Louis, Molly & the Woodchuck

by Michael Arnold

  Chapter 18

  Edna wanted to think Sam was joking, so she did a double take when she saw his words flash before her and his hand move all about in his coat pocket. She dropped her dog whistle as she reached for her car keys. Both Edna and Sam battled, trying to get their respective items.

  “Be still! How do you think I’m supposed to stun duh you, Edna?” Edna wasn’t just stronger, she was taller, smarter, and bigger, and whatever other advantage it took to win a fight, Edna had it. But the one thing she didn’t have in her favor was agility. Sam got his stun duh out before Edna got to her car keys. He pointed it to her.

  “Hold it, Sam, one second,” Edna yelled.

  “What do you mean ‘hold it, Sam’? I have been given specific orders to stun duh you. And that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t have time to hold it,” Sam replied.

  “I understand and I want you to stun duh me.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, but I want to eat my last piece of bubble gum before you do it. Can I, at least, have that request, Sam?”

  “Um…, I don’t have a problem with that. Let me know when you’re ready, okay?”

  Edna dug in her purse then took her hand out revealing nothing. “I can’t seem to find the piece of bubble gum. You think you could find it for me, Sam?” Edna said.

  “Yes, why not?”

  When he reached his hand out for her purse Edna threw it at him. Sam grabbed his head as the purse fell to the ground and so did Sam’s Stun Duh.

  “Oh, you hit me! Now I’m going to really stun duh you,” Sam yelled.

  “Oh yeah? We will see about that. With little effort, Edna pushed Sam down, and picked up his Stun Duh. “I want you to give Onree a little message, okay? I don’t work for him or anyone else.”

  “Please no! Don’t do it. I will buy you a pack of gum. Wait, I will…”

  That’s about all the words Sam got out of his mouth when the bright blue and black whirlwind of the electric charge struck him in the middle of his forehead. As if he was being controlled by a blast of electricity, his arms and all of his body flailed all over the place. Edna would have continued pressing the small button on Sam’s Stun Duh and enjoy watching him do the Stun Duh dance, but when a gray van with an emblem of an ice cream cone on the side of it sped across the parking lot, Edna stopped.

  Her eyes glared at the van. A man, a woman and Onree jumped out of the side door. “If you want something done right then by golly you have to do it yourself.”

  “Stun duh her and seize that animal hating woman,” Onree yelled.

  Edna would have loved to have stunned duh the woman and the man but by the time she had the Stun Duh up it was way too late. She too was doing the electric dance.

  Onree yelled: “Keep it up, don’t let up. I want her at my mercy. She will learn her lesson never to defy me.”

  When Hawk and Worm got through the fog what they saw was not a warehouse but a house with a backyard full of vegetables.

  “I told you this just can’t be about food, Worm. When will you get that through your brainless skull?”

  Worm stopped in midair then Hawk stopped too.

  “Why are we stopping? We are here now, so we might as well feast,” Hawk said disgustingly.

  Worm didn’t reply, instead he dove into the garden at full speed.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Worm picked up several different vegetables then he took flight once again.

  What is he doing? I better not ask. I know it is one of his crazy ideas. I will make sure he sticks to what the plan is. And I’ll be sure to put an end to all of his foolish ideas.

  The ride was bumpy but Edna didn’t feel a thing on the way to the warehouse. “I want her in restraints before she is moved into my warehouse and I want Sam in my office immediately after he awakes,” Onree said, directing his attention to the young male and the young woman. After the young woman had Edna in handcuffs, that Onree had supplied, she and the man got each end of Edna and took her inside the warehouse.

  “Where shall we put her, Mr. Onree?” the woman asked.

  “Oh, I have a spectacular place for her. I knew this day was coming, so I prepared for it,” Onree replied. On one of the poles in the middle of the warehouse was a green and red button. Onree pressed the green button and a human-sized cage rolled down off a chain from the top of the warehouse. It continued to come down until it landed on the ground.

  “Voila! This is where she is going to be for a while until my project here is done and I’m long gone. Which one of you fine people want to do the honors of opening this cage?” Onree asked.

  The man and the woman dropped Edna on the hard concrete floor. “If you don’t mind, boss, and if it’s who I think it is, I would love to do the honors of opening her cage and put her in it,” Randall said, suddenly favoring his leg again.

  “Randall, I didn’t know you were here. I thought maybe you went out or something, but yes, come on, my pal, my friend, my buddy, the honors are all yours,” Onree said. “Sorry, guys, I just remember she is his cousin but he hates her guts, so I think it’s only right to give him the honors. Now step away.”

  Randall looked down at Edna for a long moment. “I hope Onree has you in this cage so that you think you are a dog and you start barking.”

  “Well, what are you two waiting for? Let’s get her in her new home,” Randall said once he unlocked the cage door.

  Hawk thought Worm’s idea, whatever the idea was leading up to, didn’t make sense at all, but for the first time in a long time he followed his lead except without picking up any of the vegetables.

  “How does any of this have anything to do with us finding the warehouse, Worm?”

  “Ugh, because it just does, Hawk. Why does ugh…, my way of doing thing always has to ugh…, be the wrong way?”

  “Worm, listen, I didn’t mean it like that at all. What I was saying was…”

  “I know what you’re saying. You ugh…, you think I’m stupid like ugh…, dumb, Hawk.”

  “No, no, I don’t mean that you are dumb, Worm. I just think sometimes…, like sometimes...”

  “Go ahead and, ugh, and say it, Hawk.” Hawk paused. Then as if he was about to open his long beak to say something, Worm spoke out.

  “I kind of figured you wouldn’t say ugh…, what I thought you would say, Hawk! One thing you should know, we are a…, ugh team and there isn’t an “I” in a team is there?”

  Hawk didn’t say anything. He glared at Worm as if he was trying to figure out his point as if he didn’t already know.

  “Ugh…, I was asking you a question.”

  “No, no of course not there is no “I” in team, Worm, not at all.”

  “Okay, I thought I may have been wrong but ugh…, I’m right,” Worm said as he flew to the core of an upcoming fog.

  “I guess you can’t have just the good, but the bad has always to show its ugly little face at the most joyous time of my life. This can’t be right.”

  “What are you griping about now, Woodchuck?” Louis asked while he and Molly ate from three double-quarter-pounder burgers.

  “How rude are we, Louis,” Molly said, lifting her head from their feast. “We didn’t even ask the Woodchuck if he wanted some of our meal.”

  Louis put his head up and started laughing. The woodchuck put both of his hands over his eyes and shook his head in a disgusting gesture.

  “I don’t eat meat. I am a vegetarian and a fruitarian.”

  “Fruitarian? I never heard that term before. What is that, Woodchuck?” Molly asked curiosity painted all over her muddy face.

  “Just what I thought. I knew that Louis was up to his old tricks again. Sorry, Molly, but I have to let Louis know something and know something really fast. But to answer your question first; a fruitarian is a woodchuck that eats only fruit and this little weasel of a Louis has turned you.”

  “Turned me? What do you mean, Woodchuck?” Molly asked.

  “W
ell, I guess the woodchuck is back to his old self,” Louis said.

  “I mean, Molly, in all my living years, I never seen a…, no disrespect to a cat who eats meats, and I’m not blaming you, I am blaming you, Louis.”

  Louis continued to laugh while Molly found his high-pitched scolding to be somewhat amusing. She showed a smile.

  “Blaming me for what? What have I done?”

  “You turned my new friend with that horrible, horrible meat. She looks like she was a vegetarian and a fruitarian just like me until you, Mr. Louis Meatman, gave her a taste of that cow’s butt and she…, she…, she has turned and that’s no way for my new friend to be,” the woodchuck said.

  Louis whispered something in Molly’s ear. Molly looked back at Louis. Then her smile drifted away and she turned to Louis to murmur into his ear.

  The woodchuck cleared his throat and spoke in a quiet voice. “You two are not the only ones out here, you know. Woo-hoo?”

  “I was on a very specific diet, Woodchuck,” Molly said. “But being out here, not knowing where your next meal is coming from, you have to take what you can get, so that’s where I am with my diet. Now there is plenty here, and the burger sauce is really good. You should try it,” Molly suggested.

  The woodchuck took a couple of seconds to think about it.

  “Did I mention the sauce is really, really, really good?”

  “Oh, what the heck, my diet has been grapes all this time. I need to just live a little. Why not?” the woodchuck said.

  Louis put up his front paw in a high five gesture. They smacked hands then he repeated the same thing with Molly.

  “Welcome to the meatarian club, Woodchuck,” Louis said. But Woodchuck didn’t respond. He was too busy gorging on the meat sandwich.

  For a longtime Hawk didn’t say anything. There was nothing for him to say. He was well aware of how he treated Worm at times. He would belittle him, leave him, talk him down, and more recently, find his idea to be nothing more than just a dumb expression that should never come out of his head. Before they got too far off course, Hawk thought he needed to ask Worm why they hadn’t come across the warehouse that he thought he saw.

  But he held his piece, and knowing Worm as long as he did, he believed he would say something. If he didn’t, he would look for the warehouse himself and Worm could be on his own with all his fruit and berries. But it didn’t come to that. Worm finally broke his silence when they got out of the thick of the fog.

  “The warehouse is ugh…, right over these trees. They got those electricity things, so we can throw these ugh vegetables down to where ugh…, those men are outside of the warehouse. That will distract them long enough to get those things ugh…, away from them. And then we can find out what’s inside the building,” Worm said.

  Hawk was surprised and somewhat envious that his longtime best pal had come up with a great idea without his help, but he wouldn’t reveal his slight jealousy toward Worm’s great idea. Why would I? It’s a great idea and I believe it will work. Like the humans always say, “two is better than one.” I like that saying. Hawk could see the huge warehouse in the distance.

  “I see the warehouse and it looks like a couple of people are standing at the back of the place,” Hawk said.

  They looked at each other. Worm gave him a small onion. “This will stop them good,” Worm said.

  “Yes, it will. Let’s go.” Worm’s plan worked like a charm. The onion distracted the two men at the back of the building and the Stun Duh lit them up once Hawk and Worm had given them a taste of their own medicine.

  “I think we’ll have a better way in there, Worm.” Hawk pointed to the large opening in the chimney in the roof. Worm agreed that going down that hole in the chimney would work better. They wouldn’t be detected.

  “Ugh, now the question is who is going first?” Worm asked.

  “This whole thing was your idea so you’re going first I would think.”

  “Ugh, your idea was the chimney. So I elect you, Hawk, to go first,” Worm said without a smile or a smirk.

  “Okay. How bad can going down a flue hole be? If I have to go first then I will go first, Worm,” Hawk said and then went down the chimney.

  Worm flew closed by. Then, as he had expected in the back of his mind, he heard it. “Worm, this was a bad idea.” Worm laughed, opened the back door of the warehouse and let himself in. He knew it would be a big deal finding out where the chimney led to, but he wanted to be discreet in doing it. He smelled the scent of cheap cologne. Ugh, there are humans in here. They will get me if they see me.

  There wasn’t anything special about the warehouse. It contained shelves everywhere on each aisle of the many aisles; too many to count. The shelves started from the ground all the way up, missing the ceiling by about six feet. The ceiling itself had to be at least fifteen to twenty feet away from the ground with large pendant lights lighting up the place with stark whiteness. The aisles went from where Worm stood at the backdoor, all the way out of sight on each side, as far as he could see them. A concrete floor lined and separated the aisles. Worm could hear talking from a cage hanging by a thick steel chain in the middle of that aisle.

  “I see you’re awake, sleeping brute! To prevent you from straining that badly damage neck, wondering where you are, Edna, I tell you where you are. You are in my warehouse. I would say welcome back, but I suppose with all the electricity I filled your old, fat body a couple of hours ago, I’m sure welcoming you anywhere is hardly and invitation you want to accept.”

  “When I get my hands around your scrawny little neck, I am going to…” Edna said to herself then stopped. Her eyes became wider but her lips held one nasty, drooling grimace as she sat Indian style in the corner of the cage.

  “Your jabbering lips will get you nowhere, Edna. What you will do from here on out is sit in that kennel or lie in it, which ever you prefer, until I am good and done with you,” Onree said.

  The front door opened and out of the outside shadows, Randall walked in. When Edna caught a glimpse of Randall walking inside the warehouse, she forced herself to her feet and like a prison inmate; she peered out between the steel bars.

  “Hi, Edna, how are you?” Randall asked.

  “I could have your head on a platter right now, Randall. What is going on here? I thought we had a deal to get as many animals as we could get and sell them to that weasel down there and we get paid.”

  Onree shook his head and smacked his lips at the same time. “She doesn’t sound like a happy camper, does she, Randall?” Onree said.

  “No she doesn’t.”

  “One thing you should know, Edna, is no one works for me and defy my plan, my work, my vision.”

  By that time the young man and the woman, who jumped out of the van and stunned duh Edna, walked up to join Randall and Onree.

  “Who are you all supposed to be: the get along weirdoes?”

  “You take that back right now or I will stun duh you myself, Edna.”

  She laughed at Randall’s rhetoric.

  “Calm down, pal. She’s just mad because she is in that kennel and you are walking free as a bird,” Onree replied. “My plan is much bigger than the likes of a busty brute who can’t follow orders but can run her lips off.”

  “You see, Edna, it wasn’t a true website, it was all a hoax to reel you in.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about, weasel?”

  “Randall dislikes you just as much as you dislike pets. He has told me the things you done to him over the years, taking his lunch when you two were in grade school, stealing money and not to mention my keys to my warehouse.”

  Edna’s scowl became more intense by the second.

  “I don’t tolerate people like you nor do I like them, Edna, but I thought you could turn your dirty ways loose and come to join me, but your cousin here was right, you can’t and you won’t. You are just a dirty, scheming, bad, bad brute. Yes, you are, Edna. But since you are here, I might as
well let you in on our little secret. What do you say, guys, do you think we should let her in on our secret?”

  He has got to have every last screw in his head loose! Hawk thought from behind a vent where he had landed.

  “Edna, my dear, if we can’t agree on everything, we can agree on something and that something is that we both hate all animals. What the animal shelters call pets,” Onree yelled. “They say it is inhumane to kill them, but I found a legitimate way to bring fear upon every last one of them and that’s better than death. It’s better than their demise, Edna. It’s called my Stun Duh. And you have felt the power of my Stun Duh, didn’t you?”

  Edna, like an angry pit bull, growled under her quivering lips while pulling hard on the bars of her cage.

  “But now I have a great plan, Edna. I have moved up in the world if you will. I am not satisfied with putting fear in them. That’s not enough. I want more, Edna, I want more.”

  When Onree said the word “more” for the second time, he dragged it out in a very eerie kind of way which brought a chill down Worm’s spine. He was hiding between two of the shelves.

  “It’s called “Project E”, Edna, and it involves all the little weedy animals you don’t like,” Onree said.

  “Oh so you...” She stopped to exhale. “You, little weasel,” she said under her breath.

  “Project E is simple. It’s just the short form for extermination, but not as you see it. This process uses a perfect embalming fluid and a rare type of blood, called type D blood. Type D blood is only found in certain types of dogs and cats. When I find this type of blood, then I will mix the two, inject the mixed fluid into the animal of my choosing, and in twenty-four hours they will be mannequins of themselves. These mannequins will sell overseas very well, ha-ha-ha-ha.” Onree laughed hysterically then put on a serious face. “Now then, brute, you pathetic woman, you want to mess with me? You want to go and buy a dog whistle while you are on the clock working for me. Although you weren’t getting paid – but you didn’t know that – you carried on with your stupid obsession. Anyway, now that you know my secret, I think a brute with a dog neck brace would make a good mannequin in someone’s home,” Onree yelled.

  Oh no, that is bad news, Hawk thought. I have to find a way out of here and locate Worm. He can’t still be outside, can he?

  Then, as Hawk leaned forward from where he watched the whole ordeal, he made a loud clink sound that carried through the warehouse. It didn’t take him long to make the decision. He had to get out of there once he heard: “Find out what that noise was.” Hawk flapped his large wings as fast and as hard as they would go, turned to his left when he saw the woman and the man come at him.

  “It’s a big bird. It looks like an eagle,” the man said as he fired his Stun Duh.

  “Where is help when you actually need it? Worm, where are you? If you are in here we need to go very fastly – if that is a word.”

  “I will deal with you later. Looks like we have a bird problem that I didn’t know we had. Come on, Randall,” Onree said forcefully.

  Hawk flew straight ahead covering a lot of ground quickly. His heart pounded in his throat every time he thought: What if there is no exit where I’m going. Where am I supposed to go? But Hawk was mentally strong. He wasn’t going to let that situation get him down, but when he saw a few of the cages fall and one of them nearly hitting him, he had second thoughts.

  As mean and as raw as Edna was, she didn’t overlook what Onree had up his sleeve, but she wasn’t willing to admit her wrong-doing toward Charles, people at the stores, the restaurants, and toward pets, and most of all toward Louis for the three years she had him. The idea that she was reaping what she sowed came to mind while she was isolated in her steel cage. Yet, she wasn’t willing to surrender to the idea of fate; instead she continued to pull on the bars, hoping to pop the lock.

  “Let me out of here! Once I find you, Onree, I am going to break your pencil neck with my bare hands.” That was her standard retort when she was offended, but then there was the certainty of it all, which was much more than Edna’s vicious bite. It was her being locked down like a dog in that steel cage. What would become of her? And if she did get out, how in God’s name would she have the savvy to go after Onree and Randall while also keeping Louis and the woodchuck on her hit list.

  There were a few hiding places that caught Hawk’s eye, but rather than hiding he was seeking a way out. Other than the hiding places, all he saw were shelves, shelves, and more shelves and not to mention the walls that he almost ran into.

  When Worm didn’t hear anymore noise from the ranting people below, he came out.

  I have to find ugh…, Hawk, before they ugh…, get him, Worm thought as he flashed across the crowded warehouse.

  “I want that bird. We can add him to my plan for making mannequins! So far there is no bird. Get him out of the air and bring that bird to me,” Onree yelled.

  Randall, the man and the woman, farther ahead than Onree, still had the bird in their sights.

  As Worm headed in the direction where he heard the most noise, he stopped when he saw Edna’s cage hanging by a thick heavy chain. He was hesitant but not too hesitant to fly in front of the cage where Edna was peering at him. “Hey, shoo! Get out of here, bird.”

  Hawk saw a side door and above it was a two by two window that looked like it had not been cleaned in years. I have to break that window on the run to get out of here; Hawk heard his brain say at the same time as he heard Randall say: “You have that bird in the open, now take the shot!”