All The Snooz You Can Use

"Hi there, I'm Daniel Burymore and this is Snooz TV live on the scene.  Excuse me, what is your name?"

"Lisa."

"Lisa?"

"Yes.

"Great.  So tell me, Lisa, what do you do?"

"I'm a senior at Grissom."

"Grissom?  That's the secondary school named after the astronaut killed by shoddy workmanship at NASA?"

"Umm...I don't know about that."

"No problem.  Ancient news.  Today, we're here with Lisa and all the others gathered to reenact events that happened earlier in the day.  Lisa, can you describe for us this horrifying story?  Take your time.  I know this was traumatic."

"Well, I had just turned to my best friend, Murialalanad, and commented what a great-looking sweater she was wearing when..."

"That's okay, Lisa.  We know this is difficult."

"This...thing.  It came out of nowhere."

"Did it literally come out of nowhere or did it seem to come out of nowhere?"

"I don't know.  Is there a difference?"

"Tell you what, Lisa.  Let's skip that for a moment.  What about you?  Tell the audience a little more about Lisa."

"Oh, yeah, sure.  Well, next year I plan to go to the University of West Florida and..."

"West Florida?  Is that Beach U?  I mean, do you plan to...say, take classes between swimming and sunbathing?"

"Haha.  Yeah."

"And what do you plan to do there?"

"I'm going to major in communications and minor in public relations."

"Fantastic, Lisa.  Fits you to a tee, I might add.  You're cheerful, alert, fairly well coherent after this devastating tragedy.  Speaking of which, Lisa, do you feel like telling us more about what you saw today?"

"Oh, gosh!  One moment, I was talking to my best friend and next moment she was gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes.  She and that...that thing...just seemed to disappear."

"So, let me get this straight.  A normal day in secondary school.  You're walking down the hall between classes..."

"Actually, we had just finished lunch."

"You were walking down the hall after a delightful meal in the school lunchroom, savouring the aftertaste of..."

"I had a salad."

"Of a salad, and admiring your companion's sweater..."

"She's not my companion.  She's my best friend...or was."

"There, there.  It's all right, deary.  Can I go on?"

"Yes."

"And out of 'nowhere,' a thing appears, grabs your compan...best friend and..."

"It didn't grab her."

"It didn't?"

"No."

"Okay, so out of 'nowhere,' a thing appears and then it and your best friend suddenly disappear."

"Yes."

"Wonderful."

"Wonderful?"

"Oh, no, not you.  I mean it's wonderful that I summarised your awful tragedy in one sentence."

"Umm...I guess you did."

"Precisely.  So, is there anything else you can remember?"

"Like what?"

"Any smells, bright lights, gooey liquid on the floor..."

"Now that you mention it, there was this odour...it reminds me of the time my little brother was playing with his DNA kit in the basement and cloned some E. coli."

"He what?"

"Well, that's what he said.  But my brother lies all the time."

"Ah, very good.  So what does the memory have to do with this?"

"The thing looked like my brother."

"There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.  The thing from 'nowhere' is Lisa's brother.  We'll come back after this break to find out more."

"No!  Wait!  I didn't say he was my brother!"

"This is Daniel Burymore capturing another exciting moment where our citizenry have no clue what's really going on."

"He wasn't my brother!  He wasn't my brother!"

"Yes, sweety, we'll work out those details after this timeout for an advert.  Gotta hook the audience to come back, you know.  It's only business."