Bored of the Rings

by The Harvard Lampoon

“We are stealthy Green Toupées

  Skulking nights and snoozing days,

  A team of silent, nasty men,

  Who all think Sorhed’s numbah ten.

  Draw their fire

  Flank on right

  Narcs retire

  Fight-team-fight!

  Using every grungy trick

  From booby trap to pungee stick

  We hardly need the strength of thirty

  When we can win by playing dirty.

  Two-four-six-eight

  Tiptoe, sneak,

  And infiltrate

  Cha-cha-cha.”

  It was not many hours before night when the green men left, and after a leisurely meal of apple cheeks and cauliflower ears, Frito, Spam, and Goddam returned to the high road and passed quickly out of the forest and into the wide asphalt waste that lay beneath the eastern slope of Fordor. By nightfall they had come under the shadow of the black chimneys of Chikken Noodul, the dread company town that stood across from Minas Troney. From deep within the earth came the heavy whomp-whomp of fell engines producing overshoes and mess kits for Sorhed’s war machine.

  Goddam led Frito and Spam through the brown gloom to a fin-worn salmon ladder that led sharply up into the heavy mass of the Sol Hurok,2 the great cliffs of Fordor. They climbed for what seemed like an hour. An hour later they reached the top, exhausted and gagging on the heavy air, and flung themselves down on a narrow ledge at the mouth of a great cavern overlooking the black vale.

  Above them wheeled huge flocks of black pelicans, and all around them lightning flashed and graves yawned and fell asleep.

  “Things look black, and no mistake,” said Spam.

  A pungent smell of old pastrami and rancid gherkins floated out of the cave, and from deep within some hidden chamber came the sinister click of knitting needles.

  Frito and Spam walked warily into the tunnel, and Goddam shuffled after them, a rare smile playing across his face.

  • • •

  Ages ago when the world was young and Sorhed’s heart had not yet hardened like stale cheesecake, he had taken a young troll-maiden as his wife. Her name was Mazola, called by the elves Blanche, and she married the handsome young witch-king over the objections of her parents, who pointed out that Sorhed “simply wasn’t trollish” and could never provide for her special needs. But the two were young and starry-eyed. The first hundred thousand years found the newlyweds still quite happy; they then lived in a converted three-room dungeon with a view, and while the ambitious hubby studied demonology and business administration at night school, Mazola bore him nine strapping wraiths.

  Then came the day when Sorhed learned of the Great Ring and the many powers it would bring him in his climb to the top. Forgetting all else, he yanked his sons from medical school over his wife’s strident objections and dubbed them Nozdruls. But the First Ring War went badly. Sorhed and his Ringers barely escaped with their lives. From then on their marital relations went from bad to worse. Sorhed spent all his time at the witch-works and Mazola sat home casting evil spells and watching the daytime mallomar serials. She began to put on weight. Then, one day, Sorhed found Mazola and a mallomar repairman in a compromising position and immediately filed divorce proceedings, eventually winning custody of the Nine Nozdrul.

  Mazola, now banished to her drab surroundings in the bowels of Sol Hurok, let her hatred grow and fester. Schlob, was she now called. For eons she nurtured her pique, obsessively stuffing herself with bonbons, movie magazines, and an occasional spelunker. At first, Sorhed dutifully sent her monthly alimony payments of a dozen or so narc volunteers, but these gifts soon stopped when word got around what a dinner invitation with Sorhed’s ex actually entailed. Her gnawing fury knew no bounds. She prowled her lair with murderous intent, eternally cursing the memories of her husband and his derisive trolack jokes. For ages her only interest had been revenge as she brooded in her dark, dark lair. Cutting off her lights had been the last straw.

  • • •

  Frito and Spam now descended into the bowels of Sol Hurok with Goddam right behind them. Or so they assumed. Deeper and deeper they plunged into the dark heavy vapors of the cavernous passageways, tripping continually on piles of skulls and rotting treasure chests. With unseeing eyes they searched through the blackness.

  “Sure is dark, I’m a-thinkin’,” whispered Spam.

  “Brilliant observation,” shushed Frito. “Are you sure this is the right way, Goddam?”

  There was no answer.

  “Must have gone on ahead,” Frito said hopefully.

  A long time they inched their way forward through the murky tunnels. Frito clutched the ring tightly. He heard a faint squishing noise ahead in the tunnel. Frito stopped in his tracks, and since Spam had hold of his tail, they fell with a clatter that echoed and re-echoed loudly through the black spaces. The squishing subsided, then grew louder. And closer.

  “Back the other way,” rasped Frito, “and quickly!”

  The boggies fled the ominous squishing down many twists and turns, but it was still gaining on them, and the sickening odor of stale bonbons filled the air. They ran blindly on until a great commotion before them blocked further escape.

  “Look out,” whispered Frito, “it’s a patrol of narcs.”

  Spam soon knew that this was so, for their foul tongues and clanking armor were unmistakable. They were, as usual, disputing and cracking filthy jokes as they approached. Frito and Spam flattened themselves against the wall, hoping to escape unseen.

  “Cripes,” hissed a voice in the dark, “this place always gives me the creeps!”

  “Nuts to you,” lashed back another, “the lookout says that boggie with the Ring is in here.”

  “Yeah,” opined a third, “and if we don’t get it Sorhed’ll break us back down to nightmares.”

  “Third class,” agreed a fourth.

  The narcs grew closer and the boggies held their breath as they passed. Just as Frito thought they had passed, a cold, slimy hand clutched his chest.

  “Hoo boy!” exulted the narc. “I got ’em, I got ’em!”

  In a trice the narcs were upon them with billy clubs and handcuffs.

  “Sorhed will be pleased to see you two!” cackled a narc, pressing his face (and breath) close to Frito’s.

  All at once a great, guttural moan shivered the dark tunnel and the narcs fell back in terror.

  “Crud!” a narc screamed. “It’s her nibs!”

  “Schlob! Schlob!” wailed another, lost in the darkness.

  Frito drew Tweezer from its scabbard, but could see nothing to strike. Thinking quickly, he remembered the magic snow globe given him by Lavalier. Holding the glass at arm’s length, he hopefully pressed the little button on the bottom. Immediately a blinding carbon arc light flooded the dank surroundings, revealing a vast chamber of Formica paneling and cheap chintz.

  And there, before them, was the terrible bulk of Schlob.

  Spam cried out at the sight most horrible to behold. She was a huge, shapeless mass of quivering flesh. Her flame-red eyes glowered as she slogged forward to the narcs, her tatty print shift dragged on the stone floor. Falling upon her fear-frozen victims with her fat body, she ripped them apart with taloned house slippers and sharp fangs dripping great yellow droplets of chicken soup.

  “Wash behind your ears!” Schlob shrieked as she tore a narc limb from limb and discarded his armor like a candy wrapper.

  “You never take me anywhere!” she foamed, popping the wriggling torso into her maw. “The best years of my life I gave you!” she raged, her sharp red fingernails reaching out for the boggies.

  Frito stepped back against the wall and slashed at the greedy nails with Tweezer, only managing to chip the enamel. Schlob squealed, further enraged. As the ravenous creature closed in, Frito’s last memory was of Spam frantically schpritzing insect repellent into Schlob’s bottomless gullet.

  * * *

  1 Magnavox, an electronics company, made televisions, record player
s, and the first-ever video game console. Scientists speculate that before Magnavox, children may have spent their afternoons outside, though this seems unlikely.

  2 Sol Hurok was a well-known impresario who managed many popular performers and organized countless concerts, all because he was too cheap to just buy a record player.

  IX

  Minas Troney in the Soup

  The evening sun was setting, as is its wont, in the west as Goodgulf, Moxie, and Pepsi reined in their exhausted merinos at the gates of Minas Troney. The boggies were dazzled by the fabled capital of all Twodor, Stronghold of the West and Lower Middle Earth’s largest producer of crude oil, yo-yos, and emery wheels. Surrounding the townlands were the Plains of Pellegranor, whose earth was rich with many an oast and garner, not to mention wide tilths, folds, byres, rippling rilns, and rolling ferndocks. The desultory Effluvium washed these green lands and year after year provided the ingrate residents with bumper crops of salamanders and anopheles mosquitoes. It was little wonder that the city drew multitudes of pointed-headed Southrons, thick-lipped Northrons, and inverted Ailerons. It was the only place where they could get a passport out of Twodor.

  The city itself dated back to the Olden Days when Beltelephon the Senile decreed rather inexplicably that there be built in this flat land a royal ski lodge of wondrous beauty. Unfortunately the old King cashed in before he saw ground broken and his hydrocephalic son, Nabisco the Incompetent, typically misread the late codger’s vague blueprints and ordered somewhat more prestressed concrete than necessary for the original design. The result was Minas Troney or “Nabisco’s Folly.”

  For no good reason, the city was made in seven concentric circles topped with a commemorative double statue of Beltelephon and his favorite concubine, whose name was either Nephritis the Obese or Phyllis. In any case the final architectural effect was that of an Italian wedding cake.1 Each ring was higher than the next, as were the rents. In the lowest, seventh ring dwelt the city’s sturdy yeomen. Oft they could be seen dutifully polishing their brightly colored yeos for some idiotic festival or other. In the sixth ring dwelt tradesmen, warriors in the fifth, and so on to the first and highest level, wherein dwelt the Great Stewards and dentists. Each level was reached by means of wind-powered escalators in constant need of repair so that the social climber of these ancient times was just that. Each ring was proud of its own history and showed its scorn of that beneath it by daily bombardments of refuse, and expressions such as “Let’s go seventhing” and “Dahling, don’t be so third-level” were common.2 Each level was obliquely protected by out-thrusting battlements corniced and groined at the odd enjambments. Each odd enjambment was set perpendicular to every even adjacent one-way thoroughfare. Needless to say, the inhabitants were always late for their appointments, if not totally lost.

  As the three slowly wound their way toward the Palace of Benelux the Steward, the citizens of Twodor gaped at them briefly and walked immediately to their nearest optometrist. Curiously the boggies stared back at the dwellers: men, elves, dwarves, banshees, and not a few Republicans were among them.

  “Any convention burg gets a pretty mixed bag,” Goodgulf explained.

  Slowly they ascended the last, creaking set of moving steps and alighted at the first level. Pepsi rubbed his eyes at the edifice before him. It was of lavish design with broad lawns and sumptuous gardens. Rich marble paved the path beneath their feet, and the tinkling of many fountains sang like silver coins. At the door they were rather rudely informed that the dentist was not at home and they-must-be-looking-for-the-old coot-round-back.

  There they found a run-down palace wrought of stoutest Masonite, its walls aglow with fiery inlays of rock candy and old bicycle reflectors. Over the reinforced plywood door was a sign reading THE STEWARD IS OUT. Beneath that was another announcing OUT TO LUNCH, and beneath that, GONE FISHING.

  “Benelux must not be here, if I read these signs aright,” said Moxie.

  “I think it’s a bluff,” said Goodgulf as he rang the bell insistently, “for the Stewards of Minas Troney have always been private in their ways.

  Benelux the Booby, son of Electrolux the Piker, comes from a long line of Stewards dating back many arid generations. Long have they ruled Twodor. The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King Chloroplast’s kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked suspicious what with his father’s death, and Carotene was suspected of foul play. Then the rest of the King’s relatives began to drop dead one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture of grief over the King’s untimely end. Finally there was no one left in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when a lineal descendant of Carotene’s returns to reclaim his rightful throne, conquer Twodor’s enemies, and revamp the postal system.”

  Just then a peephole in the door opened and a beady eye inspected them.

  “W-w-what you want?” the voice demanded.

  “We are wayfarers here to aid the fortunes of Minas Troney. I am Goodgulf Grayteeth.” The Wizard took a crumpled slip of paper from his wallet and handed it through the hole.

  “W-what this?”

  “My card,” replied Goodgulf. It returned immediately in a dozen pieces.

  “Steward not home. On vacation. N-n-no p-peddlers!” The peephole closed with a small slam.

  But Goodgulf was not easily duped and the boggies could tell from his eyes that he was angered by this impudence. His pupils were crossing and uncrossing like a juggler’s oranges. He rang again, long and loud. The eye blinked at them and a smell of garlic floated from the hole.

  “Y-you again? Told you, he’s t-t-taking a shower.” Again the hole shut.

  Goodgulf said nothing. He reached into his Mao jacket and extracted a black ball that Pepsi at first thought was the mallomar with a string attached. Goodgulf lit it with the end of his cigar and tossed the ball into the mail slot. He then ran around the corner with the boggies in tow. There was a large boom and, when the boggies peeked around to look, the door had magically disappeared.

  Pridefully the three walked through the smoking portals. They were confronted by a seedy old palace guard who was wiping the soot from his smarting eyes.

  “You may tell Benelux that Goodgulf the Wizard awaits an audience.”

  The doddering warrior bowed resentfully and led them through the airless passageways.

  “T-t-the S-steward isn’t going t-to like t-this,” croaked the guard. “H-hasn-t been out of p-p-palace for years.”

  “Do not the people grow restive?” asked Pepsi.

  “T-their idea,” drooled the old guide.

  He led them through an armorial hall whose cardboard arches and plaster of paris vaultings towered fully a foot over their heads. Richly mimeographed tapestries depicted past Kings’ legendary deeds. Pepsi particularly liked one about a long-dead king and a she-goat and said so. Goodgulf smacked him one. The very walls glittered with inset ginger ale bottles and costume jewelry, and the polished aluminum armor cast brilliant reflections on the hand-laid linoleum at their feet.

  At last they came to the throne room with its fabled thumbtack mosaics. By the looks of the place the Royal Throne Room gave double service as the Royal Shower Room. The guard disappeared and was replaced by an equally aged page in olive-drab livery. He struck a brass dinner gong and rasped:

  “Cringe and scrape thee before
Benelux, Great Steward of Twodor, true regent of the Lost King who will one day return or so they say.”

  The hoary page ducked around a screen and a curtain fluttered nearby. Out rolled the wizened Benelux in a battered wheelchair drawn by a brace of puffing raccoons. He wore tuxedo trousers, a short red jacket, and a clip-on bow tie. On his balding head rested a chauffeur’s cap emblazoned with the Crest of the Stewards, a rather showy affair featuring a winged

  unicorn carrying a tea tray. Moxie caught a distinct whiff of garlic.

  Goodgulf cleared his throat, for the Steward was obviously sound asleep. “Greetings and Happy Holidays,” he began. “I am Goodgulf, Court Wizard to the Crowned Heads of Lower Middle Earth, Worker of Wonders and Certified Chiropractor.”

  The old Steward opened one coated eye and looked at Moxie and Pepsi with disgust.

  “W-w-what are those? Sign at door says ‘no pets.’”

  “They are boggies, my liege, small yet trusty allies of ours to the north.”

  “I’ll have g-g-guard spread some papers,” the Steward mumbled as his wrinkled head fell heavily to his chest.

  Goodgulf ahemed and continued.

  “I fear that I am the bearer of dark tidings and sad. Sorhed’s foul narcs have slain thy own beloved son Bromosel and now the Dark Lord wishes thy own life and thy realm for his own unspeakable designs.”

  “Bromosel?” said the Steward, rousing himself on one elbow.

  “Thy own beloved son,” prompted Goodgulf.

  A flicker of recognition passed through tired old eyes.

  “Oh, him. Never w-w-writes except for m-money. Just l-like the other one. T-too bad about t-t-that.”

  “Thus we have come with an army a few days’ ride behind to revenge your grief upon Fordor,” Goodgulf explained.

  The Steward waved his feeble hands with annoyance.

  “Fordor? N-n-never heard of it. No two-bit w-w-wizard n-neither. Audience over,” said the Steward.

  “Insult not the White Wizard,” warned Goodgulf as he drew something from his pocket, “for I have many powers. Here, pick a card. Any card.”