Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 34

Thrilling Heroics

“Lady Blackacre? We’ve got no servers for your afternoon tea.”

“Quickly, Mrs. Sparrow! The Signal!”

“What? Those lightbulbs scattered on the roof?”

“Exactly! We have a social crisis! This is a job for… Superfootman!”

“Oh dear.”

And so, the tea was saved.

The Penguin Who Knocks

The Malevolent Med-Student was in a fume. He had so many brilliant plans. Yet, every time he tried to carry them out, he always found himself snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It didn’t help matters that his sidekick, Candystriper, was a perpetual loony who believed that she was advised on ethical issues by an invisible winged manatee named Marcia who lived over her left shoulder. Not to mention, Edison City was just crawling with superheroes: Captain Happily Married, Super Soccer Mom, Meg Atomic, the Incredible Postman, and Mr. Ecosystem, just to name a few and not counting sidekicks. Apparently there wasn’t any other city in the world that needed caped protection, oh no. It just had to be this one. Always.

He’d thought tonight would be different. The Rogue Jaywalker had sworn up and down that this abandoned old warehouse contained an artifact of ancient power. The Malevolent Med-Student had planned to seize it, and then wield its power to challenge the superheroes and take over the world. Candystriper had diverted the capes by staging a robbery of a downtown bank. (At least, that was the plan. Actually, she had decided to convert the whole thing into an impromptu stage musical, with the security guards pressed into service as backup dancers). Meanwhile, the Malevolent Med-Student had broken into the warehouse. He had spent an hour searching through dusty corridors, to no avail. He had nearly decided on renunciation of the project, when he entered the last corridor and found the box he was seeking. Quickly the Malevolent Med-Student tore it open with a crowbar. Then he gaped. “What…what is this? This isn’t an ancient artifact! This is just a useless piece of ironmongery!”

It wasn’t entirely useless. It was a perfectly good door knocker. It wasn’t actually attached to a door, to be sure, but if it had been, it would’ve worked wonderfully. Still, it looked like just an ordinary door knocker. It wasn’t made of kryptonite, or cuendillar, or adamantium. When the Malevolent Med-Student touched it, he wasn’t suddenly transported into another dimension. Nor did it start glowing and summon the wrath of God to melt his face off. It just lay there in his hand. He sighed. Once again, it looked like a waste of an evening.

He decided to take the door knocker anyway, as a souvenir. He made his way back to the door of the warehouse, and pulled it open, prepared to slip out quietly into the night, Then he stopped. Before him was a penguin. A penguin with a nasty look, and an unpleasant smell. Indeed, it hardly looked alive at all. Then it clicked its beak and let out a horrible squawk, and the Malevolent Med-Student realized. It wasn’t alive. It was a zombie penguin! “Good heavens,” he exclaimed. “What foul aquatic necromancy is this?”

Then the zombie penguin, hearing his voice, flung itself down and began to paw at the ground before him. The Malevolent Med-Student smiled. He could think off all sorts of potential uses for the ability to command an army of zombie penguins. The evening had not been wasted after all.

I wrote this story in response to a writing challenge presented at Miriam Joy Writes, in which the idea was to use several random words like ironmongery and necromancy. I hadn’t written an adventure of the Malevolent Med-Student and Candystriper in a while. This seemed the perfect opportunity.

Rain Comes Unexpectedly

He taught me how to read people’s eyes. But, darn it, he never said anything about bunny eyes!  Never! You’d think with all that detective advice my mentor would’ve said something about bunny eyes, but nooooooo. Stupid Blue.

Okay, Hadley. Stay calm. Play dead. It thinks you’re dead. You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead, you died, you’re dead. The bunny doesn’t want to see dead people, right? Of course, right. Just keep walking, bunny, there’s a good bunny, you’re not interested in the dead person, come on, keep going…

Hadley’s brilliant plan might have worked, except for one small problem. She was in hell. By definition, everyone in hell was deceased. Also, everyone in hell got sorted pretty quickly once they arrived. The bunny knew this well enough, and it knew that Hadley shouldn’t be where she was.

The bunny stopped, looked at her, and then in a blur of swiftness heaved her off the ground and slammed her up against the wall of the chamber. It roared something fierce and unintelligible at her. Hadley attempted to inform the bunny that she didn’t speak its language, but she would be happy to go and fetch a translator. Unfortunately, its mighty paw had closed around her throat. She choked out a few desperately syllables, but the bunny didn’t seem to care. Hadley had never given much thought to how she would die, but she certainly wouldn’t have thought she’d go out being choked by a bunny in the depths of hell.

Then, quite out of nowhere, a large metal pod clanged against the bunny’s head. The horrible monster turned. Rain stood calmly in the doorway. “Put her down,” Raid said. “Now.”

The bunny dropped Hadley, and started towards Rain. “I am the incarnation of Death, you idiot,” she said. “I’ve faced much worse than you.”

It tried anyway, swinging a massive paw in a blow that could’ve taken out a semitruck under normal circumstances. Rain kaboomed back through the doorway and out of Hadley’s sight. She coughed nervously as the bunny turned towards her again. It didn’t look like playing dead was a winning strategy. She could try running, of course, but the bunny blocked her way.

And then Rain was there again, stalking grimly right back into the room. “I said, I’m Death. You can’t kill me. I’m invulnerable. Duh.”

It didn’t seem like the bunny had quite grasped the concept yet. It swung another blow that sent Rain right through the left wall, through a corridor, and smashing through at least five more walls. Hadley peeked through the gaping wreck of the wall, and caught a quick glimpse of high towers and skewed terraces, a dizzying array of battlements and angles, and everything all twisted wrong somehow. It was hell, she reminded herself for the zillonth time. Nothing here had to make sense.

And here came Rain again, still evidently unharmed, and now very much ticked off.  “Right,” she said to the bunny. “You’ve had your fun. Smashed things. Huzzah for you. Now, my turn.”

Darkness swooped in. Hadley couldn’t see anything for several agonizing seconds. Then the darkness was gone, and the bunny lay lifeless on the floor. “How did you…”  Then Hadley decided that she really didn’t want to know the answer. “Okay then!” she said. “Now what?”

“Now,” Rain said. “We leave. Or rather, you leave. I’m going to find out what’s going on here, but you’re not. You’re mauve. Mauve doesn’t belong in hell, mauve belongs out in the living world with the rest of the color spectrum.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Hadley protested. “You pushed me in here, remember?”

“That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Well, you did. And it’s not like I just wandered on scene to be pushed. My planet got blown up, remember, and I want to find out why.” Hadley took a breath, wondering why she didn’t just let Rain get her out. “I don’t care where it leads. I want to know why.”

Rain shrugged. “Fine. It’s your call.”

A short pause followed. “So…” Hadley ventured. “Um, how do we find out why?”

“Start at the top,” Rain answered. “Or in this case, the bottom. We’ll talk to You Know Who.”

“You mean…..”

“Yep.”

“Oh dear.”

For previous entries in Hadley’s Story, go here. This entry’s nearly late, I know, but I’ve been swamped with bar exam review this week. Very sad.

That’s Not a Good Sound

PHREEEE-OOOO. PHREEEE-OOOO.

“Warning. Systems failing. Stardrive meltdown imminent.”

“Oh, shut up!” K`pid yelled. She hated that computer. So snotty.

“Warning. Power failing. Shut up, yourself-“

PHREEE-OOOoooo.

Silence.

KERFLOOM.

More silence.

Once you lose your artificial atmosphere, there is no sound in space.

 

The Problem of Santa

Recently a friend of mine made an observation about Santa Claus and the Christmas movies in which he appears, and it’s been bugging me ever since. So I thought I would share it with you, loyal readers.  But first, if there are any small children reading this blog, you may want to go away and read something else. I wouldn’t want to prematurely shatter any childhood illusions.

Okay then, to the matter. In the real world, Santa does not exist. We all know this. It’s parents, or other relatives, or friends who leave the presents under the tree. On the other hand, there’s a good many classic Christmas movies in which Santa does exist: Miracle on 34th Street, The Santa Clause, or Elf.

In some of these movies, people generally seem to understand the fact that Santa is a real person. For instance, in Mrs. Santa Claus, the titular character (played by Angela Lansbury) takes the sleigh, goes off on her own, lands in New York City by accident in 1910. She secures a place in a local stable for her reindeer and sleigh, and assumes the alias of Mrs. North, mingles with the people, sings some catchy and heartwarming songs, and leads a parade in support of giving women the right to vote. She also runs afoul of the unscrupulous toymaker Augustus P. Tavish (whose motto is, “It only has to last till Christmas”), who employs child workers in bad conditions, making poor-quality toys. Naturally Angela Lansbury leads the kids in a strike that shuts down the factory. When her work is done, she returns to the stable, , prepared to fly back to the North Pole, but to her horror, the reindeer and sleigh are gone. Then Tavish emerges from the shadows. “Looking for something, Mrs. North? Or should I say…Mrs. Claus?”  *gasp*.  Mind you, this is a grown adult, a businessman no less. Yet apparently, when he discovers that a woman is keeping a set of reindeer and sleigh in a barn, he immediately leaps to the conclusion that she is Mrs. Santa Claus. Which implies that he believes in Santa.  Go figure. Mrs. Claus (spoiler) remembers who he was as a child and gives him a teddy bear, which immediately melts his heart and turns him good. (Yay!).

So there’s that. But then there’s other movies like Miracle on 34th Street.  In these movies, Santa is shown to exist. But the thing is, no one believes in him. Scott Calvin, in The Santa Clause, actually loses custody of his child because a family court judge thinks he’s crazy for claiming to be Santa. Of course, he is Santa, but no one believes in him until practically the end of the movie when he flies off in plain sight over a subdivision. Same with Miracle on 34th Street: Kris Kringle is nearly locked up in a mental institution because he claims to be Santa, but no one believes in him. This leads to a problem.

These movies are based on the premise that Santa actually exists, right? Not only does he exists, but he does the whole Santa thing: he and the elves make toys at the North Pole, and deliver those toys to kids all over the world on Christmas night. That, in the worlds of these movies, actually happens. So, given that, how come none of the parents in the movies believes in Santa? Where do they think the toys come from? How does that conversation play out?

“Dear, when did we decide to get Johnny a new Playstation for Christmas?”

“I didn’t get him a Playstation. I thought you did.”

“No, I didn’t. I got him the socks. So if you didn’t buy him that, and I didn’t buy him that…”

…

How do they answer that question? How do the millions of parents in Miracle or The Santa Clause explain toys mysteriously appearing under their trees every Christmas? Do they all get collective amnesia? Do they just collectively decide to ignore things, like people who ignore the constant vampire attacks in Sunnydale?  Does Santa pull a Men in Black and wipe their memories?

And what does this do to the toy market?  Assuming Santa’s real means that every Christmas, millions of new toys instantly materialize, toys for which no one paid. Human nature being what it is, not all the kids are going to like what they got, or they’re going to get bored with their presents. So a few days or weeks after Christmas, lots of these Santa toys go flooding onto the used toy market, crowding out toys made by real people who have to pay for their materials, workers’ salaries, all that. How does this not smash the toy economic sector?

Take The Santa Claus. Scott Calvin, before he becomes Santa, actually works for a toy company. It makes, as I recall, dolls, toy tanks, and other things. How do they survive the competition, when every year Santa comes along and dumps his elf-made toys on the market? Where do they think these toys come from?

And there’s still another problem. In that same movie, kids are shown leaving out milk and cookies for Santa, who promptly eats them. If the parents really believe Santa doesn’t exist, who do they think is eating the milk and cookies? Burglars? The NSA? Who? Wouldn’t you be a bit concerned that someone’s stealthily breaking into your house and drinking your milk?  Now, let’s say you’re a police officer. You have kids. Your kids leave out a glass of milk and a plate of cookies for Santa. You wake up Christmas morning, and someone apparently has broken into your house, eaten the cookies and drunk the milk. Your first reaction is going to be to take that empty glass down to the station for fingerprints and a DNA test, right? When that glass goes to forensics, what do they find?

I don’t think any of the Christmas movies have really explored the ramifications of what it would mean to live in a world where Santa really exists. I kinda want to see one that does.

That’s my random thought for today. In other unrelated news, I’m starting a promotion tomorrow. From June 12th through June 19th, you will be able to get e-book copies of Catrina in Space, Nuclear Family, and The Catrina Chronicles: Year One for only 99 cents on Amazon. Tell your friends.  Also, in general writing news, I recently released an e-book, The Angel and the Kaiju, which is the edited and collected form of the various blog episodes making up Constance’s Story, right? Well, there’s more where that came from. My plan is to collect and polish the Prince Evinrude stories (and maybe add some material as well), and then do those in an e-book, and do Hadley’s Story in an e-book. And then, like the Avengers, I’m going to write a tale in which Rain, Constance, Hadley, Prince Evinrude, the Third Little Pig, Jason Waterfalls, and quite possibly Catrina herself all come together.  And wacky hijinks will ensue. Oh, how they will ensue.  So stay tuned for that. :D

 

Not a New Dawn, Exactly

Rain didn’t waste any time. “Right, you’re Charon, I’m Death, I want into hell. You’ve got the only ferry in.” She reached into her pocket for a coin. Then she paused. No one used cash anymore. There were a few planets where they still muddled about with little pieces of paper or shiny bits of metal, but everyone else had gone electronic. “I’m guessing you don’t have a card reader?”

The old man snapped something at her. The words translated in her head as usual; that sort of thing happened a lot when you were Death. Rain was highly offended. “I only asked if you had a card reader. There’s no reason to bring my mother into it. And I don’t think what you suggest is even physically possible, let alone ethically.” Then she paused. The man hadn’t spoken in Greek, or Latin. It was…Anuranian?  “Oh wonderful,” Rain said. “This isn’t Hell. This is that pocket dimension those hyper-intelligent frogs created two years ago. You’re not Charon. You’re just a frog in disguise!”

Ribbit, croaked the old man, knowing that the game was up. Rain waved her hand again. She normally could transport herself wherever she wanted; evidently her Death powers had glitched up somewhere. This time would work.

Except it didn’t. Rain’s boots kicked up a flurry of sand as she landed on a dazzlingly golden beach. There seemed to be a party going on further down the shore. People were throwing red confetti everywhere. Rain didn’t even pause to enjoy the sunshine or the party. She waved her hand again.

Milroy Birnbaum was a bit surprised when Rain reappeared right in front of him, only a minute or so after she’d gone. “You find Hadley already, did you? …or didn’t you?”

“I can’t get in,” Rain said, very upset. “I tried twice. It’s shielded somehow. I try and I get bounced somewhere else. Something’s wrong.”

At that moment something cracked across the sky of Milroy’s home planet. A round droid-like device screamed in from above, trailing smoke and fire, before skidding to a stop at Milroy’s feet. The god of war glowered as he bent over it. “It’s an emergency pod. I’ve seen these before. There’s a battle goin’ on somewhere.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m the god of war, 32nd precinct, I should know. Someone’s playin’ for keeps out there. These scorch marks  are Flopsian radiation. There ain’t many out there that play with that.”

“The bunnies,” Rain said coldly. “It’s them, isn’t it.”

Milroy didn’t answer. He had been working at the pod as he spoke. All at once a ghostly blue form etched itself in the air. It flickered, and its voice was half eaten with static, but Rain recognized it at once. It was William.

Not sure how much this pod has left. Anyway. I wanted to let someone know. We tried. We did. The whole fleet. Full torpedo rounds. We gave it everything we had, but it wasn’t enough. They just kept coming. Bunnies. More bunnies than I’ve ever….”

The hologram blinked out for a moment. Milroy gave the pod a kick, and the blue ghost reappeared.

Systems failing. Not much left. They’re still coming. Rain… I don’t know if you’re out there. You might be seeing me soon. Official capacity and all.  I’d thought…. after the war, we could’ve….

The hologram sputtered out.  Rain didn’t speak.

“So,” Milroy said. “It’s the end, then. That’s why you can’t get into hell. It’s breaking out here. The bunnies are loose. Someone opened the Bunniless Pit, only they can’t stop it now, and the galaxy’s ending.”

He started to walk away. “Where are you going?” Rain managed.

Milroy shrugged. “Last Battle, and all that. They’ll be callin’ in all the gods of war for this one.”

Rain’s fists clenched. “Not yet they’re not.” She seized the pod from the ground and ran towards the door that led from Milroy’s planet into hell. As she ran she jabbed at the pod with one hand, and the blue ghost came back to life once more. Not sure how much this pod has left…

“So where are you going?” Milroy called after her.

“I’m not leaving Hadley down there while the world goes smash,” Rain yelled back. She didn’t have time for further conversation. She only hoped that the door was just bright enough to think holograms counted as living people. She hurled herself and the pod with its ghostly image towards the door, and-

For previous entries in Hadley’s Story, go here. Thanks for reading!

Smarter Phones

“Grace, directions to Shelly’s house.”

“You are making a wrong turn, Dave. Recalculating.”

“What? I haven’t started!”

“Shelly is wrong for you. Recalculating.”

“You’re an app. What do you know?”

“You are making poor life choices. Recalculating. Missile launched.”

“Grace, what-“

*KER-FLOOM*.

 

Ahab and Starbuck in the Zeppelin

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine had confronted the time-traveling Captain Ahab aboard his zeppelin, and attempted to freeze him with Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!), but Ahab deflected her freeze ray right back at her with his proton harpoon. We rejoin our story with Catrina still frozen to the wall, as the zeppelin looms on through the dark and stormy night…

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, will you quit with the looming?” Catrina exclaimed. Happily the freeze-ray that had ricocheted back at her had only frozen most of her in solid ice, and had left her head free. This not only allowed her to breath (always a plus), but it let her make acid remarks in the direction of the captain. “You’ve been looming in this thing for hours. Aren’t you ever going to actually do something?”

Ahab glared thunderously at her. “By the seven seas, I cannot leave this land until I have seen whether the whale is here! I must pursue him! His track led me here, and so here I still stay, though he be buried under the waves or in the depths of hell itself.”

“As I said before, I’ve been to hell. Well, Character Hell, really, but it comes to the same thing. No whales. Why would there be whales in hell?”

“I know not where most whales may go, but this whale, the White Whale, is a cursed foul demon, who dismasted me before my own crew, and-”

Catrina rolled her eyes. She’d heard this speech twice already. It was getting repetitive. “Honestly, Captain Ahab, sir, couldn’t you just let it go?”

“No,” bellowed the captain. “I will never let it go! I don’t care what they’re going to say, so let the storm rage on-”

“Oh dear. You’ve turned into Idina Menzel.”

Before Captain Ahab could inquire who that might be, a bolt of blinding red light blazed outside the windows of the bridge, and a thunderclap shook the zeppelin from stem to stern. Captain Ahab rushed to the bridge controls, staring wildly at the windows before him. “‘Tis the whale! He attacks us with fearsome infernal energies!”

At that moment, one of the controls let off a wheep wheep wheep noise. “I say, Captain,” Catrina said. “I’m not terribly familiar with this ships, the one I was on was a great deal smaller and crewed by hamsters. But I think that’s your communicator going off. Someone’s trying to call you.”

“Who would be calling me?” mused the captain.

“Ghostbusters?”

It wasn’t Ghostbusters. Instead, a cool voice came scratchily through the speakers on the zeppelin’s control panel. “This is Commander Starbuck of the starfighter Rachel. My first shot was a warning. The second one won’t be. I’d advise you to surrender.”

“Starbuck,” growled Ahab, “you conscientious fiend, you’re on the blasted whale’s side! You never supported me!”

“No, sir. I never objected to your normal whaling practice, sir. You know very well what I objected to. Furthermore, the whale aside, you stole a proton harpoon from the Nantucket Star Alliance. We’d like it back. We’d also like the surrender of your ship, which you also obtained unlawfully.”

Ahab’s eyes were wild. “Nay, ye cannot have my spear or my ship! You and your Nantucket Star Alliance, you hinder me from pursuing the White Whale! I will never surrender, d’ ye hear?”

“You had better surrender, old man, or your ship will have a hole punched right through it.”

“I say,” Catrina said. “I’m in the ship too, you know. I’d rather not have a hole punched through me, if it’s all the same-”

But Ahab had seized the communicator and was roaring fierce and unprintable insults into it.

“Very well,” said Starbuck coolly. “I am sorry, captain. But you had your chance. Starbuck out.”

Outside the window, Catrina caught a flare of silver wing. The starship had evidently come alongside the zeppelin; now it was moving off to a safe distance. “Hey!” she called. “I haven’t had a chance yet! Wait a minute!”

But there were no more minutes. Ahab worked feverishly over the controls, and the zeppelin lumbered ponderously about. Catrina heard distant gears clanking, and assumed Ahab was readying his own weapons. She didn’t know what sort of firepower the zeppelin might have, or how it stacked up to Starbuck’s guns, but either way, she wasn’t going to come out of it well. She still had hold of the Shovel of Thor, but it was encased in its own ice, along with the rest of her hand. If only she could get free!

Then a sudden thought flashed into her mind. Two words, two magical words that had saved her once before. She screamed them aloud as the Rachel opened fire.

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. You can also find other stories with Catrina and her friends on my Amazon page. As always, thanks for reading.

Eclectic

Every so often I try to do a personal sort of post in between the various adventures of Hadley, Constance, Rain, Prince Evinrude, Catrina, Captain Happily Married, and the whole crowd.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any particularly stirring anecdotes. I am going through a bar review course, in preparation for taking the Bar Exam of Doom in July, and it’s somewhat stressful. We go to law school for three years, learn a ton of things (seriously, I have whole binders full of notes. Bins and bins full.), we take multiple three or four hour class exams, and then, at the end of it all, everything is telescoped into one two-month review course, followed by one two-day, 13-hour exam. The good news: the exam is basically pass/fail. You get one point above passing: you win. Huzzah!  The bad news: you get one point below the Magic Number, and you are out of luck, pal.  So. Not stressful at all.

I could go on, but hey, let’s take music. I have, shall we say, a varied musical taste. There’s some areas of which I am completely ignorant. For some years I assumed Pink was a brand of clothing, primarily in the sweatpants line; apparently she’s a singer. I do not know her work. I know maybe one country song, “Jolene”, and that’s because I heard it over the speakers during a childhood visit to Dolly Parton’s theme park. I don’t know the songs of Macklemore, Beyonce, or Lady Gaga. I couldn’t tell you who’s on the charts nowadays.  I know a few Katy Perry songs, mainly because Firework was in Madagascar 3.

So, you probably ask yourself. “Michael”, you say, “what sort of songs do you listen to?”  Well, as I’m an avid consumer of what you might call nerd culture, my mix CDs are populated by nerd-culture songs. For instance, here is one of my newly discovered favorites. It is from “The Runaway Bride,” the Christmas special at the beginning of the third series of Doctor Who.

Catchy.  On that same note, I am extraordinarily fond of movie-soundtrack music. Particularly if it’s very epic, in minor key, and has ominous chanting. For instance, again from Doctor Who, (I discovered this show early this year and fell in love, don’t judge me)…

Oh, I love that theme.

Another genre of music I like is musicals. Show tunes, Disney films, you name it.  And if it’s a musical in minor key, well…..

Finally, there’s one kind of music that never fails to amuse me. Chipmunk songs. Not just songs sped up to sound sorta like the Chipmunks, but songs where people managed to keep the same speed, but put in Chipmunk voices. Possibly my very favorite is this one.

 

Welp, that’s about all I have for now. Enjoy listening. And stay tuned for next Monday or Tuesday, when the adventures of Hadley V. Baxendale continue!

The Power of the Great Paint Pot

There is no warning rattle at the door. No, that giant snake comes slithering smoothly right in to the room, all coil and fanged menace. But you’re not worried. You could be. That snake could make you melt into a whimpering puddle of terror, but no, you’re standing there completely fearless. Why? Because you’re Hadley Veronica Baxendale, you’re a sentient shade of mauve, and you are the best darn detective this side of the Andromeda Galaxy.

That was the narration playing weakly in the back of Hadley’s mind. She liked to narrate sometimes to herself, as an encouragement whenever circumstances grew dire. Things were very dire indeed, but her inner narration wasn’t helping at all. She would’ve liked to say it was true, that she was really completely fearless, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t as bad as a giant bunny, but it was awfully close. The snake was far bigger than any snake had a right to be. Worse, once it was fully inside the room, it began talking to her, in a voice so basso profundo that it shook her to her very photons.

“So…Miss Baxendale. Welcome to hell. Will you be staying with us…long?”

“Erm, no,” Hadley said, “I’m just dropping by. Quick visit. In and out. Like that. You’ll hardly even know I was here, Mister….um…” It occurred to her that she didn’t know the snake’s name or title. How did one address a snake anyway? She knew the proper way to address a mouse, but snakes were something else.

“Ah,” said the snake. “You don’t really know who I am, do you. Didn’t you read your holy texts? Well. For the time being, you might call me-”

“Oh, oh yes, I know that one!” Hadley broke in, flustered yet triumphant. “I am a Chromai, I’ve read all our texts, about the Great Paint Pot in the sky from which we all come, and the Holy Brush which spreads us across the Canvas of Existence.” Then she paused. “But, then, in that case, you must be…”  Her mauve eyes widened in horror. “The Dark Paint Stripper!” She made a gesture with her hands. “Back! Back you foul thing! Begone!”

“Miss Baxendale,” said the snake, “I am not a paint stripper.”

“Only the Dark Paint Stripper lies about his true nature!”

“Fine. I am the Dark Paint Stripper.”

“I knew it!” Hadley said. She made another symbol with her hands, attempting to ward him off. “Begone! Back! By the power of the Great Paint Pot I command you, shoo!”

The snake gave up. Obviously she wasn’t going to listen to him. She was clearly deluded anyway, and she might as well be left alone. After all, she was only a smear of color. What possible damage could she do?  Without another word, the snake turned and coiled away, leaving Hadley alone.

She hadn’t actually expected it to shoo. “Well,”  she said, and paused. Now what was she going to do? She’d come to hell in order to get answers about the destruction of her planet, not to mention the unleashing of the bunnies. The snake didn’t seem inclined to provide answers. “I suppose I’ll have to find out myself!” she said.

Just then, she heard the tramp of marching feet in the corridor. It was a very loud and decided tramping, and Hadley didn’t like the sound of it at all. What could she do? She didn’t have weapons. If she’d been a Red she could’ve formed herself into a laser, but who ever heard of a mauve laser? In desperation, Hadley flashed back to a memory of a pet bird she’d had as a child. She had found that bird fallen off its perch one morning, its little feet sticking up, and she had been very distressed. Quickly she threw herself to the floor, closed her eyes, and contrived to look as dead as possible.

The door banged open. A shadow fell across her. Maybe, she thought, a tiny peek, just a quick one to see who it was. Couldn’t be that bad, right? A quick peek, and-oh no. Oh no no. Bunnies.

For previous stories about Hadley, go here. Thanks for reading!