Stuart

Ding dong! One day I was coming down the stairs of my house when the doorbell rang and echoed throughout the house. Since the door is right at the bottom of the stairs I called to no one in particular; "I'll get it!" I picked up my pace and jumped the last two stair landing with a loud thud. I walked to the door and opened it wide. I expected to see one of my buddies, wanting to see if I could come out and play with them on this warm, sunny Saturday, but that’s not what I found at all. Instead there was a large plywood box at the very bottom of my stone steps. That was it. No mailman, no car on the street, nobody strolling on the sidewalk, not even a stray cat; (which is very common in Mewsville.)
I then heard my mom call me from the kitchen, "Jacky? What is it?"
"It's just the mail, mom!" I called back, "And will you stop calling me that, my name's Jack!"
"Alright honey!"
I sighed a little bit; my mom was frequently calling me weird names like "honey" or "Jacky" or even going as far as "sweetie poo," even though my thirteenth birthday is in a couple weeks. It's been getting pretty annoying.
I turned back to the box to find that the front of it was completely gone. In its place was a little yellow man. He was looking up at me with an innocent smile on his face. I jumped back a little bit, slightly startled by the sudden appearance of the little person. To be honest it was actually kind of creepy.
The thing was about three feet tall and wore denim suspenders with a pocket, smack dab in the middle, on the front. He also had big medal goggles on, with a strap that looped around his head. He wore black rubber boots and gloves and had about ten hairs, each hair about one inch tall sticking strait up, on the top of his head. He also held one high-tech looking space gun in each hand. One was smaller than the other but they both looked like they could either do something weird or hurt someone.
I then asked "What are those?"
He then pointed the two guns strait up and said; "Dahs?" in a high almost squeaky voice.
"Yeah, those," I responded. I wasn't sure if I knew what he said or if I just knew what he was trying to say.
The person dropped the gun in his left hand, took aim with the one in his right, and pointed it at a tree on the other side of my yard. He pulled the trigger and a beam of electric-blue light shot out of the end making a loud galactic zap type of sound. I looked at the tree that he had pointed the gun at, and was surprised to see two trees that looked exactly alike right next to each other. The second tree was leaning the same direction as the first, it had the same color leaves, and the same color bark too. I looked down at the little person and saw that he was smiling up at me looking pleased with himself. He put down the gun he was just holding and picked up the one he had put down before. He pointed this one at the tree that had appeared and pulled the trigger. This time there was no sound at all but a beam of pure white light, not as bright as the first, shot out of the end of the weapon. After not even a second, the light stopped and I looked up to see the tree gone completely. There was no sign of a tree ever being there. No crater where the roots had been, no leaves floating in the air, nothing, nothing at all.
I looked down at the little person and saw him, again, looking pleased with himself. I then did a quick analysis; the first gun that he showed me wasn't that dangerous, it only duplicated things. The second gun though, made things disappear completely. I thought it best for the little yellow person not to have the second gun. I advanced on the little person and made a grab for the weapon. He stepped back, avoiding my grab, and picked up the first gun, now holding one gun in each hand as before. I made a second grab for the gun and he pointed the duplicator gun at me. I stopped dead in my tracks and held up my hands.
"Just give me the one that shoots the white light." He looked at the one that made things vanish and then fired the duplicator at me. I felt a weird sensation of having the skin on one side of my body being peeled off, but it didn't hurt at all. After a second it was over and I looked over to see another me looking back at—well, me! It was really weird. It was like looking into a mirror but the reflection didn't do what you did. It just stood there, looked at you, and occasionally scratched its head or something like that. My duplicate made to go into my house but the little person pointed the disappearing gun at him and fired. He disappeared and left the face of the earth. The little person was now frowning at me as if to say: "try to grab this again and that's what you'll get.”
I then asked politely for him to give me the disintegration gun so that the disturbance that just occurred didn't happen to anyone. The little person smiled and nodded his head yes and pointed the vanishing gun at the box behind him, pulled the trigger and made the box disappear. He then looked back at me and tossed the weapon up to me. The metal on the gun was cold and smooth, and it felt good to hold. I looked at it and decided that I wanted to test it out. I turned to go back up to my room and the little yellow being walked up the steps and followed me into the house. I turned to him and said that I could set up some blankets and a pillow or something under my bed for him so that my mom wouldn’t think anything weird was going on. He nodded his head in agreement and we walked up the stairs to my room. Then I decided that if he was going to be staying with me, I would need a name to call him by instead of "you" or "thing." I asked him if I could call him Stuart. He smiled, nodded his head and said "Baddaboo," which I took as a yes.
Stuart and I made it up to my room unnoticed and I thought about what I wanted to test the disintegration gun on. I settled on having Stuart crumple up pieces of paper and throwing them into the air so that I could shoot them before they reached the ground. I was actually was pretty good at it. Eventually I got sort of bored of making things disappear over and over again and asked if I could try the duplication gun out. Stuart’s face transformed into a saddened look and hugged the gun. I told him that I would give it back when I was finished and he gladly handed over the gadget. We did the same thing we did when we practiced with the disintegration gun. Except this time Stuart threw pieces of paper in the air and I made more and more of them.
When I got tired of duplicating things I asked Stuart if he wanted lunch. He nodded but also asked if he could have a piece of fruit, preferably a banana. I said yes and disappeared downstairs into the kitchen where my mom was doing the dishes.
"What've you been doing up there?" she asked.
"Just reading a book," I replied untruthfully. I quickly made two sandwiches, grabbed a banana and went upstairs. What I found made me stop where I was and drop lunch. There were four Stuarts and one of them was aiming the duplicator at another's forehead. The one that was holding the gun pulled the trigger and made a fifth Stuart. They all then looked down at the floor where I had dropped the plate of lunch and said in unison; "Banana?" They all leapt for the fruit on the floor and started fighting over it. It was kind of scary actually. While they were fighting over the banana I spotted the disintegration gun on my desk and picked it up. I then yelled at the five fighting Stuarts to stop and they all looked up at me. They quickly untangled themselves and stood in a line facing me.
"Which one arrived in the box this morning?" I asked them all. The Stuart in the middle raised his hand. "Step up here please," I asked him calmly. "And you may have the banana since I originally got it for you." The Stuart that raised his hand picked up the banana and blew a wet raspberry at the other four Stuarts. I pointed the disintegration gun at the four Stuarts that were left. As I was about to fire the gun, the Stuart that was next to me jumped in front of the other ones and gave a heroic "Noooooo!" while diving in front of them. I had already pulled the trigger when this happened and was moving the beam down the line getting rid of all the Stuarts that had been copied off of the first one.

















Before I knew it, all of the Stuarts were gone and the banana had fallen to the ground.
I picked up the banana and sat down on the floor just looking at the yellow fruit for several minutes. Suddenly I heard the doorbell ring and I yelled that I would answer it. I hurried down the stairs and opened the door. Just a few hours ago there was nothing on the streets or in my yard except for one big box containing a yellow person I named Stuart. Now there were two boxes; one as big as the one that arrived this morning and one that was about an eighth the size of the first box. I made the little box go away and revealed another ray gun that looked similar to the disintegrator gun but had a short cord that came out of the back and had a head piece attached to it. I pointed the disintegration gun at the big box and fired. The box disappeared and revealed what was inside. I was very glad but also kind of ashamed of myself to see what was inside. It was Stuart! But he was tapping his foot and was looking at me with inpatients written across his face.
"Was it because I vaporized you and your duplicates?" I asked him.
He nodded and said "Mhmm."
"Sorry, I just can't keep five of you in my room. My mom would eventually find out." I decided to change the subject and asked him about the new thing that had shown up with him. "How does this one work?" I held up the gun and Stuart's face brightened as he stopped tapping his foot. He took the gun away from me and put the thing on the headpiece on. He screwed up his face as if he was thinking and then pulled the trigger. After a few seconds a lady bug the size of a small Chihuahua materialized out of thin air. Stuart gave an excited noise that sounded like it was in between a gasp and an ooooh, well it sort of transitioned from a gasp to an ooooh but it still sounded like he was really excited.
My jaw dropped and my eyes widened as I said "How did you DO that!?"
Stuart looked up at me then back at the lady bug. He hunched over, squinted, and rubbed both of the temples on the sides of his head. He looked back up at me wondering if I knew what he meant. I looked down at the gun he was holding and asked "May I try?" Stuart took off the head piece and handed me the gun. I put on the head piece and tried to think of something I really wanted. I finally settled on a large swimming pool and aimed the gun at the ground a good fifty feet away. I focused on the swimming pool and pulled the trigger of the gun. I waited a few seconds and the swimming pool materialized out of thin air. It had water in it too! Then I thought about swim trunks, pulled the trigger and those appeared on the ground in front of me too! I took off the head piece and handed the new gadget back to Stuart. I picked up the bathing suit and changed behind the swimming pool and jumped in. Stuart put down the gadget, took off EVERYTHING he was wearing and then jumped into the swimming pool.
"Eew! Go make yourself a bathing suit!" I half laughed, half commanded Stuart.
"Ohhhh" Stuart groaned and he got out of the pool. He picked up the gadget, put on the head piece, and made a tiny pair of swim trunks appear on the ground. He quickly pulled them on and got back into the pool. Just then I heard a loud buzzing noise and looked over in my yard to see the giant lady bug flying away. Stuart waved goodbye and turned back to me. At that moment I splashed him in that face and laughed a little bit. Stuart just stood there with a shocked look on his face. Then he splashed me without changing his expression. I immediately splashed back and so did he. His face brightened and we had a splash war.
After about ten minutes of splashing and inhaling water, Stuart and I got out of the pool, made ourselves towels and changed back into our regular clothes. We went inside and hurried back up to my room where we practiced making things with the new gadget. Stuart spawned enough types of fruit to put together a fairly large cornucopia of fruit and I spawned lots of money. Not that I need it any more but it still felt nice to have it. After I spawned my fifteenth one hundred dollar bill I remembered that no one knew about the swimming pool besides Stuart and myself. Then I realized that my dad would be coming home any minute. I looked out my window and saw that the pool was still there and my dad pulling in the driveway.
Stuart saw what happened and uttered a small "Uh-oh."
"Yeah, uh-oh is right," I responded. I opened my window and aimed the disintegration gun at the pool. I waited for my dad to go inside then pulled the trigger. I then made the two bathing suits go away so that there was no evidence of a pool ever being in my yard.
"Jack! Will you come here please?" I heard my dad call me from the bottom of the stairs.
I put down the disintegration gun and headed down the stairs to meat my father.
"Since when did we have a swimming pool?" He asked sternly. I talked to your mother and she said that she didn't leave the house all day, and if she did she surely wouldn’t have bought a swimming pool."
"I don’t think that she left the house either and neither do I remember ever having a swimming pool."
"Don’t think I'm dumb, I just pulled in the driveway and saw a large swimming pool sitting in the yard."
I walked over to the door and opened it. "I don’t see a swimming pool; I don’t know what you're talking about."
My dad walked over to the door and looked at the precise spot I had spawned the swimming pool. "Well—I—huh." My dad choked on his sentence. Well I guess I was seeing things, you can go back to your room." My dad looked astonished, and started muttering to himself.
I went back up to my room taking the steps two at a time. When I reached my room there were two Stuarts crouching on the floor eating all the fruit that was spawned earlier.
"Really?" I asked.
"Mhmm!" one of them answered with a mouthful of fruit.
"I don’t know were I'm going to put the rest if you make more!" I then got an idea for the storage of all the Stuarts. The next day I went outside with the spawning gun and pointed it at the ground. I thought about a very large underground room with a ladder that leads down to the floor. I focused and pulled the trigger. There, right in front of me was a trap door on the ground that stood ajar. I looked into the tunnel and saw what looked like the room I had thought about. I closed the door and saw that it was a shiny silver and if I wanted to keep it concealed from my parents I would need to do something about it. I aimed the spawner at the door and thought about a grass disguise or cover. I pulled the trigger and there was instantly a green grass cover on the door that blended right in with the grass in my yard. I opened the door to the underground room and went inside it. It was darker than a cloudy night with no moon. I pointed the spawner at the ceiling and thought some light. When I looked up the whole ceiling was glowing and illuminated the entire chamber.
The walls were shiny chromed steel with nothing on them at all. The floor was bear too. I imagined a couple of my favorite arcade games and pointed the gadget at the far wall. I pulled the trigger and saw several arcade games spawn in a line on the far side of the room. I also made a pool table, table tennis, a few dart boards, a very large TV on one wall, and an ice cream bench in the large room.
I was about to ascend the ladder when I realized I wanted a quick way to get to this room if I was in my house. I pointed the spawner at the wall right in front of me next to the ladder and thought of a high speed elevator that led right from here to the corner of my bedroom closet. I pulled the trigger and a door with a shiny metal wheel appeared in front of me. I turned the wheel and revealed a clear glass tube that went strait up. I stepped inside and pressed the up button on a panel in the tube. The lift shot strait up and within seconds I was in my closet.
I walked out of my closet and saw yet again five Stuarts standing in my room but this time my mom was standing there with them. I quickly pointed the spawner at my desk and thought of a memory erasing tool. After I pulled the trigger a very small gadget appeared on my desk I took my speechless mother by the arm and led her down to the kitchen. I looked at the little mechanism and saw a dial that had increments that bore the words: Hour, Day, Year, and Life. Currently the dial was set to Hour. I pointed the memory changer at my mom and pulled the little trigger. I ran upstairs, and to my relief, all five Stuarts had stayed in my room and were doing nothing but eating more fruit.
"Okay, where's Stuart #1?" I asked them. One of the Stuarts cautiously raised his hand. "It's okay I won't vaporize any of you I just want to find out so that I can give you something that will distinguish you from the others." I quickly spawned the exact same clothes that he was wearing but they were pure white. "Put these on," I told him, "then follow me."
I led all five Stuarts out the door and into the large room where I brought with me the disintegrator gun, the spawner gun, the duplicator, and the memory changer with me. "Here take these," I handed the spawner, duplicator, and memory changer to Stuart #1. "Keep them with you and don’t let any of your buddies get hold of them." I kept the disintegrator because I didn't think that it would be good if all the Stuarts got loose and vaporized everything in their path. "You can make as many of you as you can fit in this room—BUT, I wasn't finished, I want you to duplicate your friends, not yourself, I gave you white clothes for a reason." Stuart had pointed the duplicator at himself and was about to pull the trigger. Then he looked at me, then at the gadgets and shrugged his shoulders indicating that he didn't know were to put them all. "Here" I took the spawner and pointed it at his waist. I made a utility belt and told him to keep the gadgets on his new belt.
I ended up staying down in the cellar for a little while and playing games with multiple Stuarts. Stuart #1 and I both agreed on calling the large room the "Den" and that was how we would refer to the large roof. When I started to get bored with playing games and giving myself banana-split-brain-freeze over and over, I went up to my room through the tube and had dinner with my family after telling all the Stuarts not to leave the Den unless they wanted to be punished. I finished my dinner and headed back to the den to check on the Stuarts. When I got to the Den there was at least one hundred Stuarts all playing games or eating ice-cream. I searched for the Original Stuart and spotted his bright white clothing at the pool table. I made my way through the crowd and by the time I got to the pool table, Stuart #1 had broken the group of balls and put most of them in pockets. I called to him as he was about to make his shot and halted at the end of a hit. He didn't stop in time and he put the cue ball in a pocket. He made a noise that could have been a swear word but I didn’t understand what he said. It sounded something like "Puckooga!"
He made his way over to me frowning and I asked him where he planned on keeping all of the other Stuarts. His face lightened and he unhinged the spawner from his belt. He aimed it at a far wall and pulled the trigger. I saw that there was another door and I walked over to it with Stuart #1. When I got there and opened the door, I was impressed to see at most four hundred small beds complete with white pillows and red bed spreads. I nodded in approval and told him that I planned on going to bed myself. Stuart #1 quickly announced to all his friends were their sleeping quarters were.
I told them all good night and headed up to my room. After I went to bed I realized that I had school the next day. When I woke up on Monday I went down to the Den after getting dressed. There were only a couple of Stuarts awake, all of which were playing a game of pool. None of these were the first Stuart so I assumed that he was still in his sleeping quarters. I went into the dormitory and found myself in the middle of a cloud of feathers. They were all having a pillow fight! The feathers were like a storm; I had to push my way through in order to find Stuart #1. He wasn’t too hard to find, he was right there in the front. At the moment, he was bashing a pillow over another Stuart’s head with a very loud war cry.
"STUART!" I yelled trying to be heard over all the noise. All of the pillow fighting stopped and all the eyes in the room turned to me. "No just Stuart #1" I told them all. They all immediately went back to their pillow fight with the exception of the Stuart dressed in white. He walked over to me and I told him that I had to go to school and I would be home in a few hours. "Don't leave the Den, and don’t let any of the others leave. Make a security system if you have to just make sure they don’t get out. Okay? Can you do that for me?" Stuart nodded his head and turned to the other Stuarts. As I walked out of the room Stuart #1 started yelling over all the noise. I assume he was telling them all what I just said.
I left the den and went up to my room, back down stairs, and out the door to wait for the bus. But I never got on the bus. As I was waiting at the end of my driveway, I heard someone yelling my name from the back yard. I realized that it was Stuart, or at least a Stuart. I turned around to see a Stuart #1 panting hard and sprinting towards me. As he got closer I noticed that the gadgets that were on his belt before were all gone.
"Where are your tools?" I asked him.
"Bada bee ma talloo kaleeloo!" he said quickly.
"Is it about the others?" Stuart vigorously nodded his head. Then his eyes widened and he pointed to something behind me. I turned around and saw a swarm of yellow and blue going down the road at a very high speed. I also saw things appearing at random, road signs dividing and making two, and Stuarts trailing behind with blank looks on their faces. I ran into my house with Stuart and ran upstairs before my mom could ask what I was doing. I dropped my bag in my room and picked up the disintegrator. I ran back down stairs and out the door to chase the mob of yellow and blue madness.
I caught up with the group after a couple minutes. I aimed the disintegration gun at the mob and held down the trigger. The group quickly thinned and I saw the memory changer and the duplicator bouncing on the asphalt, left behind from the Stuarts who had them before being vaporized. Stuart #1 picked them up and hooked them to his belt. Now there was just one gadget left but there was still a whole lot of Stuarts to go through. The group rounded a corner with Stuart #1 and I close behind. We rounded the corner but saw no mob of Stuarts. I stopped where I was and so did my little companion.
"Where…did they…go so…quickly?" I said between breaths. But I wasn’t given a direct answer. Instead Stuart #1 was climbing into the sewers and gesturing for me to follow. "I don’t want to step in that!" Stuart grabbed the disintegration gun from me and pointed it down into the hole and fired. The bottom of the tunnel lit up and I saw that all of what was down there was gone.
I climbed into the dark tunnel and heard movement to our left. I ran in that direction and had Stuart follow me. I fired the "gone gun" in front of me and saw the beam of light illuminate the group of Stuarts up ahead. I sprinted as fast and as had as I could and was right behind the Stuart mob before I knew it. I fired the gun in front me and held down the trigger for a few seconds. I heard something clatter on the ground and knew that I had hit the Stuart with the spawner. I hurried to the spawner and put it on. Focusing hard on an impassable wall, I fired blindly in front of me to the general place I thought that the Stuarts were. I heard thuds and groans up ahead and knew that I had succeeded. Stuart #1 caught up and stood beside me panting as if he was going to pass out. I spawned a bright flashlight and gave it to Stuart #1 as well as the spawner to hook to his belt. While Stuart shined the flashlight on the mob of struggling Stuarts, I fired the disintegrator at the large group. Within seconds the group of struggling Stuarts was gone.
"Well that was tiring, huh?" I asked the last remaining Stuart.
"Uh-huh!" He replied.
"Yeah, let's go home." Breathing hard, Stuart and I walked back to where we climbed into the sewer and then walked back home. When we got to the house we decided to go up to my room through the Den. After creating a box with a key for all the gadgets and a hypnosis ray, I went downstairs to my mom and hypnotized her into writing a note to the school saying that I had a doctor's appointment that morning. I cleared her memory of the past hour and went back upstairs to find Stuart pigging out on fruit again. I stored the gadgets in the box and put the key on a chain to keep around my neck. After telling Stuart to stay in the Den and not show himself to my mom, I walked to school.

The next couple of days I spent going to school and playing games with Stuart while eating every flavor of ice-cream you could think of. On Saturday I woke up and went down to the Den but couldn’t find Stuart anywhere. After checking the whole house and searching the entire Den I sat down and made myself an ice-cream accepting that he was gone. When I went to put a cherry on the top of my whipped cream, I found a note taped to the top of the jar. It read:

Jack,
I'm sorry that I had to leave without warning. I remembered that I only had one week to be with anybody of my choosing just last night when you were sleeping. I was up playing Mario Cart in the Den. I tried to wake you to tell you about the one-week-policy, but when I was about to shake your shoulder you yelled "DON’T JUMP!!!" I thought that you were having a really good dream so I left you in peace. I retreated back here to the Den and wrote this note. Again I am sorry for going away unexpectedly. I also probably would have told you earlier in the week but I knew that you couldn’t understand my language.

Your Minion-for-a-week,
Stuart.

P.S. I just understood how to write your language last night when 'You Lose' blared across the screen so many times.

P.P.S. If you are reading this when I think you are, you should check your door right about now…


Under the writing there was a drawing in purple crayon of me and Stuart swimming in a pool on a sunny day. After looking at the picture and reading the note over several times, I realized what was written at the end. I went as fast as I could to my front door. I swung it open and it hit the wall with a loud bang. I stood there in my door way standing with my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open.

"Now mister you need to learn to close the door a litt—" At that moment my mom walked into the hallway behind me, about to scold me for opening the door to fast and hard. But she never finished her sentence. She was looking, stunned, at the miles and miles of Stuarts stretched across my neighborhood.