Part VII – I want Liar… I mean Lawyer…

"Geeves!... Geeves!" screamed the Queen.

"Yis your feline-ship?" came the servant exhumed from the bowels of Buckingham Palace.

"Stop calling me that, Geeves!"

"Yis, me pussy..."

"Where is that lawyer?!"

"You mean Skippy?"

"Get that smelly slob in here or I'll have him beheaded!"

"Please remember that the Stalin days are over Liz."

"Yes, well he did take care of some rather unloyal subjects for me..."

"Yis, like history and geography me lady..."

"Just get Skippy!"

"I'm off like lightning."

With that Geeves scuffed out of the room in his antique moccasins to locate the smelly lump of Skippy.

Meanwhile, the Queen paced back and forth, shedding fur all over the carpets. "I want that wizard to pay out of his pores! Look what he's done! It isn't very becoming of a Queen to be traipsing about as a kitten..."

"So, Geeves, where is her majesty?" Skippy hoarked deeply and spat on the kitten's head, distracting it from shredding the trail of Princess Anne's wedding dress, to which Anne had no further sentimental attachment.

The Queen turned and bit into Skippy's big toe, which prominently stuck out of his Reebok shoe. Skippy kicked and flung the Queen into the open face of a suit of armour standing in the corner.

"Congratulations, sah," Geeves said. "You just sank the Queen for at least two points."

"Oh. Sorry, your majesty."

The Queen burst out the toe of the armour suit, prompting it to collapse around her. "I want liar..... I want liar... I mean, I want lawyer... BEHEADED!!!"

"Right, madame." Geeves pulled an antique axe off the wall and backhanded at Skippy. Skippy tripped on a gauntlet and fell, avoiding summary decapitation, and creating enough racket to wake the Queen's grandchildren. Screams and cries echoed down the hall from the east wing. A squad of guards ran past the open door towards the east wing, carrying a bazooka. Nobody noticed the casual observer climbing from the wreckage of the armour suit and walking away with a computer disk.

Geeves turned back to the queen and Skippy, "Shall we get on with the legal meeting and cut the cutsie shenanigans?"

"Yes, that's a good idea Geeves, I have to catch a bus in an hour. What seems to be the problem, Q?"

"I'm a CAT damn it!!! That's the problem! The wizard has turned me into a cat!! I want him to pay for it! I want him to pay out of his PORES!""

"Oh, I see, that should be simple matter of liable and small claims... what's the name?"

"The Dark One, who else?!"

"Ooh oooooh, problem. You want me to sue my boss…"

Part VI – Flying Lessons

The Phoenix, newly reborn and totally unaware of anything, looked out from an ash covered mountain top and asked, "What am I doing HERE?"

He looked on a small village in the valley and, with his wings flaming brightly, poised himself to be the symbol on Pink Floyd's mocking of the Nazi third Reich. Coiling his muscles, he launched into the air...

... And sank like a stone.

"Great, what'd I do that for?" He flapped his wings furiously and narrowly avoided a pine forest. Slowly gaining control, he pulled up and surveyed the world.

"What am I doing HERE?!"

Just then he hit wind shear, and plummeted toward the village below, crashing through the ceiling of Holey Roach Motel.

Harold crawled out of the wreckage, asking, "Did you bring my new legs?"

"Uh, no, I just dropped in."

"Oh. Well, do me a favour and go look for them."

"First tell me something."

"What?"

"Who in blue blazes am I?"

"Well, you're a big bird who just destroyed my Inn! Like it needed more after Ed..."

"Oh! Sorry..."

"Yeah, yeah, we're all sorry for something or other, but sorries just aren't going to cut it, bucko! How the fuck am I going to rebuild this place with no legs?!?"

"Don't ask me, I was only born five minutes ago. Besides, you said yourself that a new set of legs are on the way."

"Don't patronize me, chickee! I've a good mind to cook you up as a fricassee..."

"Yeah, sure." The Phoenix spread his wings and cautiously flew away.

"Just like a damn bird," said Harold. "Always flying off on ya."

Part V - The Play is the Thing!

As the Music Man sat watching one of the new Billy Bob Shakespeare plays with a sheepish grimace on his face at the orchestra's rendition of "So You Bought A Cadillac," he saw the light come up on Prospero's cell, and the violent entrance of Lickin' Linda Lovelace the... Thespian? with her opening lines:

"If by your bulging part, my fiercest father, you have put the wild waters in his roar, play them. The fly, it seems, would purr down stinking itch, But the sea, mounting the welkin's cheeks, splashes the fire out..."

The curtain dropped from its tracks, giving Moon Runner Hendrix a bruise and carpet burn on his forehead. Moon Runner had teleported into the theatre and inadvertently been mistaken for the lead in the play. Using the distraction of the falling curtain, he ran for the seats and jumped to the first row, giving Music Man a really close shave.

"Excuse me, Kimo-Sabe. I have no quarrel with you or your future children."

"No problem, thank God. Lets get out of here before the orchestra insults me further."

"Very well. How do you feel about Tahiti?"

"Sounds cool."

Moon Runner moved his arms in an irreproducible gesture, and the two found themselves on a sunlit beach.

"Actually, it's kinda hot. You know," Music Man said, "I could get to like hangin' with you."

"Cool. Drink?"

"Periodically. That looks like a bar over there. My treat. How do you suppose that girl got to be in that play?"

"Blew off Billy Bob or the director or someone, would be my guess, Kimo-Sabe." Turning to the barkeep, Moon Runner asked, "Do you know a drink called the Thunderbird?"

The bartender nodded and passed an Old Milwaukee Beer to Music Man. Opening his brew, Music Man said, "It just doesn't git any better dan dis!"

... Upon which a whole whack of Aussie surfin' babes invaded the beach with semi-automatic weapons issued by Cuba.

Moon Runner downed his drink and said, "Shall we make like Cross Town Traffic, kimo sabe?"

"Sure, anytime."

Back in the theatre, amidst the uproar and rioting animal tamers, a disembodied Voice could be heard chuckling around the mangled remains of the curtain track. No one was present to hear it.

{So did it really chuckle?}

PART IV - The Weigh In

The Holy Ghost adjusted the scale. "Even weights. This'll be a close match, boys."

The Old Messiah and the New Messiah glared into each other's eyes. "Goood."

They went into their dressing rooms. The New Messiah started flipping through last year's criminal code from Follicle, New Jersey.

"Hey, no lex before a fight!" said his trainer, and the Newfie put away the book.

The Old Messiah looked out the window and saw the flashing sign of a Seven Eleven^TM store with a broken switch. A sudden yearning for a package of Big League Chew^TM took over his soul, proving that even Messiahs are vulnerable to possession.

Part III - Four Anti-Semitics, Three Convenience Stores, Two Disciples and a Pict in a Pear Tree.

Oliver North, his Lawyer, Ma Bell, and Pa Bell all said, "I hate bagels!" at the same instant, though separated by vast distances, thus setting some sort of record. Guinness was not amused.

Oliver North and his Lawyer stood in Beckers^TM saying, "No further comment!" to a raving Pict named Hafenvlaader.

The store owner screamed, "Yoo Lackies gut oot of my stoore!" Hafenvlaader owned this store as well as Elvis Schtuckerman's house of warped tunage, but we can visit that later.

Ma and Pa Bell were trying to heist a Mac's Milk^TM store in Westbury, Connecticut, for selling bagels in a hick town. Otherwise, they have very little to do with the story.

At that precise moment, Judas Iscariot MCMLXXIII and Dr. Skuppernung, the mad eastern Gemmologist, were sitting in a little known German restaurant in little Laos on the west side barrio and felt this unusual event occur. "Kvick!" Skuppernung said. "Ve must tell ze New Messiah!"

"Yeah, yeah, let me order first, will ya?"

A young waiter named Vladimir Jones (He's a combination of Reggae singer, waiter, and line backer, but if nothing else he's a black Russian) approached their table and asked for their order. The two disciples noted Vlad's dark complexion, but suppressed their overwhelming desire to start the Local KKK Kabinet meetings just yet. Besides, they had already cleaned house at KKKmart's white sale.

"Can I Take y'order, mahn?"

"Yeah, I'll have the Hyena sauerkraut with Mexican rice platter and a killer Kool-Aid," replied Isie in a superior tone.

"Giff me de Oysters und Yogurt, pleez."

"Yah mon, right away." Vlad left in a swirl of dreads.

"Has de dress cote relaxed 'ere or vat?"

"Sure, sure, put a cork in it, Doc. Ya talk too much."

"Humpff."

They sat in silence for a moment and Isie thought about the thermodynamics of his muffler while Doc considered the possible permutations of their bar maid naked in chains with whipped cream applied to all the right places. As time passed and his little daydream continued, he applied more whipped cream and more until the bar maid was completely enveloped in whipped cream except for her hands and feet which were now flailing from suffocation under the heap of whipped cream. Then his vision faded as Vlad arrived with a tray.

"'Ere's yo food, gentlemahn," drawled Vlad as one of his dreads dangled in the rice. He dropped the plates and disappeared back into the kitchen before Doc could ask for ketchup.

Turning to the bar, he signalled the waitress. "Exkoose me. Cudt I haff..?"

"You have a problem, sir?"

"Yes, I..."

"You think you got problems? Look at me! I'm fifty seven years old and trying to make a living as a bar maid! And if that wasn't enough, when I was fourteen I was raped by a runaway bison!"

"I'm sorry..."

"Sorry doesn't cut it, pal! Where were you and your sorries when I was giving birth to twin lambs!.."

Isie and Doc both flashed looks of `I've heard this all before' and started digging into the food after Doc had removed some strands of cotton from his teeth.

Doc returned to the sanctity of his whipped cream imaginings, but the giant lump of whipped cream was still now. She was dead. Returning to reality, Doc would have nothing more to do with the bar maid – She was dead to him in life now too. Doc made a mental note to have a visit with his therapist as he started to imagine the body of his therapist naked and in chains. He started to apply the whipped cream. More and more whipped cream got added. Doc amended his mental note to find a new therapist as his previous therapist was now dead to him.

Meanwhile, outside the restaurant, Hafenvlaader hoisted a sniper rifle into his pear tree and took aim at Judas. "Hold still, you imperialist Christian..."

A wind started to stir and Hafenvlaader along with his pear tree were sucked into the funnel of a space warp. Isie never knew how close to death he had come, which was just as well, considering his heart condition.