Thank you.
Now, without further ado, let's get back to the mystery of Marvin's disappearance...
While Phil was enjoying his shopping day, Marvin was on a most serious quest. He had initially climbed into the gumball machine in the hopes of finding a purple gumball. They were very rare in his experience, and he had spent a very long time entertaining a notion that he felt he could now finally verify or refute. The question was simple:
Do purple gumballs taste like grape flavored soft drink?
Now to most people this is a relatively unimportant question, either because most people (especially most young people) already know the answer to the question or they (in this case most not-so-young people) have simply outgrown gumballs and thus no longer ask themselves these sorts of questions.
Marvin, who wasn't a person to begin with, knew very well that this was the sort of question that you just had to know the answer to if you claimed to be at all worldly. And now Marvin found himself weaving and squeezing his way between gumballs in search of the purple one he was sure he had seen as he climbed down the side of the machine. It was somewhere near the bottom left corner, he was almost certain. The problem was that now that he was inside the machine, away from the glass globe, he was finding it difficult to get his bearings.
Crawling in as straight a line as he could - considering that his trajectory was being constantly modified by the large spheres in his path - he made his way back to the glass. From there he followed a clockwise route around the globe, looking above, below, and around him as he went.
Then he saw it.
There, quite close to the bottom of the machine, approximately one layer above the candy dispensing wheel, he saw that familiar purple hue he was looking for. So deep, richer than a royal purple, but not without a touch of electric. It was bluer than the darkest grapes he'd seen, but it was...yes, it was almost exactly the same purple he'd seen on those cans that one time in the refreshment aisle. And finding the can that had burst, and that wonderful carbonated puddle. Mmm. So tasty.
A loud mechanical cranking sound flooded the space around him, and the earth shook. Marvin was yanked out of his ruminations and into an extremely unstable world of shifting colored orbs. He found himself crushed between two of them, one orange and one blue, and them the floor fell out from under him. A second later he was standing on metal.
The dispensing wheel.
"No, mommy, it's white. I hate the white ones. I want a purple one."
The sound was everywhere, outside and inside at the same time. A loud clacking sound went through him as the candy door closed again. He started looking around. There was a snowball's chance in hell that this child was going to get his purple gumball.
It was just to his right. If he could just shift over a bit...
"Sandra, I only have two quarters left. You can have them, but if you don't get the purple gumball then I'm afraid you'll just have to make do with what you get."
Marvin heard the next quarter go in. The wheel began to turn again, taking the orange gumball around in a semicircle with it. A hole opened beneath the hard orange ball, and it was gone. Marvin grabbed the blue candy marble tightly to keep from falling in behind the orange one, and he pulled a pair of his legs out of the way just as the metal contraption sealed off the space where the gumball had fallen.
Then he got an idea. A way have his gumball and eat it, too.
"ORANGE!?" the girl screamed.
"Honey, you like the orange ones," the mother's voice replied.
"Not these orange ones, I like the other orange ones. These taste like tangerines. Blech."
Judging by her pronunciation, Marvin observed, she must have shoved it in her mouth anyway.
"Mommy, I shtill hab one mou quarrer."
"Then use it, sweetie, and let's go home."
The quarter fell into the slot, but Marvin was ready. He found the purple gumball, shoved it into the nook where the orange gumball had been a moment before, took a deep breath, and swallowed it in one mouthful.
Mmm. Grape.
He thought this, of course. Speaking at this point, even if he had wanted to, would've been quite impossible. He waited patiently, and the wheel began to turn. The Marvin-covered purple gumball rolled down the chute and hit the back of the door. Marvin's whole body shuddered. Then the door opened, and he rolled out.
"Black. Darn. Eww, it's sort of weird. It's got fuzz or something."
"Oh, honey, don't eat that. Let me see it." The mother took it - or rather them, if we're counting the gumball and Marvin - from Sandra's hand. "Sweetie, I think it's moldy or something. Or hairy. Or... Agh!" Marvin fell from her hand to the floor and rolled under the machines.
"Mom! You dropped my gumball! What'd you do that for?"
"I'm sorry, honey," said the mother, trying to steady her voice as she spoke. "It was just..."
Looking at me, she had wanted to say. Instead she said "Never mind. Come on. Let's go home. I'll buy you an ice cream on the way."
As the mother and daughter walked away, Marvin hit the wall behind the candy dispensers. Unable to do anything to alter his course - the gumball was easily five times his normal body size and his legs were now all but useless - he was now a victim of basic physics. The ground was angled slightly and there was a small groove in the cement, close to the wall, probably for runoff when it rained. Marvin rolled into it. The angle carried him off to the left and then slowly down the mild slope that led from entrance of the supermarket to the parking lot. He tried spitting out the thing he was beginning to regret having swallowed in the first place, but it was no good.
By this time Phil (that's me) had finished his shopping and was back at the machines looking for Marvin. After nearly an hour of searching and unsure what to do next, Phil did the only thing he could do. He got in the car and brought the groceries home.
Marvin, meanwhile, did the only thing he could do, which was let kinetic energy roll him into the parking lot where - hopefully, if he wasn't run over - he would wait for the gumball to dissolve so he could move again.
Once that happened, he would figure out his next step.
"Phil?"
"Yes, Marvin?"
"I like the way you're telling the story..."
"I think I'm hearing a 'but' in there."
"Well, it's just that..."
"Yes. Say it."
"Couldn't you have drawn a nicer picture?"
"No, not really."
"OK. Just asking."
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