Wise Acres

by Dale E. Basye

  Vice Principal Carroll gave a breathless, blow-by-blow account of the scene, a narration that grew more detailed as Milton and his team approached. It was almost as if the vice principal was describing the action a split second before it actually happened.

  “It’s a sequence,” Milton said over the mind-numbing commentary. “If we each rush past when it’s a scorpion—the smallest of the animals—we should be okay. We just jump over it.”

  Moses sighed, shaking his head.

  “Great idea, Team Captain,” Moses said in a way that made it vividly clear that he neither found the idea great nor Milton worthy of his team captain status. “The next creature is that werewolf thing. The worst of all of them.”

  Milton studied the shaggy wolf-beast just before it shrank down into a hawk.

  “Not a werewolf but … a What-Wolf!” Milton muttered. “A wolf that can become different creatures.”

  Moses spun his finger around his temple in tight “this guy is crazy” circles.

  On the other side of the gap, through clots of ashy reddish-purple murk, Milton could see a strange, silvery forest.

  Mr. Dickens stepped forward. “Mr. Fauster is right,” he said as he eyed the gap intently. “We’ll just have to Jack-be-nimble our way through.…”

  With surprising athleticism, Mr. Dickens bounded through the gap and leapt over the scorpion. The What-Wolf turned as it materialized and roared at the English novelist before sprouting feathers and shrinking back into a hawk. The shape-shifting creature strained at its various chains, but the links held fast.

  Mr. Dickens dusted off his gray suit. “My, what an artful dodge that was!” he chuckled, smoothing out his tousled beard. “What are you waiting for? The ghost of Christmas past?!”

  One by one, Mr. Wilde and the children jumped through the break in the fence, vaulting over the furious scorpion that tried to jab each valiant vaulter with its stinger.

  Moses bounded through, leaving Milton the sole team member behind.

  “C’mon, Team Captain,” Moses taunted, several yards from the fearsome What-Wolf. “Or are you afraid everyone will see the big wet spot on your pants?”

  The creature’s succession of forms hastened into a nightmarish blur.

  Milton had to time his jump perfectly. Hawk, tarantula, snake, boar …

  He leapt into the air just as Moses kicked a stone toward Milton. Milton tripped and fell into the gap.

  … scorpion …

  21 · AT THE END OF

  THEIR TROPE

  MILTON GRABBED THE stone and, just as the scorpion began to swell and grow hair, smashed the poisonous arachnid flat.

  He sprang from the ground to find his team. After a few hundred yards, Milton joined the teachers and children as they stood outside the rim of a gleaming forest. The light reflecting off the trees was blinding. Milton shielded his eyes from the glare.

  Each tree was clad in a reflective bark, with silvery, highly burnished leaves that bounced light from one to the other like a game of optic hot potato. The effect was intensely disorienting.

  “Thick, beneath yon arching trees, where silver-crested ripples screech!” Vice Principal Carroll prattled. “Word paintings melt into the breeze, bearing fruited figures of your speech.…”

  Milton could see Moses’s silhouette hanging away from the others.

  “Thanks for tripping me, jerk!” Milton spat at him as he joined the group.

  Moses turned, a neat smirk slashed across his smug face. “You’re being paranoid, Team Captain,” he replied. “I was only trying to help you.”

  “Help me? How? By tripping me?”

  “No, by trying to smoosh the scorpion for you,” Moses said loudly so that everyone could hear as he stepped over a small mound of upturned dirt. “It’s not my fault you’re clumsy. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.…”

  The ground began to quake and swell. The mirrored trees shuddered, sending a shower of glitter into the air. The forest floor bulged and distended, knocking the teachers and children onto the ground as the earth churned beneath them, the forest becoming a steep mountain peak. Milton clutched one of the trees. The bark was so reflective that he could see the terror in his eyes. He also noticed dozens of tiny tuning forks sprouting from the ground, like the kind that he and Marlo had found in Lucky’s messenger bag. Staring at them was like watching candles flicker. It was oddly hypnotic.

  “What is this place?” Pansy Cornett whined as she set Moxie Wortschmerz, lashed to her rolling dolly, against one of the trees.

  Wisps of gray clouds clotted into a dark, conspiring mass overhead.

  An Afro-Asian boy named Rakeem Yashimoto stared up at the clouds. “Looks like it’s gonna rain cats and dogs,” he said, pulling up his lapel.

  A clap of thunder boomed. The mountain began to slowly flatten. Small, fuzzy blobs cascaded down from the sky, hitting the ground with squeals, screeches, mewls, and yaps. The animals shook off the shock of impact and bounded around the children in coursing streams of fur.

  Milton ducked beneath a canopy of mirrored leaves for shelter. He held the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist up over his head.

  “What’s going on?” Winifred Scathelli gasped as a frightened Rottweiler fell onto a hissing Abyssinian. The two animals fought viciously a few feet from her.

  A cascade of canines and free-falling felines tumbled down, coating the floor of the forest until the children and teachers were hip-deep in squirming, scratching animals.

  “I can’t … even move,” Roberta Atrebor complained. “All these mutts and kitties …”

  “Not mutts … and kitties,” Milton muttered as the animals piled up on all sides, pressing into him, making it hard to breathe. “But …” His eyes sparked with insight. “This place … it isn’t a forest. It’s a Metaphorest.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Wilde said as he attempted to wriggle free from a squirming mound of precipitated pets. “How … droll.”

  “Ugh,” Jesus Descardo grunted above the choir of yaps and yowls. “What do you mean by Metaphorest?”

  “Because it’s raining cats and dogs,” Milton said. “For real. And before that, Moses made a mountain from a molehill.”

  Moses wrenched himself free from a fuzzy, writhing heap. “Don’t pin the blame on me,” he said before yelping in pain.

  Another clap of thunder boomed. The shower of plummeting pets abruptly ceased. Milton could see that Moses had a note pinned to his forehead reading “blame.” He winced as he plucked the pin from his bleeding flesh. The boy, furious, crumpled up the note and stormed toward Mr. Wilde as the cats and dogs began to slowly dissolve away to nothing.

  Moses grabbed Mr. Wilde by the collar. “You’re a teacher,” he said, trying his best to get into the tall teacher’s face. “You guys have to know what’s going on here—”

  “Moses, watch your—” Milton interjected.

  “So spill the beans!” Moses shouted.

  Instantly, Mr. Wilde doubled over in pain. He fell to the ground coughing. Out of his sputtering mouth came a cascade of beans: pinto beans, navy beans, lima beans, green beans, and even jelly beans. Mr. Dickens ran to the convulsing teacher and patted him on the back.

  “It’s okay, Oscar,” the old man said kindly as Mr. Wilde vomited gallon after gallon of beans. “We always suspected that you were full of … well, you know …”

  Ursula looked around her fearfully. The large, intimidating girl now seemed like a trembling Latino mouse.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” she murmured.

  Mr. Wilde heaved and retched, adding another stomachful of beans to the lake of legumes around him.

  “Is he gonna kick the bucket?” Ursula asked, her brown eyes wide with alarm.

  “Careful what you—” Milton said just as a large bucket materialized several yards away from them.

  Jesus Descardo snickered as he stepped toward it. “This is stupid,” he said with a shake of his head. “Loco. This is all just some kind of trick.�
�”

  “Jesus, don’t do it!” Milton said as the boy stopped in front of the bucket.

  “Or what?” Jesus said as he went to give the pail a kick. “Just watch. Nothing will—”

  Just as the boy’s foot touched the bucket, Jesus Descardo’s body instantly froze, flattened, and turned into a pile of black and white words.

  Vice Principal Carroll instantly squawked his commentary.

  “If a player’s overcome with dread, his fear like chains and fetters,

  he’ll believe that he is truly dead, and dissolve to words and letters.”

  “What happened?!” Concordia screamed. The children surrounded what used to be Jesus Descardo.

  “I don’t know,” Mordacia Caustilo said spookily. “But I don’t think that this Jesus is coming back for Easter.…”

  Mr. Wilde finally stopped retching beans and, wiping his mouth with a hanky, rose shakily to his feet.

  “We must be going,” he whispered. “Mr. Fauster is right. This is a Metaphorest. A place where metaphors—figures of speech—come to life.”

  Milton noticed a tiny, crushed mechanical toy under his foot. He stooped down and picked through the brass gears and components.

  Those odd windup crickets, he thought as he rolled tiny springs between his finger pads. That’s what all that brain-fogging chirping is.…

  The floor of the Metaphorest was covered with hopping mechanical insects rubbing their crystal wings together. They leapt over clusters of tiny, vibrating tuning forks sprouting from the shredded-paper soil.

  Winifred sniffed back tears. “I’m scared,” she said, trembling.

  Mr. Dickens put his arm around Winifred to soothe her.

  A terrible roar rattled the trees, causing a fresh cascade of cold glitter.

  “Snnnaaahhhhrrrrrk!!”

  Vice Principal Carroll’s omnipresent commentary echoed throughout the Metaphorest.

  “Hark! What’s this? Such bitter tea!

  The snark? Oh dear! They’d better flee!”

  Mr. Wilde swallowed. “Let’s hit the road,” he muttered.

  The teachers and children immediately fell to their knees and pummeled the ground with their fists.

  “Nice one … Oscar,” Mr. Dickens said as he hobbled and hammered forward.

  The snarling roar grew closer and closer.

  Milton’s hands went numb as he crawled along, pounding the floor of the Metaphorest.

  This place is what we make it … by what we say, he thought. So …

  “We’d better …” Milton said, tears streaming down his face from the pain, “hop to it!”

  Milton sprang to his feet, as did his fellow team members, and bounced across the Metaphorest. The briefcase handcuffed to his wrist swung back and forth like a pendulum. He could hear the sound of mirrored trees shattering in the distance as the snark lumbered closer.

  “Good job, Mr. Fauster,” Mr. Wilde said, vaulting past the reflective trees. “Now I suggest that we all keep our … what I mean to say is, zip up our … my goodness, this is more difficult than I ever imagined.”

  Trees snapped and shattered. Milton could hear the creature panting.

  “Each metaphor we make,” Milton grunted, “replaces the last.”

  The creature drew closer. The children could feel its heavy footfalls as it tromped across the Metaphorest.

  “It’s going to get us!” Pansy gasped with terror. “Maybe we should split up!”

  Milton and the others fell to the ground. An incredible pain blossomed from within Milton, dead center, as if he were being torn in half. The children and teachers wailed in anguish.

  We’re splitting in half! Milton thought, hugging himself as if to hold his body together. I’ve got to think of another metaphor … a counter-metaphor. The pain was excruciating. In just a few agonizing moments, Milton would end up like Jesus Descardo … or worse.

  “We’ve got to … pull ourselves together!” he groaned.

  The teachers and children gasped with relief, bunching together in a sweating, panting bunch. Immediately, Milton could feel himself “healing” inside, his guts mending and becoming blessedly whole.

  “Now … we just have to … find our way … out of here,” Pansy panted.

  Milton scanned the seemingly endless rows of mirror trees crowding the Metaphorest.

  “I hate metaphors, na mean?” Rakeem complained, scratching his puffy bleached hair.

  Moses nodded. “So indirect,” he added carefully. “They just waste time.”

  “Shakespeare used them a lot,” Milton added. “He didn’t invent them, but he popularized their use.”

  Milton had an idea. He rose to his feet.

  Mr. Wilde eyed him nervously. “Be careful, Mr. Fauster—”

  “All the world’s a stage!” Milton shouted. “And all the men and women merely players! They have their exits and their entrances!”

  The trees transformed into stage props: tall branches covered in foil, perched atop stands. The forest floor was now a large wooden platform.

  “Snnnaaahhhhrrrrrk!!”

  The creature was close. Milton could hear its legs clopping nearer across the plank flooring.

  Milton saw the edge of the expansive stage a dozen yards away.

  “Quick!” he yelled. “This way!”

  Milton, the teachers, and the other children hobbled forward. Drawing upon all of his strength, Milton leapt off the edge of the stage, landing on the shredded-paper ground.

  Mr. Wilde and Mr. Dickens hopped off the stage—the author of Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol tugging Moxie’s dolly behind him—followed by the other children, leaving only Pansy and Sareek.

  “Phew!” the small, pinched-faced girl gasped, only several feet away from the edge of the stage. She held tight to Sareek’s hand as they neared the edge of the stage with relief. “I thought we were all dead ducks!”

  “Yeah: dead as doornails!”

  Pansy and Sareek screamed before losing all of their color and turning into flattened stacks of words, just as Jesus had.

  The children gaped in shock. Pansy and Sareek were now nothing more than dry, emotionless descriptions.

  “Are they—” Roberta Atrebor started, before a savage roar blasted from the stage. There, scratching at the wooden platform with its nine hooves capping nine spindly legs, was one of the most disgusting creatures Milton had ever laid eyes on, which was really saying something considering the nightmarish menagerie of monsters he had had the misfortune of hobnobbing with down in Heck.

  “That thing is so gross,” Concordia gasped, her long mouth flapping open like a pet door, “that it makes everything I thought was gross before almost beautiful.…”

  The beast had a wide, dripping wet snout that glistened like an open sore. Its skin was scaly like a snake’s, and it had a shark’s fin protruding from its back. The snark threw back its monstrous head and drew in a deep breath through its flared, gouge-like nostrils, as if it were inhaling the children’s fear. Most puzzling of all, it also had a large silver hammer lashed to the back of its neck.

  “We best be moving,” Mr. Wilde said, backing away from the edge of the stage. “We can’t help them now.… Let’s go.…”

  Vice Principal Carroll wouldn’t create something that would actually annihilate us, Milton thought dismally as the creature sniffed at the twin piles of words that had been, only seconds ago, Pansy and Sareek.

  The beast trained its hateful glare on Milton, its eyes puffed into wicked slits, like wounds that refused to heal properly.

  Would he?

  22 · SCOFFER UNDER

  THE BRIDGE

  MARLO CRUNCHED ACROSS the shredded-paper hill toward a thick grove of trees. She rubbed her aching wrist around the handcuff cutting into her skin. The teachers and children reached the summit, their combined footfalls forming a mind-numbing march. This, with the rhythmic chirping of little metal crickets, rubbing their crystal wings together, was like a roll of Mentos dropped i
nto the carbonated fizz of Marlo’s thoughts. Her brain felt sticky and senseless, bursting with foam.

  “Well, Team Captain,” Cookie Youngblood said in a way that leeched the designation of any respect whatsoever. “Do you even know where we are?”

  Marlo stopped and assessed the gnarled tangle of spindly trees that leered back at her like a smiling hobo. “Yeah, I know exactly where we are,” she declared, her white fists pressed into her sides.

  “Where?”

  “We’re lost.”

  Cookie shook her head and snorted.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our great and fearless leader, Marlo Fauster,” the girl said, her red-and-blond-streaked bangs doing the hula along her forehead.

  Marlo Fauster? Dale E. Basye thought as he tromped alongside Miss Parker in silence.

  “I never said my name was Google,” Marlo said. The other children stared at her. “You know, because I think I know everything. I don’t. But I know as much as you. Which means that I actually know more than you, since you all think you know it all but don’t and don’t know it …”

  Dale E. Basye stared at the sassy, blue-haired girl, a girl who—until now—he had felt was merely a figment of his imagination. His literary creation. Well … that wasn’t exactly true. He had, um, appropriated the source material from that horrible boy, Damian Ruffino. But he—Dale E. Basye—was the one who had brought the story of a dead boy and his sister to life. But this whole experience was too weird and strangely real to be just a dream.

  “Why don’t you bookmark me so you can read me later?” Marlo said, staring at the man who had, unknowingly, been staring at her for a long minute.

  “Oh, um … sorry,” Mr. Basye replied. “It’s just that … did you say you were Marlo Fauster?”

  “I didn’t. Cookie did. But yeah … so what’s it to you?”

  “And you have a brother named Milton, I suppose.”