Emoticons: Spawn of Satan

I smelled her feet before she even typed in her login. I can't see anything until the screen lights up, but you can't miss an odor like that. As soon as she kicked off her high-heeled mules and plopped her dogs on the mouse pad, there was no mistaking the sulfur. She was probably wiggling her toes under her fishnets, cackling over whatever deviltry she was planning for the day. Oh yeah, I could tell it was the boss all right, even before her handle showed up in lights: SATAN.

I'm her right hand man, but even I don't know her password.

I rubbed my eyes and wiped a smile onto my face. When the boss showed up, it was best to be ready for work

“Helloooo, Smiley! How's my little friend?” She said the last word as if it were high in trans-fatty acids. The angel face betrayed her origin, but the velour bathrobe showed way too much cleavage.

“Hungry, boss.”

“Sooo, my little jaundiced glutton, we're all ready for work, aren't we?”

“You bet, boss,” I said with a smile.

The boss had been training me to eat text for months, and I was starting to develop a taste for the stuff. She streamed me a few poems my way and I started munching. She kept talking while absently paging through the Newbies and rating everything 2.5 stars. That gal can rate at quite a clip.

“Aren't you supposed to read those first?” I asked, between bites.

The trill of her laughter pelted the computer screen. “Oh dog tootsies, Smiley! What fun is that? You know I'm a busy girl. Besides, I don't take any lip from somebody who evolved from punctuation marks!”

She tapped the screen with a manicured crimson fingernail. “That reminds me. Today I have a special job for you.”

I smiled. “I'm all ears.”

She cut her evil chortle short after a few seconds and gave me the no funny business look. “Smiley, what is that you're eating?”

I held up the remains of a magenta W.

“Smiley, you know those colored letters aren't as nutritious as black type. They just fill you up.”

“But the colored ones taste sweeter!” I was complaining, not arguing. I started in on a black verb, but hid a plump lavender adverb behind my back for when she wasn't looking. Time to change the subject. “What's the job, boss?”

“Creativity, Smiley. It's rearing its nefarious head again, and it's up to us to put an end to it.” She narrowed her eyes and brought her face so close to the computer screen I could smell the brownie a la mode breakfast cereal on her breath. “But no more -- we will take away their tools! Spam it, it's time for hungry emoticons to take over! And today is the day!”

It scares me when she gets excited like that, but at the time it seemed safer to play along. “Sounds like more fun than a castrated banana, boss! What do I do?”

“Go out there and find all the feral emoticons and bring them back to me.”

“Uh, feral emoticons?”

“Those nasty black punctuation marks, Smiley. The fetid toescum from which you came.”

“Without punctuation, the whole world would be a mass of incomprehensible run-on sentences.”

“Yes, Smiley, yes! I will contrive to make them into emoticons, my own minions, my slaves, my... spawn. Soon I will have an army of them, ravenous to do my will. And they will eat – Eat – EAT!” She leaned back and began to sharpen her fingernails in the electric pencil sharpener. “But don't go out there alone. Take Frowny, and Maddy, and Tonguey with you. Oh, and don't forget...”

“No!”

“...Grinny. Yes Grinny. Why not Grinny?”

“Those teeth scare the scrum outta me, boss.”

“Judas Priest in a yurt, Smiley, sometimes I think you have all the backbone of belly button lint! Now get out there and do my diabolical bidding before I poach your eyeballs for eggs!”

Well, I got down to Emoticon Central and looked to see who was hanging around. She could give orders all she liked, but some of us emoticons are pretty busy dudes. As the Supervising Emoticon I have a few clones to help out, but most of the guys do all their own work. The only one that wasn't busy was Sicky, the little green dude. Except for --

“HEY PAL HOW ARE YA TADAY I'M JUST GREAT, JUST MAGNOFULOUS, JUST --”

“Grinny, you really take your job way too seriously.”

“HAHAHAHAHAHA!” Oh, brother.

But orders are orders, and since these two were ready to go I told them about the boss' plan. Sicky didn't want to go, but Grinny got so excited he started rolling around like a bowling ball. I smiled bravely, grabbed an extra barfbag for my little green friend, and led my crew into the wilds. Grinny's teeth chattered as he bounced along, so I stayed way out of his way. I gave Sicky a pink J pinched from a C-note, trying to perk him up and all. But it didn't agree with him and we had to use up the barfbag. I pitched the results toward a scantily clad angel sig, who squawked and batted it away with her halo. Then we made our way through a link, and on into that stronghold of punctuation, the Static Items.

We rounded up a couple indecisive commas, a bunch of useless parentheses, and a poor abused semicolon. This was turning out to be a box of crackers. But just when things were turning predictable, a bunch of exclamation points showed up, and the mood turned ugly.

“We don't want to be emoticons!”

“Yeah, you guys have to display the same emotion, day in, day out!”

I smiled. “Don't you love emotion?”

“Yeah, but we'd hate always being the same emotion!”

They started chasing after us, flailing away with those stems of theirs. Grinny and I held Sicky up and we plunged out of range, into the closest static item we could find, a survey. The other two started cruising around to work the more timid punctuation, while I went for the question marks.

“Hey guys!” I gave them a big smile. “How would you like to join us emoticons?”

They gave me puzzled looks.

“Just think, you could join up and be a rad cyber-type guy like me. We all know there's no future in punctuating sentences. All the cool punctuation marks are going into emoticon work. This is the career opportunity you've been waiting for!”

One of them got right up in my face. “Oh yeah? What's wrong with sentences, Bub?”

I smiled. “Oh, nothing wrong! Of course not. It's just, if writing doesn't have an emoticon with it, how will anyone know how you feel?”

Now a couple of them were riled. “The words, maybe?” asked one.

“Or the context?” another suggested.

Then a big double question mark got right up in my face. “Look, are you saying nobody can make emotions clear without you guys, huh, is that what you're saying?? Let me ask you this – what's to keep your kind from lying, huh??”

The others chimed in. “Yeah, you don't really feel like smiling all the time, do you?”

I kept smiling, but I was starting to get a little unnerved here. I mean, question marks are pretty big dudes. I looked around for my backup. Sicky came back with one lonely period stuck in his mouth, which was struggling to get loose. It went the wrong way and got stuck in his throat, making him cough all over the place, including all over me. I jumped back, my smile faltering.

The question marks were all around me, taking playful swipes with those hooks of theirs. I had to dance around, trying to keep out of their reach. By now Sicky had coughed his way into an answer field and couldn't get out. Grinny came bouncing up, though.

When I saw him, I smiled. “I sure could use a little help in here!”

He grinned. “HEY THERE PAL YOU'RE DOIN' GREAT! LOOKIN' GOOD!” And to my dismay he bounced off in the other direction.

I lost my cool then. “Why you...“ I burst through the line of my tormentors and took off after him in a rage. “Why you purple snouted Republicrat, I oughta shave your nosehair with a lawnmower! You frost my pickles, you know that? You...”

I stopped. Grinny was looking at me in dismay, no grin on his face, only a look of puzzlement. One of the question marks jumped up over his head. Grinny spoke with a controlled voice for once. “How'd you do that, Smiley? You ain't smilin' no more.”

I felt my face. He was right. There, instead of a smile, was a snarl of anger. I felt so guilty, I broke down and started sobbing. “Omigosh. What if that happened when I was trying to bring a happy message to someone? It would be awful if they knew how I really feel! Must-- smile--” I tried and tried, but something inside me was broken. I just couldn't muster an insincere smile again.

“What am I going to tell the boss?” I sobbed.

“Tell her?” one of the question marks asked. “Don't we have a thing or two to show her?”

“Right!”

Everyone cheered, including Grinny and Sicky. As we made our way through the Static Items, we gathered more and more backup. By the time we got there, I couldn't see the back of the crowd of punctuation marks.

She was still at her terminal, up to more of her fun. At first she didn't look up. “Smiley, is that you? Look! I've found a way to generate random passkey numbers and I'm putting them on all the review forums. That way-- Smiley?”

That's when she saw me. That's when she saw all of us. I was armed with a slash, ready to start swinging. “Full stop, boss.”

“I didn't recognize you, at first, without the yellow pie face. Smiley, what are you doing?”

“I'm going down to Emoticon Central to free the rest of the crew, but first...” I picked up the slash and started running at the screen, with the whole crew backing me up. “Prepare to meet your end punctuation!”

SMILEY I:M) GOING T:O GET YOU )A:A)A:G)G:H)H