"Shelldone the Snappy Tortoise"

Joshwa was pretending that the apocalypse was coming in December so he could avoid making New Years plans. In his worn and expired short sleeve Barracuda shirt, he was not meaning to stand out from the crowd but he did so without intent. Joshwa felt like a pancake on a griddle, brown on one side and raw on the other.

Meanwhile, Sharon sat across the room, silently fuming after not having climaxed earlier during the scheduled sex times. Sharon felt deep neglect and outward anger toward Joshwa’s inability to accurately time his festivities.

On the other side of town, a scientist- specifically a Latino paleontologist named Esteban - was bemoaning the new “paleo” diet craze as something demeaning to cave men. Esteban asserted that cave men had much more creativity and inventiveness than meager portions of meat and vegetables with the occasional nut.

                                                For most of his first 150 years, Shelldone was the main draw. When not encased in his shell, Shelldone saw it all—students, families, tourists, circus freaks, bikers, Amish, trauma patients, the sagas of other animals and, of course, the poachers. Those truly caused Shelldone’s little tortoise heart to tear in two when the eyes of the poachers grew very large at the sight of his priceless shell, shellacked and sparkling under the afternoon light.

But for Shelldone, his beautiful sought after tortoise shell was not so much a black market Technicolor dream coat but moreso caused Shelldone to feel like he was a walking target for the poachers. And realistically speaking, he was. Shelldone had, tragically, lost all seven of his wives to poachers. While many think reptiles are incapable of true love, Shelldone would beg to differ. Though the reptilian skin is scaly and dry, Shelldone’s heart is drowned in deep sorrow for each wife that has passed too soon to become another Chanel handbag.

Shelldone reflected on his rough upbringing and unlikely path to the big 1-5-0,

“Birthdays was the worse days, now we sip champagne when we’re

thirst-ay.”

Shelldone was a huge Biggie Smalls fan as well as other early 90s rappers like Easy E. Shelldone developed a keen ear for music in his eighth decade when his cage was placed near the gorillas, where the interns took cigarette breaks.

The main zoo attendants were concerned that Shelldone was going senile in his old tortoise years but they were unaware that when Shelldone appeared to be forgetting to eat or where his favorite toys were, he was really making a strong political statement about confinement and how oppressive current American domestic policies were to the middle class.

Shelldone was also outraged that The Memphis Three had been sentenced to death and life in prison while the show “Survivor” was still on network television. Ironies like these caused a rift in Shelldone’s already rough exterior. He liked to think his insides were like a dryer sheet, warm, welcoming and soothing. His outer shell was such the opposite that he had to accept from a very young age that he would never be a teen model.

                                    Shelldone was born out of a shell like most of the pop stars of today but his birth was notable for a bevy of reasons that should be noted below.

1.    Shelldone’s mother and father were actually in love. It was not an act of carnalmating but a courtship that resulted in a litter of baby half Russian, half Galapogos tortoises. Because of this, Shelldone was raised to believe in romantic big picture ideas that the Republican party often labeled as “unrealistic.” But to him, they were all he knew.

2.    Shelldone was the only baby to survive the birth in what was one of the worst nesting catastrophes in the history of the Maori Tortoise Cultural Affinity Awareness Species. As a result, Shelldone was studied at length and with extreme curiosity by a group of nomad Marine Biologists who years later, much to the distaste of thinking people the world over, founded Web MD.

  Shelldone　was filled with unexpressed rage and jealousy over his cousin Royce being selected over him to join John and Jackie Kennedy in the White House. Cousin Royce was hidden in a corner during a historic three way between John and Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. (FYI: Marilyn lived up to her reputation). This brush with power andcelebrity, and the subsequent moments that followed, were the pinnacle of Shelldone’s involvement with American politics. After knowing the Kennedys by proxy, there was nowhere to go but down, similar to how bath salts leave only a film of debris after they drain.

On the day of his 150th birthday, Shelldone was just waking up from a midday nap to the familiar and constant harassment of his neighbor, Franklin the Gorilla. Franklin the Gorilla’s sole purpose in life was to taunt and humiliate Shelldone. From the other side of his bullet-proofed glass encasing, he would rub in Shelldone’s face all the popularity and tourist traffic that at one time was centered around the tortoise habitat, and is now stationed indefinitely at the primate sanctuary. Franklin the Gorilla’s pounding on the walls chronically echoed throughout Shelldone’s aging cranium and reminded him of how far he had fallen down the zoo’s social ladder.

Shelldone sighed as he looked at the dilapidated swimming hole in his cage that used to be vibrant and revitalizing. Rather than inviting, the swimming hole was dried up and full of excrement that did not belong to Shelldone.

“Check out my gravel pit. A mystery unraveling.”

Another one of Shelldone’s beloved early 90s rap quotes explicitly described the strife of his old age, this time originating from Wu Tang Clan whom he accidently toured with in their formative years.

Sharon and Joshwa were at wit’s end in their cramped and poorly lit living space. With no money left in their checking accounts to pay the rent and Joshwa refusing to ask his affluent family for assistance, the two were in the throes of concocting an elaborate scheme to earn the money they needed to pay off their debts and return to eating the overpricedorganic arugula for their radicchio salads, to which they had become accustomed.

“People in Asia can live on one dollar a day,” Joshwa whined in between swigs from the fair-traded Columbian coffee served in his prized “World’s Best Second Cousin” mug. “I don’t know why we, in this great country, the land of opportunity, have such a hard time following their model of a simple life.”

After six years of his detached idealism, Sharon couldn’t take another second of listening to the unemployed 26-year old Environmental Studies major complain about one more thing. Although Sharon relied heavily on Joshwa to cater to her needs, she was consistently unwilling to take any initiative on her own accord.

Frustrated, Sharon finally burst, “because you keep quitting all your fucking jobs!”

        There was a frantic knock on the apartment door that dismantled the room’s thick tension. Neither Joshwa nor Sharon had had any outside contact for days and both immediately knew that the person on the other side of the door was inevitably going to pay a visit; they just had hoped it would be when they were out doing qigong in the park.

Joshwa closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath which angered Sharon to no end. “You can’t just think that meditating is going to make this situation go away,” she exclaimed, exasperated. And she, in classic Sharon style, made no moves towards opening the door.     

There was a second round of pounding. Sharon yelled towards the door, “Who is it?” Instead of answering the question, there was a third pounding sequence, clearly much more forceful than the previous two. Joshwa opened his eyes, met Sharon’s and then buried his face in his hands.

Sharon blew up and screamed at Joshwa, “pull up your balls and answer the fucking door!” And right then, a stout Malaysian man in ill fitting pleather pants threw open the door.

              The Malaysian man, Itzu (“Ee-Tzu“), turned out to be a low level crime lord sent on behalf of the owners of the building to collect the year’s back rent. Itzu casually sat in between Joshwa and Sharon on the couch, eating his lunch of assorted Malaysian delights. Sharon and Joshwa watched him in silence on either side of the couch. The two residents realized that Itzu had already taken away their phones and tied each of their hands up with various computer cords he found near the door before they could even make a move to defend themselves.

Itzu’s meal was so prototypically southern Malaysian spicey that it caused him to develop beads of sweat on his brow which he wiped off with his long sleeved red leopard print mesh top. At one point, overwhelmed with the level of heat, Itzu even had to remove his pleather peddler’s cap which revealed his D.I.Y. platinum hair tips. It was at this moment that Itzu let out a deep sigh that reverberated around all of the apartment’s second-hand store oak furniture.

Brian Jones was on parole from prison after being caught near the Mexican border with a trailer full of endangered Vicuna hides. Born Jahulius Carver, he adopted the name Brian Jones in prison. Unfortunately for Brian Jones, most people he interfaced with associated his name with the founding member of the Rolling Stones. This caused frequent panic attacks.

Presently, Brian Jones was a bitter man, not only because he chose the name of a beloved dead celebrity but also because his current job required him to devote his days traveling back and forth on a small car ferry between Martha’s Vineyard and Chappaquiddick, on the very spot where Ted Kennedy’s presidential aspirations died along with the pretty lady in the passenger seat. For ten hours a day, seven days a week, Brian Jones drove the dinky three car Chappy Ferry the 527 feet in each direction.

Brian Jones obtained his job through his brother-in-law, a well to do lawyer who pushed his convict brother onto a client who owed him a favor for getting him out of an embarrassing sex tape scandal with a co-worker and her underage roommate. When the local Chappy Ferry driver came down with Lupus, the timing was right and Brian Jones became the new captain of Ferry Boat 3: The Lady of the Night.

Brian Jones has a small but pivotal role our story that began and ended during an impromptu trip Itzu took to Martha’s Vineyard to visit Poaching Master Stefán (PMS) in his summer chateau on Chappaquiddick. The day of the meeting was scorching hot and Brian Jones was sweating almost as profusely as Itzu, who had just finished a late breakfast box packaged by Feather Pocket. The two men exchanged a look in between wiping wafts of sweat off their brows. And in that look, Brian Jones understood that Itzu had studied under his mentor, Storm and feared that Itzu was sent to kill him for having sexual relations with Storm’s niece, Monsoon.

Forty-five minutes later, still on the floor, Joshwa and Sharon have both agreed to join Itzu on one dirty job that needs to be finished tonight. Once completed, they will both get to keep their left arms. Sharon, being a lefty, was more concerned than Joshwa with losing her arm and felt that he wasn’t being supportive enough of what the experience felt like to her. Joshwa, on the other hand, was pleased that the expensive air filters that he had installed into the apartment were making it easier for him to breath through his unsettling emotions. Joshwa was so involved with his breathing that he had tuned out most of the actual conversation and had no idea about their imminent danger and the forthcoming events that both he and Sharon had committed to.

As Itzu wiped the frothy corners of his mouth, he grunted towards his captors, “You have two choices: pay your rent back to Larry or come to job for a zoo tonight. What is it, tough guys?’

Sharon muffled an answer about how her haircut was a temporary situation and she in fact was a woman but was cut off immediately by Itzu.

Meanwhile, at the zoo, Shelldone had finally pulled his head from his shell after his well deserved nap and was pleased to see that he had managed to avoid the entire afternoon rush. Now, it was back to the smooth pace of after hours zoo activities and he didn’t have to be bothered by anyone but the younger gossipy reptiles who were housed near his cage. Shelldone would take a snake or a lizard over fussy tourists any day of the week. They at least didn’t dwell on how long it took Shelldone to make it from one end of the yard to the other and had the decency not to bring up that overdone and so last-century “tortoise and the hare” fable.

Just as Shelldone was about due for his sponge bath, he overheard the blond intern, Norma-Rae, talking to Shelldone’s Chief Nurse about the Paleo diet that Norma-Rae had started along with her boyfriend Jim in order to feel a closer connection to her ancestors (and to lose her muffin top). As Norma-Rae pushed wisps of hair off her face, Shelldone caught Alvira, his nurse, self consciously patting her own thick salt-&-pepper bun in an attempt to connect.

   Joshwa really didn’t like having to paint his face black. He had no idea what chemicals comprised the face black makeup and worried that he would get a breakout. However, Joshwa didn’t complain, especially after seeing Itzu’s python tattoo that wrapped around his arm ending with wide open jaws at the tip of his shoulder. Sharon was uncharacteristically quiet as well, especially after she was hit by the butt of a 45K semi-automatic rifle to the temple. Renowned in college for her involvement in special interest women’s groups, especially her passion project for two credits called “Basic Impulse Trajectory Calming Humanity” or “BITCH.”Unfortunately for Sharon and Joshwa, their school was tucked away in a lovely rural environment and there were no actual “real world” situations to test out Sharon’s BITCH theories. For the remainder of the evening, they were going to have to revert to their suburban survival instincts. Both silently prayed.

As a result of these developments, both Sharon and Joshwa had been careful to follow all of Itzu’s instructions for their impending job to assist in the capture of an ancient tortoise, slaughter it and hand over both the meat and the high prized shell to the International Exotic Animal Trade (I.E.A.T.) organization so they could return home in one piece.