by Chuck Austen
“Grandfather, let me explain…”
Wisper took my hand, so tightly I couldn’t have let go even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t.
“There’s nothing to explain,” she told the elder Wopplesdown. “Corky and I are here—together—in my home town, and we don’t give a shit about your money.”
“Ooooh,” Grandfather growled, smiling slightly, a lion playing with his food, “is that so? Did I not hear him just bid three million dollars for you? Is that how much you don’t give a…a shit, as you so eloquently put it—about my money?”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly more nervous. “So you’ve been here awhile apparently. Well, you see, it’s like this…”
“Has he got three million dollars?” Sophie asked.
I turned to see her, still beside Morgan, smiling and bouncing with giddy glee.
“’Cause if he has,” she said. “He can afford to pay the hotel bill.”
She looked at me, smiling. “I knew you guys weren’t real criminals,” she said, snuggling in under Morgan’s arm. “Ya’ll are too sweet.”
“Hotel bills are one thing. But you are not giving this woman three millions dollars,” Grandfather snarled.
“It’s for charity, Grandfather,” I told him, helpfully, “and therefore tax deductible.”
“I don’t care if I get coupons, a hooker, and a plastic toy. There is a principle here, and you are not handing a dime of my money to these nudists!”
“It’s not your money. I have mother’s trust…”
“Which I control until your thirtieth birthday—unless I determine you are unfit—which you clearly are.”
There was a stunned silence during which my heart stopped beating. Wisper looked at me with serious concern, as I’m certain I went a little pale.
A little. Like the arctic in winter is a little cold.
“Corky?” she asked.
When I said nothing, she touched my chest, and I came back to the land of the living as if I’d been zapped by one of those heartunstopping paddle-thingies firemen and calm doctors use.
“Fine,” I said. “I…or rather we…” I corrected, which pleased Wisper no end, “…don’t need your money. Or mine. Because it is mine. But I still don’t need it.”
“Really, Cecil,” Helena interjected. “Don’t be such an ass.”
In a fury, he turned to her, and I almost laughed out loud as his mind completely derailed.
Caused by the fact that Helena and Pjuter were completely naked.
Waboombas was right. Helena was kinda hot.
“He’s old enough to control his own money,” Helena spat, “and nudists have rights. The boy made a legitimate bid, and he needs to make good on it.”
Grandfather’s lips quivered, his eyes tested their sockets’ ability to contain them, and for a moment he was rendered completely mute.
But unfortunately, only for a moment.
“Soooooo,” he finally managed to say. “That summerhouse situation wasn’t an isolated incident.” He averted his eyes and sniffed in contempt. “Well, I have news for you, my dear sister: Corky is not the only one who is disinherited.”
He turned and stalked off toward the car.
“Like you have control over that!” she said, undisturbed.
“Wait a minute,” Manschingloss cried. “You need to rehire Wisper! I will not go to the fashion show with clothing cut for a specific model and have them hang wrong on some anorexic, wannabe substitute!”
But Grandfather ignored him and continued the mad rush toward his escape vehicle.
“Cecil!” Manschingloss called, bumbling along after the old man. “CECIL!”
On their way to the limousine, they passed Woodruff—who still stood near Homer’s statue, staring at it with a calm, almost beatific expression on his face—and Biddleby opened a door for them. They waited a moment for Woodruff, and when it became apparent he wasn’t coming, they leaped in and drove off without him.
Helena smiled and turned to Sophie.
“We’ll pay Corky’s debt,” she told her.
Sophie smiled and snuggled tighter against Morgan. Her innocent trust in the world was inspiring. Even I felt a bit more secure.
But then Pizeley M. Boone and the ever-lurking Washburne stepped through the crowd with two of Nikkid Bottom’s finest in tow.
“And what about your bid, son?” Boone asked. “I can’t imagine this woman intends to make good on the enormity of such folly, and I warned you, you signed a binding contract.”
I looked at Helena, hoping.
“Three million?” she asked.
“Three million, one hundred thousand,” Ms. Waboombas interjected, as she stepped through the crowd, still holding River’s branching tributary in one hand. Interestingly, he really seemed to be enjoying it.
I nodded to Helena to affirm Waboombas additional math.
“But…” Helena began.
“Think of the orphans,” Boone oozed.
“Three million, one hundred thousand,” Helena said, and from the tone of her voice, I already knew the answer. “We don’t have that kind of cash available, Corky. Not on this side.”
Not on any side, if my grandfather intended to make good on his threats.
“How sad,” Boone said, not the least bit sad. “Arrest them,” he told the cops.
“Arrest them? Isn’t that a bit extreme?” Helena demanded. “Can’t you just negate his bids, and let the next highest bidder…”
“No!” Wisper and I said simultaneously.
“Oh,” said Helena. “But Corky… ”
“They signed a contract,” Boone snarled. “And for the sanctity of the auction, and in fairness to those trusting souls who bid in honest and sincere good faith, we have no choice, I’m afraid. Arrest them.”
“On what charge?” the cop asked.
“Fraud,” Boone said, smiling. “False representation. Credit card theft. Parking for more than two hours in a restricted zone. We’ll make a list.”
“This is ridiculous!” Helena snapped.
The cops stepped forward.
Then the auburn-haired stunner from the beach stepped forward and jutted an accusing finger at Morgan.
“That’s the jerk who molested me!”
Morgan flinched and moved behind Sophie, who looked confused.
“Goodness,” Boone said, smiling, “Well…arrest them all!”
He was now practically giggling with joy.
“No!” I said.
Handcuffs clawed open.
“Wait, wait, wait… ” Wisper said, as they reached for me.
Boone laughed heartily. So did Washburne.
“Dammit, Washburne!” Wisper snapped. “You…All right! I’ll go with you!”
“NO!” I said, and began to struggle with the cops.
“Stop this!” Wisper demanded of the younger Boone. “You think this is going to make me love you?”
Washburne’s smile fell.
A policeman unkindly jerked one of my arms behind my back and prepared to snap a cuff on my wrist.
“HEY!” I said uselessly.
The situation was looking desperate, and I wasn’t seeing any way out, when suddenly screams exploded from the other side of the crowd.
Two women ran by shrieking their lungs out, and a general cacophony rose urgently above the crowd near the thing they were fleeing. The cops looked that way, and both moved a bit to one side to gain a better line of sight toward whatever was happening, when suddenly the crowd burst apart, and we were given a full view of the horror, the horror, the horror.
It was Mindie.
She had run in from somewhere and had apparently launched herself onto a food table, ravenously inhaling anything that hadn’t fallen to the ground in her mad assault. Then she dropped on all fours and began eating some of that.
She was mostly naked, except for the rags and leaves she still had wrapped around herself in a poor effort to conceal the bits no one wanted to look at anyway as they were
still mostly covered in boils, blisters, and rashes.
“I took off my clothes for food,” she howled, snatching a hot dog from an innocent—and naked—child, “so I get some!” She bit away more than half the frank, and its bun, then shoved the poor, crying toddler over. “I took off my clothes for food, SO I GET SOME!”
Ignoring the little one screaming on the ground, Mindie jammed the remainder of the hot dog into her mouth, sliming her hands and face with remnants of bun, garnish, and meat. Growling, she moved on and continued to wolf down everything she could reach. A man braved potentially serious injury and raced in to rescue the kid, as Mindie the monster’s eyes darted about, wild and threatening, burning holes into anyone who might be contemplating the bravery, or foolishness, necessary to stop her. She even took a few swipes at some of the closer nudists, who squealed in fear, then withdrew as far as they needed to be safe, while still staying close enough to get a good, clear view of the action.
To their credit, the cops broke free of me and ran over to take Mindie down. They encircled her, she swatted at them, and when that failed to frighten them off, she threw food.
“How far the mighty have fallen,” Helena said, with only marginal sympathy. “Obviously, she is not handling her disinheritance well.”
“What?” I asked, stunned. “Disinheritance?”
“Turns out the main reason—maybe the only reason—she wanted to marry you is because her father kicked her out of the house. Felt she had some growing up to do.”
I looked over at poor Mindie, clawing at the policemen trying to restrain her with one hand while she reached for a pie with the other, and watched as the three sailed over a picnic table, through the potato salad, and into a fountain just beyond.
“I believe he was right,” Helena concluded.
Incredible how a little nudity had made everything more visible today.
Then, suddenly, it hit me like Washburne’s toe in my temple! This was my chance.
I grabbed my pants, Wisper’s hand, and called to Waboombas.
“COME ON!” I yelled.
And we ran.
Me pulling Wisper by the hand, Morgan pulling Sophie by the arm, and Wendy pulling River by the wee-wee.
It was several moments before Boone and Washburne tore their attentions away from the nude Las Vegas road show extravaganza starring Mindie The Monster, and noticed we had escaped.
“Hey!” Washburne said in that irritating voice of his. “Hey, they’re getting away!”
But no one pursued. The cops had decided there were more pressing matters at hand with Mindie, and they continued wrestling my former fiancée for all they were worth, pinning her down and lying on top of her. The way they struggled, you would have thought she was a loose, vicious crocodile, and not a doughy, pampered, rat.
“Your penis is touching me!” I heard her wail behind me. “YOUR PENIS IS TOUCHING ME!”
Had things progressed as she intended, those were likely the same words I would have heard on my wedding night, and far beyond.
Then, seeing no one else was coming after us, the auburn-haired girl and her coterie of friends lit out in hot pursuit, resuming the wild chase that had begun on the beach.
“Where are we going?” Wisper asked, astonished, somehow naïvely expecting that I had a plan.
But this time I did.
Barney was standing beside some woman’s car, absently cleaning her windshield and charming the pants off her. Which was pretty easy given that she was already bare-assed naked.
Wisper, Morgan, Sophie, River, Wendy, and I raced past him and scooted around the edge of the station office toward the impounded automobiles, one of which was still the Duesenberg.
“Hey!’ Barney yelled, as we ignored him and the sights and sounds of angry, naked teenagers approached. “What the hell?”
Not looking back, I raced to my aunt’s car and I pulled the keys from my pants as the others dove into their seats.
“You have the keys?” Wendy said in a voice that sounded not unlike the raptors hunting their prey in Jurassic Park.
“Oh,” I said, trying to think fast and nearly hurting myself. “Didn’t I…em…you know…mention that?”
“No,” Wendy said, scalding me with the hot oil of her voice. “You did not…em…mention that. All this time I could have had access to my clothes, my things, my comics…”
“You have comics?” River asked. Wendy stopped seething and softened with River’s obvious enthusiasm, and she turned to him, almost girlishly.
“I make my own,” Wendy said. “Self-published.”
“Oh, my God. That is so awesome,” River said. “I’ve always wanted to self-publish. I have this idea for my own version of the XMen, except instead of mutants, they’re sewer people…”
Catching sight of the approaching wall of flesh heading our way, with Barney now in the lead, I leaped behind the wheel, jammed the key in the ignition and cranked it.
The engine turned over on the first try.
I shifted the thing into gear, and floored it just as Barney and some of the faster teens came skidding, flailing, and flopping down on top of us.
The greasy gas station attendant bounded onto the running board as the others continued the chase, and his pet python smacked me in the side of the head a few times as I drove wildly through an oil can display, and sent the cylindrical containers flying everywhere. The naked, lady customer he’d been seducing had to dive into her car to avoid being run over as I sailed through the fill-up area, heading for the street.
Barney managed to grab me around the neck and jerked me from my seat, as if removing the driver of a fast-moving automobile careening insanely was somehow a good idea. We were just about to missile into a tree—which seemed to thrill Barney to no end—when River stood up (seatbelts!) and smashed my naked assailant right in the face.
Stunned, in several ways, Barney let go of my neck, but recovered quickly enough to grab tightly to the side of the car before falling to certain, skin-abrading doom on the quickly passing pavement below. Before he could get hold of me again, I accelerated into some oncoming traffic and scraped him off the Duesenberg with a lot of screaming on his part, but a minimum of additional fuss on mine.
Innee, and outey passoo defeather a cat! Or whatever.
I chuckled to myself as I imagined Barney would be feeling that one for several days. Nights and weekends too. Man is a truly terrible beast deep down inside, and will often laugh at the misfortune of those with larger penises. At least until our girlfriends give us the evil eye, as Wisper did now, and we make like we were just coughing.
After a moment of some genuine pretend-hacking, I turned and looked back at River in amazement. River, for his part, was looking at Wisper, almost embarrassed, and said nothing for quite a while.
“You love him,” he said simply, finally answering her unasked question, then shrugged and felt the need to add. “Why...?” He sort of shuddered and shook his head, then without another word, sat down again beside Waboombas.
Wisper and I absorbed that, then smiled at one another, and as we raced down the road, over the river and through the woods, she asked me—reasonably—where we were going.
“To the comics convention,” I said.
“All right!” Morgan cheered.
“Just one problem,” I said, looking at Wisper. “How do we get back to my dimension?”
We’d been sitting for several minutes, parked on the road a few feet from the place where Morgan, Wendy, and I had passed through the freak lightning storm on the way into town. The Duesenberg sputtered and steamed, not likely able to take us more than a few hundred more feet or so. But hopefully, that would be enough.
The air still seemed alive with energy, the hair stood up on the nape of my neck, and probably everyone else’s too. I looked at Morgan, and he seemed ready to jump out of his skin. Sophie was smiling and excited. The whole thing was like one growing, expanding adventure to her that just kept getting better and better.
“You’re saying,” Sophie asked, entirely too enthusiastically. “If we drive down this road, lightning will strike, and we’ll enter another dimension?”
What about being struck by lightning could in any way ever be considered appealing?
“More or less,” Wisper answered her.
“How?” I asked. “Why?”
“I have no idea,” Wisper said softly, staring at the empty space before us with more than a bit of fear. “We live not far from here—my family—and one day I noticed an old car driving this way. This road doesn’t get much use since they put in the 108, so I watched the car go, wondering what it was doing here. It had your Uncle Pjuter in it— though I didn’t know he was your uncle at the time—and he was just tooling along happily when suddenly there’s rain, clouds, and lightning, and suddenly Pjuter, the car—everything—just vanished. It scared the living shit out of me. There’d always been rumors about ghosts and things, down here, and I thought I’d seen one. Then one day I notice Pjuter in his store downtown, and I realized something else was going on. So I watched him leave that night, put on clothes, hop into this old car of his…”
“This Duesenberg,” I said.
“Yeah,” she answered. “He jumped in and drove off, and I followed him and watched him vanish again, right about there.”
She pointed to a dark spot on the asphalt.
“So the day before Washburne and I are supposed to get married…”
“What?” I asked, stunned.
“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t want to, but someone…” she scowled in the direction of River, who rolled his eyes and ignored her “…kept pushing me, and convinced me it was a good idea. I knew I couldn’t go through with it, so I planned an out. Since there was nowhere in this world I could hide from him and his money, I thought about this place and where it might lead. I confronted your uncle and made him tell me what this spot was all about, and he explained how he’d found the opening, or whatever, years ago, and now went back and forth all the time.”
“He just drives through?” I asked.
