Epithet Erased, page 24
Trixie and Phoenica popped their eyes over the edge of the basket.
“Phew,” Phoenica sighed, “That was close . . .”
“She was gonna fly swat us!” Trixie slapped their hands against their face. “She was gonna swat us like a couple a’ stinkbugs!”
“And worse, it seems she’s cheating and using magic, even though it’s expressly against the rules! Unforgivable!”
“Feenie, she’s trying to kill us.”
“I have my principles.” Feenie put her hands on her hips.
“Aaah! What do we do?! W-Whaddowe DO?!” Trixie began vibrating so fast that their little neon wings looked like a hummingbird on espresso. “She’s gonna SQUISH US!”
“It’s ok! We won’t die! We’ll just get zooped back to the beginning, like Molly said!”
“HHHH!!!” Their vibrating intensified. If Lorelai could see the two of them no matter where they were hiding, then that meant they would only have enough time to sabotage one more thing. If they were lucky. “What could we mess with that’ll screw up everything else?” Trixie asked. Feenie thought over the question like it was a riddle in a magazine.
“. . . Oh!” Phoenica gasped. “How about the timer?” They looked over to the little hourglass with red sand pouring down its sides. “If we fiddle with it, the baking won’t go right!”
“Dassa true,” said Trixie. “But how do we mess with it? Flip it back over?”
“No, the only way to change the rate at which sand in an hourglass falls is to widen the hole in the center.”
“Well how are we s’posed to do that?”
“Hmm . . .” Phoenica fluttered about the hourglass as if there might be a service entrance around back or a manager she could talk to somewhere. She knocked on the cork top. It was pretty sturdy and didn’t look like it could pop off easily. “I might have one idea,” she mused. “It’s a little silly, though. Can you adjust your tail?” Trixie tried it. Their little neon tail jerked back and forth at hard angles like an iron fence. “Okay! Try putting the point down here.” Feenie guided the arrowhead of the devil tail down towards the center of the hourglass’s top. “Good! Now push the tail down as hard as you can while keeping yourself in the air!”
Feenie flew up to Trixie’s height and began to spin the imp around like the two of them were swing dancing. As they did, the tip of the tail began twisting and digging into the wine-red top of the hourglass like a drill bit. Slowly, but surely, the tail began to make headway against the cork. After about half a minute there was a distinct POP and the tip of Trixie’s tail shot down, landing with a soft spike into the sand.
“There!” Feenie cried. “Now, do you think you can carve a wider hole in the neck?”
“The neck?”
“It’s the middle part of the hourglass.”
They tried digging their tail down through the sand with Phoenica directing the movements left and right like a crossing guard. The tail hit the neck, but it was definitely too big to fit through.
“Can you squeeze it so it fits?”
“Uhh . . .” Trixie squeezed and unsqueezed their tail to see how it moved. It was awkward, like trying to individually move your toes. “I don’t think so? Oh! Maybe this’ll work.” Trixie retracted their tail from the sand and began winding it up like a clockwork soldier, twisting the tail into a spiral like a pig’s. It got tighter and tighter until it was ready to snap. “Ow,” Trixie winced. “Ow. Here, hold me down.” Feenie did. Trixie grunted and let their tail go.
The spinning tip rocketed down through the sand and drilled against the bottleneck, chipping away at it and shaving off the glass. After a few seconds, little by little, the opening began to widen. Er . . . was it a few seconds? It was hard to measure now. The sand was going twice as fast.
“Phew! We did it!” Trixie plucked their tail out of the glass like a carrot and massaged it. Some of the parts that had twisted up were a little pale and the glow had gone out of them. It reminded Trixie of the way your hand looks after you press on it and the blood rushes away. Did that mean Trixie’s glow came from their blood? Glowing blood?! Rad.
“Excellent work, Trixie!” Feenie cooed. “I wish I had a cute tail.”
“You do.” Trixie said, pointing to Feenie’s backside. “Look.” Trixie snapped a picture on their phone and showed it to Phoenica. Just above the hem line of her angel skirt was a tiny, almost indistinguishable cotton tail, like a rabbit or a microsheep. Phoenica gasped.
“OOOOOH! LITTLE BITTY SHEEP TAIL!” Phoenica spun around, desperately trying and failing to catch a glimpse of her own tail like an excitable dog. This went on for some time. “This is the best day of my LIFE.”
“Low bar,” Trixie said.
“More like low FENCE. For a SHEEP to jump over! I AM A SHEEP!!!” Phoenica got dizzy from her spinning and bonked into the hourglass, nearly knocking it over. “. . . Oh, we should probably close that hole in the top, otherwise she’ll notice.”
“Oh ya.”
The fairies looked around for a stopper they could use and settled on some of the multicolored dough left over from the cutting process. By rolling the red, orange, purple and green doughs together in specific amounts they were able to more-or-less recreate the color of the cork and plug the hole. They put the hourglass back into place so the witch wouldn’t notice and surveyed the kitchen.
What else could they ruin?
They flipped through a mental rolodex, thinking of everything a child might do in the kitchen that would cause a parent to yell at them.
The girls turned the dial on the oven up to max heat. They flung open all the drawers and cabinets. They left the water running in the sink just in case Lorelai had to pay magical water bills. Phoenica touched her hands to the floor . . . and didn’t wash them afterwards. On purpose. Oooh! The pair giggled their way all across the kitchen, sprinkling miniature mayhem along with sugar, spice, and everything mean across the floor in powdery curtains.
Finally they came to the closet in the corner of the room.
It sat silently by the back of the room, protected. The only part of the kitchen they hadn’t sullied yet. Phoenica grabbed hold of the brass knob and began rocking back and forth to open it.
“Perhaps there’s some soap in here that we can put into the sink to make bubbles!”
“Yeah,” Trixie joined her, “Or cleaning supplies that we can pour all over the floor! I’m pretty sure Lori was avoiding it. Maybe there’s some kinda secret weapon inside?”
They swung to and fro until finally the door clicked. It opened a crack, creaking slowly and letting in the light of the ever-evening sun. But before they could see what was inside—
SMACK!
A buzzing fly swatter wand slammed into them from behind, disappearing the two in a puff of smoke.
Lorelai, who had returned to the room just a moment ago, let out a long, exasperated sigh. She spun her wand in the air. The chaos of the room began sorting itself, traveling back in time along an invisible track, like a magical nanny singing everything into place.
Without looking, she closed the door.
10
No Sense of Time
In her desperation to keep her hopeful future boyfriend away from those who might endanger their relationship, Lorelai had shoved Giovanni into a strange room at the bottom of the hovel. Unlike all of the other rooms in the house, this one had no pomp or circumstance leading up to its entrance. No winding staircase, no imposing door frame, no tapestry or chandeliers. Just a little flight of stone stairs hidden behind an unassuming door.
It was a wide, wooden basement that resembled a clockmaker’s store in a storybook. Cuckoo clocks sang on the walls, chirping and clicking in chorus. Little wooden figurines tic-toc’d across the room on clockwork tracks. Giant gears big enough for a person to sleep on rotated in intricate patterns parallel to the floor, powered by some invisible engine.
Dusty evening sunshine poured in from a skylight on the ceiling that shouldn’t have been there. The witch had given Giovanni a tour of the hovel, including the backyard. He knew that there was grass and foliage above this spot, but somehow light poured in anyways like the bottom of a see-through boat.
Oh well! Must be magic. The place looked like the inside of a clocktower that had been turned sideways—the secret heart of Lorelai’s world that controlled everything through clockwork.
Giovanni had stumbled in here once before on accident while looking for the bathroom. This was where he’d found the little red hourglass he was using to time the baking contest. There were two clean rings in the dust where he’d snagged the timepiece from. The red hourglass had a twin. They kept time together. When one was flipped, the sand in both of them began to pour, even if the second hourglass was still rightside up. He checked the one he kept in his utility belt and it informed him that he had about twenty minutes left before the surprise cookies would be finished.
He danced through the room and looked for something to entertain himself until then.
“Okay,” he spun in a circle, “Let’s see, whadda we got, whadda we got . . . ? Cuckoo clock. Little soldiers. Tiny cars on tracks. Gears. Bigger gear. Third gear. Tiny car in third gear. Hmmm . . .” He was trying to find something he could play with that didn’t require ripping apart one of these machines. He didn’t want to break anything. It wasn’t his house, after all.
Suddenly, he heard something.
Behind the clickity-clack of the clocks there was a strange, hokey-pokey tune bouncing off the walls. It almost sounded like someone was humming. Giovanni rounded a corner and he found a dumpy blonde man sitting on the ground, surrounded by gears and toys that had been ripped out of their homes and cast to the floor in pell-mell piles. The man held two wooden toy soldiers in each hand like drumsticks and was air-drumming a little tune.
“Baaah, dap, BAAAAH dah-dadda baddah dadda DAH daht, DOW! PSHH! PSSH PSSH!” The man struck the gear that he decided was a cymbal hard and cracked the head off of the toy soldier in his left hand.
“Hey!” Giovanni yelled. “What’re you doin’?!”
“Hmm?” the blond man turned around. “Oh, heya, gargoyle man. Don’t mind me! I’m the dad. Father of the bride. Backstage pass and all.” He resumed his air drumming. The way that band kids do when they walk around with headphones on
“. . . You’re her dad?” Giovanni looked this man up and down. He didn’t seem much like either of the sisters, honestly. More like the kind of dude who would start talking to you unprompted on public transport and stand just close enough for you to regret smelling his breath. “How’d you get in here?”
“Oh! You know, I was just . . . sittin’ in my workshop, bangin’ out some blueprints and then—BAM!” He smacked the snare again. “Suddenly, I was here! Bam. Bam. Bam BAM, b’bam, buh bam, diggi-dugga diggi-dugga diggi-dugga diggi-dugga nyaaaow!” He turned the drumming into a guitar solo somehow. Giovanni looked at his mess.
“So you’re just . . . wreckin’ the place?”
“‘Wrecking’?” The man laughed. “Nah. Nah! I’m not wreckin. I’m checkin’. Checkin it OUT. My little girl comes up with the coolest stuff. I like to sneak-in to do some peek-in’, if y’know what I’m say-in’? Hehe. Up top!”
“I’m not gonna sully the high five for that.”
“Oooh, daaamn, rejected!” Marty turned the unrequited high five into a snap and slapped his hand against his leg. “Haha. Yeah, I like to, uh . . . take sketches of the stuff she comes up with. Then I build it for real.”
“Why?” Giovanni asked. “She already made it.”
Marty looked up at him and nodded. “Riiiiight. You’re one of her toys so you wouldn’t know. About death and all. Hehe.” He held up his hands in mock submission like he was backing away from a police officer. “Whoa, sounds like the topic just got pretty heavy. Why get heavy when you can play heavy? Heavy METAL! BOW digga DOW digga JUGGA JIGGA WUGGA!”
“No, stop. Stop.” Giovanni waved away the headache he was rapidly developing and pointed at himself. “I know about death. I am a cool dude . . . burdened with the knowledge of mortality.”
“No you’re not,” Marty scoffed.
“Uhhh yes I am?”
“No, you’re not! Hmmm.” Martin considered something lazily and lightly for about two seconds before shrugging it off. “Yeah alright. I guess I can tell ya. Not like it’s gonna matter. So! Everything my little girl makes . . . no matter how biiiiig or how intricate . . . once she’s done with it. Pow! It’s gone! Never existed. That means you, this world, and all the little critters runnin’ around in here won’t be runnin’ around for much longer. And when she’s done with you, you all, well . . . die! Haha, sorry to burst your bubble! Pop!” He took the broken soldier’s neck and held it out like a needle, popping something invisible in front of him. “Nothin’ that she makes sticks around too long. Otherwise we’d be swimmin’ in dough, y’know? Livin’ in a mansion uptown with a kilo in every pocket, haha. She’s real creative though! Great ideas! Great inspiration for the shop.”
Giovanni thought about everything he had said. It seemed a little bit sad to him. “She doesn’t, like . . . reuse any ideas? Or develop them?”
“I dunno!” Marty shrugged. “But I use them! It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement! It’s . . . symbiosis,” he said, like a little kid who had just learned a new word from a documentary they saw on TV. Weird way for a parent to talk about their child.
“. . . And you just. Come in here and rip them apart?”
“Sometimes, yeah! I can do whatever I want here. My little girl made me this magic ring! She was worried. Said I might drown or blow up or somethin’ when she wasn’t looking. But this ring lets me unmake whatever I’m touching. Keeps me outta danger! See?” He held up his hand. There were no rings on it. “. . . Whoops. Musta dropped it somewhere . . . Oh well.” He leaned forwards and gripped a huge gear, ripping it out of a contraption on the wall. The other gizmos attached to it shuddered and fell to the floor in a sad pile.
“HEY!” Giovanni yelled, using his foot to stop a piece from rolling too far away.
“Hi!” Marty waved.
“Stop that!”
The inventor looked at him with genuine confusion.
“Why?”
“Uhh, because it's your daughter’s?”
“So?” Marty shrugged. “It won’t be here for long.”
“Yeah but she made it.”
“But it won’t matter tomorrow.”
“But it matters to her now.”
Martin Blyndeff looked at Giovanni like he was an alien. He turned his head from the gargoyle to the gear a few times, bouncing his words back and forth between his two brain cells like a ping pong ball.
“Hmm . . . It’s alright!” He decided. “I’m her dad! Father knows best and all that!” he grinned, playing the Dad Card he almost never took out of his wallet. Not even to buy his daughters food. Giovanni glared at him in total disgust.
“Eww. Parents,” he spat, forgetting that he himself essentially had six kids of his own with another on the way. Possibly two. “You can’t just . . . rip out the middle of a clock. That’s the CLOCK part. You’re gonna break everything! Doesn’t this place like . . . control the whole . . . place?” He couldn't think of another word.
“What, you mean like . . . this world she made?” Marty snorted. “Pfft! What? No! This doesn’t matter. It doesn’t actually power anything.” He ripped another gear out of the wall like a dentist pulling teeth. “It’s not important. It’s just for aesthetics.”
“Aesthetics ARE important!” Giovanni said, puffing out his chest and glowing with lava.
“Huh? Ya think so?” Marty appraised the Vincent Murder getup. “Doesn’t look like it.”
Giovanni wilted a bit. Hey! He worked really hard on this costume! This guy's vibes were all wrong. He looked like the type of dude who would be a lot of fun at a party, but something about his blunt disinterest was infectious and surprisingly draining.
“Hm!” Giovanni decided. “I don’t like you!”
“Hah! That’s alright! You’ll be gone soon. But hey! Tell ya what. Maybe I’ll make a little gargoyle set for the castle I’m making, huh? Something to remember you by.” A pause as his brain reset. “Welp. Back to work!” He turned back to his sketches and plans for future designs, immediately forgetting that Giovanni was ever there. “Someone’s gotta be the breadwinner in this family! Haha.” He threw the term around with such easy confidence. “Breadwinner”. Like it was a joke.
Something about that made Giovanni mad.
“. . . What about Bear Trap?”
“Huh? What?”
“About Molly,” Giovanni frowned.
“Molly-Woll? What about her?”
“She works hard too, right?”
“Uhhh . . . yeah, I guess. She runs the store sometimes. Is it her day now . . . ? Must be if Lori’s got a bubble up. Yeah, I guess she’s working. Yeah.” Giovanni stamped his foot and posed dramatically. His gargoyle wings unfurled and he pointed a claw.
“Listen and heed my warning, obnoxious man!” he cried. “These dark wings are an OMEN! A portent of disaster from a DARK FUTURE TIMELINE! Hear me! I have a premonition . . . for you!”
“Yup. You’re one of Lori’s alright,” Marty chuckled, putting his hands on his hips like a drunk tourist heckling a special effect on a theme park ride.
“LISTEN! If you fail to take care of something . . . it won’t stick around forever!”
“Well it’s not gonna be around that long, why should I waste time caring about it?”
Giovanni scratched his chin.
Then . . . he began to laugh.
A soft chuckle that slowly grew into something maniacal. A full-on evil laugh as his gargoyle wings stretched and flexed against the stream of light creeping in through the skylight.
“Ahahaha . . . HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” He pointed a stony finger at Molly’s father, sharp with accusation. “My name is VINCENT MURDER! Soon to be the greatest villain of all time! And I have decided that you are now my enemy! This is a declaration of war! As my first act of retribution . . . TONIGHT! I shall steal the most valuable thing from your store!”
