Stranger and Stranger (17 page)

When not on the phone to the cable company, complaining that their repairmen have not fixed our reception, Mom is moping around the house. Am not sure, in my zoned-out mental state, whether she knows about the Manifesto and the havoc it has caused. Am not looking forward to the inevitable meltdown over that. Will keep fingers crossed.

On the brighter side, Mom is forcing EvilMe to be my personal slave since I am totally immobile. I do not think EvilMe knows we switched journals. Aside from practical exchanges like “Here’s your sandwich” and “Bring me the bedpan,” we have not really
been speaking. I mean, we haven’t been planning any more jolly episodes of cooperative prankery, that’s for sure. If/when we do have a real conversation again, I’m not sure what I will say to her. What is there to say? Thanks for finding me in the canyon, and for not sucking the poison out? Thanks for knocking me off the trail and breaking my leg? Oh, and thanks for appearing out of NOWHERE, turning my cats against me, causing mental anguish for Mom, and basically ruining what was supposed to be a fun, exploration-and-experiment-filled summer of SOLITUDE! What am I going to accomplish with a big old broken leg? A crossword puzzle? Maybe I’ll crochet a potholder? GAHHH!!!!

Pain is making me crabby again. Need more medication. Will ring my personal slave.

Personal slave not responding to her summons. Go figure.
Will make Mom punish her.
What am I saying? Will need to punish her myself, clearly. Must quit complaining and take action. Will need to build some kind of elevator so I can get upstairs to my bedroom, and rig up an elaborate pulley system in the room so I can work on experiments and monitor cat activity from my bed.

Later

Have crocheted potholder. Used yarn I braided from my own hair. Had been saving up hair for years and had a large box of it that really needed to be put to good use. Mom thanked me for the
potholder and tried to seem enthusiastic, but I could tell she was imagining the smell of burning hair, and wondering where she could hide the hideous thing. Will have to think of non-kitchen-related uses for the rest of the hair.

Later

Just realized that EvilMe signed my cast while I was asleep. Am very annoyed that she signed it “Emily.” Am also somewhat terrified that she was able to do so without waking me up. Nothing I can do about it.

Gave Mom a batch of questions for our Jeopardy showdown. Here are some prime ones:

1. I used
   this disease
   as a clever excuse to get out of attending the first through third grades.
   
2. I successfully faked
   this supernatural skill
   for an audience of skeptics when I was 9.
   
3. My patent on
   this creative use of ordinary dirt
   has pretty much paid the rent for the past 3 years.
   
4. I found the abandoned kitten we now know as Miles under a Dumpster in
   this humorously named small town
   .
   
5. This officer of the law
   was the first (and last) to succeed in handcuffing me—if only for a moment.
   
6. A sugar-cube diorama of
   this famous natural disaster
   landed me in psychiatric evaluation for a year.
   
7. I used a spirited game of Calamity Poker and an artificial sandstorm to cleverly distract
   this would-be Romeo
   from going on a date with Raven.
   
8. Over the years, a shrine I constructed to
   this Surrealist painter
   has caused the faintings of 3 housekeepers, 7 neighbors, and 1 social worker.
   
9. Mystery joined our household when Patti rescued her from
   this potentially deadly scenario.
   
10. I used my Magic 8 Ball to successfully advise
    this leader of state
    through a minor national crisis.
    
11. Before I rescued him from a recently deceased cat lady’s pestilential home, Sabbath was named after
    this iconic science-fiction villain
    .
    
12. NeeChee’s striped tail is the result of an unfortunate run-in with
    these 4 common household chemicals
    .
    
13. The month I spent at a summer camp run by
    this celebrity
    was cut short by an unfortunate incident involving a feather boa, a video camera, and 20 gallons of rubber cement.
    

Mom has compiled my questions with EvilMe’s and eliminated the duplicates. Huh. Yeah. Eliminated the duplicates. Wish I could do more of that, myself.

Later

Just woke up and the box of hair is gone. No more hair projects for today. It’s OK. Am very sleepy.

Later

Have just had a horrifying nightmare in which
EvilMe
EvilOne used my hair to bring down evil voodoo on me, causing my leg to come out of the cast with the foot pointing backward. Should have had better security for that box of hair!

Ugh. Am clearly not making smart decisions. Am not enjoying horrifying nightmares like I normally would. Am not spontaneously coming up with delightful revenge ideas. Am not able to write dozens of fiendishly difficult Jeopardy questions that will win me the game. Way too many of my fiendishly difficult questions have been duplicates of questions EvilOne has already written.

Later

EvilOne has just been in to see me. Our conversation went a little something like this:

E
VIL
O
NE
: Yeah, so, what’s the point of this Jeopardy game, anyway?

M
E
: Uhhhhh…idle entertainment…?

EO: Yeah, right. You’re trying to prove that you
know more about being Emily Strange than I do. You think I’m a just a copy of you, right? A FakeYou?

M
E
: Oh. Well. Huh. Ummmm…

EO: [Sighing. Rolling eyes. Thumping me casually on the cast.] Whatever. As long as you understand that you’re going to lose, and I’m going to punish you for losing.

M
E
: [Pretending the thumping does not hurt like a flutterplacking pigbark.] What if I win?

EO: Then I’ll punish you for winning. But you won’t win, cuz you’re a silly little FakeMe.

GULP! Am now wondering what I think she meant by “punish.” Not to mention her entry of June 15, and what she meant by “preemptively destroy”—I mean, would she actually kill me? Could I actually kill her? Am hoping it does not come to that, but am flat out of ideas on how to resolve my doppelgänger dilemma.

Have wished her away many times, but she keeps showing up again.

Very frustrating.

Later

Am trying to stay positive by focusing on how much better life will be when I’m off the couch. Among other things, I really
would like to get out of the house to do some spying on Venus Fang Fang. It astonishes me that she would be able to shut down our Manifesto. I mean, there can’t be more than a dozen people in the world who know what a Vanian-Jugg circuit is, let alone how to disable it. Am very impressed! Not to mention afeard. Fingers crossed she can’t trace it back to us!!!!!

June 19

Life has improved slightly. Am back to using self-hypnosis for leg pain. Was about to flush medication down the toilet when I reflected that I may be able to secretly dose EvilOne’s food with it at some point in the future. That cheered me quite a bit. Am up and around on crutches now despite the crunching pain. Totally against doctor’s orders. Have painted my cast with liquid black rock to hide signatures. Should probably have used regular black paint but was hit by small flash of inspiration/blind hope that the black rock might also help with the pain. Not really sure it is working, but at least I’m mobile.

Also, my cast looks a lot cooler.

Later

Am in a MUCH better mood than yesterday! Am now reviewing old family photo albums and scrapbooks to gear up for the big Jeopardy challenge, which is scheduled for two days from now. Our family photo albums and scrapbooks are AMAZING! I feel sorry for people who do not have photos of themselves training cats to stand on one another in pyramid formation, or synthesizing amino acids in home laboratory, or completing giant homemade paint-by-numbers replicas of Bosch paintings, or reanimating lifeless human flesh and miscellaneous bird organs into a working golem. (See some favorites on next page.)

Speaking of golems…Hmm.

Five minutes later

OK. Have just reread entries of June 7 to June 9. WHY, WHY, WHY didn’t I realize back then that EvilOne was not sleepwalking at all, but actually trying to kill me? And that Raven was in fact rescuing me, not threatening my life? And that EvilOne OBVIOUSLY got rid of Raven to make destroying me easier?

I can’t believe she actually had me believing that I was commanding Raven to kill, or that I had subconscious hostility toward Mom or Mystery. I mean, MOM and MYSTERY! My two favorite living beings in the world!

Must get Raven back, and fast!!!!

Thirty seconds later

Oh no. What if Raven was at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and has been turned into a gibbering loony? I mean…more of a gibbering loony.

Am waking Mom up right now.

Later

Just had a little straight talk with Mom. This is what I found out:

1. First off, we are blattering LUCKY that MOM didn’t go to the stupid ribbon-cutting ceremony!
   
2. She says it has been practically impossible to buy groceries, catch a bus, or get a TV repairman out to the house.
   
3. Looting and vandalism are way up, and the police are too busy rounding up loonies to do much about it.
   
4. Mom has already taken it upon herself to check up on Raven. Let us be mightily thankful that on the evening of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Raven was safe at home with Bebe, who was feeling poorly.
   
5. Gigi, however, is another story. Mom located her in a dark corner of the psych ward, where she was finger-painting with…well, something no one should finger-paint with, and singing mellow love songs from the 1970s. Mom says the image will be burned into her mind for all eternity.
   
6. Mom hates to think what might have happened if Raven had attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony: My superstrong golem would probably be running amok, battling loonies and police alike. (At least, Mom SAYS she hates to think of it, but clearly she ENJOYS thinking about it.)
   
7. Mom doesn’t have any evidence, or at least no evidence that would stand up in court…but for all intents and purposes, she knows we did this.
   
8. The incident has made the national news, and a major investigation is under way, so she is assuming and hoping that we covered our tracks.
   
9. She is assuming and hoping that we did not actually intend to psychically damage most of the townspeople.
   
10. She is assuming and hoping that we are already hard at work on a solution that will reverse the aforementioned psychic damage. (I did not have the heart to contradict her. No need to crush her spirit just yet.)
    
11. She also has her hopes that we are working on a solution to this whole duplication thing.
    
12. She admits that coming up with a solution to the whole duplication thing might be kinda taxing to the imagination, especially if one were suffering with pain and medication.
    
13. She is tired, very tired, of all the trouble we’ve had in our
    19 days in Silifordville, but would like to think that we can get through it and last out the year, at least.
    

I let Mom go back to bed and am lying here on the couch making some plans. As soon as morning comes, I will call Bebe and see if I can persuade her to return Raven.

Later—broad daylight

Phoned Bebe and asked her to return Raven to me as soon as possible, but the conversation did not go well.

M
E
: Bebe, I’m telling you, it’s a matter of life and death!

B
EBE
: Well, same here. Gigi’s gone gaga and so has our maid, and who’s going to do all this dusting?

M
E
: You need a state-of-the-art golem to do your DUSTING?

B: Golem?

M
E
: Gahhhh! I need Raven to come be my BODYGUARD!

B: I don’t think that will work very well. She’s not even doing the dusting.

M
E
: GAHHH—Wait, she’s not doing what you tell her to do?

B: No, she just sits there with her mouth open,
and it’s really creepy.

M
E
: Did you try saying “Emily” before you told her to do the dusting?

B: Yes, I tried “Emily,” “jockstrap,” “poopcake,” “barfbag,” “Titicaca,” “codpiece,” “Mulva,” “Dolores,” “dissemination,” and “kumquat,” but she just sits there.

M
E
: [Not laughing. Not laughing at all.] This is serious. I’ll be there in ten minutes.

Later

Bad stuff! Really bad stuff!

Got to Bebe’s house (which DOES need a good dusting—if by “dusting” you mean “adding several centuries’ worth of dust”) to find Raven sitting around with her mouth open, as described. She is not looking good at all. I guess I really should have paid more attention to the pedicure scene I witnessed on her first night here, and made some extrapolations from that. Anyhow, the results are terrifying. They have bought her a new wig, which, admittedly, is a lot less ratty than her old wig, which had been partially burned and then torn apart for use in vehicle repairs, but at least had CHARACTER and HISTORY. Her clothing is also new and, unlike her old clothing, is totally lacking in rips, stains, safety pins, staples, handmade patches, handsewn instructions for returning Raven to her home, and drawings of vampire-cat-
zombie-ninja-monkey-mutants. Someone has obviously spent some time choosing tasteful accessories to coordinate with her outfit, including a silk scarf to hide the Frankenstein-monster stitches I spent all that time tattooing on her neck, which I thought were not only hilarious and tuff-looking, but a nice literary reference. She’s wearing quite a bit of expertly applied makeup. And she’s apparently been to a tanning salon. Ugh!!! To sum it up, Raven is looking a lot less like a well-used, well-loved, grungy old golem, and a lot more like a well-heeled, well-groomed, attractive NORMAL WOMAN.

I didn’t really know where to start, so I tried a little small talk.