POTATO MOON, Part 31 by Matt “Tuberous” McLain

“The force? The force? The Force! Of course! The FORCE! I must follow the Force!!!!1111111”

The magnitude of such a realization shook even the gods of (sic) grammar, and broke the physics of language. For a brief moment, exclamation points went through a rapid breeding period, evolution to an ascended, even higher language – thus unnamed but one that allows math to be punctuation, and was rapidly extinguished by the genocidal zealous of the quotation mark.

“The thing to remember here,” He said aloud. “Is the clues that I’ve been given. Yes, it all makes sense!” The pieces clicked together like something out of a jigsaw puzzle. Satisfied with the brilliant metaphor, Edwood, raced off to follow the Force.

His adventure lead him to the Prescott’s Ascott’s Ford’s Theater and House of Flapjacks. It was a place he visited many times as a child, and had even known the owner, a Mr. Prescott. Edwood smiled at the memory of how it was his idea to add the Flapjack house. If he had been able to eat (just to be clear, he COULD if he wanted to, he just didn’t need to), Edwood would have gladly stopped in for some of the tastey flapjacks.

The darkening clouds foreshadowed menacingly. He thought it was an apt metaphor about buying a car, and congratulated his intelligence.

The old theater was just the same as always was. Well, except for the newly redone exterior, the inclusion of color and sound in the screening rooms, the recently redone interior, and the overall renovation done to bring the building up to the current health and safety code.

Rich smells of freshly made batter was strong enough to be sensed outside (just to be clear, again. Edwood COULD smell it if he wanted to, but he just chooses to sense it. Batter has a strong aura in this world). Without pause the masculine (but not too masculine), beautiful (in an inspiring way), romantic (NOT A STALKER), blood drinker (only in a sexy way) hero (Whom we all need), proudly (in a modest way) marched through the opening of the building.

Two bored looking ushers were sitting on top of the concession counter. One was busily texting away on his cell phone, he other busily working his way through a giant tub of popcorn. As Edwood stepped through the door, both ushers raised their hands to shield their eyes.

“Whoa! Hold on a second! Could you turn down the brightness there?” the one on the cellphone cried out to Edwood.

“What do you mean?” Edwood smiled his darkest, most mysteriously happy smile at the young man.

“Are you blind? You’re like a living disco ball!” (Regrettably, the exclamation points were once again stopped by the wicked quotation marx)

“I’m not alive.” Edwood stated casually (but he COULD be, but then he wouldn’t half as dark or mysterious). “And what’s a disco ball?”

The other usher stuck his head out of the popcorn tub and turned a greasy stare towards the hero. His mouth moved like a cows (which Edwood could also become, but that would just be silly) working at a piece of cud. Loud smacks came at the begining of every sentence.

-smack- “Look in the mirror at some point.” -smack- “‘Course, you couldn’t see yourself with all the sparkles…”

“I think he caused a pile-up outside…” The texter noticed, then quickly used his phone to Didder it.

Edwood glanced behind him, and noticed the smoking, twisted wreckage in front of the theater. Somehow three cars and a bus full of sad orphans met at a one way intersection. A few of the smaller children were crawling out to safety. One child was using their arm, which was bending somewhere below the elbow, to try to pull an unconscious child out of the wreckage before they burned to death.

“Eh,” Our beautiful hero shrugged as an indoor breeze flowed through his perfectly windswept hair. “They aren’t even named, so who cares?

The two ushers shared a glance. The smacker finished his popcorn and tossed a few seeds into his mouth to chew. They popped loudly as he bit down on them. “Well, I’m Henry Carpenter.” Henry turned his head slightly towards the texter. “And he’s -”

“Look, that’s great guys, but we need to focus more on me.” Edwood interjected supurbly. “Listen, all of it makes perfect sense. The Force, the vague movie references, the not so vauge movie references. I must, I HAVE, to master the Force.”

Henry put on a pair of dark sunglasses so he could look at our hero. “You do realize the Force doesn’t exist, right?”

“Don’t be stupid. If Potato(e) Kings and nuclear energy exists, then there must be some strange energy known as the Force out there. And I must be sensitive to it, otherwise I wouldn’t have come to this conclusion.”

Both ushers were silent for a long time as they processed what Edwood said. Our sparkly vampire stood dramatically as he waited for their slow human brains to catch up to him. Behind him, he could hear some sirens as they approached the wreck.

“And you’re here why?” Texter finally broke the silence.

“Why, I’m here to watch the new Star Trek movie. That’s the only way I’ll understand this Force.”

“But that’s not…” Henry started to say, but stopped short. “You know what? The movie isn’t going to help you all that much. You can’t learn from a movie. It would be like learning Karate by watching the ‘Three Ninjas’ movies.

“What you need is help.” Henry looked over at the other usher and smiled. “And we’re just the guys to do it. Between the two of us, we know everything there is to know about cliche.”

“I don’t know what that word means.” Edwood said.

“It means, we’ll help you discover the Force, and we’ll do it in the only way that works in the movies.”

Henry threw the popcorn tub back on the stack so it could be used by paying customers, and wiped his greasy hands on his pants. Texter hopped down next to Henry. They posed dramatically (though not as dramatically as Edwood, but not bad for humans), and shouted simulta….simuali….together.

“MONTAGE!”