after a while he started to notice things changing. His arms and fingers thinning out and lengthening like claws, his teeth rotting away, and his skin turning greasy and greyish-green. Over time, his addiction made him into a monster.

            “It’s worth every drop.” he told himself, dropping a tiny amount of red liquid into his wide-open mouth. With a shudder and a spasm, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed onto the basement floor. After a few minutes, his eyes slowly shuddered open. It had been the greatest feeling yet, so many vibrant colors and poignant unnatural sounds. He disregarded the usual pains that shot through his nervous system- it was far too late to worry about that now. Sitting up, he checked his body for any anomalies and found nothing but maybe a few extra shady blotches on his belly. Argyllmylsvouth smiled and stood up, then collapsed. Shaking his head, he tried again and managed to stay up but he was very unbalanced. Stumbling over to his bench, he grabbed hold of the chair to keep himself steady and placed the palm of his free hand on his head to nurse it as a terrible pain screamed inside.