by Steve Vernon
Chapter Four - Weird, Strange and Scary
I like those old style castle and moat movies.
You know – the kind with knights and swords and battles?
There’s always a point in those movies where a drawbridge crashes down and an entire army of sword, mace and spear-wielding barbarians come charging through the gate and tear the castle into pieces. They’re either good guys or bad guys and it doesn’t really matter to me – but that’s the point in which I jump up and start to cheer.
Only I wasn’t cheering as the first barbarian stepped over the kicked-down classroom door and stomped into our history classroom. This particular barbarian had left his sword, mace and spear hat home in the castle. He was actually wearing combat khaki and was wearing a set of headphones over his ears that looked as if they’d been looted from off of an airfield employee’s head – most likely after it had been completely severed.
I’m trying to tell you that this guy was very stormtrooper-scary.
I bravely tried to duck around the stormtrooper and squeeze out through the doorway and maybe flee madly for my life waving my hands in the air and making little pig-squealing-panic-sounds but he reached one gloved hand out and caught me by the throat and shoved me back inside. I hit the floor like a fumbled pancake, nearly getting stomped on by Burt Hertle – who was still trying to kick old Santa Claus from out of his red-blue-green ringing cell phone.
“What are you laying down there for?” Jemmy asked, reaching one hand down to help me back up to my feet. “Are you tired or something?”
I took Jemmy’s hand and pulled myself up before Burt Hertle improved the aim of his stomping boot. Another dozen stormtrooper-soldiers crammed into the classroom, all wearing full combat gear. All of them were likewise wearing a pair of those oversized headphones. I wondered if maybe there were listening to music or something on them.
And each of those stormtrooper-soldiers kept on smiling the same kind of smile that you might see on a department store mannequin. The smile was pasted on, like they’d been trained to smile that way. It was evil and it was weird and I could imagine them getting up from their barrack cots every morning for push-ups, sit-ups and practice smiling.
“So are we saved or what?” I asked – as the soldiers began moving the desks out of the way and lining us kids up against the wall. “Are these good guys or bad guys?”
It was that hard to tell.
“I don’t know,” Jemmy said. “These guys look more like stormtroopers than any real army soldiers I’ve ever seen.”
“That was my first thought,” I agreed.
The two Black Masked black suits walked in behind the stormtrooper soldiers. The Black Masks looked a little darker and a whole lot scarier than they had looked to me outdoors in broad daylight – and those goofy looking flashing black fish bowl helmets looked pretty scarifying to me too.
Harbor no fear. Harbor no fear.
Only my harbor was over-filling with fear.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jemmy said.
“Me too,” I replied. “What do you think they want here?”
“Maybe they want their cell phones back,” Jemmy said. “Maybe the warrantee has expired?”
Displays of panic are apple-less and a waste of good useable energy.
“Apple-less?” I asked.
“I think they mean fruitless,” Jemmy said. “At least that’s my guess.”
Meanwhile, the headphone-wearing stormtroopers kept lining us up against the wall.
Some of us lined up better than others. Burt Hertle was having a hard time interrupting his phone-stomping fandango but one of the soldiers caught him in mid-stomp, while another bent to pick up and move Burt’s free cell phone closer to the wall – where Burt could continue to happily stomp on it and still manage to keep his place in the line-up.
Cooperation equals safety. Remain vertical in uniformity
“I think that means we’re safe if we just line up and cooperate,” Jemmy said. “At least that’s my best guess.”
“These fish bowl dudes need a set of subtitles on their black masks,” I said.
Which was right about the time that we all decided to call them Black Masks.
“It’s all right,” Jemmy said. “I have a black belt in Babel Fish.”
I blinked twice.
Sometimes Jemmy says things that just plain hurt my head.
“I think you need subtitles too,” I said. “Either subtitles or an interpreter.”
“Maybe you just need better ears.”
We stood up against the wall with the rest of the kids.
“I don’t know about you,” Jemmy said to me out of the side corner of his mouth. “But I feel a whole lot safer already. I fall down and this wall will catch me. I figure right off the bat that’s a guarantee of personal safety - as far as I can tell.”
I tried to count the soldiers that were in the room but every now and then a few more squeezed in so I gave up at twenty-three.
Math was never my strong point.
“I feel a whole lot safer too,” I side-mouthed back. “I get to feeling any safer and I might have to look for a jumbo-sized stick of roll-on deodorant and a fresh set of underwear.”
We were both busy trying to out-joke the other – which is always a sign of being scared and wanting not to show it. So we just kept on making jokes while the soldiers moved us neatly, like one of those push-and-slide puzzle boxes where you push and slide the square tiles inside the tray until all at once a picture of a happy penguin was smiling out at you from inside the tray. I wondered if maybe they had practiced lining up scared junior high school students after they were done with their good morning push-ups, their happy day sit-ups and their close-order drill practice smiling techniques.
Old Man Jenkins was trying out his own very best smile but he was still keeping his backbone glued to that white board. He reminded me of a little kid hiding in the middle of plain sight with his eyes tightly closed thinking that somehow keeping those eyes of his closed was going to keep him invisibly hidden from whatever he was hiding from.
I knew just how he felt.
I wanted to close my eyes too.
The soldiers didn’t try to move Old Man Jenkins. Instead, they just pointed their assault rifles at Principal Feltspur and motioned him over to glue his own backbone directly beside Old Man Jenkins at the classroom white board.
“You stand right there,” one of the soldiers told Principal Feltspur. “We’ll get to you in a moment or two.”
Remain calm. Panic is appleless.
If being ordered around like that was bothering Principal Feltspur he wasn’t letting on. He just adjusted those big framed glasses of his that always made him look a little like a short and stocky Clark Kent – but as far as I could tell Superman was nowhere in sight.
“Do you think that they are going to shoot us?” Jemmy whispered. “I think that they’re going to shoot us.”
I wasn’t sure about anything at all right then but I still figured I’d stick to my whole adding-to-the-panic-wouldn’t-help-things attitude. Some of the other kids had heard that whole “going-to-shoot-us” remark and were beginning to look nervous.
“They’re not here to shoot us,” I said loudly, hoping that those soldiers were listening under their headphones. “They’re soldiers, not armed killers.”
“Just as long as you’re sure,” Jemmy said. “All that I’m seeing is a whole lot of big bullies dressed in camouflage and carrying assault rifles.”
“You forgot the headphones.” I pointed out.
“All right, so I forgot the headphones.” Jemmy agreed.
“Quiet.” Somebody said.
Instantly - the cell phones stopped their ringing.
Just like someone had thrown a kill switch.
The voice that had just said quiet was about as quiet as you could imagine a voice could get without resorting to a mute button and cotton batten. The voice was pitched at something a little
less than a whisper - like the sound of what I imagine a scalpel slicing through an artery would sound like.
It was sharp, precise and it commanded absolute attention.
So, naturally, Jemmy said something.
“Are we supposed to be scared of you and your storm troopers, or what?” his voice breaking softly at the end of it.
The guy who’d said “Quiet.” looked directly at Jemmy, as if he had a set of radar tracking dishes for ears. He was as weird and strange and scary as I’d ever seen outside of a monster movie. In fact, I don’t think there was a monster movie scary enough to out-scare this walking whispering creep-a-zoid.
The man who’d said “quiet” looked as if he’d spent his entire life eating tapioca, white bread, and kindergarten glue washed down with a bottle or two of Javex bleach. His hair was just as white as a brand new sheet of foolscap and it looked as if it had been painted onto his scalp. His eyes were clear and eerily unblinking and as far as I could tell they were absolutely colorless.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.
The Black Masks echoed his sentiment like some kind of weird Greek chorus.
The storm troopers stood a little straighter in their army boots.
I think that this pale guy even scared them.
Meanwhile, the pale man walked slowly towards Jemmy, almost gliding, his feet not making the slightest sound on the tile floor of our classroom. Every kid in the room was staring at Jemmy like he had just announced that he was going to chew and swallow a case of live hand grenades and gasoline and hand out autographs afterwards. Even Old Man Jenkins and Principal Feltspur looked a little amazed at the foolhardy nerve that Jemmy was casually displaying.
Personally, I think Jemmy was scared stiff – but just too stubbornly proud to let anyone know it.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.
The Black Masks kept on flashing their repetitive warning - so of course I had to step up and say something too. There was no way on earth that I was going to let my best buddy face those fish bowl Black Masks and that white-haired freak all on his lonesome.
I guess I was a little stubborn and proud too.
I took a look at the colorless creep, sizing him up and looking for a weak spot. He was dressed in a white suit coat with a pair of neatly pressed white dress pants, a white shirt and a white tie.
White shoes too, polished to a glossy shine.
So for starters, I picked on his wardrobe.
“Did you get dressed in a white-out?”
That got his attention.
“So who are you supposed to be anyway?” I asked. “The Man From Glad or maybe do they call you Colonel Saunders of the Fried Chicken Brigade?”
I figured this dude had to be somebody that the stormtrooper soldiers had to listen to – maybe a captain or a general or something like that – but there was something else going on with his face that was weirding the bright blue bejesus out of my thinking.
“Didn’t anyone tell you that it is rude to stare?” the white-haired dude asked.
Rude. Rude. Rude. the Black Masks added.
The pale man still didn’t raise his voice.
I knew that he was just trying to scare me.
It was working, too.
But I sure wasn’t going to let him know that.
“I know who you are,” I said.
The Pale Man stopped walking towards Jemmy. He turned his head like it was mounted on its very own tank turret and then he looked straight at me.
I might have left something in my Fruit of the Looms undershorts at that particular point in time.
“Do you now?” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure,” I replied. “You’re Captain Albino, aren’t you?”
It was the dumbest name that I could think of. I didn’t particularly have anything against albinos in general – I just didn’t care much for this white-faced dude.
He didn’t much like that at all.
He started to walk towards me, his eyes never leaving mine. I felt a little like a mouse being stared at and stalked on by a human two-legged cobra – with a hungry cat perched on its shoulder – assuming that cobras even have shoulders.
Much less legs.
“Are you supposed to be some kind of a forty star General?” Jemmy asked Captain Albino, trying his own hardest to distract white-face from off of my direction.
“A general nuisance is more like it,” I added. “A general pain in my general freaking butt.”
I was on a roll.
Jemmy was trying his level best to distract that pale freakazoid, just the same way as I was – but I figured that if that Captain Albino was going to come at anybody I was determined to have him come at me. Jemmy was way too little to stand up to this flour-faced monster.
So Jemmy tried another tactic.
“You look like a general, is all,” Jemmy went on, brown-nosing just as hard as he could.”All sternish and full of discipline.”
Captain Albino stopped stepping towards me and he turned to look back at Jemmy.
I wondered how long we could keep this up – Jemmy and me – tennis lobbing this white-haired freakazoid back and forth between our insults.
Not long, I guess.
I heard Captain Albino let a quiet little snigger slip out from between his pasty lips – showing just a molecule of amusement – just the same way that a small boy might let you sneak a quick peek at a butterfly that he had just caught with both his hands – right before crushing it to wet pixie dust.
I don’t believe the man really knew how to smile.
He was just faking it.
“You can call me Mister Millett – and I’m afraid that I’m in a rather higher tax bracket than any general that I have ever met,” Captain Albino admitted. “But I’ll do my best to respond to your comment as a dubiously-phrased and ignorantly-voiced sign of respect.”
Respect Mister Millett. Respect Mister Millet. Respect Mister Millett.
Which was an answer which didn’t go very far towards telling us just exactly who he was supposed to be or what his name actually was – a fact that Captain Albino clearly didn’t think that we were smart enough to notice.
“So are you going to shoot us?” Jemmy asked nervously. “Or are you just going to stand there and white us to death?”
“He is awfully white, isn’t he?” I said. “I wonder if his mother used to bathe him in hydrogen peroxide and white nail polish.”
“You’re assuming he even had a mother,” Jemmy cracked back. “Frankly, I think this asshole hatched.”
That was a big-time burn – but Captain Albino just let out another quick peek at the giggling butterfly.
I don’t think our tag team insults were impressing Captain Albino one little bit.
“Now why on this planet would I ever do something like that?” Captain Albino asked. “Why would I ever want to shoot you two boys?”
Shoot you boys. Shoot you boys.
Why on this planet?
Who says something like that?
“Don’t you have a snappy rebuttal?” he goaded me. “No fresh sarcasm? Did you run out of comedy material?”
I kept looking at the way that Captain Albino’s mouth moved when he spoke.
There was something I didn’t like about that man.
“Rebuttal?” I shot back. “Are you saying that I need a new butt? What are you even looking at my butt for? That’s pretty weird you know – a guy your age looking at some kid’s butt. Unless you’re a butt doctor. Is that what you are? A butt doctor?”
“He means proctologist,” Jemmy explained.
I kept watching Captain Albino’s mouth.
I had an uncle whose name was Harold. He had bought himself a how-to-be-a-ventriloquist instruction manual and a wooden dummy named Floyd that he had ordered from the back of a Popular Mechanics magazine for $37.95 plus shipping and handling. He had it figured that he would make himself a good living as a ventriloquist. Maybe hire himself out to birthday parties
and conventions and such. He even grew himself a big bushy moustache to help hide the fact that his lips were moving like trembling worms every time that he tried to make that dummy talk. The last I heard of Uncle Harold was that he had traded in Floyd for a how-to-be-a-magician instruction guide on E-Bay and he was serving three to five years in a state penitentiary for almost sawing a woman in two.
Watching Captain Albino speak was a little bit like watching old Uncle Harold’s dummy Floyd trying to speak. It looked as if every word that Captain Albino spoke was made out of plastic and artificial food coloring.
I know that doesn’t make much sense.
It was just the way his mouth moved, was all.
Like his lips were moving one way and his words another.
His mouth just moved wrong, was all.
I can’t explain it any better than that.
“Is that so?” Captain Albino asked.
He bent down and he picked up a cell phone from off of the classroom floor.
I don’t really know if it was my phone or not.
They all looked the same to me.
Captain Albino looked at that cell phone, studying it - like he was trying to figure out what it really was.
Then that cell phone started ringing again.
Here Comes Santa Claus.
Only this time the Black Mask’s fish bowl screens were flashing along with the music.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus.
Captain Albino smiled like he had just found a free coupon for all of the tapioca and bleached white bread that he could eat.
Then he looked at me.
“I think this is for you,” he said, holding the cell phone out in my direction.
Answer the phone.
The Black Masks both loomed over me.
The stormtrooper soldiers crowded in a little closer.
I just stood there – frozen stuck with fear.
Here comes Santa Claus.
“Why don’t you answer it?” Captain Albino asked. “It’s ringing.”
Good question.
It is for you.
Too bad I didn’t have an answer worth listening to.
“No sir,” was all I said.
Then he put the cell phone in my hand.
“This is for you.”
It rang again.
And I started to put the cell phone up to my ear.