The Chocolate Loving Uncle

Here's a short scene in my Chick Lit novel depicting Jacy's chocolate-obsessed uncle who finds love in the 21st Century:

Maurice was a mustachioed curio of a man. A champion. A conqueror of many many things, and especially of all things, chocolate. He would, naturally, get it in his moustache, which was a deep dark auburn color, and which a lot of his girlfriends had always suspected was a faux and rather faint impression of years long gone.

His moustache was a euphemism of machismo serenades along sandy shores of serpentine, tenacious journeys. He was an adventurer. Even his prosthetic leg didn’t - and couldn’t - hold him back. He had many walking sticks shaped in many various shapes: elephants, bears, lions, all kings of things he loved and held dear.

Today he plodded up the hill with his chocolate-colored dinosaur walking stick.

And he saw her before she saw him.

He rather charmingly stopped at the ladies’ tea break table to say hello in his whimsical, wry way.

He caught Jessalyn’s eyes and his own eyes twinkled.

He then winked.

Jessalyn blushed. She had chocolate colored hair and and light chocolate golden brown eyes. He really liked that about her.

Maurice sighed happily. Maybe she made chocolate pie? Chocolate cheesecake? Chocolate mousse? Chocolate martinis? Chocolate cake? Chocolate fudge? Chocolate Hoo-hoos? He'd heard she was a very good pastry chef.

Her friends, the ladies’ of 17th Century War Widows of Yore Winding Rivers Southern Tea Party Club twittered uncontrollably and unappreciatively.

One in particular cast her evil eye at his direction and quite judiciously sneered, spilling her tea in the meantime.

He grizzled and stepped backwards, but there was an angry pebble that had somehow snaked itself up and beyond and behind his grandiose dinosaur walking stick - which was his favorite one.

He quite conspicuously stumbled backwards. Over the nasty nugget he fell. He rolled backwards down the hill.

Down he rolled.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Jessalyn bustled. She was a dithery lady who chided the others for teasing him behind his back and snubbing him to his face.

All eyes watched him moving steadfastly, surely, bumbling idiotically.

As he did trailblaze through life, he trailblazed through the field – dashingly and despairingly - as he continued to fall and roll:

Down. The. Hill.

All the way down that one can possibly go until KerPlunk he landed SPLAT! on a stagnate rock, then tottered up into mid-air for a nano-second, then twirled madly over the rock and SPLASHED! madcap-galore into the swan pond.

His body then fell down beneath the surface of the water.

Yes, Trailblazer.

The Splashing of the snarky-blast of contempt erupted from the ducks, the geese, and the wild of the pond from this man interrupting their pristinely peaceful absorption of life.

How dare he!

This uninvited philistine!

The ducks quacked their obstinate fury. The swans honked their rabid annoyance. The queen heron barked her bulky irritation. The turtles poked out their heads from their slumberboxes and chortled their aggravation. The geese cackled their exasperation.

Bubbles appeared - as Jessalyn and her lady friends avidly watched - then finally Maurice spluttered. He rose to the top and splashed his way about.

With watermelon-ic warp speed, he swam clumsily to the shore.

He sordidly clung to the shore and rose with bravado and waved at Jessalyn.

Jessalyn and her friends watched with drooping down mouths, wide open like fat blank-faced mind-numbing whales.

The next thing Maurice could interpret was that they all stood at once to help.

This was when the phenomenon occurred, he later thought.

When the snarky-blast contempt of the creatures of the high afternoon tea decided or had his fall forced upon them metamorphosed into their liking him - or feeling especially sorry for him – and possibly feeling especially guilty for having been so mean to him. At any rate:

Hortensia Blobbhorn-Frensia lowered her brows and her nose from the mid-continental air and erased the furrowness of her manner SO much that she gently slid out of her pale peach cardigan and covered his shoulders with it, then she gave him her pink and green multi-colored quilted picnic blanket from her chair so he wouldn’t freeze;

Gertrude Grazelle gasped that she was so completely sorry that had just happened and how horrific it was and poured him a cup of green tea and eradicated a quite newly minted whiskey bottle from out from under her underling-things from below the tea table and gave it to him, quite gingerly and a little ashamedly;

Mirabella Snyder-Lake sniffed she was crying so hard at her guilt at having snubbed him, she also reached below the underneathed portion of her bosom hiding behind the table and pulled out a fresh handkerchief and dabbed her face, and then pulled out another one from the abyss of her dress and handed it respectfully to Maurice, who took it.

“Thank you, Mrs. Snyder-Lake.” He said. “Thank you, Mrs. Blobbhorn-Frensia, and thank you, Mrs. Grazelle.”

“Please have a seat, Mr. Maurice,” Said Jessalyn.

“Thank you, Mrs. Vossfire,”

“Please. Call me Jessalyn.” She smiled.

“And you may call me Maurice,” He said.

Even right after that, Maurice found himself with Jessalyn in her summer cabin, which was right round the corner of the swan pond, and they bundled up with more whiskey, fire, and solitude from the other ladies.

She looked lovingly into his eyes and this was where the courtship really began.

They were married after a whirlwind courtship, and right after married life took hold of him was where the trouble with Jessalyn began.

He became one of those henpecked hackneyed husbands that we often wonder and worry about. We often say to ourselves, how did this happen to him? How did he get here?

Later Maurice disappeared and Jacy wreaked havoc all over the world trying to find him. Had Jessalyn murdered him?