By J. L. Ender
The last wild guitar note faded from the hall. I let my leafy green shoulders relax, glad to be done with rehearsal for the day.
“Hey, nice work today, Tommo,” I said to my turnip drummer.
He clicked his drumsticks together and pointed them at me. “You too, buddy.”
“We’ve got this,” my guitarist Johnny Broccoli said. “We’re totally ready!”
I nodded. It had been a while since our last show in Las Veggies. We’d just finished a cross-country tour, with shows up north in Oregano and Wasabi. It was a great time to be alive. My tunes were charting. Microwave ovens made cooking food faster. How could life get any better for a biennial, white-flowered plant with aromatic leaves in the 50s?
A broad double door leading to our performance hall burst open. Frank Cilantro stumbled in, his dapper fedora crumpled and askew.
“Elvis! Elvis Parsley! I need your help.”
He looked a little wilty, like day-old salad. I leapt from the stage. I would help the aromatic Mediterranean plant any way I could. We were practically family, he and I.
“What’s the deal, Cilantro?” I asked.
“They stole it! My best hat. You gotta help me.”
“You’re wearing your hat, buddy.”
He reached a leafy hand to remove the rumpled fedora. “This old thing? This is a spare, not what I wear for shows.”
“Who’d steal your hat?”
The coriander crooner paced. “That’s what I’m tryin’ to find out!”
“Why me?”
“You’re the only one I trust, Parsley. You’ve lived the life. You know what it’s like to be a lonely vegetable on the road. I mean, what if someone stole your blue suede shoes? What would you do?”
Just the thought made me livid, so angry that spots danced before my eyes.
“There we go, that’s the fire I need! Now help me find my hat.”
“I got a show, Frankie.” I liked Cilantro fine, but I didn’t want to get involved.
“Tomorrow! You gonna tell me you need to rehearse? You sound great! I got a show tonight, and I can’t go on without my best hat!”
I sighed. I did have some time to kill, and thoughts of kicking around an empty hotel room weren’t appealing. Why not help a fellow musician solve a mystery?
“Where’d you have it last?” I asked, resigned.
“Backstage. Let’s go take a look around. Maybe we’ll find some clues.”
My band had left, leaving the theater quiet.
“Who’s that?” Frank pointed frantically backstage, like he’d seen a ghost pepper.
It didn’t take Carrot Hepburn eyes to see the shadowy figure poking around in Johnny Broccoli’s bag.
“Get your unwashed hands outta our stuff!” I called.
The figure squealed and bolted, but Cilantro and I raced after him, hurtling through instruments, stage props, and miscellaneous junk.
“Why, when I catch you, I’m gonna mince you into powder!” Cilantro shouted.
We were gaining on the thief when he burst through an outside door. The cool air of a Las Veggies desert night washed over me as we followed him outside. The door slammed closed behind us, and three massive potatoes in zoot suits stepped from the shadows. Between them and us, a skinny celery panted with hands on his knees.
He was wearing Cilantro’s fedora.
“Why you two-bit, parasitic parsley puff,” Cilantro raged. “That hat’s mine!”
“Hey,” I said. “Leave parsley out of it.”
“We’re all parsley here,” the celery thief said, waving a hand toward Cilantro and I. “Elvis Aaron Parsley and Francis Coriander Cilantro, fancy meeting you in a dark alley in Las Veggies.”
“Nobody but my mama calls me Coriander!” Cilantro shook his fist.
I touched Cilantro’s shoulder. “Who are you?”
He stepped from the shadows.
“Celery Davis Junior?” I asked. “Why?”
“It’s a nice hat!” Celery sneered at Cilantro. “And I’m keeping it. I’ll go out there and perform in your place tonight. You got a problem with that?” He glanced back at his potato buddies, as if making sure they were still there.
“Look, Celery,” Cilantro said. “That’s my hat, and I’m not leaving without it.”
“I thought you’d say that. All right, boys.” He turned to his tater thugs. “Time to run the garbage disposal, if you know what I mean.”
“What do you mean?” a thick-voiced potato asked.
Celery rolled his eyes. “Time to take out the trash!”
“Oh, right!” the potato grinned.
The spuds chuckled as they stalked forward. One of them pulled out every vegetable’s worst fear—a paring knife.
I took a step back and tried the door behind us. Locked.
A potato grabbed me by the arm, scuffing my blue suede shoes in the process.
Cilantro turned white as a turnip. “You didn’t. Oh, you’re in trouble now.”
“Oh, did we hurt his wittle shoes?” the potato holding me said.
“You can knock my stalks, step on my buds, burn my roots down. But you mess with my shoes…”
A surge of white-hot rage burned through me. My leafy body trembled from top to bottom. I picked up the potato and hurled him into a dumpster. Another potato ran for me, but Cilantro stuck out a foot and tripped him. The final potato rounded on us, but Cilantro and I stood shoulder to shoulder and punched him at the same time.
His hired spuds mashed, Celery was a changed vegetable. He held out the hat, prostrating himself on bended stalks.
“I didn’t mean anything by it, honest. I was just gonna have ‘em rough you up a bit.”
Cilantro snatched his hat back and put it on.
“How can I make this right?” Celery asked.
Cilantro tapped a leaf against his chin. “I got an idea.”
My guitar reverberated as I strummed. The packed crowd cheered. Standing room only and all.
An announcer’s voice boomed. “For the first time on stage together tonight, Frank Cilantro performs with Elvis Parsley and Celery Davis Junior!”
Can you guess which song from the 1950's inspired this story? Share in the comments!
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Loading...ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This story reminds me of a VeggieTales movie if it took place in an alternate universe–and that’s a very good thing! I laughed aloud at “You can knock my stalks, step on my buds, burn my roots down. But you mess with my shoes…” Who knew there were so many vegetable puns?
Is this by any chance Elvis’s “Blue Suede Shoes?”
Yes, it is! If you’re a member of the Havok Horde, you’ll be automatically entered into a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card.
Hilarious! And I think the earlier guess was right on the song. It would make sense that parsley would see blue rather than red when they get angry since there is a blue variety…
Lot’s of fun.
Thanks everyone for reading! Glad you enjoyed it!
Some background notes: Like last week’s story, this one takes place in a “Midworld”, meaning it sits in a region of my multiverse where physics don’t necessarily exist as they would in a world like ours. I waffled a bit on this, unsure if I wanted a veggie world, but ultimately decided to make it part of my ongoing canon.
This version of Earth, oddly enough, seems to have progressed almost exactly like ours, but with talking fruits and vegetables ruling the planet instead of humans. There’s not much more I can say about the world than that, it’s actually pretty straightforward.
The writing prompt started as “Elvis Parsley”. Fresh off writing Blue Moon, “Frank Cilantro” was pretty quick to jump into my head when I began writing. I don’t think they were friends in real life, but they DID meet and perform together, interestingly enough. I was also surprised to find that celery, parsley, cilantro, and coriander are ALL interrelated. A happy accident/fun coincidence that flavored (get it?!) some parts of the story.
This is GOLD! I’m in love with all the puns and the silly feel of the story. Fantastic!!
Aaaand I cracked up again. Good job, fellow ninja!
This is hilarious xD Love it!
This was so much fun to read! Like Veggie Tales meets Las Vegas! (Las Veggies? LOL)
Fantastic execution of a punny idea, J. L.! (Of course the writer behind Phenny Phoenix would get a kick outa this story!) So rich with vegetable details, and the character casting was perfect.
Enjoyed reading your behind-the-scenes comment, too, and seeing how it came about. Great job!
This was fantastic! Very clever, not too punny and extremely engaging! I couldn’t stop reading!