Post by icebear on Feb 21, 2010 22:46:38 GMT -5
From the literature section of bearfabrique.org, a tale originally published in the Fantek/Gateways journal in the early 90s:
Henrietta Johnson and the Three Bears
Copyright (C) 91-95 Ted Holden
Once upon a time, not terribly long ago in fact, near one of
the nation's larger cities, there was a "modern" zoo, of the
sort which people had begun to call a "natural habitat" zoo.
And, at this zoo, working as an animal keeper and veterinarian's
assistant, there was a young girl named Henrietta "Goldilocks"
Johnson; she had acquired the nickname because of her affinity
for bears, and because she fed them and they followed her
around. Henrietta Johnson was eighteen years old, about five
feet ten inches tall, had an angel's face with skin about the
color you would get mixing milk and hershey's chocolate six to
one, and had a body capable of stopping diesel locomotives in
their tracks. Most people have to work at inciting a riot;
Henrietta could incite riots just walking down the sidewalk.
The princes of the city began to notice that something was
fundamentally out of balance in the city's economy and in their
normal flow of revenues, that big games, rock concerts, big
fights, major drug deals, disco parlor happenings, and other
kinds of ordinary fund-raising events were going largely
unattended and that large crowds of people, many of the sort
which normally attended activities such as those mentioned, were
increasingly in evidence at the city zoo for some reason. The
princes of the city were concerned with this phenomenon, since
there was no real way for them to raise money at the city zoo.
The problem was soon under discussion at a late night meeting
of the city's secondary Chamber of Commerce, the one whose
activities you don't normally read about in the business section
of the daily newspaper. "We've got to get that Henrietta
Johnson married and out of circulation" said Big Jake Wilson,
the chairman of the board.
"It aint like there aint a couple thousand guys out there tryin
day an night, Jake..." replied Dan the Dude Danford, one of the
city's disco kingpins. "Got any ideas?"
"They aint been tryin hard enough." continued Jake. Jake
turned his gaze to Ricardo (Rick the Rooster) Rincenti,
connoisseur of women and prototype American Gigolo, every
woman's dream. Rick looked the part of a youthful
middle-eastern potentate, with an olive complexion, wavy hair, a
Roman nose, and a $700 suit. For pure libidinal bang for the
buck, so to speak, Rick was said to have no peer. "You ever
been married, Rick?" he asked.
"Oh no, now wait a minute here fellas..." Rick replied, but all
eyes were on him and he knew it was too late; the only way out
of this one would have been not to have shown up for the
meeting. It was decided right then and there that Rick and
Henrietta were to be married after a whirlwind courtship of two
weeks.
Henrietta, however, had numerous sources of information of her
own; in this case, the pigeons who had watched the chamber of
commerce meeting from the 35'th floor window-sill. Henrietta
wasn't really ready to get married just yet, and she had the
chamber figured as a gang of turkeys. And, when Rick the
Rooster showed up in his red Ferarri Testarosa three nights
later in an Yves St. Laurent suit, flowers in hand, she was
ready.
Rick the Rooster always came prepared. Aside from the $700
suit, he always packed, ported, and sported the latest in
Italian hosiery, French cologne, gold and silver jewelry,
Western birth-control technology and, of course, his rabbits
foot. Rick never went anywhere without his rabbits foot,
figuring it brought him luck and kept evil spirits away. In
fact, Rick's reputation for being superstitious preceeded him
somewhat and, knowing of this, Henrietta had prepared her little
cottage especially for him that night.
"Won't you come in?" she asked. Rick entered the little
cottage, halfway stumbling over the step down from the doorway
because of the poor lighting, mostly beeswax candles. He began
to notice a rather astonishing collection of mystic symbols,
Tarot cards, iron pentangles, shrunken heads, and like
parephenalia spread out over small tables and other surfaces and
hung about from the ceiling, the skylight, and numerous nooks
and crannies in the eerie dwelling. In one corner was an
ancient spinning wheel, at least two hundred years old. There
was a frightening wolf's head mounted on a plaque on the wall
over the small chimney and, on the opposite wall where Rick
might have figured a telivision or at least SOMETHING from the
20'th century to have been, a large poster of Lon Chaney in his
Wolf-Man alter ego and the insignia "Walk Like a Man, Kill Like
a Wolf!" in Gothic calligraphy. Several posters depicting
scenes from Cecil B. DeMill renditions of ancient Babylon hung
about on other walls.
Rick supressed a shudder. "Man!, nobody said anything about
this chick being into the occult!" he thought to himself. "You
much into werewolves?" he asked.
"Oh, not me." the girl replied. "I just stay here during
summers while I'm not in school. The cottage and most of the
stuff belongs to the old dude who runs the zoo, any rate, I
don't have the nerve to try to redecorate it. You look a little
nervous... say, could you use a drink or something?"
"Don't mind if I do..." Rick replied, "You got any wine cooler
or a malt lager around?"
"That kind of stuff is for yuppies!" Henrietta replied.
"Where my people come from, the folks take their drinking more
seriously than that!"
Henrietta disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two
tall glasses of planters punch. "Only problem is..." she
continued, "most of the guys from the islands my parents came
from can't really handle the stuff. They end up breaking up all
the furniture and trying to beat up everybody they come across.
Anybody I marry has GOT to be able to hold his liquor!"
"I aint ever had any problems in THAT department!" replied
Rick, quaffing the glass, and beginning to get a first good look
at Henrietta after getting over his initial reaction to the
cottage.
"You feel like going out driving in the Ferarri?" Rick asked.
"I'd thought we might just stick around awhile and get to know
each other." Henrietta replied.
"You got a radio or anything to dance to?" he asked.
"Sure..." she said, suiting actions to words, and soon they
were dancing to the strains of the Credence Clearwater Revival's
"Bad Moon Risin", Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs' "Hey There
Little Red Ridin Hood", and other great hits of the 50's and
60's, and drinking more of the planters punch, Henrietta's
mother's recipe with six different kinds of rum, coconut milk,
brown sugar, guanabana juice, and eleven different herbs and
spices.
Rick was starting to lose control and was more than a little
bit woozy, dancing closely with Henrietta, wolfing down more of
the island punch, and howling along with Sam the Sham, when of a
sudden, Henrietta stopped in the middle of a twirl directly
under the open skylight, looked up, and gasped "Oh my God,
there's a full moon out tonight, isn't there?!"
"Seems to be..." replied Rick. "What about it?"
"Oh nothing I suppose..." replied Henrietta, "guess you only go
around once... what do you say we finish that pitcher of punch
and then go to bed?"
"Tremendous idea!" replied Rick.
Rick finished his fair share of the remainder of the punch and
then passed out on the floor and Henrietta CARRIED him to bed
and, in the morning when he woke up, next to him in bed where he
might have thought Henrietta to have been, was a large grey
female timber wolf with Henrietta's red ribbon around her neck
and wearing Henrietta's negligee.
"Did you enjoy last night?" the wolf asked, traces of a coy
smile etched across her muzzle. Rick turned ghostly pale and
was gone faster than a bat out of hell, and the other princes of
the city found him sitting on a park bench, shaking and mumbling
to himself, a sort of a vacant stare on his face.
"I owe you one, Lola" Henrietta said to the wolf as she
accompanied her back to the wolf runs.
"My pleasure..." replied the wolf, "that was the funniest thing
I ever saw."
"I'm beginnin to lose my respect for this younger generation!"
thundered Big Jake at the next meeting of the chamber of
commerce, "Bunch of limp wicks!!" Rick the Rooster endured the
humiliation without a word, figuring himself fortunate to have
recovered his sanity in the few days prior to the meeting.
"You sent a boy on a man's errand..." said Calvin the
Capitalist Calhoun (numbers, loan-sharking, money-laundering
etc. etc.). "Hell, I'LL marry the girl."
"You're already married!" replied Jake.
"What Ethel don't know won't hurt er." responded Cal and,
shortly thereafter, the meeting was adjourned.
Unfortunately, given all of the hustle and bustle of American
life, it often happens that people who succeed particularly in
some area of life never seem to have time for learning things
the rest of us regard as normal social amenities and
functionality. Cal the Capitalist had learned everything he
knew about courtship and romance from watching old Mack Sennet
films and, rather than spend the time or energy proposing to
Henrietta himself, he dispatched an employee of his, a certain
Steve "the Stooge" Stoddard, to make the necessary arrangements.
Steve the Stooge arrived at the city zoo around mid-afternoon
two days later, wearing formal clothes, including a black silk
hat, and mumbling "i can't believe i'm doing this... i can't
believe i'm doing this..." under his breath. Steve found
Henrietta simply by following the crowds and asked her for
directions to her parent's dwelling, explaining that he had some
business to conduct with them and, since Henrietta's real
parents were on vacation back at the islands at the time and
were not due back for two months, Henrietta did the next best
thing and directed him to her foster family, the bears' cottage
(Remember, this is a fairy tale and, in a fairy tale, a bear's
natural habitat IS a cottage).
Steve knocked loudly on the door of the little cottage and, at
first, there was no answer. "I have been sent to arrange a
marriage between your daughter, Henrietta Johnson, and my boss,
Calvin the Capitalist Calhoun..." he announced, "and empowered
to inform you that, should you not agree to this marriage, my
boss, Calvin the Capitalist, will foreclose the mortgage on your
cottage!"
When Papa Bear heard this, he began to howl and cry: "Uuf Uuf
Uuf Uuf, RHRHRHROHRHRHR!!! Capitalist forclose mortgage on
bears cottage, now bears have to go live with wolves, eat wolf
food stead of fish, smell BAD!!! RHRHRHRHRHROHOHRHRHR!!!"
"Calm down, big dummy!" replied Mama Bear. "Capitalist not hold
mortgage on Bear's cottage. Zoo hold; must be some kind of
mistake..."
And then, Mama Bear glanced out one of the side windows of the
little cottage and noticed Henrietta waving to her from a
distance and said "Ooooh! Understand now! Henrietta send
capitalist lackey for bears to EAT!"
Steve was standing on the porch of the little cottage trembling
in terror from all of the roaring and growling he had been
listening to up to this point. Suddenly, the door opened and,
in a trice, three sets of large brown furry forelegs and paws
whisked him into the cottage, and then the door slammed shut
behind him.
"Hey! I can't believe this, you're supposed to be tame bears...
Hey! that's an expensive suit there watch it! You can't get
away with this, my boss'll come down on you like a
load-a-bricks! Hey!, Jesus Christ!! ain't ya even gonna cook me
first!? No!! I didn't mean that!! Ouch!! That water's hot!
Hey! don't close that lid over me!!...
Henrietta walked off shaking her head and thinking "Damn!,
I'm never going to be able to teach those bears any manners!"
The following Thursday evening at the Chamber of Commerce
meeting, one of the larger varieties of winged denizens of the
zoo (of the sort which normally eats dead things) returned the
earthly remains of Steve the Stooge, mostly just some
well-gnawed bones and the silk hat, through an open window of
the board room.
"You know, it's a shame..." said Cal the Capitalist, a pained
expression on his face, "Sometimes I wonder what's going to
become of our American Free Enterprise system, I mean, it's
gettin to where I can't find competent help any more!"
"We may have more of a problem here than I figured." said Big
Jake, "Maybe I'd better call somebody in from Detroit and take
care of this Chick!"
There were boos and hisses in the room: "Loosin yer nerve,
Jake?" "C'mon, Jake, this is gettin to be a challenge!" "This
was just gettin to be fun, Jake..." "Before you do that, Jake,
let me take a shot at it." This last voice was that of Karl
(the Kidnapper) McCormick, whose nickname was a completely
adequate description of his trade.
"You gonna try to kidnap the chick and marry her?" asked Jake.
"Couldn't hurt to try..." replied Karl, "Couldn't possibly be
any trickier than baggin them two DEA agents last month." And,
shortly thereafter on that note, the meeting was adjourned.
Rick the Rooster left the meeting and paid a visit to his
grandmother, the neighborhood palm-reader. "Grandma..." he
began, "you gotta level with me, I know you've probably been
hearing about the chick at the zoo and what happened the other
night... are there REALLY any werewolves left in the world?"
"Not really," replied Grandma Rincenti, "but there's plenty of
DUMMIES in the world who'll believe anything they hear (staring
at Rick as she spoke) and the effect is just about the same."
"That chick switched a real wolf on me!?" said Rick.
"Smart girl." said Grandma Rincenti, "Smart girl, good deal
brighter than those society types I keep seein you with. Kind
of a shame she's gonna end up with that idiot kidnapper instead
of you..."
It might have been too late for somebody driving more ordinary
machinery, but Rick made it to zoo in a 160 mph hurry in the
Testarossa, and noted Karl McCormick's van peeling away from in
front of Henrietta's cottage. Rick dashed into Henrietta's
cottage, picking up a few things he figured might be
appropriate, and then stopped by the wolf runs. "Henrietta
needs your help..." he explained to his erstwhile acquaintance,
"and besides, how often does a wolf get to ride in a Ferarri?"
The big timberwolf hopped into the passenger seat of the
Ferarri, a gleefull smile on her face, and they were off.
Rick sped off to Paddy O'Shea's Tavern where he figured Karl
the Kidnapper would be having a few beers and boasting with his
friends before driving Henrietta (who was handcuffed and locked
in the back of Karl's kidnapping van) off on their honeymoon to
the No-Tell Motel on route 7. He found Karl's van out in the
parking lot beside the tavern.
"I have to admire a girl who could pull off a stunt like
that..." he said as he opened the rear door of the van with one
of his trusty lock picks.
"MMMHHMMMHMHM" replied Henrietta; Rick removed the gag.
"You can go ahead and marry Karl if you want, but I wouldn't
recommend it..." Rick continued, "he's into all kinds of weird
games with whips and chains and what not...", you'd be better
off with a guy like me!"
"I could almost believe that..." replied Henrietta, "if you can
get me loose from some of these chains, we could at least go
somewhere and talk about it." Rick undid the locks and chains.
"I brought you a pair of jeans and a sweat-shirt", Rick said,
"I'll need your dress for your friend in the car." Henrietta
chuckled, noticing Lola as she got out of the van and, shortly,
the big wolf, wearing Henrietta's dress, had taken Henrietta's
place in the van.
"You know how to get back to the zoo from the No-Tell.." Rick
said, for a wolf on foot it's just about five miles over the
hills there, just head straight out from the motel... you don't
really need to bite the guy a whole lot, just scare the holy
hell out of him." Rick produced an ad poster from The American
Werewolf in London, "can you make a face like that??"
"God!, that's scary!" replied Lola "I guess I could try..."
"Yeah, that's close enough!" said Rick.
Karl the Kidnapper drove off towards the No-Tell Motel,
pleasantly inebriated, and switched on the car stereo in which,
unbeknownst to him, Rick had placed Henrietta's Sam the Sham
tape:
"Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are lookin good,
you're every-thaang a big bad wolf could want... Awooooo -
oooooo oooo..."
Karl joined in: "Ahhwoooooo-oooo-ooooo-oooooooooooooo...",
and, at this point, he noticed a really GOOD wolf call from the
rear of the van: "Ahr, Ahh roooooooooooooooooooo -
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..."
"Whooo-eee, my, my, my!!!", Karl chuckled, " you do a really
MEAN wolf imitation there little darlin, heh, heh, heh..." And
then:
"Hey!! You're supposed to be GAGGED!!??"
The rest of this part of the story is, perhaps, best left to
the reader's imagination.
Rick and Henrietta collected Lola and a couple of Henrietta's
other pals, drove off into the sunset in the red Ferarri and,
the last anybody heard, had opened their own zoo and were living happily ever after.
Henrietta Johnson and the Three Bears
Copyright (C) 91-95 Ted Holden
Once upon a time, not terribly long ago in fact, near one of
the nation's larger cities, there was a "modern" zoo, of the
sort which people had begun to call a "natural habitat" zoo.
And, at this zoo, working as an animal keeper and veterinarian's
assistant, there was a young girl named Henrietta "Goldilocks"
Johnson; she had acquired the nickname because of her affinity
for bears, and because she fed them and they followed her
around. Henrietta Johnson was eighteen years old, about five
feet ten inches tall, had an angel's face with skin about the
color you would get mixing milk and hershey's chocolate six to
one, and had a body capable of stopping diesel locomotives in
their tracks. Most people have to work at inciting a riot;
Henrietta could incite riots just walking down the sidewalk.
The princes of the city began to notice that something was
fundamentally out of balance in the city's economy and in their
normal flow of revenues, that big games, rock concerts, big
fights, major drug deals, disco parlor happenings, and other
kinds of ordinary fund-raising events were going largely
unattended and that large crowds of people, many of the sort
which normally attended activities such as those mentioned, were
increasingly in evidence at the city zoo for some reason. The
princes of the city were concerned with this phenomenon, since
there was no real way for them to raise money at the city zoo.
The problem was soon under discussion at a late night meeting
of the city's secondary Chamber of Commerce, the one whose
activities you don't normally read about in the business section
of the daily newspaper. "We've got to get that Henrietta
Johnson married and out of circulation" said Big Jake Wilson,
the chairman of the board.
"It aint like there aint a couple thousand guys out there tryin
day an night, Jake..." replied Dan the Dude Danford, one of the
city's disco kingpins. "Got any ideas?"
"They aint been tryin hard enough." continued Jake. Jake
turned his gaze to Ricardo (Rick the Rooster) Rincenti,
connoisseur of women and prototype American Gigolo, every
woman's dream. Rick looked the part of a youthful
middle-eastern potentate, with an olive complexion, wavy hair, a
Roman nose, and a $700 suit. For pure libidinal bang for the
buck, so to speak, Rick was said to have no peer. "You ever
been married, Rick?" he asked.
"Oh no, now wait a minute here fellas..." Rick replied, but all
eyes were on him and he knew it was too late; the only way out
of this one would have been not to have shown up for the
meeting. It was decided right then and there that Rick and
Henrietta were to be married after a whirlwind courtship of two
weeks.
Henrietta, however, had numerous sources of information of her
own; in this case, the pigeons who had watched the chamber of
commerce meeting from the 35'th floor window-sill. Henrietta
wasn't really ready to get married just yet, and she had the
chamber figured as a gang of turkeys. And, when Rick the
Rooster showed up in his red Ferarri Testarosa three nights
later in an Yves St. Laurent suit, flowers in hand, she was
ready.
Rick the Rooster always came prepared. Aside from the $700
suit, he always packed, ported, and sported the latest in
Italian hosiery, French cologne, gold and silver jewelry,
Western birth-control technology and, of course, his rabbits
foot. Rick never went anywhere without his rabbits foot,
figuring it brought him luck and kept evil spirits away. In
fact, Rick's reputation for being superstitious preceeded him
somewhat and, knowing of this, Henrietta had prepared her little
cottage especially for him that night.
"Won't you come in?" she asked. Rick entered the little
cottage, halfway stumbling over the step down from the doorway
because of the poor lighting, mostly beeswax candles. He began
to notice a rather astonishing collection of mystic symbols,
Tarot cards, iron pentangles, shrunken heads, and like
parephenalia spread out over small tables and other surfaces and
hung about from the ceiling, the skylight, and numerous nooks
and crannies in the eerie dwelling. In one corner was an
ancient spinning wheel, at least two hundred years old. There
was a frightening wolf's head mounted on a plaque on the wall
over the small chimney and, on the opposite wall where Rick
might have figured a telivision or at least SOMETHING from the
20'th century to have been, a large poster of Lon Chaney in his
Wolf-Man alter ego and the insignia "Walk Like a Man, Kill Like
a Wolf!" in Gothic calligraphy. Several posters depicting
scenes from Cecil B. DeMill renditions of ancient Babylon hung
about on other walls.
Rick supressed a shudder. "Man!, nobody said anything about
this chick being into the occult!" he thought to himself. "You
much into werewolves?" he asked.
"Oh, not me." the girl replied. "I just stay here during
summers while I'm not in school. The cottage and most of the
stuff belongs to the old dude who runs the zoo, any rate, I
don't have the nerve to try to redecorate it. You look a little
nervous... say, could you use a drink or something?"
"Don't mind if I do..." Rick replied, "You got any wine cooler
or a malt lager around?"
"That kind of stuff is for yuppies!" Henrietta replied.
"Where my people come from, the folks take their drinking more
seriously than that!"
Henrietta disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two
tall glasses of planters punch. "Only problem is..." she
continued, "most of the guys from the islands my parents came
from can't really handle the stuff. They end up breaking up all
the furniture and trying to beat up everybody they come across.
Anybody I marry has GOT to be able to hold his liquor!"
"I aint ever had any problems in THAT department!" replied
Rick, quaffing the glass, and beginning to get a first good look
at Henrietta after getting over his initial reaction to the
cottage.
"You feel like going out driving in the Ferarri?" Rick asked.
"I'd thought we might just stick around awhile and get to know
each other." Henrietta replied.
"You got a radio or anything to dance to?" he asked.
"Sure..." she said, suiting actions to words, and soon they
were dancing to the strains of the Credence Clearwater Revival's
"Bad Moon Risin", Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs' "Hey There
Little Red Ridin Hood", and other great hits of the 50's and
60's, and drinking more of the planters punch, Henrietta's
mother's recipe with six different kinds of rum, coconut milk,
brown sugar, guanabana juice, and eleven different herbs and
spices.
Rick was starting to lose control and was more than a little
bit woozy, dancing closely with Henrietta, wolfing down more of
the island punch, and howling along with Sam the Sham, when of a
sudden, Henrietta stopped in the middle of a twirl directly
under the open skylight, looked up, and gasped "Oh my God,
there's a full moon out tonight, isn't there?!"
"Seems to be..." replied Rick. "What about it?"
"Oh nothing I suppose..." replied Henrietta, "guess you only go
around once... what do you say we finish that pitcher of punch
and then go to bed?"
"Tremendous idea!" replied Rick.
Rick finished his fair share of the remainder of the punch and
then passed out on the floor and Henrietta CARRIED him to bed
and, in the morning when he woke up, next to him in bed where he
might have thought Henrietta to have been, was a large grey
female timber wolf with Henrietta's red ribbon around her neck
and wearing Henrietta's negligee.
"Did you enjoy last night?" the wolf asked, traces of a coy
smile etched across her muzzle. Rick turned ghostly pale and
was gone faster than a bat out of hell, and the other princes of
the city found him sitting on a park bench, shaking and mumbling
to himself, a sort of a vacant stare on his face.
"I owe you one, Lola" Henrietta said to the wolf as she
accompanied her back to the wolf runs.
"My pleasure..." replied the wolf, "that was the funniest thing
I ever saw."
"I'm beginnin to lose my respect for this younger generation!"
thundered Big Jake at the next meeting of the chamber of
commerce, "Bunch of limp wicks!!" Rick the Rooster endured the
humiliation without a word, figuring himself fortunate to have
recovered his sanity in the few days prior to the meeting.
"You sent a boy on a man's errand..." said Calvin the
Capitalist Calhoun (numbers, loan-sharking, money-laundering
etc. etc.). "Hell, I'LL marry the girl."
"You're already married!" replied Jake.
"What Ethel don't know won't hurt er." responded Cal and,
shortly thereafter, the meeting was adjourned.
Unfortunately, given all of the hustle and bustle of American
life, it often happens that people who succeed particularly in
some area of life never seem to have time for learning things
the rest of us regard as normal social amenities and
functionality. Cal the Capitalist had learned everything he
knew about courtship and romance from watching old Mack Sennet
films and, rather than spend the time or energy proposing to
Henrietta himself, he dispatched an employee of his, a certain
Steve "the Stooge" Stoddard, to make the necessary arrangements.
Steve the Stooge arrived at the city zoo around mid-afternoon
two days later, wearing formal clothes, including a black silk
hat, and mumbling "i can't believe i'm doing this... i can't
believe i'm doing this..." under his breath. Steve found
Henrietta simply by following the crowds and asked her for
directions to her parent's dwelling, explaining that he had some
business to conduct with them and, since Henrietta's real
parents were on vacation back at the islands at the time and
were not due back for two months, Henrietta did the next best
thing and directed him to her foster family, the bears' cottage
(Remember, this is a fairy tale and, in a fairy tale, a bear's
natural habitat IS a cottage).
Steve knocked loudly on the door of the little cottage and, at
first, there was no answer. "I have been sent to arrange a
marriage between your daughter, Henrietta Johnson, and my boss,
Calvin the Capitalist Calhoun..." he announced, "and empowered
to inform you that, should you not agree to this marriage, my
boss, Calvin the Capitalist, will foreclose the mortgage on your
cottage!"
When Papa Bear heard this, he began to howl and cry: "Uuf Uuf
Uuf Uuf, RHRHRHROHRHRHR!!! Capitalist forclose mortgage on
bears cottage, now bears have to go live with wolves, eat wolf
food stead of fish, smell BAD!!! RHRHRHRHRHROHOHRHRHR!!!"
"Calm down, big dummy!" replied Mama Bear. "Capitalist not hold
mortgage on Bear's cottage. Zoo hold; must be some kind of
mistake..."
And then, Mama Bear glanced out one of the side windows of the
little cottage and noticed Henrietta waving to her from a
distance and said "Ooooh! Understand now! Henrietta send
capitalist lackey for bears to EAT!"
Steve was standing on the porch of the little cottage trembling
in terror from all of the roaring and growling he had been
listening to up to this point. Suddenly, the door opened and,
in a trice, three sets of large brown furry forelegs and paws
whisked him into the cottage, and then the door slammed shut
behind him.
"Hey! I can't believe this, you're supposed to be tame bears...
Hey! that's an expensive suit there watch it! You can't get
away with this, my boss'll come down on you like a
load-a-bricks! Hey!, Jesus Christ!! ain't ya even gonna cook me
first!? No!! I didn't mean that!! Ouch!! That water's hot!
Hey! don't close that lid over me!!...
Henrietta walked off shaking her head and thinking "Damn!,
I'm never going to be able to teach those bears any manners!"
The following Thursday evening at the Chamber of Commerce
meeting, one of the larger varieties of winged denizens of the
zoo (of the sort which normally eats dead things) returned the
earthly remains of Steve the Stooge, mostly just some
well-gnawed bones and the silk hat, through an open window of
the board room.
"You know, it's a shame..." said Cal the Capitalist, a pained
expression on his face, "Sometimes I wonder what's going to
become of our American Free Enterprise system, I mean, it's
gettin to where I can't find competent help any more!"
"We may have more of a problem here than I figured." said Big
Jake, "Maybe I'd better call somebody in from Detroit and take
care of this Chick!"
There were boos and hisses in the room: "Loosin yer nerve,
Jake?" "C'mon, Jake, this is gettin to be a challenge!" "This
was just gettin to be fun, Jake..." "Before you do that, Jake,
let me take a shot at it." This last voice was that of Karl
(the Kidnapper) McCormick, whose nickname was a completely
adequate description of his trade.
"You gonna try to kidnap the chick and marry her?" asked Jake.
"Couldn't hurt to try..." replied Karl, "Couldn't possibly be
any trickier than baggin them two DEA agents last month." And,
shortly thereafter on that note, the meeting was adjourned.
Rick the Rooster left the meeting and paid a visit to his
grandmother, the neighborhood palm-reader. "Grandma..." he
began, "you gotta level with me, I know you've probably been
hearing about the chick at the zoo and what happened the other
night... are there REALLY any werewolves left in the world?"
"Not really," replied Grandma Rincenti, "but there's plenty of
DUMMIES in the world who'll believe anything they hear (staring
at Rick as she spoke) and the effect is just about the same."
"That chick switched a real wolf on me!?" said Rick.
"Smart girl." said Grandma Rincenti, "Smart girl, good deal
brighter than those society types I keep seein you with. Kind
of a shame she's gonna end up with that idiot kidnapper instead
of you..."
It might have been too late for somebody driving more ordinary
machinery, but Rick made it to zoo in a 160 mph hurry in the
Testarossa, and noted Karl McCormick's van peeling away from in
front of Henrietta's cottage. Rick dashed into Henrietta's
cottage, picking up a few things he figured might be
appropriate, and then stopped by the wolf runs. "Henrietta
needs your help..." he explained to his erstwhile acquaintance,
"and besides, how often does a wolf get to ride in a Ferarri?"
The big timberwolf hopped into the passenger seat of the
Ferarri, a gleefull smile on her face, and they were off.
Rick sped off to Paddy O'Shea's Tavern where he figured Karl
the Kidnapper would be having a few beers and boasting with his
friends before driving Henrietta (who was handcuffed and locked
in the back of Karl's kidnapping van) off on their honeymoon to
the No-Tell Motel on route 7. He found Karl's van out in the
parking lot beside the tavern.
"I have to admire a girl who could pull off a stunt like
that..." he said as he opened the rear door of the van with one
of his trusty lock picks.
"MMMHHMMMHMHM" replied Henrietta; Rick removed the gag.
"You can go ahead and marry Karl if you want, but I wouldn't
recommend it..." Rick continued, "he's into all kinds of weird
games with whips and chains and what not...", you'd be better
off with a guy like me!"
"I could almost believe that..." replied Henrietta, "if you can
get me loose from some of these chains, we could at least go
somewhere and talk about it." Rick undid the locks and chains.
"I brought you a pair of jeans and a sweat-shirt", Rick said,
"I'll need your dress for your friend in the car." Henrietta
chuckled, noticing Lola as she got out of the van and, shortly,
the big wolf, wearing Henrietta's dress, had taken Henrietta's
place in the van.
"You know how to get back to the zoo from the No-Tell.." Rick
said, for a wolf on foot it's just about five miles over the
hills there, just head straight out from the motel... you don't
really need to bite the guy a whole lot, just scare the holy
hell out of him." Rick produced an ad poster from The American
Werewolf in London, "can you make a face like that??"
"God!, that's scary!" replied Lola "I guess I could try..."
"Yeah, that's close enough!" said Rick.
Karl the Kidnapper drove off towards the No-Tell Motel,
pleasantly inebriated, and switched on the car stereo in which,
unbeknownst to him, Rick had placed Henrietta's Sam the Sham
tape:
"Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are lookin good,
you're every-thaang a big bad wolf could want... Awooooo -
oooooo oooo..."
Karl joined in: "Ahhwoooooo-oooo-ooooo-oooooooooooooo...",
and, at this point, he noticed a really GOOD wolf call from the
rear of the van: "Ahr, Ahh roooooooooooooooooooo -
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..."
"Whooo-eee, my, my, my!!!", Karl chuckled, " you do a really
MEAN wolf imitation there little darlin, heh, heh, heh..." And
then:
"Hey!! You're supposed to be GAGGED!!??"
The rest of this part of the story is, perhaps, best left to
the reader's imagination.
Rick and Henrietta collected Lola and a couple of Henrietta's
other pals, drove off into the sunset in the red Ferarri and,
the last anybody heard, had opened their own zoo and were living happily ever after.
