A New Jeopardy

Part Three
by Jo Anzalone

"And WITH the acid drip," Franki probed.

"Well, the theory is that with the acid diluting the bearwolf saliva, the Energizer Bunny cells are then able to merge with those of the bearwolf's and mitigate the transformation into a...."

"A WHAT?" shouted Buggie.

"A...bunnybear," Joimus sighed. "But it's only a theory." Just then a terrible roaring noise came to their ears, growing steadily and quickly closer and closer to the hapless gathering atop the wooded ridge.

***************

"By the gods!" Maximus shouted, his hand going for his gladius. "What NOW?"

The sound grew and grew until Colin was forced to stuff his sideburns into his ear canals to block the over-decibelations assaulting not only his hammers but his anvils and even his cochleas as well.

"Did someone think Hammers and Anvils?" Beck asked quickly, always and ever attuned to Eastly references. Colin, blithely now blocked, could not hear her question, however, and so the query remained unanswered as lovely blurred snowflakes began to fall and an enormous grey locomotive pulled to a stop at the edge of the small clearing.

                             

"There are no TRACKS!" protested Marti. How can she have a train in this forest if there are no TRACKS??"

As the newly-arrived vehicle was a steam engine, everything was blotted out for a time by huge puffs of this billowing vapor. (Or as Ando would say, "vapour." Joimus, being a Pennsylvanian, though not by birth, did not use the extra "u's" in such words despite her fondness for the way they looked upon the printed page.)

                               

Finally an almost ghostly form began to take shape amidst the poofs...a large form and oddly squarish. It was porous...and... bright yellow. "This is incredible!" gasped the Countess.

"No," replied Amanda, who knew such things first hand, "it's not wearing red leotards. It's got on brown pants."

"NO! It CAN'T be!" sobbed Marti, totally and completely aghast that such a thing could be happening right in the middle of her Enchantments site. She looked at Jeff, tears streaming down her cheeks. "We're supposed to have ex-husbands causing motorcycle crashes, unhorsed wives catching pneumonia in the midst of icy streams, former pastors riddled with bullets being stalked by vultures....nice, NORMAL storylines! What is she DOING to my site?!?"

"Hullo, Sponge Bob," Joimus said pleasantly.

Sponge Bob Squarepants merely clicked his hole puncher, tipped his conductor's hat back a bit and said briskly, "Tickets, please!"

                                  

"Oh, thank God!" Marti sighed. "We don't have to get on that thing. We have no tickets." She put her hands, now almost numb from the snowy air, into her velvet pockets to warm them. "NO! It CAN'T be!" she sobbed in a terribly repetitive way as the fingers of her right hand encountered a large, gold-colored ticket nestled in the depths of her pocket. Were it not for Jeff's quick action, she might well have keeled right over into the Blue Mountain snow beside the train tracks. "TRACKS!" she shrieked. "There were no tracks just a second ago!"

                                 

"This is the Polar Express, Ma'am," Sponge Bob explained patiently. "It has tracks whenever and wherever it needs them. Ticket, please!"

"Doesn't Sponge Bob's voice sound remarkably like Anthony Hopkins?" asked Julie.

"You're right!" agreed Ute. "I don't think Tom Hanks does epis and I suspect that after being Aristotle in Alexander the Great, Sponge Bob was next on Hopkins' list of must-do's."

"Makes sense," Julie nodded.

"It most certainly does NOT!" Marti fumed and would, most likely, have had more commentary on the matter had not Sponge Bob just then loomed over her menacingly and demanded, "TICKET, please!"

When a large, bright yellow sessile aquatic animal of the phylum Porifera wearing brown square pants and utilizing the voice of Sir Anthony Hopkins bellows at one in the midst of a forest full of bearwolves, well, one somehow just DOES reach into one's pocket and produce said bit of golden paper.

Bob snatched it out of her hand and proceeded to punch a long series of holes through half of it. "There!" he said, satisfied, and handing the ticket back to her announced, "You may board the train now."

Each member of the cast found a ticket somewhere about their person. Even Biebe had one under his furry hat. Terry and Hando carried the sheriff up the steps into the passenger car and settled him half-sprawled across a seat. Only one person had not boarded yet. It was the nameless newcomer. He stood in the deepening snow, facing the large sponge. "I don't want to go to the North Pole," he said. "I need to get to New South Wales before February."

"What is the name of this train?" asked Sponge Bob, sounding a bit irritated.

"The Polar Express," replied the nameless one, who was turning out to be one heckuva problem for a writer to deal with.

"And just WHY would you think a train with such a name would be going to the North Pole, may I ask?" Bob queried, cocking one large eyebrow.

"I thought that would be self-evident," the difficult stranger said, shrugging his shoulders.

Himself had paused on the top step, leaning back out a bit to hear as he, Himself, had a vested interest in the train's destination as well. Sponge Bob rolled his enormous blue eyes, shaking his whole square body back and forth in amazement at his passenger's ignorance. "Have you, then," Bob continued, "never heard of Polar, California...a small but quaint village on the coast just north of San Diego?"

"I've not," the nameless tree-namer said, but his eyes brightened considerably due to the excellence of the directional location of the quaint village. "Is that where we are going?"

Sponge Bob pulled himself up to his full squarish height, clicking his hole puncher furiously in the cold air. "I thought THAT would be self-evident, my good man!" he exclaimed somewhat haughtily. Frowning at the unnamed cast member, he said sternly, "Ticket, please!"

Once everyone was aboard, Bob himself got up onto the bottom step and waved his lantern as a signal to the engineer. Steam belched out from beneath the wheels and the train began to lurch forward, gradually gaining speed. Suddenly out from behind a small clump of withered pokeweeds ran a feminine form, sprinting along beside the moving train, straining to reach the handrail by the steps. She tripped, almost falling, but regained her footing and in a final desperate leap, grasped the rail and flipped herself up and onto the metal steps. Standing there a moment until she got her breath back, she then entered the passenger car.

"LUCILLA!" Ando exclaimed, astounded. "Where have you BEEN?"

Lucilla, gazing fondly at both Maximus and Jack as she walked down the aisle to stop beside the former Welshwoman's seat, replied, "I decided to do a final check through the rubble of my Fuegan hacienda, but the eruption destruction was so complete that the only thing remaining was a bronze shoelace from the statue of Barry Manilow that once graced my front lawn." (See Elder Epi: Lucilla's Party)

"But why are you on the train?" Ando asked.

"I've come for...him," Lucilla explained, pointing to the back row of seats where the difficult nameless unnamed wandering stranger sat alone. Not taking her eyes off the newcomer's face, she continued down the aisle, settling herself gracefully into the unoccupied seat beside him. When he turned his seagreen eyes toward her, she said softly, "I'm going to New South Wales. Where are YOU headed?"

Buggie was hovering over the sprawled Biebe, looking for some sign of life, hoping it would be human. She was in an agony of uncertainty over the effectiveness of the battery acid.

"I hope we don't have to throw him off a cliff," Joimus commented compassionately. "I would never do THAT to a character," she continued, looking meaningfully at Marti, who replied by sticking her tongue out at the Pittsburgher.

Phyllis stared out the window, watching the soft night clouds float by in the moonlight. MOONLIGHT? "Aiee!" she cried. "The moon is full!" Just then Biebe closed his eyelids and turned his head to the side, his first movement since being bitten by the bearwolf.

                                   

"Now we'll see," Joimus said, her words fraught with meaning.

"WHAT will we see?" Buggie asked, her anxiety level rising.

"If he doesn't make a sound, he will become a bunnybear. If he growls and kills us all...well...then the acid didn't work."

"Why would his silence indicate bunnybearness?" Berti the always curious asked.

"Bunnies only make noise during sex," Joimus explained. She looked at Buggie sternly. "So YOU stay away from him right now because this is something we all really need to know!"

"But what about HER?" Berti pursued, indicating Bunny, who was cuddled up against Sid.

"Oh...her? She's English."

"That's IT? She's English?" Berti said,pursing her lips.

"That's enough," Joimus replied. "And stop doing that. You look like Renee." Biebe turned his head the other direction, still keeping his eyes closed.

                                     

"Did you see that?" Franki said excitedly.

"See what?" Joimus asked.

"I think he twitched his nose!"

"Oh, I HOPE so!" Buggie cried. She leaned her face close to his, the better to observe any future nose-twitchings. Suddenly his seagreen eyes flew widely open and he sat straight up. "EEEEK!" she screamed, falling backwards into the aisle on her behind, folding her arms over her head. "Don't eat me!"

But Biebe was looking at her as though he were petrified. His nose twitched franticly, becoming more delicately rounded and much pinker in the process. Joimus wiped her palm across her brow. "Whew!" she sighed in relief.

Amazed, Franki watched as Biebe's beard changed to a soft, grey fur and spread completely over his face. The very shape of his face changed, becoming something half rabbitish, half bearish, with wide whiskers. The condition of his ears remained a Mystery as the flaps of his huge furry black hat continued to cover them.                                   

"She'd never do that to Maximus," Sue commented sagely. "She's had him in some pretty strange situations, but she'd never do THAT!"

"Well, then," Ando replied, "he'd better not get bitten by Biebe, had he?" Her jaw dropped as she said that with the sudden realization that they ALL were very much in danger of becoming bunnybears.

                                 

The Polar Express swooshed through the Pennsylvania darkness, track appearing magically in front of it as it went. Annsmac, who sat securely across the aisle with Terry's equipment between her and Biebe, took a moment to muse about the trainliness of the current storyline. "At least no one with large incisors will be murdered in this one," she thought. Suddenly Biebe leapt into the aisle, his face looming over Terry's equipment, his incisors hanging well down over his lower lip. "Then again," she added to herself, "that might yet be possible."

The Orient Express, where epilife had had its origin, was divided into numerous small, private compartments. This train, howsomever, was all open so that the action took place in full view of its occupants. As Biebe turned his head back and forth, he saw all 48 of the other passengers as well as the large yellow thing that stood at the front of the car. He was truly horrified by their presence. He needed to find a small, dark place...and quickly! In a series of great hops, still wearing his jeans and plaid shirt, Biebe BunnyBear fled toward the back of the car.

The Captain stepped into the aisle just as Biebe leapt past, and his cheek was accidently grazed by an incisor. The Captain crumpled like a shook-out sugar sack.

"NoooOooOoo!" cried Juditha, bending over him. As the moon was already full, the Captain's transformation happened almost instantly and he went hopping down the aisle in Biebe's wake.

"My God!" cried Marti, who had hoped the Captain would be somewhat more Lucky than THAT. "He's become a Jack Rabbit!!"

                                     

Maximus stood, ready to follow them, but Joimus rested her hand on his forearm, saying, "Maximus, stop. You have suffered enough in epilife." She looked levelly at Bud. "Let HIM go."

Very, very gently he used his free hand to remove hers from his arm. "My dear," he said, a tender smile slightly curving his lips, "you above everyone should know that my epifate is to suffer endlessly. It's what I do. It's who I am. You must let me go." Softly he stroked her cheek. "We'll always have apple pie."

                                       

She sighed, her eyes brimming with tears. He was right. She knew he was right. The entire cast knew he was right. Sucking in a great, ragged breath, she nodded her head silently. Quickly he pressed his lips hard against hers, then turned, and cape flowing, dashed down the aisle.

Next

Write the Author     Back to Epi Index

LibrisCrowe Home