Who Moved My TV?

By Jonathan Lowe

Question: when do sewer rats in suburbia acquire intelligence and cunning? Answer: when they begin calling each other names. For Duff and Tuff, newly arrived on Conner's lawn after being ejected from a drain culvert during a flood, their I.Q. soon begins to rise while Conner's falls. Conner, you see, is obsessed with TV. Now the plan is to keep this bachelor from going through with his vow to change his life (and their situation) by pretending to be his supposedly deceased ex wife. Inspired by "Who Moved My Cheese?" this short fable has but one lesson: imagination is linked to reading, not watching television.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathan Lowe
• Release date: Oct 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370877850

Jonathan Lowe

Jonathan Lowe is the award winning author of the Clive Cussler endorsed POSTMARKED FOR DEATH, AWAKENING STORM, THE METHUSELAH GENE, JUDGE JURY: Hybrid Stories, and LOTTERY ISLAND (JACKPOT ISLAND on other channels than Amazon.) He has published widely in magazines, with awards for fiction and drama.

Book preview

Who Moved My TV?

Jonathan Lowe

Copyright © 2017 Jonathan Lowe

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

To the late great Ray Bradbury, who answered every letter I wrote him, and encouraged me to write, early on.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

--Ray Bradbury

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

OVERMAN

BE GOOD JOHNNY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first novella exists on audio under the same title, on Audible, narrated by Christopher Vournazos. The second story is a scifi/fantasy, and the third won a SC Fiction Project award, and was published in The State.

Who Moved My TV?

Once upon a time, not long ago nor far away, there lived two sewer rats whose names were Duff and Tuff. Like most ignorant rodents looking to survive, they didn't always have names, nor were they always friends. In fact, neither of them had even so much as sampled dumpster nachos together until one day a rain surge flooded the tunnel into which they'd run, and ejected them from their dark culvert, high up onto a soggy lawn in the forbidden daylight of Overground.

At first the two were terrified, and unable to move. They just looked at each other for the first time, splayed out as they were on the wet grass, with their slick hair matted down. Then the one to be known as Duff said, you ugly.

Oddly, this statement got no reaction, even though it occurred somehow to Duff himself that it wasn't a very nice (much less constructive) observation to make. Here, in the daymare realm of suburban lunacy, it had just seemed so appropriate that Duff felt no guilt at all. So he repeated himself. Did you hear me? Duff asked. "I said 'you ugly.'"

Now the other rat, as yet immobile, merely stared past him at the drainage culvert from which they had both been ejected, yet seemed to feel no disgrace or outrage at Duff's statement. And when he finally did reply, it was with another odd question. which was, "What's ugly?"

Duff was puzzled by this response, and then felt a sense of awe overwhelming his terror as he realized that he really shouldn't know what the word ugly meant, either. After all, with what was he making a comparison? Considering it, Duff eventually concluded that there was something about being here--on this beautiful green lawn in broad daylight--that had somehow influenced such thoughts. Perhaps the very act of noticing how beautiful it was had somehow done it, if not considering the very concept of beautiful. In any event, the next thing he said was, You Tuff.

Tuff? asked Tuff, perplexed.

Duff sighed, having noticed that Tuff had not only lifted his head, (while dodging the insults hurled at him), but had also managed to stand and swish his tail, allowing a warm breeze heated by the sun to dry out his fur. Duff tried to stand up himself, and failed.

Tuff, repeated Tuff, noticing how pathetic his new companion now looked by comparison. "I guess I am Tuff! Then he frowned, which in sewer rats consisted of flashing one's lower teeth. But you. . . you better get up off your duff and act tuff, or we both be seen, sure enough."

Duff? Duff queried.

Well, it rhymes, doesn't it?

Sure enough, thought Duff. Then he looked over at the big, ominous house on whose lawn they'd been exiled, and back at the dark drainage culvert which had finally stopped gushing brown water. "Can you help me get up? You know, I haven't competed in as many races as you have. I've been more. . .of a spectator. Like from the side tunnels? In the dark? With the food?"

Tuff clicked his teeth in derision, which among most mute sewer rats easily translated as laughter. Then he scuttled over to nab a flap of fat on Duff's duff, lifting his hind legs into the air.

Ouuuuuu! protested Duff. Yet with his legs soon under him, instead of splayed out on either side, he did see method behind Tuff's madness. When Tuff bit down on his neck in order to lift his front side, though, Duff had to bite his own tongue to avoid the embarrassment of crying out like a wimpy mouse.

Once upright, and facing the culvert where they hoped to escape danger, Duff felt a little better, until he had another surprising thought, which was to wonder whether any other members of their pack had even survived the flash flood, or if they were indeed the sole survivors--the only tail swishers left. What if, he said, we go back down there, and. . .and they're all dead.

Dead? said Tuff.

And what if, added Duff, "there's been another flash flood? What then?"

Then we die, Tuff concluded.

Yeah. Think about that one.

"Well, how can I?