Chapter Two. Innocuous. Unless you’re indignant. In which case SUPER oculus.

 
 Pinky-Von-Sox and the Cave of Squawking Mumbles

Chapter Two

It was a few months earlier when my best friend, Leaves, had originally asked me if I 'wanna go on an adventure with him'.

His voice was excited, warm, joyful, friendly, voicelely, seemingly defecating delight in a way which bathed the third eye, and yet I still knew exactly what he meant. This was Leaves. That meant by ‘an adventure’, Leaves meant he wanted to go out somewhere local do something violently unadventurous.

You see Leaves, despite being my best of bestest friends, is unfortunately just a really, really, super, really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super boring guy. 

Named for the first thing his mother saw looking up after pushing him out of her, Leaves was born in a small tree house home in the suburb of Mexico City, in the city of Mexico City, in some unnamed country in Central America. With a Swedish mother and a pre-US State Era Alaskan father who himself had one Belarusian parent and One Sri-Lankan parent. They were part of a popular religion at the time, the Treechrisinas, a group who believed that Green Tree Frogs had sweet lives, shiny bodies, and were a fun color, and wanted in on it. 

Leaves parents had been sent to Mexico City by the Great Froggington, the religions leader, to live in the only two trees left in the entire urban sprawl, figuring 'we get those two trees we'll have a monopoly, and according to the board game The Game Of Life, having a monopoly will make you rich, and get you a $10 prize in a beauty contest, and what’s the point of craving shiny green skin if you cant win a prize?’

Yet Leaves wasn’t as enamored with tree life as his parents were. In fact from an early age he was mostly fascinated by a local dirt-runway airfield that was hidden behind those two trees. The planes were exciting, adventurous, flying, and planeyey, and seemed to betroth airborness in a way that soaked the fourth mind. 

‘Where do they go?’ he’d think. ‘Where do they come from?’ he’d wonder. ‘Why do my parents make me eat flies with my tongue?’ He’d ponder. ‘How come despite my exotic genetic background I look like just a regular Mexican, like a young Chong, or Cheech, which ever one was the Mexican one?’ He’d contemplate. ‘If I went somewhere on one of those planes could I be someone else, perhaps even anyone I want to be, like even some non-frog freak?’ He’d muse. 

One day he asked his parents these questions. It didn't go well. 

‘Your mother slaves in the kitchen all day to serve those flies for you, stop being so ungrateful you little shit!’ his dad screamed in response. 

So Leaves ran. Ran straight for the airfield. Found a small Cessna parked next to the Churro stand, and snuck onboard while it’s pilot flirted with a roller-skate wearing waitress. By the time the pilot had watched the object of his affection get caught in a gust of wind and roll away into a marsh, and climbed back into the cockpit, Leaves had crawled into a small crevice under the steering wheel, where he got trapped. 

Too embarrassed to say anything, seeing as his Spanish was affected by a Swedish accent his mother gave him (just like Cheech, or was it Chong with the Swedish accent?), that he thought made him sound like a French person doing a mocking impression of a Chilean trying to learn Norwegian, which was a popular Vaudevillian trope at the time. So Leaves just stayed put and stayed quiet. And for the next four years he stayed put and quiet here full time. 

It turned out that this particular Cessna was a drug, alcohol and exotic bird smuggling plane. And for the next four years Leaves would stay trapped in this tiny space as this plane circumvented Central America, South America, North America, and even dabbled a bit around West America, East America, South East America and America Samoa. 

Luckily for him the pilot of this plane, Juanosa, was addicted to buffalo chicken sauce so would buy wings by the bucket load, lick off all the sauce, and jam the left over chicken into the gap behind the steering wheel figuring that they'd eventually find their way out the landing gear, and he wouldn’t have to deal with parrots looking at him sitting next to a bucket of bird bones with fear and suspicion. And so that's what Leaves ate for four years, himself shoving the bones out through the landing gear whenever they arrived somewhere. He’d drink the water from the windshield sprayers to quench his thirst. And he'd shit and piss into the engines and imagine his excrement spraying over forests and gardens and fertilizing the world. It was a more than satisfying way to survive.

Sometimes Juanosa would call his girlfriend on the radio and describe what he was seeing, and Leaves would dream around these descriptions:

'I'm over the ocean, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goat herds?' 

Or,

'I'm over the desert, what to you think I'm seeing fucking whale herds?'

Or,

'I'm over the city, what do you think I'm seeing fucking goats herds fucking fucking whale herds? 

It all sounded magical to Leaves. 

Other times Leaves would catch the tiniest of glimpse of some remote airport runway or another as he'd be sticking chicken bones out through the landing gear gaps. 

It was a glorious, fantasy filled life. 

Tragically though, one day Juanosa discovered that you could just buy bottles of the buffalo chicken sauce he loved so hard at the grocery store, and he didn't actually need to buy the chicken parts, he could just smash the bottle onto his face and lick it right off himself, and Leaves food source disappeared.

So at the next stop he climbed out of his happy home, and found himself on a small Argentinian Island of Vanitjua. Temporarily blinded from seeing more than a crack of sunlight for the first time in years, he was kidnapped by Pirates, and by the time his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight the pirates had circumnavigated the globe and sold him to a Melbourne, Australia based Malaysian family who needed a new delivery boy for their Chinese restaurant. 

Eventually they would learn to love him as a real boy, and adopted him. And that's when I met him, delivering food to my house one day, and we became firm friends. 

He was mostly a great guy, but he did have flaws. Like for example he was always threatening to leave me. 

'I don't know, something inside me makes me yearn to see the world, I have no idea what or why, but I just do?' He'd say to me when we were hanging out. 

'Fine, go you dick, I don't need you' I'd reply, my feelings hurt. 

'Come on Pinky' he'd plead 'don't be like that, it's just a yearning I have, you know like your yearning to be funny?'

'Hey I don't yearn to be funny, I just am funny, and if you say something like that again I'll cut off your fanny! And see, that's funny, because a fanny is a vagina, and you don't actually have one, that's what makes it perfect comedy.'

'In some parts of the world a fanny is your bottom, and I do have one of those.'

'You are such a dick. Ok then just go, disappear. Apparently your yearnings are more important than me getting my Honey Chicken and Nasi-Goring whenever I want it' 

'Don’t worry Pinky, you know I’m not going yet, I'm not going anywhere till I can do it RIGHT, you know, something inside me makes me feel like I'm ready to travel in a way designed to really SEE stuff, I have no idea what it is, it's just a yearning, you know?'

'Like a monkey yearns to be a wrench?' I'd say, as another perfect joke, ‘that’ll burn him, BURN HIM LIKE A LOG I DON’T SEE EYE TO EYE WITH’ I’d think to myself manically, seeing as I’d compared his yearning to monkeys wanting to be wrenches, when in actual fact they often DON’T want to be wrenches. I often use hilarious burns like this to break the tension, and cover up that I am again not tipping Leaves for his latest food delivery. I don't want him to get enough money to afford his big travels of course; real friends keep them as close to them as they can.

Still the point is, obviously, Leaves is a boring friend. He'd made a pact with himself that he refused to go anywhere that wasn't in his new parent’s restaurant delivery area until he could get enough money to do it right. And Leaves’ pacts were usually tight, staunch, ironclad, pacty, seemingly leaking enchantment in a way that wet sponged the fifth cognizance. So within these few dozen blocks was where we spent all our time, and there is very little fun to be had in these few dozen blocks. 

Yep ‘wanna go on an adventure?’ Leaves asked. Who would ever have imagined that the boring thing he had planned would ultimately lead to something that would cause change. And this change would be in a really, really, super, really, super, totally, super, ridiculously really super amazing way! And this amazing thing would change the entire world. Superly. Even a fearful and suspicious looking parrot hostage would tell you that.