Apricot Jones

This is a random story that has a lot more details than I put in the first paragraph. It's super weird and space-timey.

Apricot Jones had a paper sail. It got salty, and he made it a hat. He made many hats. A man named Indu Thyme ran into him, a short bearded fellow. Indu took Apricot’s paper, folded it, used some weird spinny glass metal device and put it in a trash can and zapped it. Then Apricot’s hat shop disappeared. He told the police, and when he returned, so did his shop, but it was a tad ascue. He went inside, telephoned the police, and they told him to leave the building, because similar things were happening to other buildings, so he should be careful. He gathered some stuff, and on his way out he saw nothing but white outside the door and windows. Then uniform black dots in the distance. As the dots got closer and bigger, he saw they were a bunch of copies of his hat shop. They all got bigger and closer it seemed like he would crash, but he didn’t. Suddenly his hat shop was in the middle of the woods. Idu Thyme met him there, his beard was more gray. Indu gave Jones a lens to read the paper, but told him not to look through it while looking up. The paper was a magic map. They wrote the words “sword” and “SWORD” on the paper, and got swords from the sky. Indu’s was better. The ran through the woods, met Latr the Native. They sent other natives who were chasing them into the void (including Latr), but had a way to get them back. Jones passed out and woke up in a big igloo with Indu and Latr. Indu cut the paper in half, splitting the world, and they got shot into the sea. An octo shrimp chased them onto the shore, where they met Santa-man. They got the beached octoshrimp back into the sea, which was angry and headed toward another ship.

“Oh no,” said Santa-man. “It’s going to take out its anger on Captain Afro’s ship. That will put them back weeks, if they don’t have enough waffle batter.”

“Uugh...what?” said Jones.

Indu looked at Jones with squinted eyes. Jones felt like opening his mouth again, even though he didn’t know what to say until he started making noise.

“The Library of Aquarius-” Indu Thyme cut him off by jumping up and covering his mouth.

“NO!!! Stop! You’re figuring out too much! Your brain can’t handle it all!”

“Wait,” said Santa-man, “How do YOU know about the Library of Aquarius? Were you in the Breakfast Wizard Guild?”

“AAAAAAAHHHH. SHUSH!!!!!” yelled Indu, “Stop giving him clues! His mind will depload, then our Universe AND yours will invert on themselves, making a continuous loop of-”

Jones kept moving his mouth and made muffled noises trying to finish the sentence before Indu.

“No NO NO!!” Yelled Indu again, “Now I’M saying too much!”

Indu turned to Latr and said, “Give me the arrowhead!”

Once again, Latr handed Indu the arrowhead. Indu put the arrowhead inches in front of Apricot’s face, repeatedly telling him to widen his eyes. Apricot suddenly felt sleepy. “Don’t close those lids, Jones, don’t close those lids!”

Latr turned to shake Santa-man’s hand.

“We have to get going. Thank you for all of your help, Santa-man.”

“I have a feeling that this will be the last time we will ever see each other.” said Santa-man, “Are you exiting this realm?”

Latr turned to Indu, “It looks like it.”

“Hopefully your departure will put this shaken plane in balance.” Santa-man bent down and picked up some seaweed in the sand, “Take this to insure its stability.”

Latr turned to Indu once more. Without breaking his concentration on Apricot, Indu said, “Take it Latr, it’s ok. Santa-man knows his stuff.”

Latr took the seaweed and put it in his pocket. Santa-man put his hand on Latr’s shoulder.

“Farewell, friend.” said Santa-man

“Goodbye, good sir,” said Latr.

Indu’s voice was getting louder. “Open those eyes wider, Jones! Look at the arrowhead, keep them wide! Wider! Wider! WIDER!!!”

Apricot suppressed the strong urge to close his eyes. He fought harder and harder until he took a deep breath, widened his eyes and saw everything behind the arrowhead expand out of sight. Suddenly he was staring at a Jack of Spades he was already holding in his hand. He looked around and saw three fellows in a dark room, sitting at a round table with him, with cards in their hands.

“What’s it gonna be, kid?” said one of them. “Call, or bust?”