Peacorn Universe ♦ ♢ RELATABLE LOVE STORY ADVENTURE ☼ (Open)

[Lunar Lullaby]

Peacorn

"Bert?" Peacorn chuckled. What a silly name. " After you guys left me for dead I knocked over a lamp and found this note."
Peacorn pulled the letter out of his droopy back pocket. "let's see here…. it says….. my darling cre…er….um…. not that part…..uh… here it is! Cindy, my wife, liked to play games and it looks like she still does, even beyond the grave." Peacorn now thought it was time for the Twilight Zone's them song to play. "Any way she tells me here that I'm supposed to find a key that's hidden in the hotel we had our honeymoon in and that the key fits into a special lock somewhere in my house and I'll find 'a big juicy surprise'…Cindy liked to say things were 'a big juicy surprise."' Peacorn looked away, lost in the thoughts of Cindy giving Millard wet willies and eating expired pickles. The good old days.

Peacorn snapped out of it. "Any way, October, I hope you'll come along, I could use your brains, Millard your er… sharp teeth, and Bert (muted chuckle), your blessing and muscle. What do ya say, team Peacorn?" Peacorn put his hand in the middle of them. "Unite?"

[A.ntique]

October

October listened thoughtfully and sighed, "Only if we split this big juicy surprise." She quickly made the arrangements, "I'll take 80% and you and Millard can split the rest." She believed this to be fair. Popping her neck from side to side, she straightened. "Team Peacorn?" She gave him a withering glance, "Might as well call it Team Wrinkly Bald Head of Doom and Despair." She then stared at the hand he had extended. Was that a mole or a milk dud on it? She shivered, "Put that thing away, there are children here."

[.jabberwocky]

Millard shuddered at the mention of a "big juicy surprise". Knowing Peacorn, it was probably some kind of expired pickle. Millard was quite the connoisseur of expired pickles. He'd found some of them had a surprisingly pleasant zing, but most had a zing of a.... different kind.

But wait... the note was from his mother? Millard barely remembered her. Most of the time he'd spent with her had been at her grave. And even that was only because he would regularly take his plate out to the backyard and scrape his leftover frozen dinners onto Al's (since Al had loved garbage and table scraps in life). Millard couldn't turn down an opportunity to get a message from her. Maybe she'd tell him that he was adopted. Or had been bought at a flea market or something. And his real parents were foreign and rich and were searching for him and would serve him proper pickles, not ones that oozed yellow goop like sweat.

"I'm in," said Millard bravely, voice cracking in the height of puberty. (He was a late bloomer.) "B-But I want 50%." He was wary to object to anything his aunt proposed, especially involving money, but this was important to him. "Since I'm the fruit of her loins!"

[A.ntique]

October shot Millard a glare, "Fruit of her loins?" She shook her head, "You're more like one of Peacorn's expired pickles." Her face scrunched up into a sour expression at the thought of one of her brother's kerosene cucumbers. "I'm sorry Millard, but you only get 19%, it's what's best for you." She nodded knowingly. "What if the surprise is one giant moldy cheese block? What then? What will you do with fifty percent of a giant moldy cheese block?

[Lunar Lullaby]

Peacorn

"Well, I'm her husband! I'll take 40%, Milly-30%, October and bertie can have the last 30%." Peacorn wondered why the surprise was. 100000000000000 expired pickles? Drugs? That last question brought back bitter-sweet memories."Well, Cindy was allergic to cheese, that's why you're allergic, Millard." Peacorn unknowingly crushed Millard's hopes and dreams…. again. Peacorn was actually so good at it that he would still do it after the grave concerning a purple shoe, but of course he would never know it. "Well, I know Cindy lost some jewelry a while ago, but then again, Al did have sparkly poop at one point… so…You heard my offer. Take or leave it." It felt good to talk with authority. Of course it would never last.

[A.ntique]

October stared at her brother in silence, "Maybe that bone between your ears blocked your hearing. I believe I said I'd be getting 80%." She walked over to a drawer filled with hundreds of little slips of paper. She rummaged through it for a time before finally pulling one out, "Ah ha! Here it is," she read it allowed, "I O U one big juicy surprise - Peacorn." She looked up, "I am only asking for 80 percent. That's more than fair."

[Lunar Lullaby]

Peacorn

Peacorn felt shame but it was nothing new. He remembered when he wrote that. 1-23-78. When October wouldn't let Peacorn leave the bathroom. She bribed him. He had no choice. "Fine…" He said as the yellow line on his back almost showed through his navy blue shirt and skinny jeans, "But you have to split it with Bernie. Millard'll take 9% and I'll take 11%. Sorry Mil but I still have custody." Peacorn had even brought papers that proved it. He got them from a friend who was able to forge anything. Peacorn met Arnie in the drug business, something he never told anyone.

[A.ntique]

October

October looked satisfied. However, that last remark about him having custody of Millard lead to an angry twisting of her face. "Not anymore you don't." She reminded him of her son's betrayal and her victory. "You're nothing more to him now but a bad dream from which he is finally waking up."

[.jabberwocky]

Millard

Millard hated it when Aunt October dug into her drawers of I.O.U.'s -- over the years, he and Peacorn had slowly promised their lives away to her through her manipulative ways and hard bargain-driving, from "I.O.U. one pizza" to "I.O.U. one Milly's childhood".

"Hey," said Millard, suddenly gaining a rare bout of confidence. "Let's just call it off until we get there and find out what it is. Aunt October, you might not even want whatever we end up finding." It could be a golden ukulele or something like that. Only Millard would have use for such an object. Playing jazz on his half-broken tinny uke at home was his only talent, and the one thing in his life Peacorn hadn't managed to screw up for him, since Millard kept it hidden in a tiny space he found under a squeaky tile in the trailer.

[Lunar Lullaby]

Peacorn

"Yeah, wow son, that was really smart. I'm proud of you." Peacorn smiled. It was a poor excuse for a smile. But hey, it was. Peacorn's yellow teeth showed. He still had 4 baby teeth. He was scared to brush them in fear they would fall out and he would loose his devastating good looks. "How about October you make some food and Millard and I can find some clothes to disguise ourselves in in your attic and then tomorrow we can go to Cindy and mine's honeymoon spot and Bert…" Bert was just standing there. As if his throbbing muscles which resembled a lone cloud in a desert of fat people said enough"….just keep sparkling."