Sentance stepped onto the bus. He walked to the middle and sat down in a very practical way. Sentance had been brought up quite well by his mother. He knew he would be regarded as quite proper in the city, but it would be worth it to see the Quote.
He had sat down next to a piece of grammar who turned to him with curiosity. "Who are you?" Asked the grammar.
"I'm sentance," said sentance, "and I'm going to the city to see the quote."
"Really?" Asked the grammer. "Me too, isn't that funny? My name's Mark by the way, Question Mark, have you heard of me?"
Sentance replied that yes, he had heard of the Question family. He thought to himself that he was glad that he was only meeting one, however- his mother had warned him that the Question family were nice enough, but too many of them together got on your nerves.
The bus rolled along the country, and soon got deeper and deeper into the tall city blocks. The vehicle reached it's last stop, and Sentance and Mark got off on the corner of a small paragraph.
The city was so busy! Hundreds of exclamation marks were running around, shoving past each other! They all look quite similar, darting about with their backs straight and their i's wide open, thought sentance. Commas were running through the exclamation's legs, and although there were more of them, they were less noticible because they were so much shorter than the proud exclamations!
Sentance saw Mark stop an exclamation to ask for directions. "Can you tell us where the Quote is, please?"
"Yes!" Said the colourful exclamation, "Go south nine paragraphs from here and turn right! Excuse me, got to run! Dickens in the belt!"
"Really?" Said Mark with some confusion. He started moving away, and was just about to tread in some full stops. "Well OK, thanks..."
"I mean, how can they stand so much mess all over the pavement?" Mark was still grumbling a few minutes later, "Is it really too much to ask for some double-checking their work every now and again?"
Sentance replied that he was used to that kind of thing in the country, and didn't fuss about it much. He mentioned that he remembered learning about the failed invasion of the Grammar Nazis in History lessons at school. Mark asked what that had to do with it. Sentance explained that he thought you could see the effects of history in a lot of modern day things.
They were walking through some quite wealthy parts of the city now. The tall towers were taller and cleaner, with bracket boys in doorways ready to take your luggage or hail a faxi for you. Rich semi-colons looked down out of their upper story windows to the common bullet points working in the street. Glamourous dollar signs clopped around with big expensive fur S's around their shoulders, and received envious glares from the ampersands, a minority group from over-C's, who only ever managed to get jobs in pizza bars and kebab stalls.
Finally, Sentance and Mark reached the paragraph where the Quote was supposed to be. There was a space in the queue inside, so they stood respectfully behind it. Mark quietly asked if they could just skip the queue, but a look from Sentance told him that that wasn't on.
Just before they reached the front on the queue, Mark said, "I wonder if it's as impressive as the Quotes in the Capitals City? Have you heard how much hype there is about them?"
Sentance said yes, he had, but that for him, just seeing one Quote would be enough for his little lifetime.
Finally they reached the front, and were ushered into the Quote box. Each of them felt a small joy at seeing such a simple yet powerful thing, and felt that it brought a fitting end to their journey.
"The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him."
- Robert Benchley
See another Short Story...
Image source: http://www.yourdictionary.com/answers/how/how-to-use-quotation-marks.html
No comments:
Post a Comment