The Tell-Tale Neelix

voporak

The Tell-Tale Neelix

----It was an ordinary day on Voyager. The windows displayed nothing but the blackness of space, the walls quietly vibrated with the warp core of the ship, and the Captain was probably thinking up some new illogical plan to put us all in mortal danger. I didn't sign up for any of this, I just wanted to be an engineer. All I wanted was to fix engines for the Maquis, and now I'm trapped on a ship with a Captain whose solution to most problems involves a couple photon torpedoes. And of course, there's him.
----When we first got dragged out here, Captain Janeway decided to scrape up that menace Neelix. He looks like something you might use to clean a plasma conduit, and has the unique ability to put the ship in danger with his "food." Every day I had to ingest plates of slop that made me genuinely wonder if I would live to eat more of it. I could always close my eyes and pretend it wasn't potentially lethal, and worry about bigger issues, such as whether it was "Punish the Ensign Day." That was a of course, until a fateful meal in the mess hall.
----I walked in to the sound of a cringe-worthy croak, also known as Neelix laughing. He was handing out bowls of "lunch special" to the crew, and it was my turn. I took my time moseying up to his lair, upon which I was greeted with the face that would scare the Borg.
----"Hi friend!" Neelix hissed, "I've made an ancient Talaxian delicacy today!"
----"Oh really?"
----"It's follicle pasta with ocular toppings from Talaxian insects. I had a few with me when I joined Voyager, now for everyone's enjoyment!" Neelix laughed and served me a bowl of this toxic waste.
----"Hair pasta. With eyeballs. From bugs," I thought to myself. I knew he had concocted some truly horrible mixtures of trash before, but this topped it all.
----I accepted my punishment with a faux smile and took it to a seat facing away from Neelix. I stared at this abomination, trying not to contemplate how much of the hair probably came from his back. An eye that was floating in the green sauce rolled over and looked at me. I almost thought I saw it shed a tear, too. I wouldn't be surprised it did, I felt sorry its existence ended in this hellish bowl.
----"Everything alright?" Neelix was standing over me, noticing that I hadn't touched his precious creation.
----"Oh yes, I was just contemplating the unique nutritional value of the... follicles."
----"Wonderful!" he screeched, probably causing a kitten to die somewhere. With a smile that I could probably prove to be capable of wilting plants, the oaf bumbled off, leaving me alone with the tortured eyeball.
----I wanted to put Satan's lunch in the replicator and just go hungry until dinner, but I didn't want to hurt Neelix's feelings. Sure, the greasy rat might've been picked up by Captain Janeway just to keep around in case she needed him to cook a bioweapon, but he wasn't mean or anything. After all, he made a recipe that was obviously dear to him, and everyone else was humoring him by eating it. Why should I get to avoid suffering?
----A bubble in the putrid sauce popped with the sound of a dying animal, snapping me back to reality. Neelix was patrolling his territory, watching like a prison guard to make sure we all enjoyed our pasta. I had to get away when he wasn't looking though, unless I wanted to end up making Neelix think I was running scientific analysis on this slop. I picked the sad eyeball out of the bowl and rolled it under the tables, right to Neelix's feet. As soon as he bent down, I picked up the pasta and hurried to the door. The last thing I saw as I escaped was Neelix talking to the disembodied eye like it was someone's lost pet.
----Now I stood in the hallway, holding a bowl of garbage. I walked back to my quarters, making like I was delivering it to someone. Once in safety, I put the deathly meal in my replicator and dematerialized it, sighing with relief. The creepy pasta was destroyed, Neelix was oblivious, and my conscience was clear.
----I began my shift in the hydroponics bay, studying alien plant samples alone because the officer assigned to do so was busy with some other task which surely had to be more imporant. While scanning something which would likely end up in my stomach after a Neelix treatment, I heard a noise in the room. I halted my work and, surveying the area, found nothing peculiar. I blamed it on the radioactive pasta's fumes giving me hallucinations, and went back to examining my future punishment.
----On the return trip to my quarters, I noticed a slight background sound, oddly similar to the hydroponics bay noise. It got louder as I moved along, but still too quiet to understand. It seemed to be following me, so I picked up the pace, almost running into a hapless crewmember as I dashed though the doors of a turbolift. I nervously waited to arrive at my deck, hoping and praying the noise wouldn't come back.
----But it did.
----It was fairly audible now, a sound of harsh, melodic grating, a nightmarish noise. I knew I'd heard it before, but I couldn't put my finger on where. All I cared about was getting away from it. I didn't want to be alone with the sound, so I diverted to the mess hall for an early dinner. At least there, Neelix's raving might drown it out.
----I rushed back down the hallway, chased constantly by my pursuer, finally bursting into the mess hall. All of a sudden the noise became perfectly clear, ringing out like a grizzly bell, ringing from a grizzly menace.
----The cave troll, once again in his lair, shut his mouth and ended his laughter, but the noise persisted. This satanic distortion kept growing louder, always ringing, never ending. As I took step after grueling step towards Neelix's pot of hair pasta, apparently the only brand of suffering he felt like inflicting that day, the hideous laughter became overwhelmingly loud. Neelix's deathly smile joined hands with the laughter as he prepared a fresh bowl of follicles and ocular toppings for me. The bowl floated in my direction on Neelix's grubby paw, outstretched and waiting ever so sadistically for my acceptance. I looked down into the sauce and there I saw the eyeball, the same one that looked at me before, the same one I freed from torture, the same one Neelix retrieved from the floor. It looked back up to me, and winked.
----I recoiled from the kitchen, exclaiming, "I confess! I threw out the pasta! I can't eat hair, I can't! Oh the laughter, make it stop!"
----Everyone had rushed to me, as I had collapsed on the ground. Two merciful souls brought me to my feet and helped me to the exit, to take me away to Sickbay. The last sight I saw before my mind gave in and lost consciousness, was the image of Neelix's atrocious, disgusting smile.

Ensign Hogan tragically perished due to Neelix's stupidity on Hanon IV when he ordered Hogan to collect bones in front of a dark cave. Fortunately, however, Hogan's death was quick, compared to the one he would have suffered at the hands of Neelix's food.

lindaleff

Define "food." :rolleyes:

worffan101

Epic.

/10char

aiurdae

I'm pretty sure that they didn't need to technobabble the nanoprobes. Just shove a bowl of "delicious" leola root stew in a photon torpedoe and shoot it into fluidic space. The weak-stomached shall perish. Then throw him to the Borg to get rid of them too.

cptjhunter

Best

fanfic


story

EVER!:D