Clarence Porter: Urban Survivor

Clarence was awakened by the sound of crickets chirping beside his ear. Startled, his eyelids burst open and immediately clamped shut from the intensity of the sunrise. A long blade of grass, nudged by the wind, reached over the top of Clarence's head and fiddle-tickled his nose. He sniffled one. Then twice.

And a cricked jumped up from the ground and onto his lips as Clarence let off the single most powerful sneeze known to man. The cricket was not only killed, it was vaporized, since it's a well-known fact that crickets aren't designed to travel in speeds excess of Mach 10.

Clarence stood up and licked the cricket guts from his face. He needed all the protein he could get if he wanted to make it out of the plains and into the big city before sundown. He picked up his backpack and camera and started walking towards the figure of a city in the distance. He pointed the camera to his own face and hit record.

"I'm Clarence Porter. And I'm gonna teach you how to survive in the world's most dangerous artificial habitats. Our next stop: Chicago, Illinois."




"Now," Clarence spoke while walking, "I'd say Chicago's about... 50, 60 miles from here? That's a hell of a walk. If you're like me and you're running on fumes and cricket giblets, you'd be better off lying on the ground and sucking on dirt than think you'll make that journey without dying from exhaustion."

He continued walking, occasionally glancing around him. "As survivalists, you're always gonna have to balance risk and reward. Right now, the reward of reaching the city isn't worth the risk of walking and running out of energy, being pecked to death by vultures, or maimed by angry Chicagonese people. Nevertheless, we definitely want to get to the city before sundown. Chicago during winter's a tamable beast, but Chicago during winter at night? I'd have better chances getting back together with my ex-wife than surviving that.

"So how do we get there without wasting precious energy? We use our wits." Clarence pinned the handheld camera between his shoulder and the side of his face. He pulled out a large doll from his backpack that vaguely resembled a mummified baby. "Remember the dolls we stole from the Taiwanese doll shop? We're gonna be modifying that a bit today."

Clarence walked toward a roadside stand with a bright red sign that said "Sam's Strawbries." A small boy sat on a stool behind the stand, eagerly waiting for customers to buy some strawberries.

"Just our luck," Clarence started. "Small children are significantly easier to subdue than their mature counterparts. A word of caution: before you engage combat with any wild children, make sure that their parents are either absent or incapacitated. You never want to let the parents spot you, or things'll turn ugly."

Clarence crouched down and slowly slithered behind the strawberry stand. The small boy remained patiently on his stool, oblivious to Clarence's presence. He gave an audible squeal of excitement every time a car passed by, though none ever stopped to buy some strawberries. Clarence stepped closer and closer to the stand, taking care to roll his footsteps to dampen their sound.

"A good strategy for this situation," Clarence whispered, "Is to startle the animal. Disoriented children are even easier to overpower." At this point, Clarence was directly behind the boy. He put his camera down on the dirt ground. He stood up, towering over the small, six year old boy.

"HORK HORK HORK!" Clarence bellowed like the demon offspring of a seagull and a very ashamed walrus. The boy jolted upright as Clarence swung his meaty hand at the boy and slapped him on his cheek. The sound of Clarence's open palm connecting with the boy's fleshy face produced a violent slapping noise, akin to the sound of a morbidly obese man diving from a skyscraper and belly-flopping into an inflatable kiddie-pool.

The child fell to the ground, unconscious. Comatose, probably. If Clarence had opted to karate chop the boy like he originally intended, the boy's head would most likely have come clean off. But for now, the boy's injuries were completely non-lethal. The only evidence that anything happened to the boy was that he was on the ground. And the giant red palmprint on the right side of his face, almost as red as the strawberries the child wanted to sell.

"Just like that!" Clarence picked up the camera and aimed it at himself. "Take the strawberries and just crush them until they're nice and pulpy." Clarence stomped on a large box of strawberries for a few minutes. When he finished, his right leg was dyed red. "Once you're done, submerge your doll into the red liquid and let it sit for... oh... five minutes or so. Doesn't matter if you let it sit for too long, we just want the red to start seeping in to the doll."

Clarence set down the camera on the stand picked up another box of strawberries. He held the box to the camera.

"Strawberries are rubbish. They're tasty, of course, but they have such little protein and carbohydrates that you'd have to eat a huge number of them just to sustain yourself. But, seeing as we're desperate and we don't want to resort to cannibalism just yet, we'll make do with what we have." Clarence immediately took handfuls of strawberries and shoved them into his mouth. He didn't care whether or not he crushed the strawberries or whether or not he ate the stem. He just ate.

"Mmm." Clarence muffled with mouthfuls of strawberry in his mouth. He swallowed. "Delicious. A lot tastier than cricket intestine. I think our doll's about done too." He picked up the doll from the liquid strawberry box, which was now dyed a deep red. A few strawberry chunks were stuck on its clothy body as well.

"Now for the witty part." He put the doll back in the box. Picking up the camera in one hand and the box of strawberries in the other, he walked to the side of the gravel road and sat down.

"As I've said in previous episodes, hitchhiking is rather dangerous, simply because humans are one of the few animals that can have ulterior motives. Sure, the guy that's picking you up looks helpful, but when you get in, one thing leads to another and next thing you know, you're in a shallow grave and all of your orifices hurt. Trust me, you don't want that. I learned the hard way." Clarence rubbed his left ear from the painful memories he just recalled.

"But hitchhiking is only dangerous because of the 'human' element. If we can remove that element from hitchhiking, then we'll be fine. I'm about to show you a foolproof way of removing the 'human' from hitchhiking so you're guaranteed safe travel to wherever you want to go."

Clarence looked to his left. A pickup truck peered out from the horizon, shimmering from the heat waves radiating from the dark gray road.

"You're gonna want to make sure the doll is nice and red before you do this. Probably best if you poured a few chunks on it too." Clarence picked up the doll and scooped chunks of strawberry onto it. Then, he stood up and awaited the trucks arrival, as patiently as the boy manning the stand had done.



Bill drove his Dodge Ram down the gravel road towards Chicago with both hands on the steering wheel. He gently rocked his head back and forth and tapped his fingers to the beat of Highway to Hell by AC/DC. The fuzzy dice hanging from his rearview mirror gently swayed with the bumpiness of the road. Aviator sunglasses on and rocking a complementary mustache and goatee combo, he was the embodiment of cool.

"I'm on the hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighway to hell!" Bill sang while nodding his head to the beat. "On the hiiiiiiiiiiii-"

Suddenly, a baby flew into his windshield, splattering into a blob of red organs.

"JESUS CHRIST!" Bill simultaneously swerved to his left and defecated in his trousers. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!" His screaming drowned out Bon Scott's vocals, which still sang "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiighway to hell!"

Bill's vehicle was completely out of control now. His tires squealed and skidded as Bill panicked and stepped on the gas pedal. He turned the steering wheel like a two year old playing Mario Kart Wii, though the two year old had the benefit of Lakitu picking the kart back up. Bill had no such luxury. In a last resort, he activated his windshield wipers to clear the dead baby chunks from his windshield before he crashed into a tree by the side of the road.



"Success!" Clarence jumped up and walked to the car accident that he had just caused. The windshield of the blue truck was shattered from the impact with the tree, but the doll seemed to have sustained little damage.

"Remember: survivors never waste precious resources. Therefore, whenever possible, always reuse. In this case, we'll be taking back this doll. It could prove useful again in the future." Clarence put the doll in his backpack and opened the driverside door.

A white bubble surrounded Bill's face. The airbag had deployed, but it had rendered Bill unconscious from the sheer force of it. The radio continued playing Highway to Hell. The fuzzy dice no longer moved.

"Surprising. No casualties. Lucky guy." Clarence turned up the volume of the radio, closed the door, and hid behind the tree, humming Highway to Hell as he did so.

"Now, the engine's wrecked beyond repair, which is unfortunate since we could've used the car to head to Chicago. But no worries. As a survivor, you've gotta be willing to adapt. If things don't go according to plan, then you change the plan and work with it."

Clarence peeked his head out from the tree and spotted another car heading his way. From the looks of it, a white Toyota, but Clarence wasn't sure.

"That's what I'm doing right now. Adapting. I was hoping that the car would stop when the doll hit the windshield, but it crashed, as you can tell. So now..." The car drove closer to Clarence. Clarence hid behind the tree. "I'll be using the accident as bait." Clarence pulled out the doll from his backpack, still slightly bloody, though not as bloody as before the car crash.

The white car reached the scene of the accident and skidded to a halt. A professional-looking woman got out of the car and rushed to the driverside window. She peered in, gasped, and pulled out a cell phone from her pocket. She quickly dialed three numbers and pressed the phone to her ear.

"Now is the time to strike," Clarence whispered to the camera. He put the camera in his backpack and stepped out of the tree.



"Um, yes, I'd like to report an accident on Farmland Drive," the lady spoke into the phone. She dusted off her business suit. "I'm not sure where exactly, since there's no intersections but-"

"WHERG WHERG WHERG!" Clarence shrieked, releasing his inner howler monkey. The businesswoman screamed into her phone, startling the 911 operator on the other end of the line. Clarence lobbed the doll at the woman's face, hitting her square in the nose and causing her to drop her phone. Amazingly, the lady managed to catch the doll in her left hand. She quickly looked at the doll.

"FETUS! IT'S A GODDAMN FETUS!" She shouted and instinctively dropped it. The bits of red strawberry stained her business suit.

"FETUS BLOOD IN YOUR BUSINESS SUIT HAHAHAHAHA!" Clarence howled as he got in her car. The woman flailed her arms and did a quick shuffle with her feet as a reflex to the disgusting idea of an unborn fetus making contact with her.

"OH GOD. OH... GOD." She was visibly disturbed now. Her eyes widened and she bent over to throw up on the ground. Clarence drove away in the woman's car. The woman didn't seem to notice that Clarence had just stolen her car. She seemed preoccupied with regurgitating her lungs out.

"Just like that," Clarence said. "Just like that."

And he drove to Chicago.





Author's Note: Out of hiatus, at last! This idea's been in my head for almost a year now, ever since my friends and I brought it up while walking home. Not sure how we got into the topic, but I think we were talking about Bear Grylls and saw a homeless guy. We put two and two together and here it is.

Speaking of Bear Grylls, actually sat down and watched a few episodes of Man vs. Wild to see the style that Bear talks and tried to replicate it in the way Clarence talks. Other than that, not too much research in here, save for song lyrics (hah) and whether or not strawberries could grow in Illinois.

Of course, the title's a bit of a misnomer, since we didn't actually get into any "Urban Survival" here. But I feel that the story would be way too long if I included the city bit in there, so I'll save that for a sequel in the future.

As always, comments are greatly appreciated!