The Un-Exploded Cow, a free preview of the first chapter!

This is the story of the Un-Exploded cow. I bid you welcome. Allow me to introduce myself. The letters you see before you were written by me, The Author, The Narrator, and your Guide. (With a considerate amount of ideas and writing from Niek, The Official Owner of the Machine On Which This Story Was Created (NTOOMOWTS)). I must apologize in advance for the silliness that will shortly engulf you. Some tales are happy, some tales are sad, and some are completely ridiculous. This one, I promise, is all of the above. I must also warn you that it is not for the faint of heart. For one thing, there is swearing – quite a lot of it, and I cannot promise that all of it will serve a purpose. Try not to worry about things like 'logic' , 'factual accuracies', 'truth', and 'making sense'. It will only hurt. Let go of these archaic concepts and allow yourself to be carried on the waves of crazy. Just sit back, relax, and hold on for dear life. 1

Chapter 1: All Good Things... 2

See, if you will, the boy sleeping in the grass. His head is resting on his sweater, a smile on his lips. The grass sways gently in a cool summer breeze. The sun plays on his face. The boy stirs. He is Rob.
He is an orphan; his parents died in the exploding cow barrage of 2005.
Hold on, I see you thinking, what's this about exploding cows? That makes about as much sense as a light-saber in a cheese-cake. This is a very good point following a very good question indeed and I shall answer it without delay:
First of all, yes, I am serious, and no, I am not drunk. Secondly, the cows exploded because of an unforeseen chemical reaction.
Earlier in 2005, scientists discovered a revolutionary substance. It was extremely nutritious, compact, and cheap. There was a brief (and best forgotten about) experiment involving its use as a contraceptive, but pretty soon the consensus was that whatever had been invented was probably a food of some sort. It was named über-food and packaged in flashy yellow wrappers, thereafter immediately adopted by the military – under the sole condition that the yellow wrapper would be replaced by a camouflaged orange one – and spread to poor countries. World hunger was solved overnight and the world had become a brighter place.
The people directly responsible for the discovery had leaned back in satisfaction, some of them even venturing to put their feet on their desks in a display of triumphant victory.
A brief silence had lingered in the office, until it had happened.
“Why not feed it to livestock as well,” a bright soul had said.
“Yes, why not,” another had added.
“Yes, alright, just get it over with - my tea is getting cold” had settled the matter.
Über-food was issued to farmers world wide. The farmers fed it to their cows and the cows exploded. It was as simple as that. It turned out that cows were extremely allergic to über-food. Not only would a cow explode when it ate the stuff, the reaction also jumped from animal to animal, wiping them all out in a chain-reaction. Many people were killed in the resulting carnage, including Rob's parents. In the months following, milk prices rose sky high and milk became a luxury only rich people could afford, until ultimately, there was no more. Burger King went bankrupt and Kentucky Fried Chicken flourished. Manchester United beat Arsenal two to nil. After that nothing happened until the day before this story starts. By that day, nothing finally got tired of happening and left, not to return for a long time. To fill the narrative void a Belurgian combat squad staged an assault on a small mushroom. They suffered heavy casualties and had to retreat. This brings us back to Rob. Walk with me through the green field as the sun shines on us and the birds chirp bad pick-up lines as we pass. Stand next to me and look down at our feet, and see Rob sleeping there.
See him. See the boy in the grass. He may not look like much, but he is the beginning. This day, this place, is where it all begins. See how he awakens. 3

Rob opened his eyes. “What the-”
He jerked up, finding himself missing his wrong arm. Normally and historically it had always been his right arm that was missing, but today it turned out to be his left. This surprised him to be sure, but he was too happy with having his right arm back to think about his left arm. It was only when he discovered that his newly found right arm was in fact not his, and that it was not attached to him, that he realised he now had no arms at all.
I feel it is necessary now to point out that Rob is a very minor character in this story and therefore I will not discuss his feelings in regard to his missing-limbs-situation in depth. Suffice it to say he probably felt pretty bad about it.
The Belurgians were in their turn surprised by an unidentified arm that was stuck in the landing gear of their spaceship. However, since they were in danger of being late to their annual cricket championships, they simply fed the arm to a passing rabbit and took off. The rabbit, much to the surprise of the narrator, was not surprised at all and simply ate the arm. With all these people being surprised (or not) it was hard to notice that a flock of trees was slowly moving south. Rob noticed this though, as his foot was stuck in one. A man came walking by, and seeing the trees moving, froze in astonishment.
“What the hell is going on here?”
“My foot is stuck,” Rob said.
“Oh, that’s alright then,” the man said, obviously relieved, and moved on.
Rob briefly considered asking the man for help, but was knocked out by a branch falling from the tree in which he was stuck. The flock of trees continued moving south for the rest of the day, and Rob continued to be unconscious.
Since nothing else of importance happened, with the exception of Rob's left foot getting torn off, we skip to the next day. This day, of course, was even worse for Rob, because he had now also lost his left foot.
Rob now had nothing to do other than to pathetically hop about on one leg and ask people for arms and money. Everyone got so irritated by him that they shot him in the head with a shotgun. Thrice.4

And so this story ends for Rob, and begins properly as I intend to move on to the “serious” part of the story. As it happens, Rob was carrying a fair amount of über-food, which was confiscated by the Belurgians after they had finally defeated the small mushroom in an epic battle that devastated the surrounding countryside in a 10 meter radius. To understand why the Belurgians had so much trouble defeating this mushroom, something must be explained:5

The reason of this is that this small mushroom was in fact a gun turret on an alien patch of grass. This patch of grass was called Arftargselia, and this patch of grass was of course from outer space, since no one from this planet in their right mind would call a patch of grass Arftargselia. Well, maybe Rob would, as he had once called a patch of grass Darla, but he’s dead now, and this Darla was destroyed in the battle with the Mushroom.
Arftargselia, that is the other patch of grass, was however outfitted with force shields and toothpicks. Toothpicks were, as opposed to the sticks of wood we know and love, very small but powerful weapons. This strange and war-ready patch of grass was home to the Arftargsels.6

Encyclopaedia Explodius Bovinia on the topic of Arftargsels
Species Name: Arftargsellus Horriblus
Common Name: Arftargsels.
Habitat: Space 'n shit.7

Hailing from the deep reaches of space of which the editors have forgotten the name, Arftargsels are vicious creatures. They roam the galaxy in their space-city Arftargsalia, and in their free time they like to shoot things and terrorise civilisations. Luckily, they are microscopically small. So small, in fact, that they are invisible to the naked eye. Their power lies in their weapons, which are disproportionately powerful and are dubbed Toothpicks because of their resemblance to the small wooden sticks Earthlings tend to jam between their teeth. Brief studies into the motivation of Earthlings for this custom have revealed that it has something to do with shooting ballistic weapons while sliding down banisters. The inventor of this human toothpick was either a man called Chow Yun Fat, or his twin brother named Tequila. It is interesting to note that the human variant of toothpick is not in fact a weapon in itself, merely a device that one seems to stick between his teeth in order to enhance the accuracy of any hand-held weapons he is currently using.
The Arftargsel version of a Toothpick, however, is a deadly weapon in and by itself. These energy-based weapons fire beams that disintegrate anything they strike, ignoring any form of armour. As of the moment of writing, no Arftargsel has ever been seen simultaneously wielding a shooting-toothpick in its hands and having one stuck between its teeth. We have extrapolated that this is probably a good thing.
When encountering Arftargsels, there is only one useful piece of advice: try to get hit in the head. It will minimize your time of suffering. 8

Because the Arftargsels were so vicious, another race had sworn an oath to follow them around and fight them. This race was known as the Belurgians. They were very much like humans, with the chief differences the fact that they were slightly smaller and that they wore asses for hats.
The tenacious Belurgians had followed Arftargsalia to Earth and had engaged it there in the skirmishes mentioned above.
When the Belurgians were about to leave for their cricket match, the Arftargsels counter-attacked and took the über-food they had confiscated. The Belurgians did not care — cricket was priority one and interstellar warfare would simply have to wait.
Anyway, when the Arftargsels took the über-food to their patch of grass, which was quite an endeavour considering their size, it had an unexpected effect on the alien grass. It grew enormously until it was the size of a large city. The Arftargsels themselves also grew until their average height was two metres. They were very fond of this — they were now larger than Belurgians. Their toothpicks increased in size as well, but curiously, their firepower stayed the same. So now there were two metre tall creatures with very large toothpicks packing moderate firepower roaming about a giant alien city. These Arftargsels, because there were no Belurgians to kill, soon started rampaging the countryside and killing everyone and everything. Later, when a ballsy reporter for Channel Eleventy News managed to get a brief interview and inquired as to the reasons for the Arftargsel attacks on mankind, the Arftargsel spokesthing merely said: “Because we can.” It then signed a baseball-cap and killed the entire camera crew.9

This is where our main character comes in.
Or rather, were he was supposed to come in, but as usual, he is late. Therefore the story will have to continue while he gets ready for his entrance. For this we go to a bakery in a town near Arftargselia, briefly after the killing and rampaging had first started. Here a little boy was trying to get some free sandwiches, but the owner of the bakery was an old grouchy man and instead gave the boy some über-food. The boy threw the stuff in the face of the owner. The owner shot the boy. The main character shot the owner.
“Oops,” the main character said, ”I wasn’t supposed to do that, now was I?”
As a matter of fact, he wasn't -- so he didn't. Instead, the owner of the bakery died of pure guilt — after all, he had just shot a little boy.
Anyway, now that our main character is here, we can forget about the boy and the bakery. Let me introduce him to you.
The main character was called Edmund Bob. He was a man of average height, with an average hair colour. His intelligence, was rather average as well. The only thing about him that was not rather average, were his eyes. They were rather blue-brown. That is, his left was blue, and his right was brown. Because of this, he was called blue-brown-bob. Or, triple-B. Or sometimes, maybe even Edmund.
Edmund had gone to the bakery to get some bread, but as he just (shot) watched the owner die of guilt, this was now out of the question. As he stepped back outside he heard a strange noise coming from the nearby hills. This sound was a crackling, crunching sort of thing. It sounded approximately like a hundred people eating crisps.
A few seconds later Edmund saw about a hundred Arftargsels coming over the hills eating crisps. This was of course extremely frightening - if you hate people eating crisps.
Edmund had to think fast. Doing so, he decided he should throw himself at the nearest piece of food and try to eat it. He looked desperately for something to eat, but finding nothing he threw himself at a passing car instead. As he did so, the driver of the car suddenly saw the Arftargsels, and also thinking fast, decided also to throw himself at the nearest piece of food, so he jumped out of the car. The driver could not find any food either, so he threw himself at the car again, which was now gone of course, as Edmund had quickly driven away.
While Edmund drove as fast as he could to the nearest drive-in McDonalds, the previous owner of the car was confused and did not know what to do. The Arftargsels were very close to the village now and raised their toothpicks. One of the smaller Arftargsels said to his mate, “wanna bet I can hit that boy hopping on one foot asking for money more times than you in one minute?”
“Bring it on!” the other one replied. Just as they fired, one of the villagers got so fed up with Rob that he shot him in the head with a shotgun three times. The Arftargels fired simultaneously and purple beams shot out of their toothpicks. When the beams hit Rob, who suddenly had a hell of a headache, large holes appeared where the beams struck him.
As it happened, the smaller Arftargsel won the bet, as he had hit Rob four hundred and fifty-seven times in one minute.
The other Arftargsel could not match this because after his four hundred and seventh shot, there was nothing of Rob left to hit. This of course killed Rob quite thoroughly. The rest of the village quickly followed and many shared Rob’s fate, only they didn’t get shot in the head with a shotgun first. (Or got their legs removed by a flock of trees, causing them to hop around and ask for money).