Roy wasn’t a big guy. That was the mystery of it. How could something so big come out of a 145 pound guy with a black crew-cut and skinny bird-like hands? Sure, in the duration of his thirty-four years, he’d looked into the stool from time to time, thinking, “Hey? that’s really big,” but he never thought it could take him anywhere. He’d grown to accept his mediocrity, his failures. I mean, after the divorce, being fired from dry-walling and the dishonorable discharge from the army for insubordination, he understood he was the guy that worked the telemarketing job, the one that wanted to leave the mobile homes but would die in them like his father had, regardless.
Until his friend sent him an email. It had a link to a listing of websites of the world’s strangest competitions and there were thousands. How could that be, right? Thousands. But there were the kind-of weird ones: grape-eating, professional videogame playing, and the sadistic ones: finger-cutting, lifting stuff with parts of your body, and the supernatural ones: mind reading, vampire dueling. Towards the bottom, something caught Roy’s eye: 14th Annual International Stooley Tournament. It was hard for Roy to believe at first: an international competition with prize money in the hundreds of thousands where the winner only had to have a stool outweighing all others? Roy’s first thought was there was finally and definitely much too many people on this world. His second thought was maybe... just maybe. He found an eight-hundred number at the bottom of the Stooley webpage and dialed.
A grizzled old-hag answered. “Hello, International Stooley Registration.”
“Yah... in the competition, you just measure how big they is?”
“We measure the competitor’s stool-weight in ounces. Heftiest wins. It’s that simple buck-o.”
“I makes ‘em big.”
“How big?” she inquired, dubiously.
“You’ll see.” And he hung up the phone right there, merely providing the courtesy of letting them know he was coming.
The single elimination tournament was a grueling fourteen-day undertaking. Each day an Offering was made to the twenty-person judging panel and the ranks of the original four-hundred competitors were thinned considerably. The amount of people that came to see the competition seemed a little strange at first. But people had always worshiped each other for strange reasons, reasons that got stranger all the time. Reality TV celebrities by the dozens, vapid runway models, heiresses and socialites: they all had the ear of the press and the public.
It was all a little intense for most, but not Roy. He’d always eaten as much as he could. Food hated him, refused to stay with him, like oil and water. But he loved food and it was all free. He first met Dr. Vickers in the contestant’s cafeteria. The Doctor sat by himself as usual.
“Anyone sitting here, mister?” Roy asked.
“Clearly there isn’t. And it’s doctor.”
Roy sat. “What you a doctor in?”
The doctor stopped worrying and masticating a barbeque chicken leg and slapped his hand to a thin aluminum box about the size of a TV remote with buttons. He eyed Roy suspiciously, “Quantum Mechanics. You won’t steal my invention!”
“What’s a Quantum for?”
“Oh, you know. Possibilities. Maybe an electron’s here, maybe it’s over there. Maybe your brain is normal and healthy like the rest of us or maybe, perhaps my boy, it’s full of marmalade, about to burst, owing to the pressure.”
“Hey, jerk. I just wanted to talk to you. Ain’t my fault you some freak that sits by hisself every damn day.”
“You won’t defeat me, boy. I’ve watched you advancing through the rounds, watched you like a spider that spins his web and waits. I’ve won the Stooley seven years in a row. And you won’t stand between my rightful place in history. You haven’t the stomach nor the girth. It’s a sport of kings, you see, and I’m sorry.”