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Rated: E · Short Story · Fantasy · #1325147
something i made for a class project. hope you like it.
Harold was stalking the cafe again. That was what he always did when he ate dinner on campus. He didn't do this often, of course; only on a few nights, when all his favorite restaurants were closed, for whatever reason. Even then, he often knew when they were closing, and planned accordingly by buying enough food for two nights to go, and eating some the first night, some the next- most nights, of course. Of course, he usually bought a lot of food to eat, because he was always eating. So, yes, he was huge.
Not tonight, though. The fat man was especially tired last night, after chasing the bus all the way into town (he forgot his papers on said bus). He didn't want to go out that night, so now here he was, sulking  over his plight, in the college cafe, seeing hat he could get to eat, which wasn't much, because he always ate late, and everyone had eaten most of the food. Finally, He decided on a slice of pizza and a few bottles of iced tea (so he could have some the next day).
Harold was in the bathroom. All that tea he bought didn't last and he had to pee, badly. But when he got in, he heard a scuffling, like a rat. It wasn't all that unbelievable; there was a problem with rats last year in the east wing of the dorms. Not thinking much of it, he went into the stall and relieved himself. But when he came out, there was not a rat, but a squirrel sitting in the air vent at on the wall at floor-level. A purple squirrel.
Not one who took easily to animals in secondary colors, Harold screamed.
"Well hello to you, too," said the squirrel, making Harold yelp, but then stifle the rest.
"You can talk?" said Harold quietly, squinting a bit to see this strange, purple rodent.
"Obviously, I can."
"What are you doing here?" said Harold. "I mean, why are you in the air vent?"
After coughing harshly, "Stuck," said the squirrel. "I heard that there was a cat in the vent system. Well, what are you standing around for? Help me out."
After fiddling with the plug-end of his USB drive like a screwdriver (which was surprisingly resilient to this kind of abuse), he got the vent's screws undone, and the squirrel ran out, and Harold used a brush that he normally used to clean off the loose hair on his cat to get the dirt out of the squirrel's fur.
"Thanks," said the squirrel, "by the way, my name's Chucky. Pleasure to meet you, Harry."
Harold was about to say something, but stopped. "How'd you know my nickname?"
"Well," replied Chucky, "I am a magic squirrel."
"Magic? Yeah, right," said 'Harry'. "I don't believe it."
"I am!" protested Chucky. "I mean, have you ever seen a purple squirrel, or even a squirrel other than brown, Chunky?"
Harold had to agree. Brown squirrels were quite a lot more common than other kinds.
"Y’know what, you saved me, I’m gonna do you a favor."
"... Like?"
"Anything you can think of," said Chucky haughtily, as though he were very proud of his power.
Harold thought for a moment. He had always wanted a tank, but that would be hard to explain. A death ray would be nice, but it was too impractical. Then he remembered why he was in the bathroom. He had been drinking tea, which he bought from the cafe, which he was in because he didn't have anything to eat from last night. But how should he remedy this? He thought, and thought, and finally thought of a bottomless pot. "I've got it. I want a pot that is always filled with fresh food," he said.
"OK, one... moment... ah!" he said, and out of thin air popped a pot- actually, it was a cauldron.
Then, the cauldron began filling up with foods. All kinds of foods: sushi, sashimi, fried chicken, spaghetti, vegetable-soup-in-a-thermos, even things that he had never seen, were there.
Whoa! I’ve never seen so much food! Harold thought, staring greedily into the pot. “But wait,” he said, “I said a pot. This is a cauldron.”
“Eh, same, diff,” snapped Chucky. He went on, “if you want food, just tell it what you want. But don’t ask for two foods at once- tell it to clear out between foods. It makes some very disgusting things when people do that.”

The next night, Harold was having a very good time with the pot. He had been filling it up, and emptying it all night with food. He had image-Googled “food” and was filling it up and emptying it with what he saw. But, he didn’t anything yet until he had dinner, which was a feast; he had ordered chicken sandwich on a roll, and aujus sauce for dinner that night, and kept eating, savoring each bite, until his pants didn’t fit. His college mates noticed too, that he was fatter. This continued; him eating as much as he could, usually two or more cauldron-fulls, and filling it up in between.
But one night, he became unusually hungry. He began eating a lot of food, and he demanded the pot to fill up with Mac and cheese; something he had never done. Then, when it filled up again, it started to fill over the top. Harold saw this, and told the pot to clear, like he did to clear it out, but it didn’t clear. It just kept filling. Now Harold was worried. What if it didn’t stop? What if it filled the room? The dorm? The college?
But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to find a way to get rid of the food. He tried eating it, but it was coming out too fast, and that didn’t work. He thought about tossing it out the window, but that would be too conspicuous. Then it hit him: find the squirrel. He ran out of his room, down the hall, down the stairs, and into the courtyard. On and on he searched, everywhere for a purple squirrel, to no avail. Finally he collapsed, tired from running around and scared from what would happen should someone find out about his plight. Then, to his surprise, there sat the purple squirrel, right in front of him. He gaped at it, then sat up and started spluttering about his problem, until Chucky threw an acorn at his head. Upon this, Harold sort of reset, and his face went blank, and he just sat there.
“Now, slowly, tell me what you’re carryin’ on about,” said Chucky.
After a moment, Harold said, “The pot is overflowing.”
“Oh, dear,” said chucky, “we need to get up there fast.”
They ran over to the fire escape this time, and entered through Harold’s window. There, they found Mac & cheese all over the ground.
“What did I do wrong?” asked Harold nervously.
“Hmm… Oh, I see. You told it to make too much. You were being greedy,” said chucky. “Look, the best I can do is make you a bottomless trashcan, but then you’re on your own. You got into this mess; you have to get out of it.”

And so Harold ruefully had to clean the macaronis out for years onward, until finally, when he was in his forties, it was empty, and he buried it; and he never took more than he had to.
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