A Blob and His Boy by Steve Ormosi

This is one of my favorites from the 1000 word challenges I did.  The challenge for this week was to write a short story about a video game.  I thought about doing Mario Bros., too obvious.  Ditto Donkey Kong and Metroid.  I almost did one based on Star Fox, but eventually decided against it, figuring no one but me would like a story that mainly consisted of the lines, "Do a barrel roll!" and "Use your bombs to get through!"  Eventually I landed on A Boy and His Blob, which was a nice trip down memory lane, although, while writing I had an urge to do some research and actually play AB&HB.  What a piece of shit.  I highly recommend this story over the video game.

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What fresh 8-bit hell is this?  I awake to a human sitting near the nest provided to me in the heart of the Earth government.  He is shorter than most of his race so I assume he is a youngling.  He makes clear that he is here to help with my troubles.  The humans have entire groups dedicated to warfare and they send me this incompetent whelp.  This is what they think of us.  My princess has been captured.  What else can I do but accept and join the fray with this poor sap.  All he does is make mistakes and I feel like he has had no debriefing whatsoever, no one has prepared him for the epic battle he will be joining once we reach my homeland.

The boy forces me to change shape several times, seemingly for his own amusement, each time the painful transformation warps my body and degrades my mind.  He gleefully tosses pill after pill down my throat until I don’t even know who I am anymore.  He turns me into an umbrella to be his own personal parasol.  I am a high priest of Bloberia, the largest province in Blobolonia, I have to remind myself.  This is humiliating.  The boy seems to have no recognition of how much agony he is putting me through and our different languages leave me no way to tell him. My only hope is that he’s running out of morphing pills, but his stash seems endless.

On my planet, the morphing pills are rare and used only in case of dire emergency.  Overuse can lead to catastrophic organ failure or dementia.  Here they sell them on every corner store.  I think the owners of these markets must be laughing at us.  I want to go home so badly, but this boy is the only hope I have of getting the princess back.  So I swallow the drugs and pray that I make it back in one piece.

As he whistles again, triggering my return to my original shape, I repeat the mantra that I learned in my training.  Blobobobob….blobobobob.  It does not help.  I bounce to his side only to be reminded of my next impending transformation.  He pulls out a coconut morph pill and jams it into my mouth.  I wince and shrink down to a small ball.  The boy picks me up and hurls me into a wall.  If only we could speak to each other.  I would have told him that this wouldn’t have worked.  Instead he has given me a slight concussion.  My thoughts begin to run together in my mind.

Soon, all I can think about is the pain and the princess.  All logic has gone away and been replaced with the constant betrayal that I feel and anger towards the humans for putting me through this.  When he tries to feed me a bubble pill, I turn away.  Despite my wish to save the princess, I know this will not help the situation.  The boy grabs me and pushes the pill forcefully down my throat.  I gag and transform.  The boy violates me by stepping inside of me.  We float and I do my best to pop.  A clean suicide is all I’m asking for now.  I’ve even forgotten the one thing I love in life.  The princess doesn’t matter anymore.  All that matters is that I end this suffering.  The boy floats for a long time, refusing to leave my body.  I feel used and disgusting.  How can I ever show my face back on my own planet now?  I’ve read that humans cry when they are emotionally distraught.  I wish I had that release.

When he finally whistles, I do my best to contract and squeeze the life out of him, but it doesn’t work.  I just go back to being a Blob.  I lie down and close my eyes, praying for the end, praying for anything else.  When I open them again I see an older human standing next to the boy.  They are smiling and I don’t understand.

They speak in their harsh human tongue for a moment and then they open a door to another room.  Through the doorway is my princess.  She is strapped to a slab and changing shape constantly.    A myriad of different objects that I’ve never even heard of a Blob becoming flash before my eyes and I think to myself, yes, do it to her, not me.  Leave me alone.  Don’t hurt me anymore.

That is obviously too much to wish for as they pick me up and tie me to my own slab.  There is a chart with pictures that I can make sense of.  It shows human children with slave Blobs of all shapes at their side.  Boys and their Blobs.  We are an accoutrement to them.  A utility device.   The treacherous humans have fooled all of us.  I should be trying to find a way to get this news back home.  My race is in jeopardy, but all I can do is weakly attempt to break my bonds.  Soon I give up and surrender to my fate.  There will be no joyful return to Blobolonia.  We are doomed.  I am doomed.