So Says The Mouse In My Hair

In Which The Negative Faces A Great Challenge

In true suspenseful and heroic fashion there were twenty minutes left on the metaphorical clock keeping track of the end of Pablo’s house. It does indeed pose a query that Lady Dude! can sew two superheroic costumes in under two minutes, but The Negative must take a full hour to toy with a couple photographs. I ask you though, to please consider that clocks must always almost run out of time before the world can be saved from abominable evil. If it isn’t a last minute--nay last millisecond--victory, then it holds no place in the most awe inspiring of halls, the superhero hall of fame.

“Aha!” The Negative cried as he almost ripped the photograph on it’s way out of the printer, “You, the evil, the slime incarnate, even you cannot have an answer for this!”

The Negative was not talking to Sam himself, obviously, because Sam himself was not there.

And then he was.

“So you have decided to make your stand after all, young Pablo. How fortunate for myself. It’s just not the same when you don’t put up a fight. You have no idea how disgruntled I have been since last we met, due to the very fact that you wanted to play the weak card.”

“Pablo? Oh, you mean the guy that lives here? No, that’s not me. Don’t be ridiculous. I am not Pablo. Whatever gave you that idea? I am The Negative, defender of the oppressed, the needy, and the riders of bicycles. (I mean, how hard is it to share the road?)”

[NOTE to readers, the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the author, or of blogger.com. I just write down the story. I don’t make it up.]

Sam didn’t seem to believe The Negative. (About what? Probably the Pablo thing. Remember, he didn’t have a mask or anything, just the suit. A work in progress, you might say.) So he just sort of smiled and nodded. How lucky that Sam's silence should give Lady Dude! an opportunity to scope him out.

“Wait, don’t I know you?” she asked. “Yeah, you’re rich and famous or something right? Sam? I’m so sorry that I ever got this opportunity to meet you. You given me this really nasty feeling in my tummy, like I’m pregnant with a huge… who knows what.”

“My condolences,” Sam replied.

“Anyway, I’m Lady Dude! For now anyway, I don’t think I like the name. It just sounds so… off kilter. Maybe La Femme Violet. Yeah, call me that, ok?”

For my dear readership, Violet in this case is pronounce VEE-o-let. It's the french pronunciation.

“What ever you say.” Sam used that very enunciated tone your kindergarten teacher took when she was trying to placate you. Sam was a big fan of placation. Then he turned to The Negative. “So I assume you have the authority to speak for Pablo on all matters pertaining to this house which will soon be my greatest Supercenter ever?”

“Of course.” The Negative replied.

“Good, then allow me to show you just what will await you if you give in to my demands.”

Sam waved a magic wand, and no, he didn’t have the magic wand with him before. But he is Sam after all, give him a little credit.

The Negative and la Femme Violet (pronounced of course, in the manner of the French) and Sam were standing on Pablo’s front lawn looking at a giant piñata where his house no longer stood.

“You turned my house into a piñata?” The Negative was not quite impressed. Close, but not there yet. He was put off guard enough however, to refer to HIS house instead of Pablo's, a mistake that Sam smiled at, but did not mention.

“This is not just any piñata, Negative, this is a house sized piñata full of peanut butter M-Azing bars. Care for a whack?

Of course The Negative cared for a whack. He’d been craving a peanut butter M-Azing bar since he woke up yesterday morning, and that was a LONG time ago, and you know how cravings just snowball when you ignore them, so you can’t really blame The Negative for grabbing the bat that Sam had popped into being for him, and running full force towards the M-Azing bars.

Fortunately, La Femme Violet was able to maintain a direct line with reality and screamed at the slobbering superhero that that was his house that he was about to attack with a baseball bat.

It wasn’t so much what she said to him that made him stop. I think it was more the fact that she had said it after wrestling him to the ground and while she was jumping up and down on top of him that really did the trick. Either way it worked, and he released his grip on the Louisville Slugger.

Then he stood up and said confidently to his evil nemesis, “I don’t cave in so easy as that. A little respect, that’s all I ask.”

Sam nodded the way your kindergarten teacher used to not at you. “In that case, there isn’t really much I can do.” He started running around the yard. At first it looked like he was kicking the air in front of him or something, but this air was almost immediately replaced by a bouncing soccer ball. The Negative followed the ball not only with his eyes, but with the rest of his face as well, nodding, and shaking his head as it went back and forth.

The Negative thought back to those halcyon days of his youth, joyous with his friends, zigging towards the goal, and away from it again. He remembered his first soccer ball, It was a birthday present when he turned nine. He clapped and hugged his father who smiled back indulgently. What a soccer ball that had been, some kids had their teddy bears, or their barbies, or their play stations, but he was never so happy as in the company of that soccer ball.

“Yes,” Sam replied to these thoughts, “I remember that ball well. I was visiting the factory that day… They let me put the air in it myself…”

It took a minute for the meaning of this statement to pool in The Negative’s brain. For the first minute while it took hold, he continued nodding. In the next minute his shoulders began to sag, and his chin went up and down much slower. In the third minute it stopped altogether, and in the fourth minute, it finally made sense. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you. My dad would never…”

“I still have the receipt. I picked it out of your trash one night. One of my many pleasures. I’m especially fond of receipts, they tell me how much money I am making. You wouldn’t know about that, though, would you?”

“Accounting was never my strong point,” The Negative sassed. He wanted to look strong, but his entire past was crumbling, one happy memory upon another had been built upon a lie, upon a poor child in a sweatshop who saw these toys everyday, but never got to play with them. He was a bad person.

And just like that, his morals crumbled, and a tear ran down his baby soft cheek that just this morning he had applied moisturizer to. The good kind too, he bought it at a farm stand from this nice old lady who had mixed the concoction herself from emu butter. But even that good deed fell under shadow now. Escape was futile.

To be continued…

Well, I don't know if all of you are completely insane by now, but this is definitely driving me nuts. Who knew that stories took so much time to tell! They never used to. The next one is the end. I promise.

posted by Sarah Eliza @ 2:26 PM