Great Expectations: Editead and reeveised: cahpter 4

I returned home hoping that the fuzz hadn’t sniffed me out yet. When I opened the door I smelled the disgusting smell of Mrs. Joe’s Christmas cooking. Her ‘hard work and labor’ was filling our small little home with layers of smoke that almost equaled the fog outside. I had almost forgotten that it was in fact Christmas because number one I am a Buddhist and number two I had been too busy being threatened with swords and…cannibalism. I assumed that nobody had yet discovered that I had jacked the bread and file last night (the file shouldn’t have been an issue anyway, I could have taken it back home but I chucked it at the convict as he was disappearing into the fog and couldn’t find it afterwards.) but who really cares about a piece of bread.

“Where the hell have you been!” Mrs. Joe screamed at me as I came in the door, I find it reasonably creepy that she was sitting at the door waiting for me but I suppose that’s also the excuse for the all of the food being prepared catching fire.

“uh…I was.” Excuses were coming to my head slowly but none of them seemed perfect for the occasion. Until the most amazing one finally arrived “I was at a techno dance club making out with a bunch of fat chicks wearing angel wings”

“Oh, I suppose it could be worse.” Mrs. Joe said, losing some of her anger “If I wasn’t a blacksmith’s wife I could be making out with fat chicks every night.”

“um, okay” I dismissed the conversation as Joe walked into the kitchen with his hand over his nose. He sat down at a stool and stared at me and Mrs. Joe awkwardly.

“Don’t you ever speak you retard?” Mrs. Joe asked.

“Well me suppose me should sumtimes.” He answered while rocking back and forth dangerously on his stool.

“What does that even mean?” She said, shaking her head around and getting back to her cooking, or, fire fighting.

To escape the smoke and despair Joe and I said we were going off to church, or at least I did, Joe couldn’t articulate the words clearly enough. We really headed down to the strip joint down on 3rd street for a little Christmas entertainment. As we entered the joint we saw Mr. Wopsle, the church clerk who would be sharing our meal tonight, watching a girl dressed as one of Father Christmas’s elves doing a strip tease for him. Sadly my time at the bar was ended there when the bartender realized that I wasn’t really riddled with dwarfism as I had claimed and I was indeed an eight year old boy.

I waited out on the snow covered cobblestone streets holding my hands tightly against my chest for warmth and shivering violently. As I sat there suffering along come a fat tub of lard that I call Uncle Pumblechook, I’m not sure whether or not he is really my uncle and I would prefer if he were not but I had to call him that and he would also be dining with my family that night. Either way my opinion on the subject doesn’t matter because, well, I’m a weakling little kid that nobody likes (except for convicts and retards)

“Pip?” The dough-boy coughed out in his raspy voice that sounded as if he was attempting to speak through a turkey leg lodged in his throat. “Pip what are you doing out here?” Before I received an opportunity to answer he jumped in with his own theory “My god, Mrs. Joe finally threw you out of her home. Bless the heavens! To-day is a joyous day indeed! I think I’m going to go home and grab a chair and heater and sit out here and watch you suffer! What a wonderful present that would be! You’ll never be able to survive on the streets Pip, and you know what? Knowing that you’re going to have to try actually makes me feel a little happier inside. I’m going to be able to die peacefully knowing that you died horribly. See you later, heeheehee!” He skipped off happily and I was filled with contempt towards him until he slipped on the cobblestones and, as luck would have it, completely avoided falling lightly into a pile of snow and slammed straight into the road. As he lay there unconscious I considered hiring a horse carriage to ride over him a few times but Joe emerged from the bar and motioned for me to follow him home.

Suddenly seven hours of the day passed and I was sitting down for dinner with Mrs Joe, Joe, Pumblechook and Wopsle. We were eating our feast of kings, a truly superb meal, a dinner fit for champions. The feast consisted of bread.

Mr. Wopsle was telling stories about his lack of an interesting life and I felt like producing any sort of crude weapon and hacking away at him. Mr. Wopsle has a deep powerful voice and speaks with overly exaggerated happiness like a game show host or Newscaster. The kind of voice that actually deters you from wanting to watch the show, God knows how he acts so happy seeing as he is a priest. There were also two other people at the table, Mr. and Mrs. Hubble…but they are not important in any way so I’m just going to go ahead and delete them from the story.

“Anyway, that’s how I slayed the Dragon of The Eastern Kingdoms” Mr. Wopsle finished his tale of his childhood.

“Haha, what a funny story Mr. Wopsle” Exclaimed Pumblechook excitedly shoving his plate into his mouth and chewing since he was out of food.

“That story wasn’t supposed to be funny, I just told a tale of the annihilation of a civilization.” Mr. Wopsle muttered awkwardly.

“Well…some find different things funny, that other people might view as sad or depressing…like genocide.” Pumblechook attempted to explain.

“Genocide isn’t funny.” Mrs. Joe said.

“What?” Uncle Pumblechook said hopelessly waving his arms about “Come on, you must at least get a little giggle out of it.”

“No…no, it’s not funny at all, genocide is sad and depressing.” Mr. Wopsle said with a very depressed look.

The mood of the dinner had suddenly turned very cold and everyone stared awkwardly at their plates wishing there was more food to eat.

“Is there nothing else we can eat?” Pumblechook yelled out suddenly, of course he is the first person to ask.

“Well.” Mrs. Joe started, letting the word hang there for a moment “I suppose we could eat Pip.”

“NO!” I yelled out, I attempted to jump up but Pumblechook was already behind me eagerly awaiting the meal, he jabbed the back of my neck with two of his pudgy little fingers and crushed the side of my face against the table. Mrs. Joe produced the Bowie Knife the always keeps beneath her dress and held my arm out across the table.

“You have to try the forearm, it’s quite delectable.” She said eerily.

“How would you even know that!” I squealed in terror, feeling the cold of the blade pressed against the inner side of my elbow.

Joe, who didn’t quite know how to defend me, was standing beside me while pouring gravy all over my body as a subtle way of showing that he cared. The gravy pouring was not all pointless though, for it made me slimy enough to slip out of the hands of Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook. Immediately upon breaking free I made a break for the door and upon swinging it open in a horrified frenzy I almost ran straight into a group of cops waiting outside the door.