The army swarmed underneath them, growling and hissing in the most frightening of ways. The minotaur, who had been enjoying the show from the chasm, chuckled without saying a word. At first, the army was less than threatening as it just loitered below them. However, these critters were not all bark. They stacked on each other, inching closer and closer to the log. Just when Captain Rescue had begun yielding to panic, Charlie revealed that he had just the thing to disperse this mob. Like Mary Poppins digging inside her magic carpetbag, Charlie rooted around in his pouch for a few moments then pulled out a rather large plainly wrapped parcel. Everyone looked to him, unsure of what the crazy man was doing.
He opened the package and removed a small animatronic man. Not just any man, though, a 24-inch tall hunter—every forest dwelling animal’s greatest nightmare. He wore a red and blue plaid shirt, overalls, and a hunting cap. In his hands was a generic bolt-action rifle. Charlie flipped him upside down, turned him on by the switch on his bum, and then placed him in the middle of the army. The hunter walked around in circles playing a fuzzy recording.
“You’re gonna look nice on my mantle,” the animatronic hunter said as it raised and lowered its rifle. The army spread and kept its distance, but did not flee in horror. It walked in circles, scaring off the occasional animal. “Deer season is my favorite season.” He then fired his rifle as sparks flew from the tip and it jerked upwards to simulate recoil. This did the trick, and animals fled for cover in every direction. The tiny hunter threw his rifle over his shoulder and said, “Don’t run away, we’re just getting started.” Charlie lifted him from the ground and as he went for his bum to switch him back off, the tiny man begged, “Please, I don’t want to go back into that darkness, let me stay here wi—.”
“He gets a little clingy from time to time.” Charlie added.
Dr. Malevolent had a baffled look on her face. “I’ve got two main concerns. Firstly, what on earth are you doing carrying around a small robotic man?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Charlie said, “It’s a gift for my uncle, he’s an avid hunter.”
“Okay… okay… fair enough. Secondly, how on earth did you fit that thing in there?” Dr. Malevolent added, pointing at the pouch.
“The thing’s bigger on the inside,” Charlie said.
“How is that even possible?”
“It’s magic.”
“Shut up,” she said like a teenage girl as she stuck her head into the pouch, almost falling into the expansive hole. Once she recovered from her near tumble, she noticed the plethora of random odds and ends that filled the pouch. Among other things, there was a kite, a notebook computer, a bicycle, and a few filled black garbage sacks. She calmly closed the pouch and shrugged. This conundrum, she thought, was better left uninvestigated.
In truth, Charlie had no clue as to the origins of his costume and its enigmatic pouch. Story had it that the bunny suit was passed down by his ancestors from generation to generation, its true origins lost to time. However, Charlie was no fool, and he knew that chances were slim that anyone in the distant past would have been able to create the bright blue bunny suit, or would have even wanted to. Thus, he knew its origins were much more mysterious. Charlie’s thoughts made their way back to reality as everyone jumped down from the log now that the evil pink army had disappeared.
Chapter 18: The Fourteenth Century Funhouse
They made for the hallway. The moment their feet touched its cold stone tiles, not-so-medieval lights switched on one by one along the ceiling. Their hearts sank as they watched the lights flip on for what felt like a millennium. Eventually, they faded from view, revealing just how deep this rabbit hole went. To add insult to injury, dozens upon dozens of heavy fourteenth century wooden doors lined both sides of the hallway, leaving an insurmountable amount of options.
Captain Rescue stomped his feet in a tantrum and whined, “We’re going to be here all year!”
Dr. Malevolent replied, “What, you thought saving the world would be easy? Even I knew otherwise and I’m the one who’s always trying to take it over.”
Before Captain Rescue could let the hamster and its wheel formulate a response, Stubbs snatched a loose pebble from the ground and tossed it into the hallway in an attempt to spring any additional traps. While doing so, the zombie made sure to hold his throwing hand securely to prevent it from flying off with the pebble. Life as the undead certainly was not easy, but Stubbs took to it with grace and charm—and no zombie on earth would disagree, even if it was too busy eating brains to bother.
After some fine bouncing that would have made the friendly neighborhood minotaur jealous, the pebble finally came to a rest a ways down the hall without any signs of unwanted traps. Stubbs looked to everyone else and shrugged. He stepped into the hallway, half-ready for a giant saw to fly out and chop him in two. All remained quiet, and Stubbs breathed a sigh of relief. Rather, he tried to, but then remembered that his lungs were of little use as anything other than punching bags.
Concluding that a ghastly medieval booby trap was not going to obliterate Stubbs, everyone else entered the hallway, tasked with the decision of which doorway to open first and feared what could possibly be behind it. To solve this conundrum, Captain Rescue pulled a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air. As the coin flipped, the hamster and its wheel, still recovering from the last request, tried hard to communicate with his hand to catch it. Apparently, the two had miscommunicated, because he missed the coin and wound up slapping himself across the face.
As Captain Rescue ran off trying to catch the coin, Stubbs grabbed the knob of the first door on his right and opened it. Inside it, sitting in a rocking chair by a fire, a female minotaur sat knitting a quilt that had on it a depiction of the bouncing minotaur they had already met. The small room she called home had no exits or windows. Satisfied this room was not the one sought, not that they had a clue what they sought in the first place, Stubbs started to close the door just as the female minotaur spoke.
“Excuse me, have you seen my son?” She said, tears in her eyes.
Stubbs looked at the quilt then at her, and stuttered, “Um…actually... I think we did on our way in here.”
“Oh, all right. If you see him again, tell him his mother is worried about him and that he’s late for dinner.” She wiped the tears away and gave a faint smile.
“Certainly, ma’am,” Stubbs closed the door. He regained his composure, turned to the others, “Well, one down,” he said as he peered down the hallway, “a lot to go.”
Captain Rescue took point and grabbed the doorknob of the next door, which light emanated from underneath. The source of which floated a few inches from the ground, a bald glowing creature wearing a flowing white gown. It turned to them and said softly with a wide smile in a high-pitched voice, “I bring you love.”
Captain Rescue, teeth chattering and shaking at the knees, mumbled the following words, “Sorry… we’re not… in the market for love.”
The creature’s aura of light dimmed and sadness filled its eyes, “Oh…”
His fear subsided. “Aww, don’t be sad, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who are.”
The floating entity brightened, smiled, and waved goodbye as Captain Rescue closed the door and said, “Was that what I think it was?”
“If you mean a deranged elderly man drugged beyond all reason,” Charlie said dryly, “then yes,”
“All righty then.”
They assessed the situation: endless doors and no telling which, if any, was the one that would lead them in the right direction. They decided it would be in their best interest to explore further down the hallway; no way could it go on forever. Coincidentally, the search would not take too long. After but a short jog into the belly of the castle, the heroes felt as though they were getting bigger or that the castle was getting smaller. It seemed the endless hallway wasn’t anything more than an optical illusion put in place to confuse and infuriate anyone who entered the castle.
&nbs
p; While everyone else was returning to the properly proportioned section of the hallway, Captain Rescue lingered within this tiny world. While pretending to be King Kong, he thrust his arms into the air and roared furiously, swatting at imaginary miniature planes that flew through the air. He then forced open a nearby tiny door and slid his arm into it, hoping to grab hold of a damsel in distress but found only miniscule screams from within. He gasped and yanked his arm out, then whispered, “Sorry!” to those he had just disturbed.
Freight cracked his knuckles and strutted over to one of the doors, ready to dive headfirst into whatever this castle had to throw at him. With Courtney in one hand, and the doorknob in the other, he effortlessly yanked open the massive door. A normal man would have soiled himself after discovering what lay on the other side, but Freight was no normal man, so his pants remained unsoiled. It was a dragon—the largest, most terrifying dragon ever conceived. The monster’s eyes burned blood red with pure hate. Enormous spikes lined its back all the way down to the tip of its tail, where they culminated into a most vicious weapon. To Freight, it was just a bigger—fire breathing—zombie. Though bound to the ground, upon seeing someone at the doorway, the dragon rose to its feet and spread its mammoth wings, brushing off bits of stone and mortar from the high ceiling as they grazed it.
The dragon crouched low to the ground as the two behemoths stared into each other’s eyes. Then, like a vacuum, the dragon inhaled, pulling everything towards it except Freight, who refused to waver, showing the beast who was boss. After the air in the immediate area found its way into the dragon’s lungs, the winds ceased. The beast then expelled all the air in a mighty roar. The ears of every creature within a hundred miles burst into flames, except for that of Freight and his comrades, theirs were immune to such devilry.
The dragon’s roar subsided, and Captain Rescue had recorded the entire thing, hoping to make a single out of it and strike it big in the music industry. Freight straightened his clothes and fixed his hair, then prepared to give the monster a taste of his own medicine. As he breathed in, his chest expanded to fifteen times its normal size. Just before popping like an overinflated balloon, Freight let out the most animalistic roar capable by human lungs. Comparatively, it was nothing next to the mighty bellow of the dragon. However, the beast knew a badass when it saw one and admitted defeat by hiding its snout within its colossal talons and whimpering. Freight nodded approvingly at the dragon, which had put up a good fight, and closed the door.
Charlie, hoping for an encounter as epic as Freight’s, went to one of the nearby doors and fumbled for the knob, plush gauntlets made most things difficult to open. Eventually, he overcame this hurdle and managed to get the door open, and then kicked its frame in frustration. Charlie couldn’t have conceived a more monumental disappointment than the broom closet before him. A mop sat in the center of the tiny room, and shelves lined the walls. Upon them, someone, perhaps a janitor, had organized the cleaning supplies alphabetically. A glimmer of hope twinkled within the depths of his plastic eyes as he realized what rested on one of the shelves: a golden lamp etched with the most elegant of doodles. Excitement filled Charlie as he dreamed of the possibilities. A lamp could mean one thing and one thing only—a genie. Charlie gingerly snatched the lamp and cradled it close to him, barely able to grasp it with his fuzzy hands. He then rubbed it. What else was one to do when given a magical lamp?
“Leave me alone,” a tiny voice from within the lamp yelled.
Charlie rubbed the lamp more vigorously. After waiting a few seconds for a further reply, and being disappointed when there was not, he slid the lamp to his bunny’s mouth, where his real eyes were, and peered inside. An orange smoke seeping out from within the lamp obscured his vision. He coughed and tried to brush the smoke away, but it continued to gather, eventually coalescing into a humanoid form. The gaseous muscle bound genie hovered in front of Charlie, its arms crossed and an irritated look upon its face. No discernable clothing graced the genie’s gaseous orange body, which dissipated just past its waist, where things would have gotten really interesting. From its hair to its goatee to its nipples, the genie employed various shades of orange.
The genie leaned forward, its face centimeters from Charlie’s, “And what do you want?”
“Why my wishes, of course,”
“I don’t do the wish thing, and even if I did. It only applies to humans, not overgrown rabbits like you.”
“You’re a genie… of course you do this wish thing.”
“I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me, that with all my phenomenal cosmic powers, I am obligated to grant your wishes?”
“Uh yeah… I believe I am.”
The genie backed away from Charlie, floated to the very top of the rather tall hallway, and outstretched its arms. He then started to gyrate, conjuring all sorts of ancient magics. The winds inside the fourteenth century castle picked up and were soon that of a hurricane.
“Don’t think that you can command me!” the genie bellowed. He continued spinning around and around, causing the winds to force everyone against the wall. Grey storm clouds gathered along the ceiling. Lightning struck, and a torrential downpour began, spilling gallons of water on everything. As it soaked his bunny suit to the core, Charlie became increasingly furious at the genie. His saturated bunny hands clenched the lamp, and an idea dawned on him. He threw it to the ground and began stomping on it like a man jumping on a cockroach that refused to give up and die.
The genie, appalled at the treatment of his itty-bitty living space, abruptly ended the hurricane. As quickly as they came, the torrential winds subsided. The only remnant that they had been there was the half-trillion gallons of water left in its wake. The genie then proceeded to conjure a pair of legs just so that he could fall to his knees and hold his wrecked home in his hands. Without saying a word, he held the lamp to his gaseous orange lips and blew into it. The lamp regained some resemblance of its former greatness, but was still bent and twisted. The genie turned its back on everyone and slammed the door as it went back into its closet. The door then blinked out of existence, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.
“Great, you pissed him off. We could have used him to help us save the world,” Dr. Malevolent said as she rung the water from her long brown hair.
“Either way, he still didn’t seem very motivated to help us,” Charlie replied.
“Oh and how would you react if someone stomped on your house?”
“Point taken.”
“Anyway, I think it’s my turn to open one of these doors.”
“Be my guest.”
Dr. Malevolent tapped her chin with her fingers as she surveyed the remaining doors. After a good amount of time transpired—there were still quite a few left—she picked one and opened it. At seeing saw what lay beyond it, she did an arm pump in victory. Inside the room was an enormous spiral staircase with an iron portcullis sealing off the entrance. The staircase wasn’t alone in the room, however. A lemonade stand was in the corner, and behind it was a young boy who wore a bright smile on his face.
“Hello!” he said as Dr. Malevolent entered the room. She then motioned with her hand for everyone else to follow. The boy continued to smile behind the lemonade stand, with his fingers crossed and his hands resting on the wood. There were six small glasses of lemonade already made. The boy knew they were there, but he wasn’t sure if Stubbs would want a glass. Regardless, he didn’t want to be ill prepared for the castle’s guests.
“Come in! Have a drink!” he said cheerfully to the travelers as they entered the room. The offer was accepted and the lemonade was sipped, and actually quite delicious. Captain Rescue, however, would have preferred the pink variety.
“What are you doing here?” Dr. Malevolent asked the boy.
“I am the gatekeeper. If you answer my questions three correctly then you can go up. If not you have to leave, sorry!”
“That’s it then?” she replied, the water still dripping from her white lab coat.
“The questions are quite challenging, don’t be too confident!”
“Well, let’s get started then.”
“Of course, your first question is, ‘What is seven plus twelve?’”
She chuckled a little and asked, “Did you write these questions?”
“I sure did!” the boy said exuberantly, “my teacher says I’m very smart.”
“Well, I’m sure you are and the answer you seek is nineteen.”
“Excellent, you got it right! Are you ready for the next one?”
“Lay it on me, kiddo,” she said very confidently to the boy.
“How many sides does a hexagon have?”
“Six!”
“Right you are again!” the boy’s cheerfulness didn’t falter in the least, “the last question is, ‘How old is the universe?’”
Dr. Malevolent’s jaw dropped, she didn’t have the foggiest clue what the answer was. She remained silent for a few seconds, then said, “I have no idea.”
“Do any of your friends know?! They can answer too!”
Freight blurted out, “13.7 BILLION YEARS, GIVE OR TAKE!” In reaction to everyone’s awestruck faces, he added, “WHAT? I LIKE SPACE.”
The boy began clapping, “Very good, you got all the answers right!” The portcullis sealing off the stairway lifted and the boy wished them well.
“That was super easy,” Captain Rescue said with blatant arrogance.
“Oh yeah? How many did you know?” Dr. Malevolent asked
“Just one, but still!”
“Yeah… exactly.”
They looked up at the spiral staircase before them, it seemed to climb for stories upon stories and scaling it would certainly be no simple task. Therefore, without wasting any more time, they got to it.
Chapter 19: The End of the Beginning
The stairwell had only been their companion for mere moments and already Captain Rescue had started to complain about how boring it was. He kicked the metal railing in frustration. This, of course, sent a streak up pain through his leg, and on top of that, the entire stairwell swayed back and forth. From that point forward, Captain Rescue kept his boredom to himself in the very reasonable fear that he might be flung over the side.
Not Everything Brainless is Dead Page 15