Attack of the Mounted Gnomes Part 14

Suddenly all of the bombs that Mr. Thumb had been storing up in his basement, in preparation for World War 3, decided to spontaneously combust. Everyone who was in the house died.

The End

That’s what it would look like if everyone died in a horribly unimaginative and boring way…

 Now this is how everything really happened: (Just making sure you were paying attention.)

Sir Champagne's voice was quavering and disgustingly high pitched for a man’s voice, and it was very much like Sara Brightman’s voice but coming out of a man’s body. The resulting undulating tones were absolutely nauseating to hear. I lost all concentration completely, and the gun on the ground ceased to quiver.

Sir Champagne Noticed and smiled evilly, but he still continued to sing. The smile seemed to convey everything that he wanted to say. It said to me: As long as I am singing neither of you will be able to use your powers. I instinctively sensed that fact as well, and I knew that even if I closed my eyes and we tried to escape through the door with invisibility—with the wicked looking handgun still in the assassins hands—we would be very much un-invisible. Oh, and we would die.

The assassin taking advantage of our decapitated state stepped forward and grabbed Chris by her forearm and put the gun to her temple.

“Where is the cheese!” He sang in his awfully high opera. “Tell me or the girl will get her brains blown out all over the floor!”

I couldn’t say anything I was still so stupefied by his horrible singing voice.

Just then the reinforcement arrived. It was that gnomish cavalry! I could hear them coming before I saw them. They burst into the dining hall carrying tiny trumpets to their lips. The gnome with the chainsaw was in the front of the small cavalry. They were ridding atop grotesquely large sewer rats, which were scuttling across the floor ferociously toward the assassin.

By the time Sir Champagne noticed the gnomes were already upon him.

The Rats leaped off the floor and began climbing up Sir Champagne pants. The gnomes began prodding his bottom with spears and beating his kneecaps with tiny clubs.

The assassin screamed like a little girl for the second time that evening. Boy, I thought. For an assassin he sure is girly.

I grabbed Chrysanthemum’s arm and we fled out of the kitchen. Ironically I noticed that Chris still had her purple purse around her left shoulder where the cheese had been safely stowed away the entire time.

While the assassin was busy fighting off the rats and gnomes we ran out of the dining hall and out the front door.

To Be Continued…

UFS: (Unidentified Flying Sausages) Part 13

It was at that precise moment that the butler gnome decided to bring in the next course of our meal. He walked into the dining hall in a miniature tuxedo caring the tray of round hot sizzling sausages over his head. As soon as he noticed the assassin in the room holding the silver dueling handgun, he dropped the sausages to the floor with a squeak and ran from the room babbling nonsense.

I looked at the sausages lying on the floor and looked meaningfully at Chris. She caught my glance out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t give away that she had seen my gesture. She knew what I wanted her to do. I could see the little vein appearing on her forehead as it always did when she was concentrating super hard.

I of course began to stall for time. “Who are you!?” I demanded as if I already hadn’t figured it out.

“I am an assassin, of course you puerile twit, and I’m here to recuperate the cheese for Lord El Stinko. “You’ll understand, his Excellency doesn’t take kindly to pilfering. It’s simply unadorned vulgarity. If you don’t yield the cheese, I have been mandated to terminate you.”

Not if you get a face full of sausage first! I thought to myself with some measure of satisfaction as I noticed the tray of sausages on the floor wiggling menacingly.

“I see,” I said carefully, “and do you expect us to yield the cheese so easily?”

“Why certainly, that is if you value your unspeakably bleak and non-principled actualities you ought to evidently hand over the cheese.” Sir Champagne said smugly. He was confident that he had us trapped.

There was a sudden explosion of sausages, the greasy missiles flew through the air toward Sir Champagne, and struck him in various places on his face! He squealed like a woman and dropped his silvery long handgun to the floor and began swatting at the grease smudges on his face. I hoped that some of the spicy juices from the delicious deli product would get into his eyes and buy us just a bit more time to escape! And perhaps cause permanent blindness.

 Chrysanthemum had done her part and now it was my turn. I began to concentrate. If my calculation was correct then the bigger the object was the more difficult it would be to vanish, and so I focused on the gun on the floor. Sir Champagne was no longer holding it in his hand and so I would be able to get rid of it separately without having to bring the assassin with the gun.

“Curse you brats,” The knight screamed at us.

“Come on and do it already!” Chris screamed at me urgently.

I was focusing as hard as I could; it was our only hope of getting out of this room without being shot.

The gun began to quiver slightly, and I felt the overwhelming exhilarating feeling of power flowing through my body like a torrent of water, but just then the assassin did something completely unexpected, he began to sing. And he wasn’t singing just anything… It was opera!

To Be Continued on Part 14…

The Perfect Assassin Part 12

Chris really never liked Mr. Thumb, and so she wasn’t very distraught that I had suddenly “vanished” him or whatever it was that I had done to him. The gnomes left us alone for the most part, they understood that Mr. Thumb had been training us and they knew that we were guests in Mr. Thumbs home. However, they definitely seemed more leery around us, me in particular. I was glad, I definitely didn't want to get on the bad side of the gnomes again, I sort of like the way my face looks with the nose still attached.

We looked around in the woods surrounding Liberty for Mr. Thumb, hoping that perhaps I had merely made him teleport to a different location rather than cause him to cease to exist. My secondary power was clearly more powerful than either of us had imagined. Of course, it was just as difficult to replicate, like trying to squeeze a watermelon through your nostril difficult. 

I tried to make several boulders disappear after the incident by focusing really really hard, I only managed to give myself a splitting headache. I decided to stop least I give myself an aneurism. It appeared that I had to be extremely irritated for my second power to function properly.

“Well what do we do now?” Chris asked after we had searched the entire forest for the thousandth time that day. Mr. Thumb’s gnomes also helped us search, their squeaky incomprehensible voices echoing mournfully through the trees. Only Mr. Thumb would be able to understand what they were trying to say.

“Let’s go back to the house and get something to eat.” I replied tiredly.

Mr. Thumb’s estate was a very pleasant stately home. Despite his obvious insanity it appeared that Mr. Thumb did quite well for himself by selling his gnomes. I wondered if any of the people who bought the gnomes realized that they were actually alive…

“Mr. Thumb might have been crazy,” Chris said over our dinner that night. "But at lease he did help us to do something… Now that we don’t have him it’s like we’re lost in the middle of the desert not knowing which direction to travel."

We sat in the dining room, a long dim room. Light dimly shone from large glowing crystal chandeliers from above. Paintings of former Crazy Thumbkins stared down at us from their portraits, many of their eyes were pointing in opposite directions I noticed idly.

“Yes.” I agreed wistfully. “Maybe you could have a look in your crystal ball and see what we need to do next. I could write down everything that you see so that we don’t forget.”

“I’ve already tried that and I didn’t see anything. The future for us is a big, blah…”

Silence ensued, for a brief moment, before it was suddenly broken by a voice as smooth as quicksilver in the dusky light. “That’s because I’m afraid the road ends for you to here…” the man’s voice said in the shadows at the other side of the long dining room.

I turned almost choking on the piece of meat I had been chewing. I hadn’t even noticed the figure sitting at the head of the long banquet-style table. He had been watching the whole time as we ate. It was really quite remarkable that the gnomes of the house had not noticed him either.

The man was swathed in the shadows but I could make out in the dim lighting that he wore a white powdered wig. He wore a navy blue elongated suit coat made with intricately woven fabric, and sported a high collar and a vest underneath with a silver chain leading into the pocket. Like Lord El Stinko he wore a frilly cravat at his collar, which gave him an aura of importance and menace, pinned down with a sapphire gem.

In his hand he held a monocle on the end of a long silver pole, which he was examining nonchalantly.

“Habitually when one is first introduced to a member of aristocracy it is customary to bow or curtsy.” The man spoke again in his British accent. “However, since it seems that you two have lost your reason at the sight of me, I shall extenuate you from your societal duties for the time being, and overlook your abhorrent manners.”

“Who are you?” I asked finally regaining my voice.

“You may refer to me as Sir Pierre de La Champagne."

"Gesundheit." Chris said chuckling to herself.

"And why exactly have you come?" I asked.

"To annihilate you naturally..." He said simply, pulling out a long silver dueling handgun from his suit coat pocket with a silk blue handkerchief. "I am what you would call, le chevalier parfait, qui est un tueur."

To Be Continued on Part 13...