Meh… I got bored, so I typed this lil’ story-type thing. Semi-continuation of Because It’s Not (the End of the World).

S.O.S. (Save Our Sanity)

Two weeks, five days, and some number of hours that mayhaps Big Bob would have been able to count had he remembered his watch had been spent in the bomb shelter of a basement everyone had called him crazy for building. He had been preparing for the “unavoidable” alien invasion, but he didn’t much want to climb outside to see if he was right.

He was fine and dandy, with all the freeze-dried, two-thirds-inedible astronaut-food he could ever eat. And his basement had become a regular Bed and Breakfast for people he had never met. Well, there were no beds, and breakfasts were more or less optional. Actually, eating breakfast was heavily frowned upon—it was viewed as greedy in the Great Pataki Empire (hey it was his basement after all).

As days passed, Bob found that it was near-impossible to learn everyone’s names. Nicknames were invented for a reason, and that reason was because what he chose to name people was indeed much better than what their parents could ever call them.

Names like Nug, Big-Nosed Guy, and Bologna Kid were far easier to remember than Milligan McGurtrey or SomethingOrOther Patterson, or Thaddeus Gammelthorpe.

Yes, The Basement was a grand place indeed. His children weren’t there. Or his wife. But that was okay, because he had his subjects to rule over, and there was no possible way that a Pataki could die in or around the Great Pataki Empire. As long as they were within a two-hundred mile radius, they were fine, and would return.

In the meantime, he would help himself to some gravy-powder.