All of the creatures in the store become silent. The calm before the storm is about to break or so that is how Helga feels as she squeezes her eyes shut and shudders. A few limbs tremble on the floor, twisting and turning about, searching and seeking for things to grab, like chairs, toads, and tables.
The limbs begin moving faster, springing into action picking up anything they can grab that is nearby. The tendrils wave and spin these items briefly in the air before throwing them back at Helga. The chairs go thwack against Helga’s body. Most survive for another smack while some explode into tiny splinters. Helga’s right side starts to burn from the several hits.
The frogs and toads make impact with squishy smacks on her skin and land on the floor with small croaks of annoyance. A few go limp and slowly slide down her apron leaving slimy trails behind. Tables are thrown and miss Helga by mere inches, but she then gets slapped in the face by more unhappy toads and frogs.
Helga ducks down trying to escape her own hair only to be yanked right back up by some of the free tendrils. She snaps her fingers trying to undo her sister’s spell but sucks in her breath as more angry stings attack her arm, reminding her of her probation. Magic sparks in the air as more toads and frogs appear and plop to the floor. They leap away to safety as everyone in the shop, including the pizza guy, who is recording the scene on his phone, watches with slackened jaws and wide eyes.
Agnes leans against the counter with her arms across her chest, waiting for Helga to cry ‘uncle’ or to apologize. Sobs issue from the mass of hair thrashing about the room. Agnes’s steely gaze never leaves the mass. She leans forward listening for the barest whisper of an apology.
A tug on Agnes’s arm breaks her concentration, and she turns to see Ursa standing there with her face red and puffy and tears streaming down.
She pleads with Agnes, “Stop, please, stop!”
Agnes pats Ursa’s hand and looks back at the mass of hair tendrils pummeling itself with various objects in the shop. Her eyes begin to water as she presses her lips together waiting for the tiniest of whispers from Helga to say that she is sorry.
Ursa tugs at Agnes’s arm, again pleading, “Agnes, stop it. You are hurting her . . . please . . . stop.”
Agnes pushes Ursa’s hand away as she turns to one side. Her thumb rubs the edge of the wooden handle of her spatula. More sobs and screams erupt from the mass of hair, and Agnes bites her lip.
With a sigh Agnes waves the spatula towards Helga and utters, “Un-tangle-de-fangle.”
As though someone pressed pause, the tendrils stop in mid-air, each with an object still firmly in its grasp. Helga struggles against the mighty strands that hold her in place and then stops. Her tear-streaked face looks up from the floor as she takes a moment to open her eyes.
Slowly, one by one, the limbs begin to let go of their prizes and drop things onto the cafe floor. Chairs and tables clatter against the tiles as the frogs and toads leap out of the way. Wet plops sound as more toads appear and land on the floor.
Helga’s hair calmly untangles and recedes back to its original length. She dashes away with new tears forming in her eyes. Unable to meet Agnes’s eyes, in a small voice she says, “Thank you.”
With a sad smile Agnes replies, “You’re welcome.”
She and Ursa wade through the toads and frogs that are now knee-high to embrace Helga in a hug. Helga winces as her right side flares with pain. She bites her lip trying to stay quiet so that Ursa, who is excellent at healing spells, does not feel the need to heal her wounds.
The window to the front door bangs, and everyone looks up, as the pizza guy shouts, “Hey, guys, as much as I want to stay and watch, I got pizzas to deliver! You guys want your pizzas or not?”
Jay jumps up and waves to the girls indicating for them to stay where they are. “I got this . . .”
He places the fox down and points at the floor telling Ruby to stay before he heads outside to pay the pizza guy.
The bell above the door jangles again as Jay pushes it forward with five boxes of pizza in his arms. Moving quickly Jay scoots in enough, blocking the fox, so that the door closes shut before she can escape. He looks over towards the sisters, calling, “Hey, y’all want some grub or not?”
Across the room Agnes’s stomach gurgles loudly, and the sisters all start to laugh.
Agnes motions towards the front counter, saying, “Put them on the counter, Jay.”
Slogging through the knee-high sea of frogs and toads, Jay manages to make it to the counter. He places the boxes down on the glass top and then opens each one. Each wafts their own signature scents of pepperoni, bell peppers, sausage, extra cheese, and garlic butter bread crust.
He looks over at Agnes, asking, “Plates?”
Agnes grabs her spatula, saying, “Allow me.”
Helga and Ursa suck in their breath.
Agnes pauses a moment. “What?”
Ursa fidgets, barely looking up at her older sister, and states, “Um, don’t you think we have enough toads and frogs in the shop?”
Tilting her head to one side, Agnes scratches her temple with the spatula for a moment and then inquires, “What’s me calling for a few plates got to do with any frogs and toads?”
Helga bites her fist while Ursa gestures about the room, reminding Agnes, “Uh, remember, toad flu?”
Agnes straightens up and places her hands on her hips while looking about the room. “Huh, well, I’ll be . . .”
“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you, Agnes?” Ursa asks.
Waving her hand dismissively at Ursa, Agnes responds, “No . . . no . . . don’t you fret about your leg. A few more toads ain’t gonna hurt us. Besides, we all need to eat.” Agnes starts to wind up her arm to cast a spell.
Helga shouts, “NO!”
Agnes stops, Ursa turns towards Helga, and Jay stares, keeping his mouth shut.
Helga continues, “No, no more spells. We can’t do anymore—”
Agnes interrupts, “Tut-tut, I see no reason why we can’t call for a few plates.” She winds up to cast the spell.
Helga leaps forward to grab Agnes’s spatula, screaming, “NO!”
Agnes leaps to one side, staring down at Helga who lands with a loud thump. Toads and frogs hop about in a fury, barking and croaking.
“I’m the eldest, and I say it’s alright if we do one more spell,” Agnes insists, glowering down at Helga and then turning to cast her spell.
Helga quickly kicks Agnes’s knee forward making her crumple to the floor like a house of cards. Helga snatches Agnes’s spatula from her limp grasp and then bounds away from her.
“HEY!” Agnes shouts.
Keeping her distance from Agnes, Helga places the spatula in her apron, explaining, “We can’t DO anymore spells.”
Agnes asks, “Why not?”
“We are at stage three of toad flu.”
“Stage three?” Ursa asks, eyes bulging.
Agnes replies, “Stage three? That ain’t nothing.”
Helga fires back, “It means a lot if the shop becomes full of these critters while we’re still in it, you dummy.”
Agnes chews on one of her cheeks as she appears to mull over the information. Finally, she shrugs her shoulder and heads towards the kitchen, muttering, “Fine, fine, have it your way . . . spoilsport.”
While Agnes is in the kitchen, the two sisters, Helga and Ursa, slog their way to the counter with the pizzas. Jay watches them as they bicker over who gets how many slices of each. Their idle bickering is interrupted by the clatter of plates being placed upon the glass countertop.
Agnes returns from the kitchen with a stack of plates and napkins. She hands each person a plate and then grabs slices from each of the pizzas. The crew stands there eating pizza as the toads and frogs sing to them with croaks and barks. Once in awhile a faint moan filters through the toad and frog songs.
A plate clatters upon the countertop as Helga rubs her hands together. She looks about the room and then back to the crew.
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“Alright, break time’s over,” she hums.
She hands Agnes her spatula wand and gives each of the crew a bucket, commanding, “Let’s get these critters out of here before we have a REAL disaster on our hands.”
Jay places his bucket on the counter, announcing, “S’cuse me, ladies. I have to go take care of some business.” He trudges through the critters to the restroom in the back of the shop.
The crew gets to work putting the toads and frogs into buckets.
An uneasy groan is heard between the silence of barking and croaks.
Ursa stops and then shouts, “HELGA!”
Helga swivels her head around, asking, “What?”
“The inspector! We forgot about the health inspector!” Ursa hollers, worrying her lips.
“Oh crap.” Helga runs the best she can through the sea of critters towards the last place the inspector was seen. Agnes and Ursa join in, trying to move through or leap over the slimy creatures to help find him.
Helga yells over at Ursa, “Your phone, where’s your phone?”
Ursa stops and heads back for her phone, which was last seen by the cash register. Helga and Agnes stop near the door and dig. Throwing frogs and toads left and right, they finally unearth a puffy pink mass covered in slime. It groans again as chubby cartoon-like fingers reach up to wipe the slime away from its swollen eyes.
Ursa comes back with her phone and screams, “EEEEEEEE!”
She points at the puffy mass, demanding, “What is that?”
She drops her phone as she almost faints from the sight of the puffy, slimy man.
Helga quickly snatches the phone before it gets lost in the sea of critters. Helga swipes at the screen over and over, muttering, “How do you get into this darn thing?”
Ursa snaps out of it and grabs the phone out of Helga’s hands. “Let me do it. 911?”
Helga replies, “Yes, 911.”
Ursa dials 911 letting the phone ring.
A lady answers, “911, what is your emergency?”
“Yes, we need an ambulance. We have a customer who’s having some really bad allergies,” Ursa explains.
“Bad allergies? How bad? Did you try anti-allergy meds?” the lady asks.
“No, but it’s really bad. The guy is all puffed up, red, and super slimy. I think he can barely breathe.”
The lady asks, “Where are you located?”
Helga kicks Ursa and then points at Higgins’s table. Ursa nods telling the lady on the phone, “We also have someone that hit his head pretty bad.”
The lady sighs, “Okay, miss, we’ll send two ambulances, but where are you located?”
“We’re on Highway 124, and we’re in the cafe called Baubles & Brews. Suite 101.”
“Mm, okay. We’ll have the ambulances to you shortly.”
“Please hurry.”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ursa replies.
“You’re welcome.”
The phone goes silent.
The inspector tries to talk, “Mmmph mm Mmph mmmm.”
Agnes pats his sticky shoulders, soothing him, “There, there, don’t talk, sweet. This is all a bad dream. Everything is going to be fine.”
Helga widens her eyes at Agnes and then looks back at Ursa, asking, “How long?”
“The lady did not say how long, but I guess maybe twenty minutes,” Ursa says while placing her phone into her apron’s top front pocket.
Helga lets out a small breath and leans against the wall. “Good,” she says and turns to Agnes to ask, “Hey, help me get this guy out of the shop, will you?”
Agnes goes to one side of the puffy inspector while Helga gets the other side. They both bend down to pick him up under the arms. Ursa winces as the slime touches her arm when she bends down to lift his feet.
The sound of a toilet flushing echoes from the back of the shop as Jay exclaims, “WHOA! Who made that puffy mass? I thought we weren’t supposed to do anymore magic!”
Helga says, “No, we didn’t do any magic. It’s the inspector.” She nods her head towards the door, insisting, “Be some use and get the door for us.”
Jay nods and rushes to the door while keeping an eye on the fox.
“You guys have to be quick, or the fox will get out,” Jay warns the sisters.
Helga presses her lips together, her right side burning with the strain of picking the inspector up. She says, “We know. Now move, this guy weighs a ton!”
The fox watches the crew as they carry the puffy inspector out of the shop. Ruby stays put due to Jay’s watchful eye upon her.
The sisters prop the poor inspector up against the stone wall adjacent to their shop. They all scramble back inside, trying to sweep the slime off of their clothes.
“Ewww,” Ursa says, “this will never come out.” She sweeps her arm down as a tendril of slime clings to her hand. She shudders, “Gross.”
Agnes and Helga both reply, “Oh shut it.”
Helga finishes wiping her hands on her slimy apron, gathers the buckets, and then passes them back out to the crew. “Come on people, we got to get this cleaned up, pronto.”
She looks about the amphibian-filled floors, scanning for something, and sighs, “First things first. We have to find Mr. Higgins. He’s here somewhere.” She gestures at the frogs, adding, “Buried under all of these slimy creatures.”
Agnes’s nose twitches into a sneer as her right eyebrow cocks up. She asks, “Eh? Who?”
Helga drops her face into her palm shaking her head. Ursa and Jay glance at one another biting their lips and then look elsewhere.
“I’m serious,” Agnes insists and again asks, “Who is Mr. Higgins?”
With a few deep breaths Helga slides her palm away from her face and looks up at Agnes with cold eyes, stating, “The Order of Magic Official, who closed down our shop, you nitwit.”
Agnes’s baby blue eyes bat a few times before she asks, “The walrus dude?”
Grimacing, Helga replies, “Yes, the walrus dude.”
The other two sisters wait for Agnes to think. They know that when Agnes remembers her baby blue eyes grow wide and wider as though a bright bulb lit up above her head. She then snaps her fingers and moves to the last place Higgins was seen in the cafe.
With bucket in tow Agnes starts to shovel frogs and toads out of her way, slogging them off to the side as they bark their froggy unhappiness. She stops at a large mound, that if you were to look close enough, you would see it slowly move up and down. Agnes waves for Ursa and Jay to come help her.
Jay stops halfway, looks back at Helga, and asks, “Where are we putting these guys? We can’t poof them away, or they’ll just multiply.”
Ursa, in the process of picking up a frog by its hind legs, stops to add, “He’s right. We won’t make any progress if we don’t have a place to put these icky things.” She shudders as the frog kicks her with its other foot and leaps free to the floor. “EWW, YUCK!”
Pursing her lips, Helga agrees, “You’re right. We do need a spot for these buggers while toad flu is still active, and somewhere else in the shop won’t work. Any ideas?”
Looking over at Agnes, Helga sees her sister working hard to remove the frogs and toads from on top of Higgins by scooping them up in a bucket and dumping them over her shoulder. Helga turns her head back towards Ursa and Jay expecting answers from them. Ursa stands there squirming and flinching whenever a toad or frog touches her. Jay is Helga’s last hope for suggestions.
His eyebrows furrow down as his lips pinch into a flat line while he scratches his bare chin. Jay’s foot taps on the floor in a rhythm until he stops. He looks up at Helga with an animated face. He then rushes towards the back door of the cafe. Curious, Helga follows after him along with Ursa. The fox pops up at one point during their run, and Helga snatches her out of the air from one of her forward leaps.
They all come to a stop at the back door of the shop. Jay, grinning from ear to ear, opens the door. Bright l
ight filters into the shop as the crew shelters their eyes and walks outside. They see the woods that line the back of the shopping outlet. Ursa and Helga smile at one another when they realize Jay’s solution: the small lake in the back.
“The lake out in the woods?” Helga asks.
“Yep,” Jay answers, taking Ruby from Helga’s arms.
Ursa asks, “How are we going to shoo these slimy things to the lake in the forest?”
Helga says, “Simple. With the buckets.”
Ursa moans, “Ugggh, that will take forever!”
“Quit your whin—” Helga says when the door to the shop slams itself closed.
With wide eyes Ursa and Jay look over at Helga.
Helga moves towards the door and says, “Don’t be a bunch of chickens. It was just the wind, and that’s it.”
She tries to open it. The knob refuses to budge. Helga pushes harder on the doorknob trying to make it move. She stops, placing her head on the door, and bites her lip as her right side flares with pain again.
“It looks like it’s locked,” Ursa comments.
“Bull,” Helga replies, shoving and pushing against the door while rattling the handle.
Jay asks, “Do you want me to go around the front and open it from the inside?”
With cheeks puffing out as Helga pushes on the door, she says, “No, it’s stuck . . . not locked.”
She rests for a tiny second with her head against the dark heavy metal door. A faint child’s laughter can be heard, making Helga jump backwards.
“What is it?” Jay and Ursa ask.
“That child . . .” Helga says, “That child ghost . . .”
Ursa tilts her head to one side, asking, “Huh? What about her?”
Helga shakes her head and then replies, “That horrid little brat . . . She locked us out!”
The sound of the child’s laughter grows louder. Helga rushes towards the door and rams it hard with her shoulder. She cries out loud because she forgot about her injured right side again.
Potion of the Hound Page 13
