Bored of the Rings Page 4

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” cried Moxie.

  “Yes, let’s,” added Pepsi, who promptly took one step, fell directly on his flat head, and managed to bloody his nose.

  “Icky!” laughed Moxie.

  “Double icky!” wailed Pepsi.

  Frito rolled his eyes heavenward. It was going to be a long epic.

  Gaining their wandering attention, Frito inspected his companions and their kits. As he had feared, his orders had been forgotten and everyone had brought the potato salad. Everyone except Spam, who had stuffed his knapsack with sleazy novels and Dildo’s tablespoons.

  At last they set off, following Goodgulf’s instructions, along the yellow-brick Intershire Turnpath toward Whee, the longest leg of their journey to Riv’n’dell. The Wizard had told them to travel at night unseen along the side of the Path, to keep their ear to the ground, their eyes peeled, and their noses clean, the last directive weighing rather heavily on Pepsi, under the circumstances.

  For a while they walked along in silence, each lost in what passed in boggies for thought. But Frito was especially troubled as he considered the long travels ahead of him. Though his companions frisked gaily along, playfully kicking and tripping each other, his heart was heavy with dread. Remembering happier times, he hummed and then sang an ancient dwarf-song he had learned from the knee of his uncle Dildo, a song whose maker had lived before the dawn of Lower Middle Earth. It began:

  Heigh-ho, heigh-ho,

  It’s off to work we go,

  Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-heigh,

  Heigh-ho, heigh-ho . . .

  “Good! Good!” yipped Moxie.

  “Yes, good! Especially the ‘heigh-ho’ part,” added Pepsi.

  “And what do you be callin’ that?” asked Spam, who knew few songs.1

  “I call it ‘Heigh-ho,’” said Frito.

  But he was not cheered by it.

  Soon it began to rain and they all caught colds.

  • • •

  The sky in the east was changing from black to pearl gray as the four boggies, weary and sneezing their heads off, stopped their march and camped for the day’s rest in a clump of dogwillows many steps from the unprotected Turnpath. The fatigued travelers stretched out on the sheltered ground and made a long boggie snack from Frito’s store of dwarfloaf, boggie-brewed ale, and breaded veal cutlets. Then, groaning softly under the weight of their stomachs, all dropped quickly off to sleep, each dreaming their private boggie dreams, most of them having to do with veal cutlets.

  Frito awoke with a start. It was dusk now, and a sick feeling in his stomach made him scan the Path from between the branches with terror. Through the leaves he saw a dark, shadowy bulk in the distance. It moved slowly and carefully along the rise of the Path, looking like a tall, black rider on some huge and bloated beast. Outlined against the setting sun, Frito held his breath as the ominous figure’s red eyes searched the land. Once, Frito thought, the fiery coals had looked right through him, but they blinked myopically and passed on. The ponderous mount, which appeared to Frito’s startled eyes to be an immense, grossly overfed pig the size of a house, snuffled and snorted in the wet earth to root out some scent of them. The others awoke and froze with terror. As they watched, the evil hunter goaded his mount, emitted one great and sour fart, and passed on. He had not seen them.

  The boggies waited until the distant grunting of the beast had long quieted before anyone spoke. Frito turned to his companions, who were well hidden in their food sacks, and whispered, “It’s all right. It’s gone.”

  Doubtfully, Spam emerged. “Bless me if that didn’t fright me plumb out o’ me codpiece,” laughed Spam weakly. “Most queer and disturbin’!”

  “Queer and disturbin’!” came a chorus of voices from the other sacks.

  “And even more disturbin’ if I keep on a-hearin’ me echo every time I open me chops!” Spam kicked the sacks, each of which yelped but showed no sign of disgorging its contents.

  “Grouchy, he is,” said one.

  “Grouchy and mean,” said the other.

  “I wonder,” said Frito, “what and who that terrible creature was.”

  Spam cast his eyes downward and scratched his chins guiltily. “I’m guessin’ it’s one o’ those folk the Fatlip told me to remember to be a-warnin’ ye about, Master Frito.”

  Frito looked at him inquiringly.

  “Weeeell,” said Spam, pulling his forelock and licking Frito’s toes in apology, “as I recollect now, the Old Lip was a-tellin’ me just before we left, And don’t be forgettin’, he says to me, to tell Master Frito that some smelly stranger wi’ red eyes was askin’ after him. Stranger? says I. Aye, says he, and when I keeps mum, the fiend up and hisses at me and twirls ’is black mustache. ‘Curses,’ the foul thing says, ‘foiled again!’ And then he waves ’is billy at me and jumps on ’is pig and hightails it frae th’ Bag Eye a-shoutin’ somethin’ very much like ‘Hi-yo, Slimey!’ Very strange, I says. I guess I was a bit slow t’ tell ye, Master Frito.”

  “Well,” said Frito, “there’s no time to worry now. I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some connection between that stranger and this foul searcher.” Frito knitted his brows, but as usual dropped a stitch. “In any case,” he said, “it’s no longer safe to follow the Turnpath to Whee. We’ll have to take the shortcut through the Evilyn Wood.”2

  “The Evilyn Wood!?” chorused the grub sacks.

  “But, Master Frito,” said Spam, “they say that place is . . . haunted!”

  “That may be true,” said Frito quietly, “but if we stay here, we’re all blue-plate specials for sure.”

  Frito and Spam hastily decanted the twins with hearty kicks, and the company policed the remaining fragments of cutlets from the area, spicing the leftovers with a number of sawbugs. When all was ready, they set out, the twins emitting high-pitched cheep-cheeps in the not altogether vain hope of passing themselves off in the dark as migrating cockroaches. Due west they tramped, doggedly locating every possible opportunity for falling flat on their muzzles, pressing on so that they might reach the safety of the wood before the next sunrise. Frito had calculated that they traveled over two leagues in as many days, not bad for a boggie but still not fast enough. They had to take the wood in stride to be at Whee by the next day.

  Silently they walked, save for a slight whimpering from Pepsi. The silly nit’s bloodied his pug again, thought Frito, and Moxie’s getting cranky. But as the long night passed and the east brightened, the flat ground gave way to hummocks, hillocks, and buttocks of spongy, soft earth the color of calves’ brains. As the company stumbled on, the underbrush changed to saplings and then to huge, irritable-looking trees, blasted and scored by wind, weather, and arthritis. Soon they were swallowed up from the dawn light, and the new night covered them like a rank locker-room towel.

  Many years before it had been a happy, pleasant forest of well-pruned puswillows, spruce spruces, and natty pines, the frolicking place of drone-moles and slightly rabid chipmunks. But now the trees had grown old, clotted with sneezemoss and toemold, and the Nattily Wood3 had become the crotchety old Evilyn.

  “We should be in Whee by morning,” said Frito as they paused for a light snack of potato salad. But the malevolent susurrus in the trees over the small company bade them not tarry there long. They quickly moved on, careful to avoid the occasional barrages of droppings that fell from unseen, yet annoyed tenants in the branches above.

  After several hours of mucking about, the boggies fell exhausted to the ground. The ground was unfamiliar to Frito, and he had long since muddled his sense of direction. “We should have been out of these woods by now,” he said worriedly. “I think we’re lost.”

  Spam looked at his rapier-sharp toenails in dejection, but then brightened. “That may be true, Master Frito,” he said. “But don’t be a-worryin’ about it. Somebody else was here only a few hours ago, by the looks o’ the camp. An’ they was gobblin’ tater salad just like us!” />
  Frito studied these telltale clues with care. It was true: someone had been here only a few hours before, lunching on boggie grub. “Perhaps we can follow their trail and find the way out of here.” And tired as they were, they pushed on again.

  On and on they trod, vainly calling after the folk whose evidence of passage lay after them: a scrap of breaded veal cutlet, a sleazy boggie novel, one of Dildo’s tablespoons (What a coincidence, Frito thought). But no boggies. They did come across a large rabbit with a cheap pocket watch who was pursued by some nut of a girl, another kid being viciously mugged by three furious grizzlies (“We’d better not get involved,” said Frito wisely), and a deserted and flyspecked gingerbread bungalow with a “To Let” sign on the marzipan door. But no clue to a way out.

  Limp with fatigue, the four finally dropped in their tracks. It was already late afternoon in the gloomy woods, and they could go no farther without a snooze. As if lulled by a potion, the hairy little beggars curled up in furry balls and, one by one, conked off under the protective boughs of a huge, quivering tree.

  Spam did not at first realize he was awake. He had felt something soft and rubbery pull at his clothes, but he thought it a longing dream of those reptilian pleasures he had so recently enjoyed back in the Sty. But now he was certain he had heard a distinct sucking sound and a tearing of cloth. His eyes popped open to see himself stark naked and bound head and paw by the fleshy roots of the tree. Screaming his fool head off, he woke his fellows, likewise hog-tied and stripped clean by the writhing plant, which was giving off a distinct cooing noise. The strange tree hummed to itself, ever tightening its hold. As the boggies watched with revulsion, the crooning tossed salad dipped down the orangy, liplike flowers at its tips. The bulbous pods drew nearer, making revolting smacking and smooching noises as they began to fasten themselves to their helpless bodies. Locked in a foul embrace, the boggies would soon be hickeyed to death. Summoning their last strength, they all cried for help.

  “Help, help!” they cried.

  But no one answered. The fat orange blossoms ranged over the helpless boggie bodies, squirming and moaning with desire. A bloated blossom fastened to Spam’s boggie belly and began its relentless sucking motion; he felt his flesh drawn up to the center of the flower. Then, as Spam looked on in horror, the petals released with a resounding pop!, leaving a dark, malignant weal where the horrid pucker had been. Spam, powerless to save himself or his companions, watched terrified as the now panting sepals prepared to administer their final, deadly soul kiss.

  But just as the long, red stamen descended to its unspeakable task, Spam thought he heard the snatch of a lilting song not far distant, and growing louder! It was a muddled, drowsy voice that sang words that were not words to Spam’s ears:

  “Toke-a-lid! Smoke-a-lid! Pop the mescalino!

  Stash the hash! Gonna crash! Make mine methedrino!

  Hop a hill! Pop a pill! For Old Tim Benzedrino!”4

  Though mad with fear, all strained to the rising melody sung by someone who sounded like he had terminal mumps:

  “Snorting, sporting! Speeding through the arbor,

  Pushing till the folk you burn toss you in the harbor!

  Screeching like a dying loon, zooming like the thrush!

  Follow me and very soon, your mind will turn to mush!

  Higher than the nowhere birds grooving in the air,

  We’ll open up a sandal shop where everyone will share!

  Flower folk are springing up, wearing bead and boot,

  And if you down me you can stick a flower up your snoot!

  To Love and Peace and Brotherhood we all can snort a toast,

  And if the heat is on again, we’ll all split to the Coast!”

  Suddenly a brightly colored figure burst through the foliage, swathed in a long mantle of hair the consistency of much-chewed Turkish taffy. It was something like a man, but not much; it stood six feet tall, but could not have weighed more than thirty-five pounds, dirt included. Standing with his long arms dangling almost to the ground, the singer’s body was covered with a pattern of startling hues, ranging from schizoid red to psychopathique azure. Around his pipestem neck hung a dozen strands of beaded charms and from the center, an amulet imprinted with the elf-rune Kelvinator.5 Through the oily snaggles of hair stared two huge eyeballs that bulged from their sockets, so bloodshot that they appeared more like two baseballs of very lean bacon.

  “Ooooooooooh, wow!” said the creature, assaying the situation quickly. Then, half loping, half rolling to the foot of the murderous tree, he sat on his meatless haunches and peered at it with his colorless, saucerlike irises; he chanted an incantation that sounded to Frito like a hacking cough:

  “Oh uncool bush! Unloose this passle

  Of furry cats that you hassle!

  Tho’ by speed my brain’s destroyed,

  I’m not half this paranoid!

  So cease this bummer, down the freak-out,

  Let caps and joints cause brains to leak out!

  These cats are groovy here among us,

  So leave ’em be, you uptight fungus!”

  Thus speaking, the withered apparition raised his spidery hand in a two-fingered “V” sign and uttered an eldritch spell:

  “Tim, Tim, Benzedrine!

  Hash! Boo! Valvoline!

  Clean! Clean! Clean for Gene!

  First, second, neutral, park,

  Hie thee hence, you leafy narc!”

  The towering plant shivered and the coils fell from its victims like yesterday’s macaroni, and they sprang free with joyful yelps. As they watched with fascination, the great green menace whimpered like a nursling and sucked its own pistils with ill temper. The boggies retrieved their garments, and Frito sighed with relief to find the Ring still firmly Bostiched6 to his pocket.

  “Oh thank you,” they all squealed, wagging their tails, “thank you, thank you!”

  But their savior said nothing. As if unaware of their presence, he stiffened like the tree and gasped, “Gah gah gah” while his pupils opened and closed like nervous umbrellas. His knees buckled and unbuckled, then buckled again and he fell to the mossy earth in a ball of frantically thrashing hair. He foamed at the mouth and screamed, “Oh God get ’em off me! They’re all over the place, and green! Argh! Org! OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod!” He slapped at his hair and body hysterically.

  Frito blinked with astonishment and grabbed his Ring, but did not put it on. Spam, stooping over the prostrate freak, smiled and offered his hand.

  “Beggin’ your leave,” he said, “can you tell us where—”

  “Oh no no no! Look at all of ’em! All over the place! Keep ’em away from me!”

  “Keep who away?” asked Moxie politely.

  “Them!” screamed the stricken stranger, pointing to his own head. He then sprang to his horny feet and ran directly at the trunk of the hickey tree and, charging full tilt with his head lowered, butted it a mighty lick, and, before the startled eyes of the boggies, passed out cold. Frito filled his narrow-brimmed hat with clear water from a nearby trickle and approached him, but the stunned figure opened his marbled eyes and gave another high-pitched scream.

  “No, no, not water!”

  Frito jumped back with fright and the skinny creature wobbled to his feet and knuckles.

  “But thangs loads anyhoo,” said the stranger, “the rush always arfects me like dat.” Offering a filthy hand, the odd-speaking stranger smiled a toothless grin. “Tim Benzedrine, ad yen serbice.”

  Frito and the rest solemnly introduced themselves, all still casting a worried eye toward the kissing plant, which was sticking out its stamen at them.

  “Oh wow, doan’ worby about him,” wheezed Tim, “he just sulking. Yoo cats noo aroun’ here?”

  Frito guardedly told him that they were on their way to Whee, but had become lost. “Can you tell us how to find our way there?”

  “Oh wow, oh sure,” laughed Tim, “thad’s easy. But led’s split to my pad firz, I wan’ yo
o meet my chick. She name Hashberry.”

  The boggies agreed, for their stores of potato salad were gone. Gathering their packs, they curiously followed after the wildly zigzagging Benzedrine, who occasionally halted to rap with a likely looking rock or stump, giving them time to catch up. As they circled through the menacing trees aimlessly, Tim Benzedrine’s throat croaked merrily:

  “O slender as a speeding freak! Spaced-out groovy tripper!

  O mush-brained maid whose mind decays with every pill I slip her!

  O mind-blown fair farina-head, friend of birds and beetles!

  O skinny wraith whose fingernails are hypodermic needles!

  O tangled locks and painted bod! Pupils big as eggs!

  O flower-maid who never bathes or even shaves her legs!

  O softened mind that wanders wherever moon above leads!

  O how I dig thee, Hashberry, from nose to sleazy love beads!”

  A few moments later they broke into a clearing on a low hill. There was a ramshackle hovel shaped like a rubber boot with a little chimney that emitted a thick fog of sick-looking green smoke.

  “Oh wow,” squeaked Tim, “she’s home!” Led by Tim, the company approached the unprepossessing little hut. A flashing white light blinked from its only window, at the top. As they stepped over the threshold, littered with cigarette papers, broken pipes, and burnt-out brain cells, Tim called:

  “I’ve brought four with me to crash,

  So now’s the time to pass the stash.”

  From the smoky depths an answering voice returned:

  “Then celebrate and take a toke,

  To make us giggle, gag, and choke!”

  At first Frito saw nothing amid the iridescent wallpaper and strobe candles but what appeared to be a heap of filthy cleaning rags. But then the pile spoke again:

  “Hither come and suck a pipe,

  Turn thy brains to cheese and tripe!”

  And then, as the boggies squinted their smarting eyes, the heap stirred and sat up revealing itself to be an incredibly emaciated, hollow-eyed female. She looked at them for a second, muttered, “Like wow,” and fell forward in a catatonic stupor with a rattle of beads.