Everything and the Kitchen Sink
Presto and Change-O wrinkled their noses and sniffed. "A noon thirty trial is nothing to scoff at."
"Yeah, and with Archibald working for the defense…"
"Someone is BOUND to be stuck marrying Princess Purple Rabbit!" They both shuddered at the horrendous thought.
"Well, I for one, am getting back on the ship and going home!" Snerdly said stubbornly. "I do not think I was meant to die saving a bad fiddle player and a…whatever Hamish is. We can hold auditions and replace them!" With that, Snerdly wiped the blue paint from his glasses and headed back to the ship.
"I say, mates, but isn't anyone going to stop him?" Mew inquired. Mollie looked at Tasha. Tasha looked at Sparki. Sparki looked at the sky as if waiting for something to fall. Realization hit Tasha.
"MY nail polish is on that ship!" Tasha took off at lightning speed, with Mew and Mollie only a step behind. With alarming alacrity, Tasha propelled herself airborne, and landed on Snerdly's back. Snerdly fell forward, face down in the mud, arms flailing frantically. Again. Mew began biting his ankles.
"Tasha, this is NOT helping matters!" Mollie pointed out. "But it does look like fun…" Snerdly managed to disengage himself from Tasha, by turning over and dumping her into the mud. She began wailing. Mew howled pitifully.
"Get a grip!" Mollie said, quickly moving out of reach as Snerdly started to do just that. "NO ONE is going anywhere without Hamish and Craig, and that means YOU too, Snerdly."
"My calculations have shown that I am not meant to die here!"
Mollie made a fist, "Wanna bet?"
"Testy, testy," Mew muttered under his doggy breath.
"Come on, let's get back," Mollie helped Tasha to her feet.
Tasha pouted, "I am not going anywhere without a shower and a change of clothes and some new boots AND a complete facial…."
Mollie shrugged, "Well, you just had a mud bath…"
"Snerdly got me DIRTY!!! I need a shower!!!" Tasha howled.
"Me too," said Snerdly, visions of Tasha in the shower dancing in his head. "What she said."
Two and a half hours later (and after a bar of soap had been shoved down Snerdly's throat when he tried to get a peek) they were fluffed, buffed and ready to re-begin the search for Hamish and Craig. Assuming, of course, they were still alive, as no one knew what time noon thirty really was on that crazy planet.
They returned to where they had left Sparki, Bruce and the rabbits but…
"They're gone!" Tasha stated the obvious.
"Well," Mollie pointed out, "It has been over two hours."
Tasha blinked. "What! Come on, Mol, I didn't even crème rinse!"
"Without the rabbits we can't find the Courthouse!"
"Well, that's that!" Snerdly stated brightly, "Back on the ship everyone."
Mollie's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Snerdly…why are you so anxious to get off this planet?"
Snerdly looked disconcerted and his brain frantically searched for an answer. "Well…uhh…I'm…uh….I'm afraid of rabbits…"
"Poor, poor Snerdly," Mollie and Tasha empathized, before bursting into hysterical laughter.
Mew barked. "I say mates, I have picked up the stench…er, scent, that is, of our companions. Our furry and not-so-furry friends have gone in that general direction." He gestured with his nose.
Snerdly was doing some wild computations with a compass and a solar calculator. "Impossible! All facts would indicate that they have headed in a Southnortheasterly direction."
"Well, my nose always knows, and I say they have gone Northsouthwest."
"I believe you are trying to sabotage this mission!" Snerdly accused. "I'm calling it off. Everyone back on the ship." (author's note: Nice try, Snerdly.)
"They went THIS way!" Tasha pointed. Snerdly and Mew stopped squabbling.
"Tasha, how could you possibly know that?" Mollie looked like she really want to know, because, really, when does Tasha EVER have a coherent thought, much less the answer?
Tasha peered intently at a hangnail and smiled. "Well, look!"
Hanging on a bush was Sparki's backpack. Leading away from it was a trail of candy corn, heading in a Westeastsouthernly direction. So there. Tasha began rummaging through Sparki's backpack searching for clues (or at least a snack). She sat on the clean grass and dumped out the contents. Tasha withdrew: several tapes from a passé musical group called the Spice Girls ("hey there were 5 of them once?"), a chocolate hazelnut candy bar ("ooh"), 2 red M&Ms, 64 incense sticks, eight CD roms. A broken pencil, ninety-two buttons with witty sayings, a book on the myths and legends of Wales, 6 green Ginseng tea bottles, a koosh ball, a naked ceramic goddess figure ("Ooh," said Snerdly, grabbing for it... "OW!" said Snerdly, pulling back his well-rapped knuckles), a dog-eared copy of Llewellyn's "Guide to Sun and Moon Signs", a framed photo of a schnauzer (glass covered in lip prints), a statue of R2-D2, 138 movie ticket stubs, a can of Mountain Dew, two bags of Gummi Worms, puka beads, a do-it-yourself Tattoo kit, a hookah, 7 earrings, Jimmy Hoffa, 8 pairs of Groucho Marx glasses, an oddly shaped gray rock, 52 popcorn-flavored Jelly Bellys, a weed whacker string, a Union Jack, a ginger bread man (with head bitten off), Puffs-Plus tissues, a half-eaten bag of Doritos, three Nutcrackers (Snerdly turned pale), a sand sculpture complete with a cow ramp, 17 plastic shovels, an IRS Tax Refund form from 1982 (unused), a statue of Shecky the Gargoyle, 111 rubber bands, chewing gum (unchewed), 18 paper clips, shortbread (in a pretty plaid box), a disposable camera, salt and pepper shakers (labeled "stolen from Wags restaurant, Clearwater, Florida"), a clock, a Barney video (subtly altered with a pair of pruning shears), a miniature satellite dish, a banana peel, 2 police badges (don’t ask), a teapot (minus tempest), 33 Magic cards, chopsticks, skis, a kayak, moose antlers, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh, a trench coat, a butterfly net, a Ninja Turtles sleeping bag, an answering machine plugged into a cell phone, 3 pairs of salad tongs, 15 copies of the video The Birdcage, keys to a `56 Chevy, a pile of 8X10 color glossies with circles and arrow and a paragraph on the back of each one (to find out what that means, listen to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant"), a plaid skirt, a short-wave radio, bleach, Battlefield Band concert tickets (courtesy of WMNF Radio 88.5), cinnamon flavored potpourri, 1 government-issue FBI standard giant black flashlight (labeled "F. Sculder"), a sword, 14 hard-boiled eggs in assorted Easter colors, tartan ribbons, Jerry Seinfeld's phone number, milk, 8 Playbills from the Broadway show RENT, a Ming vase, a Spiderman PEZ dispenser, Mickey Mouse ears, 2 goldfish swimming in a bowl, The Assorted Works of William Shakespeare in leather bound edition, 5 Renaissance Festival rats, another backpack ("don't open it," cautioned Mollie), a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar (inscribed: "Property of B. Metzger"), a cactus, a pen, a bald Chia Pet, several thousand sheets of paper downloaded from various websites, a fiddlebinkie, 57 fortune cookies (cracked, minus fortunes), jugglers clubs, a songbook of "The Greatest Hits of Barry Manilow", 3 crystals, rope, 11 candy hearts (the first one said…")
"STOP!" cried Mollie. "This is getting us nowhere! (Author's note: but it did fill an entire page longhand…) Put everything back and let's get going!"
Try as she might, Tasha could not get everything back into Sparki's backpack. As EVERY woman knows, whatever is removed from a purse NEVER fits back in again, even after tossing out gum wrappers, ATM statements and empty lipstick cartridges. She jammed and she squished and she pulled and she pushed, and finally everything sort of fit, but the bag bulged a bit.
"I'll bet it's WAY past noon-thirty," Mollie reflected. "We're probably too late."
"Oh well," Snerdly said hopefully. " I guess they're dead! Might as well go…"
Just then, fireworks shot into the sky and exploded in a myriad of colors. Bottle rockets screamed and burst into sparks, just above the treeline.
"We're too late…" Mollie sighed. The bushes shook and wiggled, and out popped a green rabbit.
"Hurry up! Hurry up!" it exclaimed. "Didn't you hear? Princess Purple Rabbit is FINALLY about to be married!"
"But how do we get there?" Tasha didn't really want to know.
"Oh, that's easy, " Green Rabbit said, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road!"
They looked and sure enough, there was a Yellow Brick Road heading in the same direction as the candy corn trail.
"Do you think it could be a coincidence?" queried a certain blonde member if the team, who shall remain nameless.
"TASHA!" the cry was unanimous.
"Ummm, who is Princess Purple Rabbit marrying?" Mollie was afraid to ask.
"Oh that's easy, " Green Rabbit said, "she's marrying…"
A bottle rocket landed in the road, tossing yellow bricks, candy corn, furry mammals and quasi-musicians in fifty-million directions.
"Hit the dirt!" Snerdly screamed, pushing Mollie and Tasha's noses into the yellow debris. Mew whimpered and ran off to hide under a blue rose bush.
"What the fuck was that?" Mew vociferated.
"Oh, that's easy," said the ever-informative Green Rabbit. "That would be Princess Purple Rabbit's boyfriend."
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