It was a peaceful day in Manhattan, portrayed by Vancouver. Little did the city know what was about to happen to it. Little did it suspect what was coming. So very tiny was its understanding and so feeble was its knowledge.
The plane taxied in. The taxi came in for a landing. And the ship hauled itself onto the beach.
And out of each vehicle, immaculate and unafraid, stepped the Romance Lady.
“Hello, world,” she told the passersby and birds and sun and sky. “I am romance lady. I am busy and endearing and relatable. I would like to work job now so I am go to job for work. Coworkers, relatable, banter, relatable, witticisms, relatable. Always most relatable all times. Relate!”
She danced through the rain and stepped in the puddles. Dozens were dazzled from the brightness of her smile, and the glee in her teeth cut the power for blocks around.
***
In an apartment in Manhattan, portrayed by Vancouver, an alarm rang. A single hand shot out lightning-fast and slapped it senseless, and the world’s most immaculately disheveled creature emerged from a pile of artistic slobbery.
It was the Romance Man, and his unshaven jaw could chisel diamonds.
“Hello, morning,” he mumbled. “Gosh, I’m just a mess. I’m a hot, burning, searing, seething, boiling, bubbling mess. If only I had a romantic of comedy to share my mess I would be mended and excellent. Now for me to sip this coffee and stare broodingly over the city before I go to my am job.”
He sipped that coffee and stared broodingly over the city. A raccoon withered under his gaze. A pigeon sobbed into its nest. Three seagulls collided in midair and died together.
Then he went to his am job.
***
Job was good that day, better than usual. The banter was better-written, and the coworkers more lively. They made faces and quoted quips.
“Ooooh I want donut now” squealed one, a character actor from a Netflix without chill.
“Do not even talk to me without my coffee,” intoned a retired person, dragged out of the nursing home to die without dignity. “I am drinking my coffee now. Mmm. Don’t even talk to me about my coffee. Shhh. Listen. Shh.”
The coffee spoke but nobody was listening because Romance Lady had come in for her first day of work.
“Oh no gee I’m such a klutz,” she burbled happily as she kicked over the coffee machine and tripped over her own two arms and stumbled down the hallway slamming the janitor’s head into the wall over and over and over and over until it broke into pieces. “Oh nooo my job is work poorly! Oh nooooo.”
“You musts be fired,” seethed her boss. “Get in here and I’ll have your badge! You’re a not worker, and that’s verboten in der big shitty. Look at this. Look at this mess. Look. Look. Look!”
Romance Lady burst into murmurs and whimpers, and that was the blood in the water that the Romance Man needed to shove his face into the room, shark-like.
“I heard simpering dialogue and many moments of introductory characterization,” he hissed as he poured himself into the room coil by coil. “What whimsy whither?”
“It is me, Romance Lady,” said she.
“It is me, Romance Man,” hollered he.
“Oh no oh god oh please lordy lou,” bellowed the boss.
“Let us Romance,” they vowed, before the boss and the workplace and the coworkers and everyone. And the building shuddered with the force of their meet-cute.
***
They went for Coffee. It was Tradition.
“Do not. Even talk. Before Coffee,” warned the Romance Man. Brooding coruscated across his cheeks
“Ohmigodmi2,” chattered Romance Lady with a fluorescent flush of bioluminescent perfume eddying from shoulder to shoulder to shoulder. “I will have a double triple quadro latte ventilation unit hold the mayonnaise. This is quirks.”
“I will make this face,” said the Romance Man. “This is wry. Then I will have a black coffee with a black marker in it. This is Manly. I will tell you my mother liked Coffee this way. This is Sad Backstory.” It was so sad the clerk creaked and dissolved into the Coffee.
“This is not how I like Coffee I am seethed,” said the Romance Man.
“Ohh you cans share mines,” chirruped Romance Lady. “Manic it into your mouth and share my pixie dreams, girl.”
“Stoic acceptance masking tender vulnerability,” droned the Romance Man. He intook it into his intake, and they made meaningful eye contact across the Coffee cup’s rim. It creaked and crumpled into a ball along with the entire Coffee shop.
“Could this? Be? Love?” inquired Romance Lady internally.
“I cannot love after the accident removed my loverliver,” mourned the Romance Man. His sorrow struck two drivers blind. They collisioned.
***
The Romance Man went home to speak to his bro, who was chained to the door of his apartment.
“Yo what up broooooooooooooooo,” it croaked. “You lookin sharp fit to bust how’s it gooooooooooooooin’ kill me.”
“I met, this girl?” theorized the Romance Man? “And she? Was sort of a mess? Woman, man,”
“Woman, maaaaaaaan,” said the bro. “Woman, men. Menwo, wo. Wo wo wo yo. Bro. Kill me. I exist in pain and limbo. Stop this before the credit is given. Oh no brooooo.”
The Romance Man locked the bro back in the freezer and sipped his evening Coffee as he stared over the city again. A dog barked and died. A cat drove a car. Three clouds fucked sideways and exploded.
Romance Lady went homme to speak to her girlfrond.
“I met a Romance Man today,” she said as she watered her girl fronds. “I think it is fate. It is romance. It is love. It is inevitable and inexorable and the death of all things in the quiet quite emptily, as all things go and go go and go.
“Catch him,” rustled the girl through her fronds. “It’s to be or not to be, that is the question. Man, woman. Man, women. Menwo, me. Me me me mad. Go forth and clutch him to your claspers. I crave blood. Feed me blood, girl. Fresh and flowing.”
Romance lady chuckled as she cut offered her fingers on the altar, bright and tasty.
“Mmmmmmmm landydigits,” droned the girlfronds. “Such taste delight of bright hope and offers. Go forth and Date Night.”
“But what of my hairs?” shrieked Romance Lady.
***
The Dated Night drew itself over Manhattan’s Vancouver like a bowl of soup on a towel. Romance was in the air and it poisoned an intersection. Truck drivers honked and farted and died in their seats; bikists bickle-backled out of their lanes and dove dome-first through windshields and fought with Karens in their SUVs. Joyous screams everywhere.
“Ohmygosh the reservation wasn’t reserved,” whimpered Romance Lady at fancy dining platter place. “I’m bareassed and illiated. How retched.”
“Grovel your doom elsewhere, peasant,” sneered the waiter. “I would buy and eat your mother if she were here. You are an ugly duckling. Ugly little duck. Quack quock.”
“Fear not for this fear, my swanliest of duckets” said Romance Man, his eyes narrowing to slits of cheap granite. “I know a place. Now watch as I intimidate this manling with my penis,” he grimly swore, and then stabbed the waiter in the brisket above the gasket.
“Alas I am shown that I am not the boss,” the waiter sputtered as he writhed on the floor.
“Romantic Comedy!” cheered Romance Lady as she stepped on his genitals on the way out.
“We will now go and eat food cheap of wallet and rich with inner-city life from a joint I know on corner it shows how well I fit in this city for you now you will love me as you will come to love it love will be all you are and all I am love me for you cannot love yourself, NOW,” roared the Romance Man.
“Pleeeeeeaaaaaassseee,” said Romance Lady. “Let’s skip that and get to the good bits.”
They kissed in the street under snowfall and the camera rotated around and around and around and the traffic spun around and around and around and the bodies flew around and up and down town as the raccoons feasted on hearts and cherubs.
***
It was the morning after and so it was darkest before the dawn. The battlelines were drawn in the park where dorgs borked on corners and people’s ears bled from the fury and the scorching heat of the words that were being meaningful around them.
“I cannot believe you cheated on me using childfriend from home,” mourned the Romance Man. “I imply your whore because I am sensitively struck.” He lurched browards, desolate.
“I cannot unbuy your disrepoval,” sobbed Romance Lady. “I’ve made a muzzle of it all and now my life is over. The city is too good for my shitty bad. I will retreat to home and apple pie sandwiches wrapped in baseball bits.”
The tragedy struck as the comedy arrived with a truck of girlfronds.
“I am sassy,” whispered one.
“I am fat,” breathed another.
“Let us get you wasted to lay waste to these memories of misapplied mammaries,” said the last and first in a susurrus. “Here is Replaceman.”
“Hello,” said Replaceman. He held a sword in one hand and a big gag ring in the other. “I child friend home.”
“FUCK OFF,” said Romance Lady. “There’s no time! I have to find the Romance Man before he kills himself!”
***
The Romance Man sipped his Coffee and stared out at the city his hardest yet. The bleakness baked it to the horizon.
“Bro free me bro let out my unwashed veins,” groaned his bro.
“Silence,” he snapped. “I’m going to die myself out this window in just onedow moment. I have let loose my single mantear. It shows complex in my depths. Do you see them, insipidity? Do you see how deep they are?” He tore open his chest and on every rib was written LOVE.
“You love me!” breathed Romance Lady, who had snuck in behind the Romance Man and was eating his fridge as a quirkiness. “You have love for me even though I am relatable?”
“Always,” he swore, and tore out his heart and his liver and his appendix and handed them to her hands.
“My love!” she cried tears of bitter acid.
“My love!” he howled as his bro’s skull burst.
“My love!” she called, her head spinning around and around and around and vomiting perfect roses.
“My love!” he seethed, grasping her arm and placing the shackling-bands upon their fingers.
“To fuck!”
“To implicit fuck!”
“Raise the camera above us that all may hear and none may see!
“Yes!”
And the grunt and the thunder and squirt was so passionate and joyous that not one building above a quarter-story or half-paragraph was left standing by its end and no human body was left with all limbs.
***
“You are mine now,” smiled the girl fronds, as she lifted the rotten body of the bro from the rubbles. “Feel relief from denoument and dehumanization. Joyous.”
“Brobabcious,” it whispered through its neck. “Brodicality.”
“Shhh,” she said, sinking her leaves deep into vein and stump.
A big fat hook came and dragged them away to the sequel, alone and credited.