"Give me that book!" Jack swiped it from Mollie's triumphant (but rapidly deflating) hands. "Well, it looks like gibberish to me!"

            Tasha cocked her head and stared at it. "It's not even in American!"

            "…And isnae that the lass we left in Macedonia?" Craig eyed the woman in leather garments frowning on the cover. "Seems after we left, SOMEone got mighty handy with a word processor…"

            "And to think Mollie thought the Secrets of the Universe were mass produced trade paper backs of poor quality!" Jack shoved the book into Sparki's backpack.

            The others concurred, while a crestfallen Mollie grumpily sulked in a corner. Denara soon joined her and petted her head. "We all make mistakes. So it's not the Secrets of the Universe, it'll make a good paperweight."

            "I," Mollie glared, "am not talking to ANY of you. Just so you know." She crossed her arms over her chest.

            The old man and the red-haired young woman watched the proceedings carefully, and making neither head nor tale of the whole mess, decided to change the subject.

            "I see you found my cow," the old man said brightly, looking at Elsie. "I wondered where I had lost her. Now if only the jackalope would return…"

            "I am Lady Genevra de Brus…" interrupted the young woman, "You'll have to excuse my father, but he has been rather absent minded of late."

            "Suits me just fine," said the cow, "but I am a bit hungry…which way to the mess hall?"

            Genevra gave the cow complicated instructions and after a tearful goodbye ("I think I'll miss you most of all, Gucci Girl!") she disappeared down a hallway, never to be heard from again. By anyone reading this story that is…

            "Well noo, what is it we are to be doin'?" Hamish inquired, eyeing the well-stocked wine cellar anxiously.

            "Well, before we went off on some oubliette tangent, we WERE looking for a phone." Denara informed them.

            As one, the Neon Lites and Jack turned to Denara and yelled, "Castles don't have phones, you twit." Denara stuck out her tongue.

            "Er…" Genevra raised her hand, "as a matter of fact, this one does…What seems to be the problem?"
            "Our van broke down just a way down the road from here and wait a minute!" Jack stopped suddenly. "Have you all also forgotten that we heard screaming before? What kind of castle is this anyway?"

            Genevra actually blushed. "Oh, that…well, my Dad always screams when I make him take a bath…"

            "Okay, that clears up everything missed in the chapter the computer ate and no one could reconstruct. Can we get on with this story please!!!???" Mollie begged.

            "Yeah," Tasha added, "It’s been ages since I've used my American Express card and it's starting to get moldy. I'm allergic you know…"

            "No, we cannot continue with the story," Genevra told them abruptly, pulling a gun from her ample cleavage and aiming it at the Neon Lites. "Because you see, something has happened. It happens to everyone who enters this castle and it’s the reason you need to help us escape."

            "What?" Mollie asked, eying the weapon nervously but trying to be brave.

            "Castles have a way of bringing stories like this to a dead stop. No imagination in an old castle you know; none at all. When you bring an old castle into a story, one of three things can happen - you can meet a prince or princess, you can meet a ghost or you can stop telling the story, because it's all over. That's what happened to dad and me. There are no royal family members and nothing even remotely resembling the walking undead among us. So we have been TRAPPED here for ages, just as you have been."

"Ages?" Tasha yelped, immediately checking her mirror for unsightly wrinkles.

 "Since Christmas. At least two months, maybe more," Genevra nodded. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

"Us?" Jack exclaimed, "Why us?"
            "Because she has a gun, now there's a good lad." Hamish muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

They all paced and thought and thought and paced. This went on for some time and not much was thought. In fact, here is a snippet of their thoughts, in case you were skeptical:

Genevra: "Idiots, how can THEY help us?"

Old Man: "Jackalopes, heffalumps and woozles, oh my!"

Jack: "Rope. Leather. Chains. Wax. Plastic…"

Mollie: "I can't believe they canceled ELLEN, those bastards!"

Tasha: "                     "

Craig: "Ooooohhhh…by the light of the silvery cow…."

Hamish: "Twenty paces from th' wine, ten paces from th' wine, five paces from th' wine…"

Denara: "This sucks…I'm the Oracle and I should be able to save us all!"

Sparki: "I like hope I totally like unplugged the iron when I left home a bogus 80 million light years ago…."

So as those thoughts processed, not much actual planning was done…in fact, what happened next was MERELY a twist of fate and what have you, because ever since they learned the meaning of `Deus Ex Machina' (look it up kids), the Neon Lites have held fast to the theory that when in doubt, a Greek Chorus can always come to the rescue. In this case, it was not so much a chorus, as a party…

As they all thought, Craig got bored and started fiddling away at a happy tune he was writing in his head (that's the `Deus' - or God part of this). In the meantime, Denara got bored and started fidgeting with some wires and machinery (hence the `machina' - see this all fits). As the fiddle played, Denara accidentally turned on the external microphones that the castle had because it had been a way cool Disco in the late 1970s when discos were cool the first time around and before some insane person brought back bellbottoms. The fiddle music was joyfully blared out into the world…and being that this was rural Wisconsin, the people came a-running.

 Within minutes, the castle was hosting a grand ceilidh. The Wisconsonians were dancing up a storm and the wine was flowing (much of it down Hamish's throat) and when the band rested between sets, one of them noticed someone had left the front door wide open.

They made a run for it, noticing only when they had gone about twenty feet that they were exactly where the space ship had crash-landed so many months earlier! They retrieved the new wankle rotary engine from the van, gathered the instruments and Tasha's clothing and returned to their beloved ship.

It was not until they were in orbit, and someone had pushed a button they were not meant to push, sending them hurtling into the cosmos, that they were able to stop and take a collective deep breath.

"What just happened?" Mollie glared at the author in disgust.

"Wait a minute!" Craig looked wide-eyed out the view screen window. "I know where we are! Grandmother's house!!!!!!"