OP

Quoted from Bublehead:

...Day ???...
In what would seem the cruelest of jokes of life to play on me, my distributor sent me a text message today saying my machine was ready and would be shipping soon, he just needed me to contact him and acknowledge the shipping info. It was here my cell phone battery finally drained it’s last electrons of current and my phone fell silent, black, and cold in my hands. As I sat and pondered my life’s choices, I remembered oddly enough the date, and thought “ha ha, OK, he got me”... so taking to my feet i staggered back to the homestead, looking for a charging cord and my solar charger...
Pushing aside the old Stellar Wars playfield that I had fashioned into a crude barn door, I went looking for my electronic life line amongst my stuff. I pulled open the top drawer on my make-shift dresser, which I had pieced together from an old Genesis cabinet and a bingo machine, to find my progress immediately halted by what appeared to be one rare, and angry pink rattler.
Pthffftht! <rattle> <rattle>!!
“Jeeee-suuuus! Floyd, ya about gave me a heart attack” I stammered as I reached in and moved him out of my way. A man has got to have his priorities... digging deeper in the drawer I found my handy dandy solar charger complete with charging cord and headed out to the sun. Floyd coiled back up into the drawer and went back to sleep. I think he hates me.
Resting as comfortably as one can on a 117 degree rock, I pulled out my charger, ripped the velcro flap open, unfolded the solar array and rested it on my knees. Reaching absentmindedly for the charging cord that had fallen to the ground, I felt a small prick on the back of my left middle finger and looked over to see what sticker or thorn I had “pricked up”, when to my horror and surprise, what was currently a single prick suddenly became one- two- three more pricks in a row as the brown bark scorpion, the largest one I had ever seen, had just landed 4 solid stings to my hand and was turning to deliver a couple more. “F*ck!”, I screamed as I jumped to my feet, grabbing the solar charger with my free right hand. My phone, which I had sat on top of it went flying through the air in a gentle arc, heading for the opening of my hastily dug, but thoroughly deep latrine a few meters away, tucked out of sight behind a cactus. “Shit!”, I yelled appropriately, as I watched the phone tumble, end over end, on it’s way to the eventual turd touchdown I was fearing. Sploop! A three pointer! and the fans did not go wild.
Turning my attention now to the massive pain and burning of my finger, my rage towards Mr. Scorpion now swelled in me faster than the swelling of my hand and finger, but I was determined to get my revenge. With the only thing I had in my possession at the time with any heft or reach, I took the solar charger by one end and went charging after Mr. Scorpion. Feeling and fearing my oncoming attack, the scorpion turned and started running towards the rock, in hopes of crawling out of sight quickly, but my big human strides took me to his deaths door in less than two. With a giant swing of the solar charger, I brought it down onto the killing floor of the desert in a thundering smack that was sure to do Mr. Scorpion in. Unfortunately for me, but more fortunately for Mr. Scorpion, just about the time the solar charger was to dash him to bits, he had crawled upon a small twig of a mesquite tree that sat in his path on the way to the rock. With the grace and all the pageantry of a Cirque du Soleil vaulting act, the solar charger hit the mesquite branch, and, just like a teeter totter, had launched the now airborne arachnid in my general direction, specifically directly at my face.
It is now, I should note, not only was Mr. Scorpion performing his best Superman impersonation, but he was also NOT Mr. Scorpion, and this was NOT his best Superman impression but instead this was Mrs. Scorpion, this was her HER best Wonder Woman impersonation, and Wonder Woman had kids, lots of them, and they were taking their first Invisible Airplane ride.
Splat! Aieeee! “What the holy F*ck!?! They are in my mouth- yuh! OMG!”...
I woke up, my face, sunburned and puffy from the stings and the exposure. My left eye was completely useless, it had long since swollen shut after taking the brunt of the stings from the tiny, clear, almost invisible baby scorpions that had been riding on momma’s back. My right eye could see fuzzy images, as it had not totally puffed shut like the left. In my limited view, I could see Mrs. Scorpion hiding now under the edge of the rock only a few feet from my head.
The pounding in my head was fogging my thinking as I turned over and tried to sit up. The blinding pain in my swollen left hand reminded me that it had taken 4 or 5 good stings and was probably useless. Turning over onto my stomach, I used my still viable right arm and hand to crawl towards the last known location of my phone. If I was going to survive this, I needed to get help, and my phone was my only hope...
It took me several minutes and a lot of pain to inch my way towards my latrine. It didn’t help matters that with every inch closer I came, the stench of that hole grew stronger. And I had to hurry. I had no clue how shit-proof an iPhone was and I had no idea how long it had been submerged. If it worked at all would be a fecal miracle. Finally, I reached the rim of that festering hole of butt stew and looked over the edge. A sad, iPhone-shaped outline still hung on the surface where it had plunged to the depths, a telltale sign of just how unpleasant this was going to be. Plunging my hand into the warm, sticky goo, I felt around for a iPhone shaped turd and was sidetracked momentarily by my own appreciation on just how amazing deep I was able to dig this hole. Several shoulder-deep plunges later, I was able to retrieve my phone from that god-awful nightmare of self created waste.
After wiping the mainstay of the fudge-like trappings off my arm on the warm rock, I turned towards the solar charger and slowly inched my way back to were it lay on the ground nearby. The cord was fortuitously close as well and so I figured, if I was lucky, I might get just enough charge to text my distributor and tell him I did not appreciate his humor on April Fools Day, and how far up his hinny hole he could shove his joke before the sun set.
I tried several attempts to get the literal crap out of my charging port on my phone using only the twigs and sticks I could scrounge on the ground around me, but I was getting desperate when another thought came to mind. What if he wasn’t joking? What if this was the day, and this was the message I really was waiting on?
With a renewed sense of purpose, and throwing all caution to the winds, I immediately stuck the iPhone, still crusted in my own filth, up to my mouth and started blowing and manipulating it like I was Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull playing it like a flute, little bits of shit and twigs going everywhere. Soon, after what looked like most of the offending matter had been cleared out, I stuffed the plug of the charging cable into the phone and opened the solar array up and pointed it at the sun, which, getting low on the horizon, was slowly sinking behind the distant mountains.
As the last rays of sun tucked slowly behind the purple and brown shadow of the San Tan Mountains, the little red battery indicator blinked once and was replaced by that familiar white bitten-apple logo. Glimpsing the first few pixels of green and white sea-foam wallpaper, I thumb crush the home button to open the phone and start the message app. Ok, Joe @ PinballSTAR, ok new message, as I madly begin to tap out “Ok to ship...”
I don’t recall much else after that. I must have pressed send, but I wasn’t sure until later. The venom of the scorpions had finally got the best of me and I succumbed to the heated fever that enveloped my head as I pitched to the ground and blacked out. The next thing I remembered was coming to, right where I had passed out, a pair of “dually” tire tracks stretching off into the distance, a wooden pallet with a ripped up cardboard box on top of it, and next to me, a canteen full of water. On the canteen was a post it note written in a very familiar looking hand:
“Thanks for letting me borrow your Monster Bash LE, saw it had been delivered and didn’t look like you were going to be using it any time soon. Call me when you sober up.
Sincerely, your brother, Mitch”