“Hey. Look over there. That looks like Cybil.” Lulu looked in the direction Reggie was pointing and sure enough a thing that looked a great deal like Cybil appeared to be observing them through a lorgnette. The creature didn't look exactly like Cybil, but the resemblance was striking.
“Hey, Cybil,” Lulu called, running toward the figure. “Come on, Reggie. Cybil will help us.” Reggie followed, lugging the Expedition Kit.
“Cybil. What are you doing here?” Lulu had a moment of doubt as to the identity of the Cybil-shaped thing when it glanced her way and then looked beyond her.
“Don't call me Cybil. When I'm here you have to call me the ‘Wicked Witch of West Texas.’ That's what I go by when in this country.”
“You aren't the Wicked Witch of West Texas. You're being a creep. And you look different, too.”
“I'm on a Goosebury, Lulu.”
“I don't understand.”
“Relatives are a frightful bother, particularly on holidays, unless they're dead. When they're dead they don't really bother me much except for the way their ghosts just keep skulking about in the shadows. So stupid. Anyway, that's why I'm Gooseburying. You can't believe how tiresome it is with you two missing,” Cybil pulled a mock pathos face, “'Oh, the poor things this, and the poor darlings that. What if the witch harms a hair on their dear little heads. Oh, the tragedy.' I had to get out of there before I spewed, so Goosebury has taken a dreadful turn.”
“You still haven't explained Gooseburying.”
“I've come to go see my dear sick friend, Goosebury. And I won’t be back ’til well after they all forget about you two. That could take several weeks, probably 'til after the Halloween feast. Which will be handy because I'll also get to skip that.” Cybil looked very pleased with herself, which confirmed for Lulu her Cybil-ness.
“Well, I would have missed that anyway, but this way it's all combined into one Goosebury.”
“What’s wrong with Goosebury?”
“He hasn’t decided if he’s dead or undead, Lulu. So, whenever your Granny announces a holiday dinner, or some snot-nosed cousins go missing, I go Gooseburying, because he suddenly becomes extremely distressed and needs my assistance.”
“Where is this Goosebury?”
“He lives in West Texas, of course, on a Chupacabra ranch.”
“I want to meet Goosebury.”
“You'll never. He couldn’t survive a day of bratty behavior, especially when undead, which he may be at the moment,” Cybil explained. “And what is that you're wearing, Reggie?”
“It's a Navigational Mustache.”
“Stupid,” Cybil said, with a snort. “You look like an idiot.”
“You're just mean, Cybil. At least you can tell us how to find a Snipe,” Lulu said to her usually-grumpy, but currently-nasty cousin.
“No. I can't.” Cybil scowled into her lorgnette, studying something in the distance. “And call me the Wicked Witch of West Texas. I told you that's my Gooseburying name. Now, you two will see me later, most likely, unless I see you first. I'm off to the Menger Hotel to see Goosebury. Don't tell what's-her-name you saw me here, either.”
“The Wicked Witch of West Texas?” Lulu asked.
“I know I'm here you little dolt.”
“Who are we to not tell, then?”
“My mother.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have no intention of visiting her,” Cybil turned as if to go, but then paused and turned back to them and added: “I don't suppose she warned you that this place is crawling with cobras?”
“Cobras?” Lulu was now even more worried for their safety.
“
Yeah. If you see one, just hope there's a honey badger around somewhere and that it doesn't decide to eat you when it finishes off the cobra. This is a savage place, wholly enchanted. The good news is that once the hullaballoo dies down over you two, I'll likely not have to put up with either of you ever again.”
She raised a wand in front of her and and purple sparks flew from the end. Cybil disappeared. Lulu could hardly believe what she had just seen. Cybil with a wand? In Sugarland? Acting wicked?
“I think we should tell the witch about this,” Lulu said, hoping that turning Cybil in would make the witch more happyish with them. She didn't know how to contact the witch, but she had an idea.
“I don't want to tell her anything,” Reggie objected. Lulu ignored him.
“I don't think the Wicked Witch of West Texas is really wicked.”
Smoke filled the air and sparks flew as, right in front of Lulu, the witch materialized.
“I heard what you said, Lulu. You have some explaining to do, since Wicked has always been my name and I shouldn’t want to have any other.”
Lulu was glad to see the cat tails were still in residence on her head, swishing about wildly.
“I wanted to tell you what Cybil [80] is up to. She says she’s going Gooseburying in Sugarland and I figured out where Goosebury is.”
Lulu told the witch everything Cybil had said.
“The Menger, eh? Very interesting.”
“That's what she said.”
“I think we should meet Goosebury, since Cybil is using him as an excuse to get out of Walla Walla and miss Halloween dinner,” Lulu continued.
“Missing Halloween dinner, eh?” The Wicked Witch of West Texas looked very intrigued. “I say we pay a social call on this Goosebury. Show me your watch.”
Lulu held up her wrist and the witch waved her wand over it.
“There, I've stopped time while we sort this out.”
“Stopping a watch doesn't stop time,” Lulu objected.
“It does when you use magic,” the witch said.
With that the Wicked Witch of West Texas raised her wand and gave a little wave. Everything around them blurred a bit and then clarified again, and when it did, they were in a strange place. It was an entirely transparent, circular room with a metallic ceiling. As Lulu turned around to take in her surroundings she realized that they were still in the same place. The grass beneath the clear floor was still pink and the sky a now-blurred plaid, and they were near a giant witch. She realized that they were inside of a jar.
“What the heck?” Lulu said.
“Yeah, what’s going on?” Reggie put in.
“I’m considering using the two of you as poisoeuvres. You’d look so scrumptious on a plate.” The witch’s voice boomed inside the jar.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I wanted an easy way to transport you, but I now realize that I could make poison pickles of the two of you for use on annoying guests.”
“We can't do your bidding if you make us into poison snacks.”
“True enough. Let's just make sure you're actually doing my bidding, though, shall we?” She flicked her wand and everything blurred. They found themselves standing on a sidewalk in front of a big building, and happily, no longer in the pickle jar. There were huge pickups and SUVs going by honking horns and it was hot. Lulu examined the building.
“The Menger Hotel,” its sign read.
It was white with three stories, a green-railed balcony on the second floor, and green awnings. The witch pushed open the big glass door and walked inside, followed by Lulu and Reggie, who was still carrying the Expedition Kit. Lulu slipped the can of Chupacabra Repellent into her pocket for the time being, since she was pretty sure they wouldn't be allowed in a hotel.
“I’m here to see Goosebury,” the Wicked Witch of West Texas told the desk clerk at the Menger, who bore a strange resemblance to the Marginal Wizard of Calamity Flats. He was skinny with frizzy red hair, but the desk clerk was also cross-eyed.
“Whom should I say is here?”
“The Wicked Witch of West Texas, of course,” she replied.
“The Wicked Witch of West Texas just went up to see him.”
“No, I’m standing right here. Unless you believe I am bi-locating or that this is another doppelganger event, in which case I'd be wearing red,” the wicked witch answered.
“I wouldn’t know. Goosebury is in room 320, at any rate,” the man replied. “Schrodinger’s cat seems to have just gone up too.”
“How curious,” the witch remarked on her way to the elevator.
“You must be Goosebury,” the witch said to the man who opened the door. He wore a pince-nez and had a beard.
“Oh, no, I'm Professor Prattle. Goosebury’s out on a wild goose chase. Who might you be?”
“Dare you ask? I am the Wicked Witch of West Texas,” she replied.
The man looked slightly terrified.
“No, that’s impossible unless you are bi-locating or a doppelganger because the Wicked Witch of West Texas is in the next room and you look nothing like her. “And what are those things on your head?”
“If I were a doppelganger or bi-locating how would I look nothing like myself?” the witch asked, ignoring the question about the cat tails.
“Yeah, how?” Lulu put in. She was liking oneaspect of the kidnapping, which was that nobody seemed to mind her being rude to adults.
Just then Cybil walked into the room.
“Well, Cybil. Fancy meeting you here.” The witch gave her a look laced with ice-9.
“You must be mistaken,” Prattle said. “This is the Wicked Witch of West Texas.”
“Really? ‘Wicked,’ eh? You don’t have your Wickidity Warrant. I dare say you haven’t even passed your Portmanteau Primaries.”
“What’s a Portmanteau Primary?” Lulu asked.
“You throw a bunch of words into a suitcase and by magic make them scramble up and take on new meanings. Confusing meanings, if you’re skilled. Why, some of my Portmanteaus have yet to be deciphered. Do you understand what it means to have that kind of power?”
“Who are you?” Prattle turned to Cybil.
“Well, I’m on a Goosebury, and when I am I like to call myself ‘Wicked.’ That way when news of my deeds reaches Walla Walla, where I’m know to be quite sweet, everyone assumes the bad deeds were done by someone more truly wicked, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” the Wicked Witch answered. “Surprisingly wicked of you, really. And yet I shouldn’t think that you could really call yourself ‘Wicked’. ‘The Very Bad Witch of West Texas,' perhaps. Maybe even the ‘Quite Terrible Witch of West Texas’.”
“My wickidity is much-enhanced by being in Texas. You know, they do have schools here, but luckily education has no effect in Texas. This enhances wickidity to such a degree that when I’m in Texas I’m really quite diabolical, and since this is the alternate reality version, when I get here, I'm even worse.” Cybil explained. “It’s all just semantics, anyway.”
“That’s all well and good, but how do you propose to get around the fact that I’m the Wicked Witch of West Texas,[81]meaning that you can’t be, because aside from bi-location or doppelganger situations, nobody can be in two places at once.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just another type of bi-location,” Cybil argued. “We’re both here right now and no ill has befallen us.”
“Good point. We can probably do it as long as neither of us bi-locates to the same places at the same time because that would accelerate all of the particles in the known universe causing a black hole like that Hadron thing did.”
“True,” Cybil said.
“It’s a terrible bore to have the end of the world twice in one week,” the witch pointed out. “It’s simply not done in better circles.”
“That would be tiresome,” Cybil agreed.
“Why are we here if the world already ended?” Lulu asked.
“Nobody’s noticed it yet,” the witch answered. “And I dare say they shan’t.”
Lulu was confused.
“I think you should simply think of another place to Goosebury,” the witch said, turning to Cybil, “One rather similar in some ways to Texas.”
“Does such a place exist?” Cybil asked, astonished.
“Of course. You’ve heard of Kansas, right?”
“That’s a great idea. The wicked witch of Kansas, or perhaps even the wicked witch of Wichita. There's a well-established wickidity tradition there and the alternate universe that's already in place is has an opening for a wicked witch…”
Cybil commented. As she did, Schrodinger’s cat slinked from the inner room and gave the witch a sly look.
“They may even find themselves changing the spelling of Wichita to reflect it's new status as a place be-witched.”
“But what about Goosebury?” Lulu asked.
“I guess he’ll have to be dead for now. Until he can be undead in Kansas.”
“There will be plenty of wild geese for Goosebury to chase.,” said the witch.
“If only he would try a tame goose chase he might actually have the chance to bury one,” Cybil answered. “Can’t tell him that though. Well, we’ve quite killed Goosebury for now so I may as well relocate.”
“What about the Chupacabra ranch?” Lulu asked.
“I suppose he’ll have to find a new line of work,” Cybil admitted. “Maybe he’ll start a Sasquatch Spa. Bigfoots can always use a good pedicure.”
“I'll just zap you to Wichita so you can begin to get Goosebury established.” The witch raised her wand and, poof, Cybil was gone, as was the cat that had been with her which looked a lot like Schrodinger’s.
“Now, there’s the question of what to do with the two of you.” The witch had looked them up and down.
“Doesn't this prove that we are doing our duty?”
“Well, yes, but seeing you two puts me in mind of interesting experiments I might need subjects for. I guess I really should let you get back to work, though. Maybe next time you come around you could bring a friend or two. If you two actually have any friends.”
“This entire hotel will be underground anytime now,” Professor Prattle remarked, squinting through his pince-nez at his pocket watch. They'd all but forgotten his presence, but that was mainly due to the fact that he was becoming a bit transparent.
“The hotel is sinking, so we'd better go,” said the witch. She waved her wand and Lulu found herself back where she'd been when Cybil had arrived.
[80]Careful citing sagas supplied by Cybil. Some sound sibilant and seductive, but are still subversive.
No comments:
Post a Comment