Sarsaparilla Alphabet #8

H - HELIUM

Psssssssssshoomp.

"Here ya go, kid. A big, red balloon." Justin smiled. Giving away balloons was his favorite part of being a balloon vendor, especially red ones, which turned everything on the other side of the sun the color of sweet cherries.

"Red?" asked the kid. "But... I want blue, Mister J." Mister J was what Justin wanted all of his regular customers to call him. It made him feel like he could be a role model for them while maintaining a certain degree of coolness.

He handed the kid a blue balloon, which shone purple on his face as the sun set. Justin closed up his balloon cart and wheeled it to his car.

Justin has always liked balloons as a kid, ever since he asked for a butterfly at his fourth birthday party and got a net filled with a hundred of the little things seemingly suspended in the air until their eventual capture. However, when he swung the balloon net, it only caught one, small, red butterfly among the many. It had shriveled up long ago, but Justin had tried to replicate it ever since. He was getting close, but when he swung his nets, they would sometimes catch five or ten or two or none at all. He did, however, create a host of other wonderful balloon inventions, such as a frying pan with a pancake that you could flip into the air, a full-size Great White Shark, and the cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," all of which were made with (mostly) red balloons.

The obsession with the color red was probably a personal preference thing. Some people tend to buy clothes of one color, others paint their home's walls another, and some people only make balloon animals with the color red.

The next day, Justin arrived at the park and a sneer shot across his face. It was her, that blue balloon bending bitch, Catherine (They were both aware that it would've been a lot more poetic had her name started with a "B." But seriously, what's a good "B" name, anyway? Beth is short for Elizabeth and Bethany and Belinda are just kind of witchy. Catherine's parents certainly weren't expecting that.)

"Ah, I'm glad that you're here," she cackled. "You can have a front row seat to the unveiling of the greatest balloon sculpture ever created!"

Justin's face sagged. "Do what now?" To be honest, he was curious, but he was also nervous, as he hadn't created anything new to provide a witty enough retort to her – the "Sgt. Pepper" collection was entered into last year's nationwide competition. He had won third place.

At noon, Catherine threw up a loudspeaker in front of her face and her voice crackled across the park. "So you've seen the hundreds of squirrels around the park? Well, have you seen one that's 200-feet tall and can breathe fire?" And so, parkgoers came to see her giant, blue, fire-breathing balloon squirrel. Justin was there, too, off to the side. He was smiling.

Catherine screamed. "Let's fire this baby up!" She pressed a single blue button on a remote control and the giant, rubbery squirrel shot a 50-foot-long flame from its mouth. Catherine laughed triumphantly as the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed, that is, until simple science made its presence known. The latex melted away and the animal quickly deflated into a depressing lump over the mouth of the flamethrower.

An astute man exclaimed, "It's gonna blow!" and the crowd panicked and fled the park. Justin grabbed Catherine and ran her behind one of the brick restrooms before the flamethrower melted itself and ignited its fuel. It resembled a small bomb as the entire park resembled a war-torn city in Palestine as the dust cleared. The two balloon artists emerged unscathed from behind the ripped restroom. Justin's cart had be blown next to them and everything that was inside had been ripped out.

"Hey, what's this?"
Justin sighed. "Another broken dream." He kicked the broken door off of the cart.
"No, I mean, this net-thing. Isn't this what that old guy Tantione made, that butterfly net?"
"Yeah, it's what made me get into balloons in the first place. I never got to figure it out, and now I never will."
"Here, lemme stick some of my blue butterflies onto it. Since red light has a long wavelength, amongst colors, anyway, the net won't work the way that you want it to. You have to balance it out, man. Just because you like red doesn't mean that you exclusively use it."

Catherine finished adding on some of her butterflies to the net. He took it in his hand, and swung at the swarm of red and blue bugs in the air. He smiled. He had caught a blue one.

Sarsaparilla Alphabet #5

E - ELEPHANT

The man rode atop the elephant, in a fancy, wooden box that resembled a castle tower. Rapunzel let down her golden ladder and he climbed out of his box and into the castle window. They talked about elephants and castles and the like, so much so, that whenever he came to her room, he was filled with the warmest glow that made his face shine brighter than the sun. Eventually, the sunlight made his heart grow flowers, which he picked and gave to Rapunzel whenever they were in full bloom. They made love, but the man had never experienced anything so intense, so wild. Her hair seemed more brilliant each day.

A number of months later, however, he noticed that her once-brilliant locks were dulling. When they made love, all of those feelings returned and her hair once again shone, illuminating the entire castle. But Rapunzel was concerned with how far apart their worlds were – her in her castle, and the man on top of his elephant. The man was bewildered. She was just a short climb away, this was nonsense! But Rapunzel truly did love him, so she continued to let down her hair, but told him that each day, it would be just a little bit shorter.

The man continued to enjoy each day that he was her as if he was the richest man in the world, but he was still aware of what was to come. When her hair was just out of reach, he would jump from his box, despite the fact that he couldn't jump very high at all. One day, however, he climbed into Rapunzel's room to find another man, who didn't own an elephant. In fact, he merely walked on the ground and Rapunzel hair had, in fact, been getting longer each day. The man stared in disbelief. Rapunzel's hair shined brighter than the sun. The man's garden had not been tended to and a final, devastating thundercloud appeared in his chest.

Rapunzel offered to continue talking to him, but the man would have to yell at her while she stood by the castle's window. Many times, he considered destroying, burning, and throwing the castle off of the elephant's back, but the sun was always behind the thundercloud, just waiting for its chance to seize control of the sky. The man decided that this chance was one worth taking and continued talking to Rapunzel as he rode his elephant across the desert.