The Winner

By

Michelle Pichette & Holly Cushing

Chip held onto one sock and looked everywhere for its mate. Chip was usually a fastidious person but he’d just gotten back from a very long cruise only to find that he had a had a date. He hadn’t planned on it, but an ONI Lieutenant that he’d been flirting with for months finally agreed to go out with him. Now, he had one clean suit and only one sock that matched it.

"Aargh!" Chip groaned in frustration, certain that he’d gone over every inch of his apartment and still couldn’t find his sock. "I can’t believe this!" He kept his sanity on the Seaview even in the most ludicrous situations, through aliens and spies and weird mutant creatures, and now one sock was threatening that sanity. He refused to let the sock win, though. He would find it and he would go on his date.

Chip had found seventy three cents and a nail clipper he hadn’t known he owned stuffed way down into his sofa. He’d found a credit card that Lee had reported lost a year ago that had somehow worked itself into the center of the oriental carpet in his dining room. He found an earring that must have belonged to a previous girlfriend caught in the grill of his refrigerator. He’d ‘liberated’ two spiders from his apartment, one getting the heave ho from his pantry, the other from the back of his closet. He’d also banished every dust bunny from every corner and from beneath every piece of furniture that he owned. He’d even rediscovered the empty frame his mother had sent to him asking him to return it with a picture of himself and, if possible, the future mother of her grandchildren. His apartment had never been cleaner and still no sock.

"Aargh!" Chip groaned again as he flopped down on his bed. How could something as simple as a sock defeat him when he’d helped to overcome mutant creatures, aliens, madmen and every thing else that had tried to take over or destroy the Seaview since he’d been a member of the crew?

Chip rolled over to look at the clock beside the bed, "Great!" There was still time to stop at the store on the way. He smiled to himself, this setback wasn’t going to stop him from going out with the first woman he’d met lately who agreed that Tofu was not only not a food, but was possibly an alien life form. He’d buy new socks, and the old one, following the laws of the missing would show itself when he returned, sorry it had missed the date. And when he found the offending chunk of cotton, it was going on a trip to the incinerator. Chip might have lost the contest, but he didn't intend to be a good loser.

As Chip walked out his front door, then turned the key in the lock, he never heard a little snicker as a small figure popped into view. "Sure'n you'll learn the power of wee things yet, Mister Morton," laughed the leprechaun who stood there on the other side, holding a black sock.

The End