How to Rescue a Dead Princess (8 page)

“I think we could enjoy each other's company,” she told Randall.

“That sounds ... interesting. Almost fascinating. But, you know, I'm just a lowly squire, and I don't think Sir William would approve.”

“Go for it,” said Sir William.

Randall's heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest and onto the floor. “I'm a woefully inexperienced kisser,” he said. “I'd probably miss your lips completely.”

“I don't have to look this way, you know,” Grysh said. She snapped her fingers, and instantly transformed into a tall, leggy, astoundingly attractive redhead.

Sir William cleared his throat. “I don't suppose there's any way I could tactfully put myself back into the equation after that fur comment?”

“I wouldn't think so, no.”

“Just checking.”

“So, Randall,” said Grysh. “Care to join me in my Chamber of Looooooooooove?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.” She looked over at Sir William. “Stay there.” She considered for a moment, then snapped her fingers. A bright light surrounded Sir William for a moment, then faded.

“You turned him to stone!” Randall gasped.

“Plated with pewter. He won't be going anywhere. Too bad he had such a ridiculous expression on his face—otherwise I might've been able to get a good price for the statue. Follow me.”

Randall followed her around the corner into an area filled with all manner of books and reagents for spells. There were also cobwebs to add a touch of atmosphere. Demon Baby walked by, holding a broom and a new sack, and looked jealously at Randall.

“In here,” said the witch, opening a door disguised as a door-shaped stack of books with a doorknob protruding from them. She let Randall enter first, then shut the door behind them, casting them into complete darkness.

“Be careful,” she said. “Watch out for the floor spikes. And cobras.”

“I'll just stay put.”

A soft light without a visible source began to glow at the other end of the room, illuminating the bed. A very lumpy bed that seemed to be adorned with various torture devices.

“Something's moving inside the pillows,” Randall noted.

“I like to keep the feathers as fresh as possible.”

She moved past him and sat down on the edge of the bed. She began to seductively massage her earlobes. “Come here,” she purred.

Randall sat down next to her. She gently placed her hand on his knee. “Ooooooh,” she said. “That's a nice, firm kneecap you've got there.”

“Thank you.”

“Randall, sweetie, why don't you tell me a little about yourself?”

“Well, I'm five-foot-six, twenty-two years old, brown hair, hazel eyes, and have my mother's chin.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Occasionally.”

“Have you ever loved so deeply that you just walked around all day with a retarded grin on your face? Have you ever loved to such a great extent that the mere sight of them made your internal organs completely rearrange themselves?”

“No,” Randall admitted. “My love was more of a ‘Hey, she's cute, too bad I annoy her,’ kind of deal.”

Grysh stared off into space for a moment, then wiped a tear from her eye. “Have you ever loved somebody, and then lost them forever?”

“There's going to be a revelation here, right?”

“His name was Romeoo. A stable boy, not too bright, poor posture. But I loved him the way the King of McNaughton used to love pomegranates.”

“I remember the King of McNaughton,” said Randall. “He was a few kingdoms away from us, but we kept hearing about his pomegranate obsession. Non-stop. Pomegranate, pomegranate, pomegranate. I mean, give it a rest, man!”

“Our love was as far-reaching as the ocean, and just as wet. But, our families hated each other, for they were God-fearing, simple folk, and we were a coven of witches offering frequent sacrifices to the Dark One.

“We wanted to run away together, but knew we'd be discovered—unless my family thought that I was dead. So I obtained a vial of liquid that put me into a death-like trance. The funeral was quite nice, I'm told. The food was delicious and plentiful, the eulogy grammatically correct. And so I was carried down into the morgue to await my betrothed. But, alas, he had not been told of my scheme.”

There was a long pause.

“This is a good time to ask ‘what happened then?'” said Grysh.

“Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you'd get to it on your own.”

“I was hoping you'd increase the dramatic tension.”

“My mistake. So, what happened then?”

Grysh sniffled. “I can't bring myself to tell the story. But I shall show you.”

She gestured, and a white rectangular box materialized in mid-air. An image began to form upon it.

“Behold the tale of doomed love...”

THE IMAGE on the block began to move:

Grysh, in her non-hideous form, lay on a pedestal, in a death-like state. Romeoo, filled with big heaping gobs of pathos, stood over her.

“How oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry, which their keepers call a lightning before death?” he asked. “O, how may I call this a lightning? O, Grysh, my wife ... my darling ... my love bunny ... my passion slave ... thou art not conquered. Beauty's ensign yet is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks and in thy knees.”

He thought about the situation for a moment. “You know, it almost seems as if you're in a pseudo-death brought about by drinking a very difficult to obtain, highly illegal and relatively expensive drug given to you by a religious figure that leaves you in a death-like state lasting for, say, two and forty hours after which you'll awaken, a little hung-over but otherwise all right to rejoin me so we can run away and buy that farmland we wanted. But that's silly.”

He sighed with so much drama that Randall felt his eyes begin to moisten.

“Ah, dear Grysh, why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, and the lean abhorred monster keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour?”

Romeoo shrugged, then thought that over.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asked himself, taking out a copy of
Cliff's Notes
and looking it up. Satisfied with the answer, he pocketed the book and returned his attention to Grysh. “Oh, Snookums, here, here will I remain with worms that are thy chambermaids.”

He brushed them off her.

“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! Navel, do whatever it is you do! And lips, O you, the doors of death, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

He began to lean toward her, then paused about an inch from her lips. “Wait a second—that's sick, she's
dead
!”

He stood up straight. “Now, with this poison...” he said, grabbing a bottle of booze, “...I shall join thee in thy grave.”

He drank it and grimaced. “Ugh, the fluid that would bring us together for eternal love doth taste like crap. Thy drugs are quick. With this, I die.”

He waited a moment. Nothing happened. He tapped his stomach, then glanced around the tomb while he waited. Checked his fingernails for dirt. Sighed loudly. Then grimaced in great pain. After a second, the pain ceased.

“Gas,” he muttered. “Forget it, I'm in a hurry.”

He took out a meat cleaver. “O, happy meat cleaver. This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die!” He twirled it in the air several times like a professional chef, then stabbed himself. “Ooh—that's gonna leave a mark,” he winced.

Then he died. It was fairly graceful, as such deaths go, with only a minor bit of gurgling and choking distracting from the mood.

The image faded, but the block remained, casting a dim light upon Randall and Grysh.

“Bummer,” said Randall.

“Truly. I revived him, but his anger ran deep, and he left, never to be seen again. Well, not by me, at least.”

“Bummer number two.”

“That is what love means to me,” she said. “Loss. Sorrow. Misery. Oh, if only somebody were to find my dear Romeoo and return him to me!”

Four shadows darted across the wall.

“But,” Grysh sighed, “that's probably not going to happen.”

“Probably not,” Randall agreed.

“So I have to concentrate on physical pleasure instead of love. But I'm still enough into love that I feel we should look beyond surface beauty.”

She snapped her fingers, transforming back into the wretched creature. Randall gagged.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Uh ... could we go back to that darkness motif?”

The block of light vanished.

“And is it possible to temporarily get rid of my other four senses?”

“You should be more open to new experiences,” Grysh scolded. “Am I that repulsive?”

“No, no,” Randall lied. “It's just that, well, I'm
too
excited, and if something isn't done to numb my senses I'll probably burst into a fit of unrestrained giddiness that won't be pleasant to watch.”

“Kiss me,” said Grysh.

“You mean now or sometime in the future?”

“Now.”

“Where?”

“Here.”

“There already?”

“It's my hand.”

“Interesting hand.”

“Kiss it.”

“I will.”

“Now.”

“I will.”

“I don't feel it being kissed.”

“Figured I'd practice on my own hand a few times first.”

The witch cursed ("fiddlesticks") and illuminated the room. Randall's stomach twitched a bit as he saw that there were at least ten men chained to the walls.

“Who are
they
?” he gasped.

“My previous love slaves.”

“Any special reason they're chained to the wall?”

“Purely decorative.”

The men were all giving Randall dirty looks, which he felt rather insensitive considering that he was the one currently getting the worst of the situation. He gave them a light wave. “Hi. How's it going?”

“They won't answer you,” Grysh told him. “They're giving me the silent treatment. They think it bugs me.”

“Does it?”

All of the chained men began to nod.

“Liars!” Grysh shouted. “You think something like the silent treatment can bother a witch of my power? I laugh at your feeble attempt! Ha! Ha again! I laugh in your collective faces!”

The men said nothing.

“I'm still laughing in your faces,” Grysh insisted. “Doesn't bother me a bit that you won't talk. Not a bit. You hear me? Your little stunt isn't working. So you might as well quit it and start talking.”

The men remained silent.

“I'm gonna kill them,” said Grysh, reaching underneath the pillow and taking out a wicked-looking knife with a twelve-inch bloodstained blade and flower designs on the handle.

“No!” said Randall. “I mean, it's very hard for me to stay romantic after multiple murder. Last time that happened—poof!—my lips wouldn't pucker for hours.”

Then, proving that mercy can be granted, there was a knock at the door. “Hate to interrupt,” Demon Baby said through the wood, “but we have a serious problem out here.”

“How serious?” Grysh asked, thoroughly annoyed.

“Well, on a scale of one to ten, one being peace and quiet, ten being the world coming to an end, eight being the zombies outside getting ready to make a violent raid upon our mausoleum, I'd have to rank it an eight.”

Grysh got up, motioned for Randall to follow her, then left the bedroom. Joining Demon Baby, they walked back to the main part of the mausoleum.

At that moment, three very bad things happened.

First, and most noteworthy, four stained-glass windows shattered from having zombies crash through them. These zombies did not look happy. Part of this was due to the shards of glass now sticking in them, but one can safely assume that their anger had been present before the actual vandalism. In a related incident, the door to the mausoleum burst open, revealing another helping of irate living dead.

Second, in a coincidence rivaled only by the time the King of Lockhart made the comment that “it would sure be amusing if those little things that dangle in the back of people's throats suddenly fell from the sky” mere seconds before the legendary Uvula Rainfall, Grysh lost her magic powers. This was something that happened once a century to all witches, and it only lasted eight minutes. In a further coincidence rivaled only by the time the King of Adams said “I wish I had a trout in my pants,” seconds before his advisors dropped a fish down his pants (though they replaced the trout with a piranha), the situation would be resolved in seven minutes and fifty-two seconds.

Third, Randall remembered he hadn't brushed his teeth that morning. It was a minor problem, comparatively, but still noteworthy considering that gum disease takes no prisoners.

The zombies were still pathetically slow-moving, but they had all the escape routes covered. Grysh snapped her fingers, trying to conjure her mystic powers. When nothing happened, she snapped them again. And again.

One of the zombies took this as his cue to begin a musical number, but thankfully was interrupted before he could sing.

“I wish to read from a prepared statement,” said a zombie at the front door, as the zombies began shuffling forward. “This has been signed by all of us. ‘To whom it may concern. We are sick and tired of the oppression brought upon us by the dictatorial policies of the management. If our grievances are not heard and acted upon, we shall be forced to take severe measures.'”

The zombie cleared his throat, being one of the few zombies whose throat was in clearable condition. “Okay, here are our grievances,” he said. “First, we are fed up with the lack of decent food around here. I guess ‘fed up’ isn't the best way to phrase that, but you know what I mean. We're not saying you have to breed humans for us, just quit killing so many of them in the Realm of Mystery! Ditch the ‘legs’ question.”

“I'm listening,” said Grysh. “What else?”

“Second, we'd like some sort of beautification project implemented in the cemetery. It's embarrassing to have what few victims come around see the place in such deplorable condition. If we could get some cleaning products for the tombstones, we'd be very appreciative. And flowers go a long way.”

“Tulips or daffodils?” Grysh asked.