Not Everything Brainless is Dead (17 page)

The tiny hunter threw his rifle over his shoulder and said, “Don’t run away, we’re just getting started.”

Charlie lifted him from the ground, and as he went for his bum to switch him back off, the tiny man begged, “Please, I don’t want to go back into that darkness, let me stay here wi—.”

“Yeah…” Charlie began, “he gets a little clingy from time to time.”

Dr. Malevolent had a baffled look on her face. “I’ve got two main concerns. Firstly, what on Earth are you doing carrying around a small robotic man?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Charlie said. “It’s a gift for my uncle, he’s an avid hunter.”

“Okay… okay… fair enough. Secondly, how on Earth did you fit that thing in there?” Dr. Malevolent added, pointing at the pouch.

“The thing’s bigger on the inside,” Charlie said.

She glared at him. “How is that even possible?”

“It’s magic,” the bunny replied with a laugh.   

“Shut up,” she said flatly.

Dr. Malevolent stuck her head into the pouch and almost fell into the expansive hole. Once she recovered from her near tumble, she noticed the plethora of random odds and ends in the pouch. Among other things, there was a kite, a notebook computer, a bicycle, and a few black garbage sacks filled with who knows what. She calmly closed the pouch and shrugged. This conundrum, she thought, was better left uninvestigated.

In truth, Charlie had no clue as to the origins of his costume or its enigmatic pouch. While story had it that his ancestors passed down the bunny suit from generation to generation, its true origins lost to time, Charlie was no fool. He knew that chances were slim that anyone in the distant past would have been able to create the bright blue bunny suit, or would have even wanted to; he knew its origins were much more mysterious. Charlie’s thoughts made their way back to reality as everyone jumped down from the log now that the evil pink army had disappeared.

Chapter 18: The Fourteenth Century Funhouse

They made for the hallway, and the moment their feet touched its cold stone tiles, not-so-medieval lights switched on one by one along the ceiling. Their hearts sank as they watched the lights flip on for what felt like a millennium. Eventually, they faded from view, revealing just how deep this rabbit hole went. To add insult to injury, dozens upon dozens of heavy fourteenth century wooden doors lined both sides of the hallway, leaving the survivors with an insurmountable amount of options.

Captain Rescue stomped his feet in a tantrum and whined, “We’re going to be here all year!”

Dr. Malevolent laughed. “What, you thought saving the world would be easy? Even I knew otherwise, and I’m the one who’s always trying to take it over.”

Before Captain Rescue could let the hamster and its wheel come up with a response, Stubbs snatched a loose pebble from the ground and tossed it into the hallway to spring any additional traps. While doing so, the zombie made sure to hold his throwing hand securely to prevent it from flying off with the pebble. Life as the undead certainly was not easy, but Stubbs took to it with grace and charm—and no zombie on the planet would disagree, even if it were too busy eating brains to bother.

After some fine bouncing that would have made the friendly neighborhood minotaur jealous, the pebble finally came to a rest a ways down the hall without any signs of unwanted traps. Stubbs looked to everyone else and shrugged. He stepped into the hallway, half-ready for a giant saw to fly out and chop him in two. All remained quiet, and Stubbs breathed a sigh of relief. Rather, he tried to, but then he remembered that his lungs were of little use as anything other than punching bags.

After concluding that a ghastly medieval booby trap was not going to obliterate Stubbs, everyone else entered the hallway. Now, they had to decide which doorway to open first without a clue of what could possibly be behind it. To solve this conundrum, Captain Rescue pulled a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the air. As it flipped, the hamster and its wheel, still recovering from the last request, tried hard to communicate with his hand to catch it. Apparently, the two miscommunicated, because Captain Rescue missed the coin completely and wound up slapping himself across the face.

As he ran off trying to catch the coin, Stubbs grabbed the knob of the first door on his right and opened it. Inside and sitting in a rocking chair by a fire, a female minotaur sat knitting a quilt that depicted the bouncing minotaur they had already met. The small room she must have called home had no exits or windows. Satisfied that this room was not the one they needed, Stubbs started to close the door just as the female minotaur spoke.

“Excuse me, have you seen my son?” she asked with tears in her eyes.

Stubbs looked at the quilt, at her, and then stuttered, “Um…actually... I think we did on our way in here.”

“Oh, all right. If you see him again, tell him his mother is worried about him and that he’s late for dinner,” she wiped the tears away and gave a faint smile.

“Certainly, ma’am.” Stubbs closed the door, regained his composure, and turned to the others. “Well, one down,” he peered down the hallway, “a lot to go.”

Captain Rescue took point and grabbed the doorknob of the next door, which had light emanating from underneath. As he opened it, the being inside greeted them: a bald glowing creature wearing a flowing white gown and hovering inches from the ground.

It turned to them and said softly with a wide smile in a high-pitched voice, “I bring you love.”

Captain Rescue, teeth chattering and shaking at the knees, mumbled the following words, “Sorry… we’re not… in the market for love.”

The creature’s aura of light dimmed and sadness filled its eyes. “Oh…”

Captain Rescue’s fear subsided. “Aww, don’t be sad, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who are.”

The floating entity brightened, smiled, and waved goodbye as Captain Rescue closed the door. He looked at the others and asked, “Was that... an alien?”

“Well, you closed the door before we had the chance to ask it, didn’t you?” Charlie said dryly.

“Go ahead and open it back up,” Captain Rescue suggested. “I’m not touching the door. That thing was scary!”

“Let’s just move on,” the bunny said as he motioned for the rest of the hallway.

They assessed the situation: endless doors and no telling which one, if any, would lead them in the right direction, or which one of those directions was the right one. They decided that it would be best to explore farther down the hallway; no way could it go on forever. Coincidentally, the search would not take too long. After but a short jog into the belly of the castle, the heroes felt as though they were getting bigger, or that the castle was getting smaller. It seemed this endless hallway wasn’t so endless after all, for it was but an illusion put in place to confuse and infuriate anyone who entered the castle.

While everyone else was returning to the properly proportioned section of the hallway, Captain Rescue lingered within this tiny world. A fantasy took hold, and he pretended to be King Kong by thrusting his arms into the air and roaring furiously. The oversized hero channeled the beast and swatted at imaginary miniature planes that flew through the air. He then forced open a nearby tiny door and slid his arm into it in hopes of grabbing damsel in distress, but he found only miniscule screams from within. Captain Rescue gasped and yanked his arm out, then whispered, “Sorry!” to those he had just disturbed. The hero then fled from the tiny world before he fell off the Empire State Building and died.

Freight, ready to dive headfirst into whatever this castle had to throw at him, cracked his knuckles and strutted over to one of the doors. With Courtney in one hand, and the latch in the other, he effortlessly yanked the massive door open. A normal man would have soiled himself after discovering what lay on the other side, but Freight was no normal man, so his pants remained unsoiled. It was a dragon—the largest, most terrifying dragon ever conceived. The monster’s eyes burned blood red with pure hate, and enormous spikes lined its back all the way down to the tip of its tail, where they culminated into a most vicious weapon. To Freight, it was just a bigger—fire breathing—zombie. Though bound to the ground, upon seeing someone at the doorway, the dragon rose to its feet and spread its mammoth wings, which brushed off bits of stone and mortar from the high ceiling as they grazed it.

The dragon crouched low to the ground as the two behemoths stared into each other’s eyes. Then, like a vacuum, it inhaled and pulled everything towards it except Freight, who refused to waver, showing the beast who was boss. After the air in the immediate area found its way into the dragon’s lungs, the winds ceased. The beast then expelled all of that air in a mighty roar that caused the ears of every creature within a hundred miles burst into flames. Luckily, though, Freight and his comrades were immune to such devilry.

The dragon’s roar subsided, and Captain Rescue had recorded the entire thing. Now, maybe he could strike it big in the music industry. Freight straightened his clothes and fixed his hair, and then prepared to give the monster a taste of his own medicine. As he breathed in, his chest expanded to fifteen times its normal size. Just before popping like an overinflated balloon, Freight let out the most animalistic roar capable by human lungs. Comparatively, it was nothing next to the mighty bellow of the dragon, but the beast knew a badass when it saw one. The mighty dragon admitted defeat by hiding its snout within its colossal talons and whimpering. Freight nodded approvingly at the dragon and closed the door.

Charlie, hoping for an encounter as epic as Freight’s, went to one of the nearby doors and fumbled for the knob (plush gauntlets made most things difficult to open). Eventually, he overcame this hurdle and managed to get the door open, and then kicked its frame in frustration. Charlie couldn’t have conceived a more monumental disappointment than the broom closet before him. A mop sat in the center of the tiny room, and shelves lined the walls. Upon them, someone, perhaps a janitor, had organized the cleaning supplies alphabetically. A glimmer of hope twinkled within the depths of his plastic eyes as he realized what rested upon one of the shelves: a golden lamp etched with the most elegant of doodles. Excitement filled Charlie as he dreamed of the possibilities. A lamp could mean one thing and one thing only—a genie. Charlie gingerly snatched the lamp and cradled it close to him, barely able to grasp it with his fuzzy hands. He then rubbed it. What else was one to do when given a magical lamp?

“Leave me alone,” a tiny voice from within the lamp yelled.

Charlie rubbed the lamp more vigorously. After waiting a few seconds for a further reply, and being disappointed when there was not, he slid the lamp to his bunny’s mouth, where his real eyes were, and peered inside. An orange smoke seeping out from within the lamp obscured his vision. He coughed and tried to brush the smoke away, but it continued to gather, eventually coalescing into a humanoid form. The gaseous muscle bound genie hovered in front of Charlie with crossed arms and an irritated look upon its face. No discernible clothing graced the genie’s gaseous orange body, which dissipated just past its waist—where things would have gotten really interesting.

The genie, which employed various shades of orange, from its hair to its goatee, leaned forward with its face centimeters from Charlie. “And what do
you
want?”

The bunny smiled. “Why my wishes, of course,”

“I don’t do the wish thing, and even if I did. It only applies to humans, not overgrown rabbits like you.”

His smile evaporated. “You’re a genie… of course you do this wish thing.”

“I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me that with all my phenomenal cosmic powers, I am obligated to grant your wishes?”

“Uh yeah… I believe I am.”

The genie backed away from Charlie, floated to the very top of the rather tall hallway, and outstretched its arms. He then started to gyrate, conjuring all sorts of ancient magicks. The winds inside the fourteenth century castle picked up and were soon that of a hurricane.

“Don’t think that you can command me!” the genie bellowed.

He continued spinning around and around as the winds forced everyone against the wall. Grey storm clouds gathered along the ceiling. Lightning struck, and a torrential downpour spilled gallons of water on everything. As it soaked his bunny suit to the core, Charlie became increasingly furious at the genie. Then, an idea dawned on him. He threw the lamp to the ground and began stomping on it like a man jumping on a cockroach that refused to give up and die.

The genie, appalled at the treatment of his itty-bitty living space, abruptly ended the hurricane. As quickly as they came, the torrential winds subsided. The only remnant that they had been there was the half-trillion gallons of water left in its wake. The genie then proceeded to conjure a pair of legs just so that he could fall to his knees and hold his wrecked home in his hands. Without saying a word, he held the lamp to his gaseous orange lips and blew into it. The lamp regained some semblance of its former greatness, but was still bent and twisted. The genie turned its back on everyone and slammed the door as it went back into its closet, which blinked out of existence, leaving no trace that it had ever been there.

“Great, you pissed him off. We could have used him to help us save the world,” Dr. Malevolent said as she rung the water from her long brown hair.

“He didn’t exactly seem very cooperative,” Charlie replied.

She glared at him. “Oh and how would you react if someone stomped on your house?”

“Point taken.”

The super villain motioned for the array of doorways. “Anyway, I think it’s
my
turn to open one of these doors.”

“Be my guest.”

Dr. Malevolent tapped her chin with her fingers as she surveyed the remaining doors. After a good amount of time transpired, (there were still quite a few left) she picked one and opened it. At seeing saw what lay beyond it, she did an arm pump in victory. Inside the room was an enormous spiral staircase with an iron portcullis sealing off the entrance. The staircase wasn’t alone in the room, however. A lemonade stand was in the corner, and behind it was a young boy who wore a bright smile on his face.

“Hello!” he said as Dr. Malevolent entered the room.

She then motioned with her hand for everyone else to follow. The boy continued smiling behind the lemonade stand with his fingers crossed and his hands resting on the wood. There were six small glasses of lemonade already made. The boy knew the castle had guests, but he wasn’t sure if the zombie would want a glass. Regardless, he didn’t want to be ill prepared.

“Come in! Have a drink!” he said cheerfully to the travelers as they entered the room. The offer was accepted, and the lemonade was sipped, and actually quite delicious. Captain Rescue, however, would have preferred the pink variety.

“What are you doing here?” Dr. Malevolent asked the boy.

The boy pointed at the staircase. “I am the gatekeeper. If you answer my three questions correctly then you can go up. If not you have to leave, sorry!”

“That’s it then?” she replied, the water still dripping from her white lab coat.

The small boy crossed his arms and smiled. “The questions are quite challenging, don’t be too confident!”