Dorothy: Locked and Loaded

Welcome to Dorothy: Locked & Loaded

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 19:27:00 +0000

Author Note to Readers:

This online novel was first started in May 2010; it continued on and off for two years and wrapped up in July 2012. The order of publication then would naturally put the first episode at the bottom of the page and the last at the top, so to read them in order, please use the navigation bar on the right. If you scroll down, you will read the last episode first, and then you'll already know how it turns out - no fun.

Each episode offers a title, the perspective (Narrator, Tin Man, Dot, etc.) and then the episode number (from 1 to 136/finale), so that should be enough to keep things straight - who is the subject of each part and what order everything is in. We just want to make sure this is as seamless and enjoyable as possible.

So, you have 136 episodes and nearly a dozen main and secondary characters to read about. Don't waste a moment. This journey to Oz is not what you expected, and we're happy it turned out that way.

And hey, if you are joining us on this adventure, stop by our Dorothy: L&L Facebook page and tell us what you think or just say 'hi'. We'd love to hear from you!

- The Authors

D:L&L (finale - Narrator) -- In and Out

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 01:43:00 +0000

Dot came to with a start, eyes blinking against the morning light as she tried to sit up, but Skinny Jake was there, and the other boys from the 3rd Street hook-n-ladder, paramedics who liked it when a rough-and-tumble and extremely cute girl waltzed in and laid down the law on poker night. They'd driven out from the fire house as soon as a bloodied young man had stumbled into the all-night wellness center missing an eye and screaming her name. They'd stayed a couple of hours, dressing Dot's scratches and checking her vitals, moving her to her bed - much better place than the floor - and they'd watched over her in shifts until she finally woke some time around six in the morning.

She was out of sorts, which was to be expected, ranting and raving about a storm, the house, a purple fog, a lion, a green witch and a wizard from Kansas, something about a scarecrow that would be king, rabbits, a crazed woman in a pink gown, and a man made of metal with an ax to grind. Oh, and she went on and on about a pair of ruby slippers. They took it in and looked knowingly at each other, and Jake remarked later that it was likely she had a mild concussion. He was the most experienced of the group, and said while she seemed okay, the brain worked in mysterious ways, especially when it had had a jolt. What else could explain what was coming out of her mouth? After all, she'd had a bad fall, she'd been nearly raped, and she'd been unattended for half the night before that little shit Andy had shown up at the clinic and spilled the beans. He'd be receiving a visit from the sheriff soon, and Old Man Diggs didn't care for funny business in his little town.

Shortly after seven, they packed up the truck and left, waving at Dot as she sat on her porch, her head still aching, partly from the pain of the hard knock and partly from the disappointment that she hadn't been gone for weeks, that everything she'd experienced was nothing more than a bad dream, and like so many dreams - Jake had explained - it had ended with a fall, which often jolts the dreamer awake.

But how could that be? How could it be true? Or was he wrong?

Dot spent the whole day in the rocking chair on the porch, the weather cool and breezy as the forecast storm pushed north of town. She sipped iced tea all day - Jake had warned her off beer or whiskey due to the head injury - and daydreamed, her feet curled up underneath her and hidden by the extra large AC/DC tank top she'd chosen from the hamper. Oz was on her mind, and nothing would make it go away.

She could see it all so clearly - the purple fog turning the Munchkins into zombies; the train wreck; the Tin Man's bloody ax; the way the sudden tornado had swept up the Scarecrow and whipped him away; the Grimmerie glowing in the dark next to a little black figure; Glinda's nasty snarl and quick wand; the Lion's tail between his legs...and so so much more. Had they all just been part of an elaborate, lucid dream? Was it just like the dream her grandmother had had when she'd fallen and hit her head? And everyone had thought the old woman was crazy because she'd told the story as if she'd actually been there - even though when she told it, you could feel how honest the tale was. And yet...

Dot closed her eyes after lunch, her naked legs still tucked underneath her, Toto sitting in her lap, locked and loaded, and she drifted off for a bit, her mind still focused on that one thing that wouldn't leave her be even for a second. It was still too fresh. And for a moment, she could see it all again, plain as the nose on her face, her grandmother would say: in the garden, Fiyero embraced his love, the little green girl who would grow up to be the Wicked Witch of the West and then the Crown Empress at his side. In the main hall, the Tin Man knelt over the bodies of hundreds of little fallen tik toks, tears falling freely from his rusting eyes, his heart broken but beating again. The Lion, however, was nowhere to be found; only at the top of the highest tower in the room where the magic mirror claimed a place of honor on the wall, a little lion cub gnawed on a pair of gleaming Ruby Slippers.

When she woke, she felt refreshed and smiled for the first time all day. Maybe, she thought to herself, that was exactly how the dream was supposed to end, or that was exactly what was happening now. Oz was safe again, and it had taken a girl from Kansas to straighten it all out.

What else could it be?

Just then, a little blue Pontiac pulled up the dirt driveway, and Dot smiled, recognizing it as belonging to one of the paramedics. It was Nick and Leo come back to check on her. She waived from the porch as they got out and shouted, "So, where's Jake then? We need a fourth for poker."

Leo laughed and pointed back to the car. "He'll be along. He's bringing the beer. Besides, not even a scarecrow like Jake can squeeze in when we're riding in Nick's little tin can Fiero."

The End

D:L&L (part 135 - Lion) -- A Fine Line

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:37:00 +0000

Apprehension always spoiled a good thing. Am I doing the right thing? What the hell am I doing? Shit, maybe I should go back and see what’s up with the Monkey-bats and the crew. The thoughts invaded my mind, no wonder I was crazy. I couldn’t get my brain to shut the fuck up. But the truth was I wasn’t going to go back. I didn’t know if the crew was dead or alive, even little Gilly. And quite frankly, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was Her.

She was waiting…for me. I knew she was. I could feel it. She was going to forgive me, and I’d already forgiven her. I didn’t even care about the price I was going to have to pay for that forgiveness. She was going to hurt me, I was going to bleed. Some things were worth the price.

I strutted closer to the palace, wanting to run, but I was a Lion, damn it. I did have some pride. She could take that from me later, and I’d gladly hand it over. She was my Queen after all, and I was looking forward to her ruling me again. My cock hardened at the thought of her mounting me, of taking me into her. I wanted her immediately. My legs picked up the pace, a little faster would get me there a little quicker. But I was going to keep my pride, I wasn’t going to give up my fucking pride.

Large pink blooms began to appear along the path, their scent intoxicating. Their scent—her scent, I couldn’t tell the difference. My nuts tightened. How I loved the way she smelled. Her perfume was light and florally, as I remembered. And her cunt, I could smell her cunt. She was ready to be fucked, she wanted to be fucked. My ego bloomed along with the flowers; no one could fuck like I could fuck. She was all around me. Her laughter seemed to radiate straight from the delicate pink flowers—taunting…alluring. Images of my Glinda in her pink dress and ruby slippers filled my mind, all other thoughts eliminated. She stood at her window, a bottle of booze in one hand, her glowing blonde hair half falling out of her up do. Her lipstick was smeared across her luscious lips, and wet streaks cut through her makeup down her soft, rosy cheeks. She leaned clumsily against the window frame, staring out over her kingdom. Her free hand worked at the space between her legs. Slugging back the bottle, she drank heavily, liquid dribbling out of the sides of her mouth. “FUCK!” She yelled, as she brought the bottle away from her lips. She ground her hand harder against herself. “Come to me, my love,” I heard her cry. “I need you. I need you right now. Come fuck me NOW!” —I ran.

At the entrance, the thickly-slabbed wooden door was open. Nothing to hinder me, nothing to fight. I clambered up the marble steps and through the porthole into my dream world. I scrambled up the stairway to my heaven. I slowed my pace as her bedroom door grew near. I pressed a paw against the only thing blocking me from the satisfaction I craved. My ears twitched, I could hear her beyond the door, sobbing quietly, calling for me. I pushed, the hinges didn’t make a sound as the door opened. And there she was —I couldn’t breathe. The visions I had didn’t detail what reality had in store for me. She was a mess. Sitting on the floor, her back propped against the bed. I couldn’t help notice a strange statue, an orange man, a look of horror on his face. I knew that face from somewhere. But who cared…my love was breaking before my very eyes. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Could nothing go right? Just one fucking time, I needed this to be right, and it was all wrong. My cock started to deflate, my heart began to break. I walked to her slowly. “Glinda, I’m here beautiful.”

“Well, it’s about fucking time,” she slurred. “I’ve been fucking waiting on you for-fucking-ever. Why did you leave me, Lionis?” She slugged another hit from her bottle and put her head on her bent knees. The bottle fell from her hand and turned on its side. The liquid flowed from the opening onto the carpet. She didn’t move.

I crossed the room to her, stepping in another wet puddle of who-knew-what—I could swear it smelled like Bunny blood—bent down and picked her up. She wrapped her arms around my neck, her fingers tangling in my mane. It felt so good to have her next to me again. To feel her warmth, to touch her flesh. She nestled her face into my neck, a tingle pulsed through me. I gently kissed the top of her head. She moaned softly. “I’ll never leave you again, I promise,” I whispered to her. She moved against me, in my arms, continued to nuzzle at my neck…then bit me.

I threw her onto the bed. She leaned up on her left elbow and laughed hysterically. My blood oozed down her lip to her chin. “They’re trying to stop me, Lionis…stop us. They can’t win. This is my kingdom. My world. Why do they think they can stop me?” The sky outside the window darkened more, the rain like a river falling from the sky. “I will kill them all. All of them! Then I won’t be bothered by any of them. Then it can be you and me. We can fuck all we want. We can go where we want, and no one can hurt us. No one will sneer at us.”

“Baby, you’ve got to stop this…” was all I could get out before she flung herself at me, her nails held like claws ready to rake the flesh from my bones.

“Don’t you tell me to stop. This is for us. I am doing this for us!” She screamed. I stepped back before her hands made contact. She stumbled to the floor on her hands and knees. A deep growling emanated from her throat as she looked up at me, wild-eyed.

She’d lost it. I could see there was no happy ending here. I wanted to take her into me, to protect her, she was lethal.

Standing up, her eyes fixated on mine, she quietly spoke, which was a whole hell of a lot more frightening than her screaming and raving, “You say you love me, Lionis. Then why don’t you want to be with me?”

“I do love you, baby. I do want to be with you,” I replied.

She stepped towards me. Her drunken swagger would have been comical had the situation not been so serious. You can’t save her, Lionis. You have to end this. Only you can end it. Stop her from her madness. The familiar voices sing-songed through my brain. My dead best friend called to me. Cu’s gruff voiced hollered, “Kill her, Lionis. Kill her just as you killed me!” I gasped.

Fear plastered itself to my face. Glinda grinned at me. “You’re afraid of me, Lionis? The big brave fraidy Cat, huh?” She laughed.

“Uhh,” I didn’t know what to say. The smell of Bunnies wafted through my nostrils, I furrowed my eyebrows trying to find the source. Where the fuck were those fuzz balls? Glancing around the room, I saw nothing. Nothing but the mirror gazing at me. And don’t tell me I’m crazy for that. That mirror was alive. It fed, it hungered. Yessss, yessss…come to us, Lionis. Join us.

“What are you looking for?” Glinda inquired, swinging her head around, checking out the room. Her stray bits of hair flung around as her head swiveled to survey the room, her arms crossing at her chest. “Ahhhh, I see. You like that mirror, don’t you? Thank you for giving it to me, by the way. I had a bit of an infestation while you were away. It was a great terminator, so to speak.” She laughed the maniacal sing-song of a crazy mother fucker.

She crossed the room and gazed into the reflective glass, primping her hair. “It’s calling to me, Lionis. It’s telling me to shove you through to the other side. But don’t worry,” she blew a kiss to her reflection, “you’ll be of no use to me dead.”

I’d heard of manic women, but had never really witnessed it. The woman before me was as calm as glassy waters. Smiling, I said, “It calls to me too, my love.” I stepped towards her. “You know I can’t let you kill all these creatures and people, don’t you Glinda?” A puzzled expression crossed her face.

“I love you. I love you more than you know. I wish things could be different for us.” She stood up and looked at me, her mouth opening to speak. I bounded across the room and landed in front of her. She struck her hands out, her nails clawing my face.

“No one can stop me,” She cried. Her breath heaved in her chest, her eyes widened in panic. “Don’t Lionis,” She begged as I grabbed her arms and shoved her towards the magical glass. “Nooooo! I love you. I love you, don’t!” The terror in her screams tore me apart. Life ain’t easy, and sometimes you just gotta do what’s right.

Tears burned my eyes as the silver liquid from the glass caught her left arm and started sucking her in. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. But we’ll be together soon. We’ll have peace soon, you and I.” I didn’t know if she heard me or not, it only took seconds for her entire upper body to be pulled into the glass. Her legs the only thing left to go. Ruby-clad feet kicked and fought, but to no avail. In no time, my love had been swallowed up to her ankles. It seemed the mirror hesitated at her feet. The air around me seemed to compress, as if I were in a void. Creaking sounds came from everywhere, but nowhere. I couldn’t breathe from the pressure against me, I was being crushed. A loud pop ended the sensation, as her lovely, delicate feet were pulled from the slippers, the magical shoes cast to the floor before me—indigestible. The power of the ruby slippers too much for the magic of the mirror.

She was gone. I was stunned, not believing what I’d done. The sun that shone through the window seemed wrong to me. It wasn’t a day for sunshine. I knew I would never feel like sunshine again. She was my bright, shiny ray of golden fucking sunshine and I sacrificed her. I sacrificed her for a world of displaced, convoluted fuck ups. They are what drove my baby crazy. I was enraged. I wanted to hunt every one of them. And I realized, it made me no better than she was. But what was I going to do? I had no place in this new world, a world without her. Sure, she was sick, but man could she suck my dick. I didn’t even get that final piece of ass. I knelt to the floor. I didn’t know what to do.

I stroked one of the ruby slippers with my paw. All that was left of her spirit. Maybe it was the slippers that drove her mad. I pulled my paw back, afraid of being corrupted by them. An image of me in the ruby slippers entered my mind. I was powerful in my vision. No one could touch me. I could fuck anyone I wanted, eat anyone I wanted. Who’d stop me? I started reaching for the slipper again when a corner of white paper behind the glass caught my eye. I carefully dragged it out from behind the frame, a tuft of Bunny fur and a spot of blood marred the bottom of the paper, but I read:

My Dearest Cornelly,
Please do not fret with me gone. I am happy here, in this place, wherever it is. There is no pain, my fuzzy Bunniest. There are carrots and cabbage every day! It’s like spring all year round. All of Bunyburry can live here… beyond the glass, it’s safe. There are no walls, and no Owls. I can’t wait until we can be together again. Tell Fizzle I love him.

With always love,

Your devoted

Beyond the glass it’s safe…?

I leaned towards my reflection, the liquid silver bulging out to reach for me. I pulled back. “By the Beard, what the fuck am I doing?”

The glass seemed to swirl, like a whirlpool in a Munchkinland wine vat. When the go-go freak show cleared, I saw a real life picture of a beautiful pasture. Soft green grass was dotted with a rainbow of colors. At the top of a hill, I saw two glowing white lights. Like a strange hairy mushroom trip, the picture closed in on the figures. My breath hitched, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t know what kind of magic the mirror was using on me, but there was my Glinda, as she used to be. Her smile radiant, her dress clean, she was the perfect creature I fell in love with. But who was the other?

Her face turned as if she knew I was watching, “Come, Lionis. You were right. There is no place for us in that world. Come, come be with me. You can be a man if you want to, Lionis. Whatever you choose, I will love you. I have always loved you.” Tears streamed down my face. I reached for her, for my love.

She smiled and continued, “Look, Lionis. Look who is here.” The view expanded. “Ozma has been here, waiting for us.” I stretched my paw a little bit further and pulled back wondering why she would give a shit about Ozma, but then again, it seemed her crazy was gone.

I could be human. I could be with my love. I had no place in Oz anymore. The liquid silver engulfed my hand, it was warm, comforting. I was terrified. I tried to pull back, but it wouldn’t release me. “No going back now, Lionis.” I smiled, I was going to Heaven. Glinda reached her arms out to me, I surrendered to my fate… The warmth turned to pain, I swore I could feel spikes being driven into my flesh as I passed from my reality into a hellish land. My soul screamed…laughter came from the mirror, taunting me for being the idiot that I was. Don’t worry, Lionis. You will live again, but as the idiot you are…

D:L&L (part 134 - Tin Man) -- Be Still My Beating...

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:30:00 +0000

The rain didn’t stop. We waited as long as we could, Serena shivering in the doorway, her face shadowed by the weak glow of lamplight. I tried to comfort her, but my metal hands were cold and hard, and my fingers tangled in her hair. I couldn’t imagine my old lust, the Nick who would have taken this opportunity to ravage and pleasure her in ways that had stopped the hearts of mortal women and Muchkins alike: a thick, raging, vengeful violence I so often and for so long mistook for love.

“We’ll have to go now,” I said finally, although the swollen clouds still sank low over the pulsing green towers. I could no longer see Glinda; she had slipped beyond heavy pink curtains, back into her dry warm boudoir shortly after the clatter of rain and the click of her finely placed curses started falling from the sky.

“We’ve waited too long as it is.”

Serena, who had been dozing crumpled into a dusty corner of the doorway, looked sleepily past me, her eyes raising in the direction of the palace on the hill. “You do realize it’s not real.” Her head fell to one side, resting, her black hair catching against the knotty wooden grain of the wall and glinting dully in the low light. She yawned. “It’s just a spell.” She stretched one leg out and wiggled her toes beyond the shelter of the doorway. Her foot pulled back a moment later, completely dry. She smiled and closed her eyes. “See?”

I stepped into the alley and looked up. Rain continued to fall, convincingly so, but I was completely dry, cool, safe. I glared at the pale shape of her foot in shadow. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

There was a light giggle from the shadow. “I was sleepy, Nick.”

I bit back a stream of curses and helped her to her feet, shoved her into the street. Rain fell in silent, evaporating drops around us, our feet hurrying across dry warm cobblestones. As we wound through the streets toward the palace the clouds glimmered and glowed, burned away. Serena hummed lightly to herself, singing softly as she deftly crossed streets and dipped past alleys, her skimming over stones and gutters in soft silence.

The tik toks were, predictably, waiting for us at the main gate to the palace, so I followed Serena around the western side of the high walls, curving along the glittering walls until Serena found the one chink in the wall she’d had her hand trailing along the wall for – an almost non-existent divot directly across from a gray, gnarled tree that looked disturbingly familiar. As Serena pressed small buttons in the wall with tiny stitched fingers, I glanced up into the upper branches of the tree – no apples.

“Damn, that was one fucked up journey,” I chuckled, shaking my head.

What have you learned, Dorothy?

Serena let out a pleased little yelp and turned toward me, scratching out a low door that suddenly swung forward on noisy hinges flush from the wall. “Success, Nick! I knew I could find it – it’s been years, but folks like us never forget, do we?” She winked at me.

I smiled, watching her slight form disappear into shadow beyond the door. “No,” I whispered. “No, but we must forgive.”

I knew the tik toks would be waiting for us but I underestimated how many she would have deployed – it was quite gratuitous, if you ask me. Serena pulled up short as we approached a window of light that grew as we got closer; a dim secret hallway, musty and unused for years it felt, that opened onto a high foyer flickering with enchanted candlelight. My footsteps clattered and echoed – it was practically impossible for me to be sneaky. That’s why I carried a big ax and a bigger attitude.

Both of which I had lost, or left, behind me.

Serena seemed to realize that at the same time. She stared at my empty hands, eyes wide. “Nick, your…”

I waved a hand. “Don’t need it.”

Quickly, in hushed tones and while watching the silent, motionless army of tik toks in the bright foyer, I explained to Serena the tik toks that had helped me along the way, saving me in many ways, their eyes flickering with something as close to emotion as soulless robots controlled by the whim of a madly pink witch could emote. Serena’s face lifted, her eyes moving over the shining silver bodies of the squat machines waiting for us. For me.

“So, you’re telling me that you think some of these little tin boxes actually aren’t empty shells,” Serena repeated, her voice hollow and doubtful. Candlelight lit the deep onyx of her eyes, so very much like button eyes on a doll. I realized for the first time that her eyes were completely black, flat, and very, very sad. “You actually think they will help you.”

“I know they will,” I corrected. The front line of tik toks tittered slightly, their faces turning in one motion toward us. I cocked my head, focusing on the first of them, the closest to us. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I had to feel for them, toward them, send out… something. Positive energy. Emotion, pure and without agenda. I had to let them know that, as one of them and formerly as soulless and focused as they were then, that they could – and should, must – change.

They could live. They could care. They could feel.

I was so focused on silently drawing their attention and beaming as much of myself, my hope and gratitude and forgiveness and love, into the tik toks that I barely noticed when Serena gasped, clutching at me, a slender stitched shaking finger pointing over the heads of the tin men I sought to set free.

“Nick,” she hissed.

I didn’t have to glance up, and I couldn’t have if I did have to – I knew who it was.

You don’t have live like this, under her control, under her thumb, privy to her whims and her violence and her tyranny, I thought, sending the words to them like silver corded steel, looping around them, into them and through them, drawing them in. You can break free and live like me, with me, I’ll take care of you and protect you but let you be your own.

The first of the tik toks, who looked inexplicably familiar among the sea of identical faces and bodies, turned his shining face toward me and, I swear it, smiled. I caught his eye and nodded, my body rigid with fear for the first time since I strolled down that yellow brick road with a straw-stuffed scarecrow, a whimpering cowardly lion and a country girl in a dime store dress.

And her dog – let’s not forget that dog.

Glinda didn’t have to speak – her mind spoke for her. I felt it, but the witch’s will was solely for Serena now, and as I dared to lift my eyes I saw Glinda glaring down, her mouth twisted and ugly, as ugly as an enchanted witch can appear. Her eyebrows lifted, and she raised a palm to her painted lips, kissed her fingertips and offered her palm to Serena.

A kiss.

I looked down and read Serena’s lips as she heard Glinda in her head.

Welcome back, whore. Thank you for bringing him to me. Your job is done. Finish yourself.

“Serena, no,” I said, reaching out but she was gone, moving into the light, her eyes on Glinda’s paper doll pink form on the balcony above us.

The tik toks were upon her in an instant, metal fists raised as they rushed her, surrounding her, and she fell to her knees, her face raised, never once taking her eyes off the woman, the witch, who had once again betrayed her.

It sounded like cloth ripping, soft cotton stretching and moaning as they tore her apart. I watched, white puffs of stuffing and lace, lanks of black hair sifting away as they backed off finally, finished, waiting, turning their faces as one to Glinda on her balcony, watching from her pedestal.

She raised one hand, pointing directly at where I stood silently in shadow. They turned as one, metal scraping against stone, a shift of light and sparkle and gleaming tin.

“Kill him!” She called out, which was completely unnecessary and purely for show.

I stepped forward into the light of the high hall as they moved as one in my direction. “STOP!” I shouted.

The candles flickered, and a pink window in a pane high above Glinda’s head shattered.

The tik toks kept moving as one. I held my ground, one palm out and up, facing them, an effort to halt her efforts. I shouted again, and another window exploded, shards of pink glass glittering and clinking off the machines impenetrable, shining bodies.

“I was once like you,” my voice boomed through the airy hall. Reaching behind me as they advanced, I felt a table against the wall. With one sweep I knocked off the vase of flowers, which evaporated instantly before hitting the cold marble floor – enchantment. Glamour. Her façade. Without taking my eyes off them I climbed onto the table; not too much more height, but I was above them now – a situation they were used to which I could use.

“I was like you – a machine, a killing machine, operating under a will not my own,” I called out. “Look at me – I am like you. I am made of tin and metal, I am hollow and indestructible. I killed because I was bored and didn’t want to face what made me that way.” They didn’t stop. “Like you, I killed and killed and I did it because of one person, one woman, who told me something a long time ago that I chose to believe. She controlled me, and she knew it. She cherished it above all things, this control, this power, this belief that she was better than me and so she could control me. And I didn’t even realize it.”

Above, high above, Glinda began to laugh.

The tik toks did not stop. My back was against the wall.

“But then I got some help from friends,” I called out, my voice tipping and unraveling now, eyes skipping over the horde of machines inching closer for the faces I recognized, the ones I swore I knew. “Friends that cared about me and took care of me and helped me realize I am not a machine – I am not a monster!”

The sound of their feet scraping across the marble, the cold spark of their advance, filled my head. I was losing my argument, my train of thought, my mind.

“They were some of you!” I shouted over Glinda’s rising laughter. “You, some of you, I know you – I know your faces and I remember you helping me! I know you’re here! And if you helped me then you know that you can feel empathy, and pity, and graciousness, and that’s what this place needs!”

The first several tik toks reached the table. One on my left produced an ax from somewhere and raised it high over his shining metal head.

“You don’t have to live like this!” I shrieked as the table splintered beneath the first blows of his ax. “I know you can feel – if I can you can! You can! You don’t have to live under her rule!”

Three tik toks hung back, their faces turning from me and the rising tide of metal men bent on my destruction to Glinda’s pale amused face, high above them all, her fluttering pink hands and twisted red mouth.

“Own your own soul,” I screamed as the table split in two. I snatched at a metal sconce several feet above me and held on, dangling just above the tik toks’ heads. I raised my face and closed my eyes. “You don’t have to live under anyone else’s rule – you don’t have to obey her! Listen to what’s inside you – I know it’s there, you’ve shown me it’s there! You don’t have to obey her!”

“But sir,” said one tik tok, staring up at me as his brothers extended their arms and tugged at my legs and the sconce broke free from the wall. “We do have to obey her. We love her. She made us. We obey our maker.”

The world went tinny silver, and silent, and dark, and the crunching and slashing and bending of metal ushered me into a blistering spin, and then there was nothing at all.

D:L&L (part 133 - Scarecrow) -- With Friends Like These

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:26:00 +0000

So it had all come down to this – and I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Right from the off I was never sure who to trust. Turlo was the first to get me out of my shell, but who the fuck was his boss? Was it the Wizard himself? I never found out. Then Dot came along. Little Dorothy Gale’s granddaughter (or was it great-granddaughter?) arrived on the scene with something she called Toto, only it wasn’t a mewling, smelly piece of four-legged meat but a contraption that killed people with metal things called “bullets”. I think I preferred the dog, in all fairness. But you’re supposed to trust your friends, right?

Wrong.

At the last hurdle, with a sniff of victory in my grasp, there they were: Tin Man, Lion, and Dot, all in league with The Big Kahuness Herself, Glinda the White Witch. It was a fall from grace that had become atypical. If one of them had produced a vat of Munchkinlander wine there and then, I would have happily quaffed the whole lot and blown my own brains out. But alas, that option was not forthcoming.

“Any last words, fucker?” Dot said, cocking Toto. “You know, I’ve been itching to blow your straw head straight to hell since the moment I clapped eyes on you. Now that it’s blue it makes it all the more worthwhile.” She took a final aim. “Pray to whatever god you believe it. Tell him Dot sent ya.”

The White Witch spoke up. “Now, now, Ms Gale. We’re not in that much of a hurry to reunite the lovers, are we? Let him catch up on old times with the rest of his friends. What say you, Lion?”

“I never had much time for him,” Lion growled. “All I want to do now is eat him. Now that he’s changed back to Fiyero, I can cook up a decent sauce to complement his fine rump.”

This didn’t sound like the Lion I knew. What had she done with him?

The Tin Man poked me with his axe. “If you want to eat him, Lion, then allow me to chop him into bite-sized portions. More of a delicacy that way.”

“Oh don’t go to any trouble on my account,” I said. If I was going to go down, let it be with a smile on my face. Before the smile turned into a grimace of terror, that is.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Lion said, his voice dripping with menace and a touch of sarcasm. “But I didn’t acquire courage so others could do my dirty work for me. My teeth will do just fine, Nick.”

Glinda breezed over and placed herself between me and the three amigos. “It is fitting,” she said, “for the condemned to enjoy a hearty meal.”

“I was hoping he’d enjoy being one,” Lion retorted.

“The time for fun is later,” Glinda continued. “Let poor Scarecrow – sorry, Fiyero cling on to life a little bit longer.” She waved her wand and brought about a change of scenery. We were no longer at the palace door but in a banquet hall. Instead of waiters we had Tik-Toks. Instead of all the trappings of a feast, we had bones for knives and spoons. For food we had what delicacies each province of Oz could provide. Meat, cheeses, fruits, sweetbreads…and crow.

“That’s your seat there.” Glinda pointed to a spot in front of which was the biggest plate of burnt bird it had ever been my pleasure to witness. “I took the pleasure of baking them myself,” she said gleefully. “I do hope you like them.”

In the centre of the table was a large serving dish, deep enough to hold a body. I looked into it and cried out with despair. The dish held the charred green body of my beloved Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. I convulsed and I felt that nothing could stop my agony but my own death.

“Oh yes,” said Glinda. “Dessert.” She grabbed a bone and raised it over her head. “Who’s first to tuck in?”

The bitch was well and truly insane.

Dot, Tin Man and Lion crowded around me and pushed me over to my spot. Lion put a napkin around my neck and handed me a piece of crow. Dot rapped her Toto on the table, chanting, “Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.” Tin Man banged his axe off the floor in unison. Glinda just clapped.

I threw the bird back on the table and stood up, the bile in my throat rising with my courage. “Give me my sword, Glinda,” I said stubbornly. “If I’m to die, at least allow me the dignity to die fighting.”

“We will allow you nothing!” Lion screamed, his own mouth glistening with green flesh.

There was a crash from behind.

“Oh you won’t, huh?” Before I could even turn around, the Lion was ejected from his chair and he ended up in a heap under the far window. “I don’t think I can let that happen, sweet sister.”

Elphaba – well, I think it was her – filled the doorway with her presence. And behind her, a small crew of flying monkeys seemed ready to do battle.

“You think closing off all the exits was enough to keep me at bay, dear Glinda? You mock me.” Her gaze was so powerful, so full of imminent destruction, that even I had to look away.

No thinking – this was Elphaba.

“How could I kill my only friend?” Glinda responded. “It is not my responsibility.” She pointed to my two remaining former friends. “It is theirs.” With that, Tin Man and Dot jumped from their chairs and made for Elphaba. I knew they were done for even before they did. Elphaba unleashed more green fury from her arsenal of magic and eviscerated the pair before they could get within five feet of her.

“Mere phantoms,” she said, hardly breaking a sweat. She turned her gaze to me. “Glinda’s creations,” she explained. “Dead Ozians given a makeover and a little shot of something to put a spring in their step. A few more minutes and their limited lifespan would have expired. But for what purpose, Glinda? Why not just kill us?”

Glinda put her hands on her hip. “I like to play.” With that, she released her own fury; the result of which sent Elphaba flying out the door and crashing into the monkeys behind her. I looked around for my sword, hoping that one of them had brought it in with them. If any bitch needed a slapping, it was this one. I spotted it buried under fake-Lion’s prone body. Faux or not, I hoped he was either dead or at least out for the count. I was going to need my sword. I leapt up and dashed over to where Lion lay. Lucky for me he didn’t budge an inch when I recovered Bitchslapper. Unlucky for me, Glinda didn’t take kindly to my freshly-acquired weapon. She launched a spell at me. I waved my sword in front of me, hoping for some sort of protection. The spell bounced off the blade and rebounded straight back to the White Witch. She herself bounced off the wall behind her and fell flat on her face. A monkey landed on her back and began pulling her hair.

“Get the fuck off me!” Glinda screamed. But the monkey was enjoying itself so much it called over to its pals, who joined in on the hair-pulling fun. This distraction allowed Elphaba to recover and to come storming back in to the banqueting hall. She threw another fist of green energy at her opponent. The monkeys made it away just in time to see Glinda try to get up, but only end up plastered against another wall. Elphaba moved closer, throwing spell after spell against her bitter enemy.

So what was I doing while all this was going on? Decapitating as many Tik-Toks as came my way. It was obvious to me whose side they were on. They carried little knives in their hands and were stabbing at me whenever they had the chance. Bitchslapper made short work of them, though. In the space of mere minutes, metal limbs and heads decorated the hall floor; while around me the smell of magic grew ever stronger. It was might versus might. Witch versus Bitch.

And my Elphaba appeared to have the upper hand.

Appeared being the operative word, that is.

The body of fake-Lion stood up from where it had lain, but instead of rushing in to fight by his Mistress’s side, it grew to three times its size and fury. It unleashed a vengeance upon Elphaba that knocked my beloved to the floor. It took advantage of this respite by grabbing Glinda, locking its arms around her, then vanishing into the ether, taking the White Witch with it.

We had lost our only advantage. What the hell had happened, I did not know. I hurried over to Elphaba’s side and helped her up.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I had her,” she muttered. “I fucking had her. But that thing got in the way.”

“Are you sure he’s not the real deal?”

“Oh he’s a creation all right. Only a simulacrum can change its size. I’ve not seen one of them for a long, long time.” She shook her head one more time. “I nearly had her, Fiyero.” Only this time there was no anger in her words, only despair. Where we went from here was anyone’s guess. I took Elphaba in my arms and carried her away from the hall and back outside the palace. We would have to come up with a new plan, a fresh way to stop Glinda from wreaking more havoc upon Oz. If we didn’t, we were fucked.

Not that we got much of a chance, mind you. It would have been too easy for Glinda to just leave us alone, to leave us wallow in our misery. Oh no, she had her own plans all right. At the back of the hall a large mirror appeared; not the kind you could see your own reflection, though, more the kind that projected your image. Glinda took centre stage once more.

“Here’s a recording I made earlier,” her image said. “On the off-chance I’m not standing over your dead bodies, cackling like a green witch, I have taken the liberty of creating a fail-safe, just to be sure.”

As soon as she said these words the room became almost claustrophobic, as if all the air was being sucked out of it…

…which was precisely what was happening. The room filled with a sudden roar, as if we were inside a tornado, one of those whirling death winds that flung houses to far away lands. That’s when I realized that I couldn’t breathe – hell of a time to no longer be made of straw!

“Run!” screamed my lover, and Elphaba and I raced to the door, but found it shut tight in our faces. We banged and pulled on it, but it wouldn’t budge. I stepped back, beckoning Elphaba to give me room, and let Bitchslapper do its work – but it clanged off of the door as if I was striking stone, the vibrations so painful that I dropped the gleaming blade with a yelp and grabbed my wrists in agony. Not wasting a moment, my love moved me aside and swung her arms, throwing words at the door that I’d never heard before. If brute force wouldn’t work, deep magic would. But nothing happened; the door resisted each effort. It was as if it was protected by a force that not even Elphaba’s ancient magic could penetrate. She tried again and again, but try as she might she could not break through the magicked door, and instead she was left panting, gasping for the very air that was seeping out of the room while I massaged by numb arms and shoulders. I looked left and right, trying to stay calm, searching for a way out, but there were no other exit or entry points in the banqueting hall. They were there before, I thought, or were they? Another illusion? Was everything an illusion?

Glinda’s image continued to prattle on regardless (or maybe regardful) of our current situation. “In less time than it takes to skin a cat, the banqueting hall will be as a vacuum. You will each suffer a painful death, struggling to the last for every breath. You have no chance of life, my former friends.” She laughed once more. “I would enjoy watching you die, but I have other matters to attend to. Have a nice death, Fiyero. You too, Elphaba. Parting is such sweet delirium, don’t you think?”

Then she was gone for perhaps the final time. It was just like the White Witch to have one more trick up her silken sleeve. I looked despairingly at my beloved. I saw no hope in her eyes, only disbelief and sadness.

“The slippers,” she said, slumping into my arms as we sagged against the closed doorway. “If only she didn’t have those slippers.”

I nodded, a meaningless effort now. What had looked like a sure victory was gone. We were going to die in an airless room under the heel of those slippers, and that would finally be that. All we had was each other now; I hugged my beloved to me, but sadly, even that was no comfort – I could barely feel her at all.

D:L&L (part 132 - Dot) -- The Pink and the Dead

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:44:00 +0000

When I'd first heard the Oz stories from Grandma, I thought they were the most wonderful stories ever. What little girl wouldn't? It wasn't until I was a teenager and boys and riding horses and shooting guns had become the priorities in my life that I began to think that she was batty. The Emerald City had always seemed like a magical, beautiful, gleaming place, a place that must have been polished from spire to cobblestone everyday by troops of brightly colored, completely joyous men and women drawn about in gilded carriages by these horses of a different color than I'd fallen in love with - so much so that I'd demanded for years that Papa buy some such horse because ours were all one color, or maybe two, and they certainly didn't change. And if not, then I would ask to go visit Grandma, even though she was frighteningly old and sometimes scared me a little and smelled like old shoes. At least then I would get to see the horses that changed color, hear the Lion roar, and smell the buttercuppery breezes that blew in from the golden fields around the EC.

All that was gone now, as was Toto's bark (not to mention his bite). Down below, the EC sparkled with its normal green glare, but the shine was less polished, somewhat dingy despite the warm sun bathing it in morning light. There were no colorful horses prancing about with cleaning crews and happy contingents of city servants; instead I could see waves of silvery men like mechanical ants moving around the palace in formation, setting up a perimeter, albeit not in fashion our platoon sergeant would have appreciated. As for the smell - let's go with dried pit sweat, musty old rags and, well, dingleberries? Let's just say these fucking Monkey bats smelled like warmed-over shit.

They'd made short work of our raggedy band of nobodies. That was a simple as I could put it and as honest. The Weasel? Dead. Picked up, still rhyming, dropped. Ordinal? Probably dead. Ran away, saying he would draw some of them off. Picked up, legs still kicking, dropped - I didn't see where because he, to his credit, did get some distance, dodging and ducking and hurdling fences and gates as if he'd trained for it all his life before they caught him and dropped him hard and fast somewhere I would probably never see. Cobb? His little shovel was bright red with blood last time I saw him, and there were Monkey bat heads littering the coal car. I didn't know if they would burn as well as coal, but I'm sure he will try it if he survives. I could hear his voice for some time, screaming for Smalls to hurry up and help, and then he was out of earshot. And as for the Lion? Coward through and through. He slinked, slunked, slunk, slipped away - however you say that. He bitched out. No fucking King of the Forest, that one. One big pussy. There was no other way to call it. Grandma would have been upset. She had had some nice things to say about him.

That left me, now airborne between two Monkey bats, Turlo up ahead, leading the way, his nasty little monkey ass turned towards me, tail in the air, reminding me of those Animal Planet episodes with the baboons with the bright red butts that you hate to see but can't stop watching. Toto was holstered; couldn't lose him even if there were no more barks left in him. I'd dropped more of the Flying Oz Taliban that I could count, running from cover to cover, head on a swivel, Toto barking proudly, that smirk on my face as I squinted and squeezed and tried to protect myself and my team. And then click, and then a sigh, and then a quick look around for something to use as a weapon, a squawk of some type and a pair of strong hands under each of my arms.

Up, up and away. Time to visit the one person I'd yet to meet here in Oz, the one person that seemed to be the origin of this crisis. The one person who could call up a storm and whisk away an entire person - the Scarecrow, who never came back. The one person who could usurp an emperor. The one person who could call up a purple fog that turns cute little people into craven, hungry monsters bent for flesh. The one person who could corrupt an old hero and turn his ax against anyone she wanted. The one person with an angry smirk, a violently pink dress that hid all but a bit of a pair of gorgeous, gleaming Ruby slippers, and who walked out onto the parapet of the palace's highest tower just as Turlo and his henchmen landed and slammed me to the hard stone.

I felt my teeth rattle in my head, tasted blood and saw nothing but bright light for a moment. Then I heard something that sounded vaguely familiar and utterly wrong and told me that this was, in fact, the end of my little journey to Oz. I'd done everything I could, and nothing had mattered. It was over, and I was so dazed that I couldn't even look up at her and spout out anything vile or rebellious when I heard her sickly sweet voice and knew just how naive Grandma had been.

"Oh, dear, what have we here? Another someone trying to drop a house on us?" A slender Ruby Slipper came into fuzzy view and pressed my cheek into the hard rock underneath. I groaned from the pain, felt bile in my throat and tried not to cough or vomit. "Not today. You aren't a good witch or a bad witch. You, my pretty, are nothing at all. And in a moment you will be less than nothing. I just wanted a look at you. And your little dog, Toto, too. Now, fly away, my dear. Fly, fly away, while I sort out the rest of your foolish friends and end this once and for all."

A moment later I was jerked up and back. I vomited as they drug me to the edge of the parapet, catching the barest glimpse of the golden tresses and tiara, and suddenly there was the blue sky above and I was falling, falling, falling.

D:L&L (part 131 - Narrator) -- All the Glitters...

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:41:00 +0000

"And so, this is it," she muttered and turned away from the window.

Down below, the whole city spread out before her - a window to the East, to the West, to the South, and to the North - each of them giving her a way to look out upon the EC and see the sparkling green, the tiny figures like ants on the ground moving about their little lives. The air shimmered for a moment when she glanced back to the eastern window, little more than a slit in the tower wall through which blue skies crawled on forever.

"Show me the train station," she said. The air glimmered and shook and color swirled into form until she could see the figures running about the train yard, tiny creatures swooping down on them from above, bat wings flapping. They swooped and scratched, cackling like madmen, trying to catch a wrist or an ankle, then climbed back on the updrafts around the city walls,looking back and flinging dark handfuls of filth. "Nasty little creatures, these winged monkeys, but useful in a pinch and so willing to trade off one magical bitch for another." Glinda sneered. The monkeys would keep them occupied and eventually grab them all, dragging them up into the sky and dropping them, one by one. She's already witnessed the Weasel, caught by his baggy pants, fall to his death. His body was bent backwards over a railing outside the ticket booth.

She flicked her wrist and the image disappeared. "Soon they'll all follow him, even that little resourceful wisp of a girl from Kansas with her nasty little Toto. It can't bark all night, my dear. Sooner or later, your little dog will go hoarse as you grow tired, but my monkeys, well, that's another story entirely."

"Everyone except him. Kill them all, but not him. Bring him to me."

Glinda turned and winked at the man standing across from her, then scooped up a glass of Munchkinlander wine, draining it quickly. She wiped the back of her hand and let out a long, loud burp. "Not very lady-like, I suppose," she said, chortling, "but then again, whoever said I was a lady?" She giggled again, thinking back to some of her most recent escapades since the Lion turned on her - what a bastard he'd been! What a fraidy cat! She eyed the man against the wall, the former Captain of her Secret Service, remembering how brutal he'd been at a Captain, then how desperate he'd been as a lover, trying to hard to satisfy his mistress with his tiny, um, wand, and ultimately failing. She stared at him, sizing him up - for such a large man, she'd expected a larger... "But all that glitters is not gold, so they say."

Grabbing the bottle of wine, she stomped across the floor, the Ruby Slippers click-clacking across the stones as she staggered forward. "Isn't that right, Captain? Isn't it?" She giggled and pressed the bottle to his lips, but he didn't move to open his mouth or swallow, nor did he protest or push her away. He stood stock still, his purple eyes staring back at her blankly.

"Isn't it, Captain?" A hint of anger at his lack of response. She raised the bottle to her lips, stumbled and fell into him, crashing against his cold, hard body, the bottle of wine crashing to the floor. Reaching up to steady herself, she grabbed his collar for support and it tore. Down she went, the cloth of his tunic ripping easily in her hand, his broad orange chest now exposed to the waist. She stared up at it, at the grandeur of his power, his strength. She'd hoped that he would have the audacity, the boldness of the Lion, the sheer will of personality in private as he had in public. She wanted him to step forward and overpower her, to put her down and ride her hard until she begged and pleaded. But he had been weak at heart, no soul, no pent up anger or frustration, no rage. He was not the one she needed to help keep things balanced. He'd been feeble at heart, weak and afraid, a man willing to do whatever she wanted and unable to take charge and turn the tables on her, to take his punishment and then give in kind.

Gone were the days of claw marks across her backside. Gone was the snarl that had set her loins on fire, fear leaping into her heart because she knew that if he, her Lion, had desired, he could have kill her with one bite, and she would have been powerless to stop him. She looked up from her knees, her pink dress stained with the wine, at the orange man before her, stock still - rock solid she had joked earlier when she'd cast the stoning spell and killed him mid-sentence. He couldn't replace what she had lost, and he had been just as devious and dangerous as she - only he was afraid of her like the Lion hadn't been. And in the end, that fear had shown through - his eyes still screamed, frozen forever in a look of terror now that he was solid stone, a memorial to the weak and pathetic.

Somewhere down below, east of the palace, was what she wanted - a creature the nasty little monkeys wouldn't touch, couldn't handle - a roaring King of Beasts rivaled by none and loved by none other than herself. And once this, the final battle, was over and the fools who pitted themselves against her were trampled under her Ruby Slippers, then perhaps she could once again be united with the one creature in Oz that she felt was her equal - not a handsome prince from a fairy tale but a king in his own right. "All that glitters," she mumbled and climbed to her feet in search of another bottle.

D:L&L (part 130 - Lion) -- Fraidy Cat

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:54:00 +0000

I knew that damn Monkey-bat had something up his sleeve. As soon as the train stopped, a hoard of the beasts began to descend upon us. The beating of their wings was a drum, it was wild, and had a rhythm. Up, down, up down, shifting the air around us. Dot jumped out of the coal car, her black, metallic weapon in front of her. I reached a paw out to stop her, but women are stubborn creatures. She pulled from my grasp and stood on the platform banging her banger into the sky. A couple of the creatures fell from flight, landing on the roof of the train car with a thunk. As for me? I slipped out under the cacophony of flapping wings and banging bang things called Toto. Who was stupid enough to try to fight a losing battle other than stubborn women? And that is exactly what was transpiring—a losing battle. Never trust a Monkey-bat, I always said.

I managed to simply slink away from the fight. The sun was going to be in full bloom, so I knew I needed to get away while I still had a chance to. Before anyone saw me. I glanced back over my shoulder at the silhouettes of the battle. A lost cause, I thought to myself. I heard Dot cry out in frustration, she was wiping her Toto on her slacks. There’s not much defense against flying flying-Monkey poo.

I don’t know why I even cared. It wasn’t my problem. Oz wasn’t my problem; Dot wasn’t my problem either. I didn’t ask for her to come here. I didn’t send an invitation for her to come to the party. Dot wasn’t my problem. She made it clear as finely distilled vodka that she was able to take care of herself. My only problem was Glinda. So I was working my way back to her place.

The streets were oddly deserted. I guessed the tik-toks were all called back to Her. But I wasn’t taking any chances, surely there had to have been some patrols left. I moved quickly, and even thought about moving over the rooftops; but surely those Monkey-bats would be flying overhead any moment with whatever was left of my friends. My friends I abandoned. But it was for the good in the long run. If they survived, I might be able to bust them out of the prison. Surely Gilly could pick the locks again. Poor Gilly… he was so small. I hoped he was hiding, too. Yo, yo.

The fissure in my mind began to crack again. This is no time to lose it, stupid! I backed against a green brick wall and closed my eyes. I needed to keep focused, I had a goal. I had to get back to her. My goddess, my…love. I could envision her, a lovely vision in…pink. I said a little prayer for her, took a deep breath, and opened my eyes.

Above, the flapping of wings sounded, a black cloud blocking out the first rays of the rising sun. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and the sky broke open. Rain blanketed down, soaking my fur, adding to my misery. Who’d have thought a flock of crows could control the weather? I knew I shouldn’t have been surprised, after all, they were no ordinary crows. The poo had been flung, literally and figuratively. I had avoided most of the shit storm, but I knew my time was coming. I had to get to her. To save her from herself.

“I’m coming, my love,” I mumbled. I wondered in that moment if she had heard me. A feeling of warmth came over me, and I felt stronger. She needed me. My cock stiffened at the thought. I could save her. I was the only one who could.

I bounded onto the street, not caring who might see me. Tik-toks—fuck em’. Those little fuckers couldn’t keep up with me. Money-bats—fuck em’. I was hungry anyways, and while Monkey isn’t one of my favorites, I’d make due with a few of them. I was the Lion, the bad-assed mother fucker of Oz.

The green glow of her palace shone through the sheets of rain, a beacon of light, a haven of horror. I was ready. I kicked up some speed, adrenaline pumping through me. I was almost there. She’d welcome me, I knew. She loved me, I knew.

Then I came to a complete stop. What the fuck? I thought, as I gazed at the million-mile-high garden blocking my way. I never knew my dirty girl had a green thumb. And just like everything about her, these plants were thorny. I’m talking stab a mother fucker and kill him, kind of like the bird impaled on one that was in front of me. Its ichor oozed, blending with the rain water. I carefully plucked the feathered fiend from the thorn and popped him in my mouth. It tasted bitter; the feathers dry on my tongue. I spit it out. I lapped at the falling rain to wash away the foul funk. A feather was stuck in my choppers. Just great, I was going to have rotten crow breath when I kissed her again. I dug one of my claws between my teeth but couldn’t dislodge the damn thing. I roared in frustration.

You came back for me. Her voice permeated the air around me. “Of course I did,” I said, and suddenly I remember - was it her who put the thought in my head? - our special door, my secret entrance, the one I'd used dozens of times, when she'd called, when I'd needed her angry hiss and her soft mewling. You know how to find me. I did. I remembered, as if it was a long forgotten thought. I was drawn to it, so grinning I beat feet away from those nasty green hedges to the secret place that led me to the one I craved…

D:L&L (part 129 - Tin Man) -- A Stitch in Tin

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:33:00 +0000

Streaks of rose and ruby struggled with a growing green glow as I stalked through the silent city, soft and supple being sleeping behind shuttered doors and windows. I kept my eyes on the light rising from the lofty tops of the palace where she was rising, or waiting, or willing her creatures to her bidding. She knew I was coming, of that I was sure. What I did not know was what waited for me between us, what magic she had woven and conjured to stop what must happen.

Not vengeance, exactly, not revenge. Redemption.

I saw the young woman in the doorway just before the last turn onto the wide boulevard that led to the palace. She was standing but slumped, one bare shoulder against the rotted wood of the entrance, her face mottled with shadow. A long strand of clumped, matted dark hair hung past her elbow, snaking over one nearly naked breast. She scratched at her other arm with ragged black fingernails, absently tugged at a slip of a strap, letting her hand rest lightly on her own shoulder, smoothing the strap into place over her sharp white collarbone.

I could see her pulse beating in her neck. If had lips I would have licked them.

She stepped forward when she saw my huge gleaming form emerge into the lamplight. Dawn was moments away.

“Hey there, soldier,” she slurred, still scratching at her arms, which I saw now were littered with scabs and fresh scratches. “How’s the night treating you?”

I studied her, her slitted scarlet eyes smudged beneath with the depth of fatigue and abuse, her wide red mouth with a split lower lip. She stepped forward again, slipping a bit off the step, startled when I reached out and took her elbow, my metal fingers wrapping around her warm flesh. Her eyes rose to mine, and her mouth gaped.

“You,” she whispered, bloody eyes widening. “It’s you. Oh dear Oz, oh dear god please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, I know I’m worthless I know I’m nothing, I’m nothing I’m a wreck, a waste, a whore, a monster but I don’t want to die I don’t want to die….”

My grip automatically tightened at the word. I felt I felt my jaw clench, bits of rust hidden in the hinges falling to my shoulders. I wanted to squeeze her arm until it was paste in my palm. I wanted to slam my fist through the back of her head and see her muddy diseased blood on the door, break the glass and push her through it, leaving her body half in and out of the broken door. I wanted to destroy her for the mere mention of that word.

But it was just a word. And words do not hurt you. People do. M…m...monsters do.

“I’m not going to harm you,” I told her in low, but hopefully not dangerous, tones.

She blinked rapidly, her eyelids making audible clicks. A pink tongue slipped out to wet her cracked lips, dabbing cautiously at the cut, dried with fresh blood. “You aren’t? But… that’s what you do. You kill people. Violently. I know who you are, sir.”

“Who I was.” I touched the back of her head, her knotted hair catching in my fingers. “I have changed. I had to.”

“Why did you have to? Were they looking for you?”

I released her from my grip, pulling away several long damp hairs with me. “Who? Was who looking for me?” I glanced over my shoulder in the direction of the palace, where the sun was just lifting pink and perfect, framed by countless glowing green towers. She was there, waiting. Once, long ago, I would have been able to feel her presence being this physically close to her, but no more.

“The Queen,” the whore breathed, her eyes following mine. “The Pink One, the Witch Who Would Be Queen.”

“And who else?” I looked down at her. “What is your name, girl?”

She smiled, more of a baring of teeth, and said instantly, automatically, “What do you want it to be?”

I took a few steps away from her.

“Wait! Wait? Please?” I heard her hesitant, shuffling steps behind me. “Just wait, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve just used that line for so long, it’s… it’s…”

“Automatic?” I answered.

“Yeah, that. Like, a machine or something.” She paused and grinned, attempting to bat her matted eyelashes up at me. “Scraps.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Scraps. My name is Scraps.” She giggled, and it sent a cold shiver through me. “A terrible name, isn’t it?” She paused, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, glanced up at me almost shyly. “You… you don’t remember me.”

If I could swallow I would have, to stall for time. Of course I remembered – I am cursed with a limitless life and boundless memory. I remembered the journey of Ojo, who scoured Oz for the five ingredients to make an antidote to Dr. Pipt’s Liquid of Petrifaction. This nasty concoction turned any object it touched into marble – helpful and harmful, depending on your outlook and situation.

“Serena,” I whispered.

Her lower lip trembled. “Yes,” she whispered back.

Scraps, or the Patchwork Girl of Oz, or Serena as she was known after she befriended the Wicked Witch of the West, was a doll given life by another of Dr. Pipt’s potions, the Powder of Life, in order to be a servant for his wife. Ojo was little liberal with the magic brains as he gave life to Scraps, and in her floundering she spilled the Liquid of Petrification onto Dr. Pipt’s wife and Ojo’s uncle, thus setting Scraps and Ojo – and others, myself included - on the journey to mix an antidote.

One ingredient needed for the antidote was the left wing of a butterfly. Along for the journey, I wouldn’t allow the wing to be torn from the butterfly’s body – I couldn’t see killing one being, even a butterfly, to save the life of another.

That was who I had been, before her. Before Nimmie Amee. Before her betrayal, before the heartbreak and the agony and the subsequent slaughter. I had been a sentient creature who wouldn’t allow the wing of a butterfly to be harvested in order to save a human being.

“What happened to me?” I breathed, more to myself than to Serena.

She slipped her arm through mine and put one small hand, only slightly criss-crossed with stitches in the gathering light, upon my metal chest. “I often wondered that myself, sir.” She moved a step, and soon we were walking together toward the palace. “I heard stories of course – in my line of work you can’t help but hear most everything. I heard about… what happened with Nimmie Amee and her patchwork lover – of course I revelled in that. A man made of spare parts, much as I was stitched together,” she cackled now, a laugh that echoed through my body and memory, “how rich!”

We crossed a street and saw small people with bleary eyes and sleepy faces emerging from doorways in jewelled hues – tiny people beyond flashes of blood red, rich purple, vibrant yellow, and, of course, the deepest emerald green. The Emerald City, or the EC as Gabriella had called it, was rising from slumber.

“Gabriella,” I muttered, stepping over a sleeping bum at the base of Oz Funding & Loans.

“Mmm?” Serena murmured, moving closer to me. “Who’s that?”

“No one,” I said. “Just somebody that I used to know.”

“Ah yes,” she purred, “I’ve been that somebody so many, many times.”

I pulled her closer as an impossibly tall man dressed in rags rocketed from a doorway and vomited into the gutter, clutching his tight belly. He heaved and moaned, slapping one knee with a balled fist. Serena glanced over, released a low chuckle. “Oh, Shaggy,” she said. I glanced at her, but she patted my metal hand and turned away.

“So tell me how life since our journey has treated you,” I said, watching the palace as we climbed a low hill and the palace became clearer and closer. “Where have you been? What have you… been doing?”

She tightened her grip on my arm, her eyes down to watch and measure her steps. “Of course we never did manage to make the antidote the good doctor wanted,” she said, her voice low and dreamy. “After that journey I met up with Elphaba… also known as the Wicked Witch of the West. She was a dear friend to me, but because of my association with her I was ripped apart… literally.”

“Damn, Serena,” I said. “I know how that feels.”

She patted my hand again. “I know you do. I was stitched back together and repaired by a quiet man with a strange name, I don’t remember. But then she found me.”

“Elphaba?”

Serena shuttered. “Yes. And for some reason she… she killed my family. I’ve never known why.”

I kept walking but it was difficult, knowing I had slaughtered so many people’s families for absolutely no reason and with no thought. I didn’t remember it and wouldn’t even have known it if not for dear Jumbly, poor Jumbly….

“Then Glinda found me.” I glanced down and saw Serena’s face both smile and darken – an unsettling phenomenon.

“Glinda?” The palace was huge now, looming as we wound up the sparkling street toward the front gate. Even from here I could see the army, the rows of silver tik toks shining in the now bright, clear morning.

“Yes, Glinda,” Serena snickered. “Our Pinkness, Our Goddess, Our Saviour and Ruler of Worlds.”

I was helping Serena around a strange vine choking the street, breaking from the earth, when I heard a piercing, howling whistle. We both stopped immediately and turned toward the sound. Below us, at the edge of the city, a long, rather dilapidated train slid into the EC train station. Something about the sight and the long, high shriek of the whistle made us both cringe.

“Glinda – she found me nearly dead after Elphaba killed my family. I was,” she licked her lips, “huddled inside a tree just beyond their cottage. A large hollow tree where I played with a little girl when she was a child, back when I was a doll. Before I was made to live, and before I was human.” She waved her hand, “It’s all very confusing. I’m quite tired of this world and it’s magic, to be honest.”

As she spoke, I watched a dark cloud rise from the castle. It was dynamic, moving, alive. It chittered and shrieked and weaved together, apart, picking at one another and screaming as it lifted.

It was a troop of flying monkeys.

“Glinda brought me to her palace,” Serena went on as I watched the teeming cloud pulse in the sky, moving in the direction of the train station. “She offered me a life of leisure, of luxury, of decadence and style.” Serena sighed and her slight shoulders shrugged against my metal chest. “I took it. What choice did I have? Everyone I loved and everything I knew was gone. I was trapped, I was free, and I think that sometimes that is the same thing.”

The flying monkeys swooped overhead, but Serena did not notice. They chattered and screamed across the phalanx, their noise riotous in the early morning haze of the sleepy Emerald City. As I watched, eyeing as many monkeys at a time as I could, I saw another black cloud rising from the direction of the palace: crows.

Huge black crows.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“So I went with her,” Serena said, her voice thick and hoarse now. “I went to the palace, and there she... she made me... with that Lion....” Serena stopped both speaking and walking, jerked her arm from mine and pressed her palms to her eyes, shaking her head. As she did, hunks of thick black hair shimmered to the street. “The things that Lion did to me....” She looked up at me, her eyes huge and clear and cognizant for the first time since I’d encountered her. “But he was only the first one.”

I watched the crows pass overhead, screeching and dipping, black feathers sifting to the ground, their noise and commotion causing Munchkins and people alike to stumble sleepily from their doors along the final streets near the palace.

“There’s something happening,” I said, my hand on Serena’s lower back to move her along faster.

“I was her whore,” Serena said, and this made me stop.

“What?

“Her whore. Her personal whore. Whether it be to pleasure her solely or to deflect the hundreds of suitors she had at any given time, she shoved me in front of her to do what she wanted or take what she didn’t.”

I held Serena at arm’s length and studied her. “Wait. So you’re telling me you have been in the palace?”

The corner of her upper lip pulled up, a disgusting, knowing, jaded sneer. Her eyes lifted to the fading flying monkeys and the last of the crows shadowing overhead. Her mouth dropped open. “Oh god,” she whispered.

“Serena. Serena. I need you to tell me – you have been in the palace. You have?”

Her eyes dimmed, glazed as they followed the shadows over us before settling back on mine.

“Serena. I need you to focus on me now.”

She bared her teeth, her eyes the dull side of a coin tossed years ago into a wishing pond, the flat absence of a wish unfulfilled.

“Sweet dreams are made of these,” she sang in a flat, dead voice, “who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something....”

“Serena.” The monkeys and crows hovered over the train depot, and I could hear screaming and the sound of clothes and flesh tearing. I turned back toward the palace, whose green glow was much stronger and brighter now, even as the sun rose behind it. When I squinted I saw a figure emerge on the balcony of the uppermost tower – a smudge of shimmering pink. “Serena. I need you to talk to me now. I need to know how to get into the palace without anyone knowing. Can you do that? Can you tell me?”

“Some of them want to use you,” Serena chanted. “Some of them want to get used by you.”

“Serena!”

“Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused....”

It took all I had, but I focused on the pink figure on the balcony. My vision, when tested, is much like a telescope – I am, after all, mostly a metal machine. I saw her – I saw Glinda, in all her frothy pink, polished, perfect goodness hovering on the balcony, the pink sun just above her palace, licking her perfect hair with lovely bright rays.

And Glinda?

She was utterly, terribly beautiful and perfect, a cut pink doll, a cast model of a princess.

And Glinda?

Glinda saw me.

Her mouth moved. Her eyes locked on mine. Her hand raised and cut in one single, perfect wave.

She raised her palm toward the sky.

“Every...body’s... looking for something....” Serena droned.

I looked up.

Clouds, thick and dark and pulsing, clotted the sky.

“You bitch,” I hissed, grabbing Serena’s elbow.

Glinda grinned.

The sky split, the earth moaned, and it began to rain.

Serena screamed as I drug her through the streets toward the palace. I saw the overhang of a blacksmith’s shop and ducked inside, slamming the flimsy door behind me. The old man hunched over his scarred wooden table, spoonful of morning gruel in his fist halfway to his mouth, paled as I stormed inside, dragging Serena with me.

“Sweet dreams are made of this...” she sang. “Who am I to disagree? Travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something....”

“Back room,” I roared at the tiny man. His spoon and mouth dropped. “Back room, where is it?”

“I won’t have whores in my shop, no sir,” he managed in, I must commend, a quite strong voice given the circumstances. “You won’t do your dirty business here.”

I pushed Serena aside, and she tumbled into a corner by the fireplace still fragrant and glowing comfort from the night before. “Listen old man,” I snarled, grabbing him by the collar and swiping his breakfast from the table in one swift motion. “I’m not with this girl. I’m saving her and myself – and this entire city - from powers you cannot fathom. Now tell me where to go, where to hide, or I’ll rip your heart from your chest this instant.”

It wasn’t his trembling. It wasn’t his instant, sorrowful rambling apology. It was the reflection of pure terror in his eyes, the slack defeat in his core, the release, the utter abandon of his body and spirit in my tight metal clutches.

“You! You monster! You’re nothing! Nothing! You hear me, you freak, you waste, you monster, you tin can? You. Are. Nothing!”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, releasing the tiny gray man into a tousled heap in his worn kitchen chair.

“Some of them want to use you.... Some of them want to get used by you...”

“You,” I turned, snarling Serena in my fist by the hair. I tugged her limp form into the back room, a tiny space with a thick feather bed, a weak table supporting at least a dozen books – titles outlawed by Glinda’s regime, I noticed – and a thin chair. One photo in a cheap frame on the wall – the old man I’d just terrorized, a lovely Munchkin woman and three bright-eyed, red haired girls with identical lop-sided grins – and one window facing the palace.

I shoved Serena into a corner and rushed toward the window.

“Some of them want to abuse you.... Some of them want to be abused....”

“Shut up,” I hissed, metal fingers ticking against the stone windowpane.

“Sweet dreams are made of this....”

Beyond the rain, through the drops, between the darkness of the sudden storm, around the wet streaks of lightning and riotous clouds, I zeroed in on Glinda’s face.

She was staring straight at me.

“Who am I... to disagree?...”

I squinted, staring, my eyes seeing only her face, the slight smile that lifted the corner of her perfect. pink. lips.

“I wanna use and abuse you,” Serena wailed. “I wanna know what’s inside you....”

Glinda leaned forward, her face, her hair, her dress unmarred by the sudden, violent rainstorm.

“I’m gonna use and abuse you,” she mouthed around a smile widening and sharp. “I’m gonna know what’s inside you.”

I backed up from the window and into the opposite wall. Serena clutched at my metal knee, her palms slick and sliding. I forced my eyes shut, away from Glinda, and looked down to Serena staring up at me.

“I can help you,” she rasped, her throat throbbing with the effort.

I dropped to the floor beside her, my hinges neglected and squealing. “What is wrong with you?”

She shook her head, her eyes cast toward the window. I didn’t look, but I knew Glinda was watching.

“Does she have power over you?”

Serena’s arms, thin and white as a sapling, corded with power and she scrambled over me, her hands curling into claws that scratched open the closed door. She crawled out on her hands and knees, hissing at me over her shoulder to follow. I stood and scooped her up, set her on her feet, and she sprinted toward the door of the shack.

The blacksmith lay face down in his bowl of gruel, blood trickling from one ear. His eyes were wide and blank. Scrawled in red beyond his ragged fingertip on the table was: “Use the whore”

I followed Serena out of the shack and into the alley just beyond it. She ran, stumbling often, until she found a doorway with a bright green light covered with a purple shade, where she ducked inside. She held her hand out, catching a thin pool of rain in her palm as I pushed my way into the entranceway beside her.

“We have to get to the palace,” I hissed, glancing out beyond the covered entranceway. The alley was dim and remote, even in the heart of the city, so close to the palace. It was the vein to another world, a realm of shadow people and servants, removed from society although they directly contributed to the oiled precision, the clean continuation, the persistent perfection that was the polished face of Oz itself. The face Glinda and her minions had worked so hard, for so long, to put into motion and continue.

The rain continued to fall.

“I have something that may help,” Serena said, her hands shoved into the deep pockets of her dirty, ragged dress.

“I don’t even know what we’re up against,” I said, looking past her to the top spires of the palace – all I could see from this tiny doorway tucked away in the inner depths of the EC. The green glow against the streaking gray clouds was a bright beacon.

“But I have this – it will work no matter what we’re up against,” Serena huffed. She withdrew her left palm from her breast – she had been digging around inside her dress and I hadn’t even noticed. I felt dismayed – I was losing my lustful touch.

I leaned in closer, hearing the rush of water from the alley gutter at my feet. Glinda had certainly put on a storm to stop me.

Serena held up a small vial of a sparkling purple liquid. Even in the gloom it shimmered and pulsed, turning over itself with a life all its own, in its own little crystal bottle.

“Dr. Pipt’s Liquid of Petrifaction,” Serena grinned, turning the bottle in her palm, flicking it over her fingertips. She glanced toward the palace. “I knew it would come in handy someday.”

I took the vial in my hand, turned it over. It glowed, ever so faintly, pink in the center.

I looked at Serena. “This, my dear, could work.” I handed her the vial, and she tucked it back inside her soiled dress. “But I’m jaded and cautious, so you must forgive me, but why? Why are you helping me?”

Serena’s eyes met mine, and for the first time I saw the clarity and intelligence she was capable of if only released from Glinda’s spell for enough time. She blinked, wiped her mouth, and glanced again toward the palace.

“The green bitch had me ripped apart and killed my family,” she panted, her eyes closed tight, pressing the bottle, with a faint ticking sound, into my hand. “The pink bitch made me her whore. If you’re going to the palace you’re fighting her.” Serena pushed back against the wall of the entranceway, her hands balling into small, strong, stitched fists. “You and I have been ripped apart by others and pieced back together by others. Now it’s time for us to refit those pieces into who we are.”

She smiled – not a baring of teeth, but a genuine, bright, renewed smile.

“Why wouldn’t I help you kill the bitch?”

D:L&L (part 128 - Scarecrow) -- A Game of Thorns

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:29:00 +0000

“What do you reckon she’ll throw at us?” Elphaba and I were minutes away from Emerald City Central: Glinda’s palace, my old alma mater, the home of the Scarecrow who would…should be emperor. “It’s not likely the bitch will let us just fly in and take up residence.” I looked around hopefully at my green goddess. “Is it?”

“I would hardly think so,” she replied. “If it was me, I’d have every weapon at my disposal primed and ready for action. I’d have Xs marked on my enemies’ foreheads and point whatever’s available right at them.” She turned to face our destination. The noise of the monkeys and crows had reached deafening point. But still I continued.

“What’s it to be, then, magic or warfare?”

“If it was me?”

“Yeah.”

“Both – at the same time.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Elphaba nodded. “We’ll learn soon enough, though. We’re nearly there.”

My witch was right. Emerald City loomed ever closer. I looked behind and below and spotted a small train chugging along the Yellow Brick Road. I heard a whistle and thought to myself, It’s away you idiots should be going, not in. I wished them, whoever they were, well. I just hoped that they hadn’t come to party with Glinda, because if luck was on our side, the White Bitch was going to have her celebrations severely curtailed.

“She knows we’re coming,” Elphaba shouted over the noise of our entourage. “I can feel her presence in the air.”

“What have we got in our arsenal?” I called back. It had suddenly come to my attention that all this talk of weapons had left with the desperate knowledge that I was lacking in this department. Sure, I had as many crows that I could call on, but what use would they be if Glinda unleashed the full extent of her abilities on us? There was only so much pecking the birds could do before Glinda got pissed off and vapourised them.

“We’ve got us,” Elphaba replied. “That’s all we need.” I dropped my head. “Okay, if you want more, I’ll give you a sword.” She waved her hand over her head. There was a puff of smoke and – voila – she handed me a blue sword. “I remember you telling me all those years ago that you were quite good at fencing. Do you think you can hack off a limb or two, maybe a head, if push comes to shove?”

I felt its weight in my hands (an awkward thing to do when you’re flying through the air at top speed). I smiled. “It needs a name,” I said.

“Bitchslapper,” Elphaba offered.

It took all my strength not to crack up laughing at this. Instead I nodded. “That’ll do nicely.”

We flew on ahead, and soon after we landed at the palace gates. It seemed quite, with the obvious exception of our menagerie. The monkeys and crows were itching for a fight of any description; they had even begun to pick fights among themselves. We needed something or someone to concentrate their attention.

What we got was something.

The palace gates opened by themselves and we were greeted not by Glinda herself, or any messenger representing her, but by a maze, rows and rows of sharp thorns daring us forward, but with two openings beckoning. Elphaba sent a monkey up in the air to do a reconnaissance. He was back in less than a minute and he chattered quickly to mistress. She frowned and turned to speak to me.

“The entrance to the palace itself is protected from top to bottom by this maze. these are the only points of entry, and this is the only one way to get to the palace door it seems - find the right way through.”

I didn’t like the sound of this, and I said as much to Elphaba.

“I know,” she replied. “She means to separate us.”

I looked at the beginning of the maze. “So we can’t just fly over and break our way in?”

“It’s protected,” Elphaba answered. “These are not natural plants. One touch from the thorns could be deadly to us. I've seen this magic before, and there's no telling what drips from those spikes. I see four ways in, so here’s what I suggest. You lead one party of crows; I lead a party of monkeys. We each pick an entry point and work our way through the maze, then whoever gets there signals the other party to backtrack and come around.”

I looked at her as if she had two heads. “You are assuming there IS a way through, and we won't get lost finding it."

"True."

"Why not all of us pick one entrance and work straight from there? We’ll form a line so we don’t get lost.”

“That would make sense, if time wasn’t of the essence. Two teams will guarantee one successful trip.”

“Provided that team isn’t killed on the way,” I said gloomily.

“It’s the only way, Fiyero.” Eplhaba was insistent on having her own way.

“Fine!” I brandished Bitchslapper and called out. “To me, my crows!”

My witch laughed heartily. “That’s the spirit, boy. Go get her.”

I picked the second entrance on the right and ran through it, followed by half my host of crows.

“Wait for me at the palace,” Elphaba called out. “Remember, there are two of us now.”

This was either going to work in our favour, or we were running to our doom.

I slashed my way forward, taking left, taking right, veering to the east, heading on north, then repeating as needed. Every few steps or so a thorny branch would lash out, hoping to sting me into oblivion. I let Bitchslapper sort those fuckers out. I had my eye on the prize: regaining my throne and releasing all of Oz from Glinda’s manipulative clutches. (It sounds easy once you put it like that. The reality is, on the other hand, quite back-breaking.) I wondered how Elphaba and the other teams were doing.

I heard a whirring noise from over one of the hedges. When I reached the place it came from, I saw a Tik-Tok man, holding a sign that read You’ve reached the midway point in the maze. Congratulations, Scarecrow. Continue to your left and meet your destiny. G.

The bitch was taunting me. Was she leading me to her? Or was she tempting me to fall into another of her little traps? Well, if it was a game she wanted, I was willing to play. A game of Thorns, I thought as I severed another murderous branch. I sneaked a look behind me to see how my crows were getting on. They seemed to follow my thoughts and moves and were avoiding what branches I missed, and the ones that missed me. If we continued in this vein there was every chance we might make it to the palace door with little or no casualties.

Of course, as soon as I thought this, three of my crows found themselves impaled, skewered like a delicacy one might find at a table in Kiamo Ko. They screeched their death cries and fell silent. Their shriveled bodies were flung to the ground as the deadly plant lashed out at another victim. I used my mind to call out to the crows. Watch your guard. Keep an eye on your flank. I cannot afford to lose more of you. Follow my lead once more. Concentrate.

We surged forward, taking lefts as the tik-tok’s sign suggested. Even though it appeared we were following Glinda’s lead, it didn’t mean she was going easy on us. More tik-toks appeared, and rather than helpful signs, their fingers were barbed and bladed, but they barely put up a fight. I scythed through them, Bitchslapper feeding of their viciousness and using it for its own benefit. Never had facing death felt more life-giving.

Yet another Tik-Tok with a sign appeared around a corner. You’re nearly there, Scarecrow. Allow me to slip into something a bit more comfortable. G.

(Glinda does nothing for me. I just want you to know that, okay?)

The crows and I kept moving in, slashing and dodging branches and leaves, taking lefts whenever we could. The day seemed to drag on, and I began to wonder if we were going to have to spend the night in the maze, or if we would ever find the end or our way out.

Finally, we were met by what would turn out to be the last tik-tok. His sign chilled me to my very being.

Elphaba is dead. But don’t worry, your friends are waiting and will offer comfort. We have enough to wine to sink Oz. G.

Of course I didn’t believe her, but with Glinda, who knew? She could be telling me her version of the truth. And what friends? Besides Elphaba, I had none to speak of.

I pushed these thoughts out of my head and continued forward, taking only lefts along the way. This maze was doing my fucking head in. But I could sense an end coming. I could hear some cheering ahead of me. I looked behind and couldn’t see a crow anywhere; had they all been claimed by the thorns?. Between the last signpost and now, every one of them had vanished. I called out with my mind once more, but no reply came back. I was on my own, so I slashed forward...and came to the end of the maze. The palace rose up over my head, beautiful as ever, gleaming in the sun, and I saw the main gate up ahead at the top of the steps. Glinda stood in front of it, wearing her finest gown for the occasion, pink and frilly like the one she wore so long ago when I had first met Dorothy. She whistled and clapped, waving me on. It was as if I had graduated top of the class.

“Go Fiyero, go!” she guffawed. “You are indeed a Scarecrow among scarecrows. Come,” she beckoned. “Your friends await you at the banquet table to celebrate your arrival. Ah, but alas, your darling, the little green girl, she seems to have found herself in a rather thorny situation, and she won't be joining us. Poor dear.” Glinda stared back at me, an exaggerate pout on her lips, and then suddenly she burst into laughter.

The dam broke, and I raised my sword in front of me, racing toward her with a ferocity that was a long time in coming. “We will eat your entrails if we must, Glinda the Good, but you have lived your last day,” I shouted, a murderous rage overcoming me as I vaulted up the steps and swung the sword at her head.

But a metal hand blocked its path, and when I looked around for a tik-tok, what I saw instead was a man of tin. Nick the Chopper was alive and well, covered in gore, and baying for my beating heart. I heard a roar and nearly collapsed from the sight of the Lion coming from behind the witch, claws and fangs bared, saliva dripping from his mouth. Then a metal barrel was shoved in my face, a thing that I recognized from not so long ago.

“Welcome to Emerald City,” Dot said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

These were my friends…but they were not my friends. Not anymore.

D:L&L (part 127 - Dot) -- Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am!

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Wed, 30 May 2012 02:06:00 +0000

I'd said my peace, and the Lion had said his. That was all there was for the remainder of the night. No one else spoke up; there were no more speeches, no more offerings of valor or shrugs or apologies, not even a rhyme from the ridiculous Weasel. What did I expect them to say anyway? I'd asked myself that, and I had no answer. Nothing - that was what I'd expected, and that's what I got.

Call me cynical at this point. Call me angry. Call me 'fuck-this-and-just-get-me-the-Hell-out-of-here'. I knew at that moment in my heart that I'd had enough of what they called Oz. I hadn't asked for this, and Oz was getting no thank-you's out of me for this adventure. Wham! Bam! Fuck off! Just get me those Ruby Slippers; I already know what to do.

Grammy had always been so polite about it, so full of wonder, so innocent...or was it just naiveté? I wasn't sure. She was always a kind soul, but I'd never really considered that she was anything if not bonkers when it came to Oz, and so I'd never asked her any tough questions. They'd come hard and fast though in the last week, leaving me still wondering and still unable to really make sense of it all.

So, there was this place ruled by some guy from Kansas - my Kansas - who called himself The Wizard of Oz. He ran a scam on the entire population, even though he knew no magic and even though there really is magic here and people even studied it in a university? And a little girl comes out of nowhere and kills two witches, a girl who hasn't really a clue what she's doing and is supposedly manipulated by everyone into two murders - albeit one technically an accident (but even now I was beginning to think that the house falling on the Wicked Witch of the East was no accident - someone with some power must have given the house a little nudge onto that woman). A hapless Scarecrow waits by the roadside; a rusted Tin Man waits by the roadside; a pathetic Lion waits by the roadside, a path set by a university-trained witch, Glinda, the chick who rules the land with an iron, yet pink, fist of fury? Coincidence? Conspiracy? Kill off the other witch, then find a way to move the Wizard out. He must have known by then that Grammy was dangerous - not gun-toting, Marine Corps dangerous, but in a Jim Carry 'Ace Ventura' kind of way - or maybe a Pink Panther kind of way. Not physical comedy, just a comedy of errors that all somehow managed to come true - not unlike a movie script that is completely incredulous and yet still suspends disbelief long enough to work out, leaving you walking out satisfied at the end. Witches gone - check. Wizard gone - check. Moron placed on throne only to be found incompetent. Or I'm missing something. All his friends turned on him, or so the Lion said, and that doesn't bode well for the Royal StrawHead. All his friends bailed and let the creator of this credible conspiracy step forward and claim the crown. All of this happening over the last fifty or so years and culminating in this upcoming battle?

It was ridiculous at best, and I should have been sleeping.

I tried to scrunch deeper into the front corner of the coal car, hoping to find some purchase for my head, somewhere that wasn't vibrating or shifting constantly, but I knew better, and yet, I'd slept on helicopters before, under rocks, and even during bombardments. I should have been able to sleep; instead my brain was whirling at one hundred miles per hour, this whole scenario hitting me square in the face.

We'd been running in full reverse for hours - nowhere to turn the train around for miles and miles, and I could see the dawn coming up pink and rosy on the horizon, right where I expected it. On the opposite side of the train, I could see the false dawn of emerald green in the distance. Both were growing closer, ominously closer, and while on occasions I had looked forward to the dawn and the firefight I knew was coming - the Taliban didn't like to attack at night because they didn't have the tech like we did to fight effectively in the dark - I was not really looking forward to seeing the little tin men scrambling toward me with their tiny scalpel fingers glinting in the morning sun.

And what was worse? The little army I was leading - nothing like my squad, not even the least of them.

I hadn't seen a sorrier bunch of rag-tag troops in my life, if they even qualified for the term "troops", but either way we were heading into a war zone, a hell-hole I'd only just escaped from, and this was what I had. I did a run-down again of assets, and again I felt empty inside: the Lion - only worthwhile asset, probably supremely dangerous but also known as the 'Cowardly Lion', and I didn't think that was a misnomer; the Weasel - big mouth and big schlong and essentially worthless unless I was producing a beastiality, gangsta-rap porn; the kid, Ordinal - terrified, but cute, probably the kind of guy who would cry in bed during and after sex and obviously well-known for running (away); the engineer - crazy as a hitch post but straight dope with a shovel as long as he wasn't asked to leave his train; the Monkey Bat - good in a pinch so far, but shifty as all fuck, and I never liked shifty. Thus, we were fucked, and I was really low on ammo, without a secondary weapon at the moment, and expecting massive numbers against.

All I could do was shrug and try to plan something. It had worked for Grammy, and maybe somehow it would work for me. If I could only get a few moments of sleep to get my head together.

I woke to the train whistle, started up and glared at Cobb. He shrugged.

"Habit. Smalls always liked the whistle."

Behind him I could see the countryside far away and the city wall close-by on the left side of the track. Almost everyone else was still asleep around me and the sun was just about to peek over the edge of the world to my right. We'd be in the station in minutes, I had no plan, and we'd just let the whole city know that the YBR had returned.

Great job, Corporal.

"Up! Rise and shine, crew! We are back, and we just let the whole fucking city know it. Either get up and get on guard, or get ready to die." I didn't have time to bullshit around, so I threw my best drill sergeant voice at them, channeling Full Metal Jacket as well as I could, and let them have it again. "Lion, Weasel, Jones, Turlo, report! When those tik toks swarm the station, you better be up, or you are going down hard."

They blinked at me. The fucking Lion yawned. Ordinal swallowed and looked like he was going to jump off the train and make a run for it. The Weasel opened his mouth, but my glare cut him off - thank Heaven for that. Cobb stood clutching his shovel in one hand and the throttle in the other. Turlo? He cocked an eyebrow at me - monkeys have eyebrows? I hadn't noticed it before, but then again, a monkey with wings that talks is enough to distract a girl.

I tried again, this time taking on a different tone.

"Guys, we have a job to do, and each of you has a stake in it. You know it's true. Whatever you do today is going make all the difference in the world - in Oz anyway. If we are lucky, we won't meet a horde of angry tik toks; if we are lucky, we can slip into the city somehow undetected, find the palace - the Lion knows the way - get in and find Glinda. It's not much, it's likely not even doable, but it's a chance we have to take. We've talked about this. We know what's at stake." I looked at each of them in turn. "She betrayed you, Lion. Weasel, do you think you are going anywhere but back in the dungeon? Jones? She killed your friends, and she got your girl. Cobb? Your friend Smalls is gone because of Glinda, and your train is wrecked. And Turlo?" I was suddenly at a loss, unsure of what to say since I didn't really know him all that well.

It didn't matter. The look on his face said it all.

He turned and smiled, a strange metallic object in his hand. It had the shape of a cell phone, similar to my iPhone but silver and a little longer. Still, he held it to his ear, nodded not to me but to a voice that I could suddenly make out coming from the little object - was it a cell phone?! How could they have cell phones in Oz? Turlo didn't hesitate to fill in the void, chattering a moment and then chiming in. "Yes, Mistress, of course," he said and then pulled the metal object from his ear and flipped it shut.

Cell phone?! What the...?

"It seems, my dear Dot, that the Glorious One, the Empress of Oz, formerly the Good Witch of the North, my most precious Glinda, would like to make your acquaintance. I, and my brood, are charged to escort you to the palace, where she will surely and most deliciously help you to understand her claim to the throne and her determination to keep it. Afterward, as she just described to me, you will be taken to the highest tower, just like your grandmother was, and there you will fall horribly to your death."

The train ground to a halt just at that moment, shuddering and blasting steam, as Turlo launched himself into the air. I whirled on him, death in my heart - I knew that Monkey Bat was no good! - and drew on Toto, tracking up just as the sun peeked over the horizon and blinded me. I fired knowing I was wasting my time, and a moment later all I could hear were wings...wings and screams.

D:L&L (part 126 - Tin Man) -- Heartfelt

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Sat, 26 May 2012 03:02:00 +0000

“Wake up.”

Because I could not stop I chopped. I chopped the day, I sliced the night, I… I… I…

“I said wake up!” A light sloshing, the thunk of water moving over itself in a metal container. “I’m warning you, big silver man, wake up now or I start pouring the water.”

Because I could not stop I killed. Because I could not stop thinking needing remembering aching sinking I killed and I killed and I lapped at the blood I floundered in a flood of need of greed locked inside shiny steel I killed I killed I killed

“I am so sick of hearing about the chopping. Sit up so we can talk. I know you’re not asleep.”

When I opened my eyes I saw Gabriella. Her eyes were narrowed, and she hunched over me daring to tip a metal pan of water. She grinned.

“Hello.”

I sat up, my hinges squeaking from moisture and rest. I looked around. I was still in the abandoned building, but this time we were alone. “Hello,” I answered, eyeing the metal pan. “Would you be so kind as to put that away, please?”

Her eyes widened and glimmered. “Kind and please – are you sure you’re the infamous Nick the Chopper?”

“I never said I was.”

She nodded. “Ah. Yes. And about that – we need to talk, big boy.”

She sat the pan down and helped scoot me backward so I was propped up against the wall behind me. In the distance, water dripped from somewhere high, pinging against a metal surface. The sound made me wince as it echoed through the nearly empty building, sound doubling over itself, bouncing off walls and the invisible metal roof and my own tin chest. Repetitive. Hollow. Almost like…

Gabriella snapped her fingers in my face. “Come on back now.”

I focused on her. “Yes. What is it.”

“Where have you been?” She settled onto the floor beside me, leaned forward and swiped at the wide expanse of my metal chest. “Great Oz but you’re filthy.”

“I’ve been here.”

She kept rubbing, using the hem of her dress and frowning. “No sir, you have not. You have been very much away.” She glanced up. “Tell me where you’ve been.”

Because I could not move away from her at the moment, I turned my head and stared into the dim recesses of the building. “I have been remembering, thinking. Reliving.”

“Yeah, you really need to stop that,” Gabriella said breezily, spitting now on my chest and rubbing harder. She stopped suddenly and glanced around, stood and brushed the back of her dress. Something about that dress caught my attention – I squinted at her.

“Stop what.”

“Stop living in the past.” She moved away from me and began peeking under the flaps of boxes nearby, searching for something specific. “What’s done is done. There’s something going on in Oz, in the EC, I can feel it. Something is happening, or about to. Something big.”

I squinted harder, watching her move between boxes in the dimness, focusing on her dress, or what I could make of it. “How do you know?”

Gabriella made a startled, happy noise and practically skipped back toward me. She knelt and held up a handful of relatively clean red rags. Their color flashed in the dark open space, making me flinch.
“You sure are jumpy tonight,” she said, settling down beside me. She began to wipe earnestly on my legs, and I was surprised to see the dirt and grime disappearing without much effort. “And I don’t know, I can just feel it. Plus, I overhear a lot. It’s a perk and a punishment for being… someone like me.”

“Someone like you,” I echoed, staring at her dress. It was a light blue, a very light blue, with a white frilly smock over it. A very distinct ping rang through my body, and my voice only came out as a whisper. “Where did you get that dress?”

She didn’t look away from her task, rubbing at my left knee. “Found it,” she muttered. “Does it look familiar to you?”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall, unable to answer.

“Right, so back to what we were discussing before I got distracted by you, you filthy monster.”

I shot up and stood without realizing it, raised my hand clenching my axe and found myself glaring down at her. Gabriella gazed up at me, completely unfazed, eyes glimmering. “Whatcha going to do with that axe, big boy?”

“Stop calling me that,” I hissed, “and if you value your life and your blood you will never again utter the word monster.”

Gabriella settled back, palms splayed out on the dusty floor behind her, hair swinging against her elbows. “Don’t you think,” she smiled, “that you’ve done quite enough of that?”

I forced myself to unclench my jaw, worked it side to side. The squeaking was loud but didn’t cover the drip drip drip of water falling from the ceiling. Gabriella patted the floor where I’d been sitting.

“Don’t you think I know what I’m doing, who I am?” I shot back. “I know who I am, what I am, and that won’t change.”

Gabriella’s face fell, darkened. “Then you might as well stay in this building, alone, in the damp and rust.” She stood as well, and put her small hand on my upheld arm. “But that’s not you, it doesn’t have to be. You are strong, stronger than this… this…” she gestured with wide arms to the dank, dusty, dark wasted structure around us, “this emptiness. This foul, forgotten, neglected place.”

“I know much about forgotten and neglected places, Gabriella. I allowed an empire to rust and ruin, only after slaughtering more people than you and I both could count.”

“Ah,” she breathed, appearing satisfied. “Now we’re getting to it.”

“Are we now? What are we getting to?”

She grinned. “To the heart of the matter.”

I felt the familiar rage rising within me, but her touch, the heat of her fingers causing the metal of my arm to warm slightly, calmed me, eased me in a way only Jumbly had been able to in the past.

“Nick,” Gabriella said softly. “Sit.”

Gingerly, loudly, I sat.

“A great woman once said, ‘One question haunts and hurts, too much to mention.’” Gabriella cocked her head. “Do you know who that woman was?”

“I know not.”

She nodded. “You will. My point is, yes – you know ruin and loss. So let me ask you this: what is your question?”

I felt my jaw clench again. “My question.”

“Yes. The one question that haunts and hurts you too much to mention.”

I stared at her but saw my Nimmie Amee instead. Her bloody face, her ravaged body, her hair swinging matted with blood and gore. “Why must we do this?” I whispered.

“So you can answer it and move on.” Gently, slowly, Gabriella began to wipe at my metal limbs again, taking time to get into the creases and lines of my hinges. “It is move on or rust here, alone, for I will not watch it.”
I felt myself letting go, relaxing beneath her touch, watching her small hands making small circles on my body. “Why didn’t she love me anymore?”

Gabriella nodded without looking up.

“Why didn’t she love me anymore?” I asked louder. And then it was a mantra, I relinquished control and the same question rose from inside and echoed off the walls, mingled with the dust, kissed the rain as it found its way inside the building, finding me. My question grew louder and harsher and more frightening, but Gabriella never looked up or flinched or strayed from her task, her hands moving up toward my torso.

“Why didn’t she love me anymore?” The last shout echoed off the walls, pinged off the ceiling and shuddered through my hollow chest. I was panting, head back, heaving. "Why?"

"We'll never know. For some questions we don't ever get answers. Gabriella looked up, and she was crying. Her hands stilled. “Feel better?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Now what.”

Gabriella blinked and lifted her chin. “Shhhhh… do you hear that?”

I did. It was a low but quite distinct thumping. A… beating. I glanced down as Gabriella leaned forward and tapped on my chest.

“Nick,” she whispered, her cheeks streaked pale with glistening tear trails. “It’s coming from inside you.”
“That’s not possible.” But even as I said it I knew; I felt it. Something, impossibly, was beating inside of my chest. I felt – I felt – the vibrations from within me, shuddering against impenetrable metal.

Fluidly, Gabriella began polishing my chest, but it was slower going than the rest of my body. I watched and felt myself not remembering, not relishing, not aching and needing and reeling from the weight of so many wasted years as a brutal monster, as a being in motion of destruction and immoral desire – as the monster she painted me to be, the portrait of her collected brush strokes I had held before my face for so long instead of a mirror. I had seen myself as she had seen me and formed myself to that image.

“I am not a monster,” I said aloud, my voice barely above the ringing of rain shaken loose from the rafters after my released rage.

Gabriella shook her head, rubbing furiously. She muttered something to herself.

“I am not a monster,” I said louder, and felt a loosening move through me.

“Please don’t start shouting again,” Gabriella said.

“And I forgive her.”

Gabriella raised her face, eyes wide and liquid blue. “What?”

“I forgive her. I forgive Nimmie Amee, and her husband, her not-me. I forgive them for hurting me and making me into… what I was. I forgive them.”

Gabriella sat back and studied my face before lowering her eyes and touching my now clean and gleaming chest. She leaned forward, and as she did her tears dropped onto my tin legs and rolled, shining, over the sides. “I can see myself in you,” she said quietly. “I’m finished here. You are free.”

And Gabriella was gone.

I felt her essence linger for a while before I was able to stand and find my way out of the building. My limbs and joints were loose and warm, my mind clear and silent – I had never before noticed the constant noise and thunder of my own thoughts, crowded as they were with the storm of rage and regret. I was calm, and whole, and I felt – I felt everything, at once, and it was glorious.

The Emerald City was still sleeping, rainfresh and clean. The streets glowed and rose to meet my steps as I moved into the empty city, my eyes on the one place I knew I had to go to finish my journey of redemption. It streaked the sky green, the upper towers disappearing in fat black clouds shimmering silver around the edges as the sun struggled to rise in the sky, and I knew she was there, sighing in sleep, fingers clutching her wand, her sheets, a sceptre, a lover. There was one more person I needed to forgive, but I still wasn’t sure I could without bloodshed, without more regret.

But I would try. I had to – I owed it to Gabriella. I owed it to my Jumbly, my tiny flower friend. I owed it to myself.

“I’m coming for you, Glinda,” I said, and my steps echoed through the silent city like rain on a tin roof, like Gabriella’s tears on my shining tin, like a tinny heartbeat – steady, and ready, and strong.

D:L&L (part 125 - Lion) -- Going Back to Move Forward

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:50:00 +0000

I had to laugh at little Dot’s brave words. She sneered at me, hand on her Toto. I truly was beyond giving a fuck. “Go ahead, shoot me,” I said, continuing to laugh. I knew the group must have thought I’d lost my mind, and at that point, I was fairly confident I had, too.

My stomach rumbled. My mouth started watering, “I don’t suppose anyone packed a lunch for this picnic?”

Gilly was the only one to say anything, as he held up the remaining bit of Snake, “Here ya goes, Boss. Yous can has Gilly’s snack.” I tried not to wrinkle my nose in disgust, and took the scrap from the little guy.

“Uhh, thanks G. When things settle down I’m going to take you out and show you how the big guys eat.” I popped the morsel into my mouth and swallowed quickly. I didn’t want to taste the slithering belly-crawler. Glancing around at the group before me I thought, this could be a hell of a smorgasbord. Cobb would probably be a bit tough, but the other would be succulent and juicy. I wiped a bit of drool off my chin. I stepped up to the new-comer and sniffed him, under my breath I mumbled, “Mutton Chopppp.”

The kid was shaking under my nose, his fear exuded from his pores and wafted into my nostrils. Oh Man, was I hungry. “Please don’t eat me, Mr. Lion. I don’t want anything except to get away from Glinda and her secret police. I didn’t even mean to become the leader of The Shiz. I just wanted to get laid.”

I growled over the little punk. “Don’t you mention that bitch’s name around me again? I’d have given her anything, you know. Anything to make her happy. In turn, she did her best to humiliate me, to walk on me, and I don’t mean with those ruby reds, baby.” The thought of the Ruby Slippers brought me back to laughter, and I looked over at Dot.

She pulled Toto from her belt, “Don’t think you’re going to eat me, Pal. I’m getting out of this hellish place and going home.”

“I’m not going to eat anyone. I just wanted a little sniff.” I ruffled Jones’ hair with my paw, he flinched under my touch. SHE never flinched when I touched her. The bitch.

“Look, you’re facing a hindrance of epic proportion here. Your plan will fail. There is no way you can get those Ruby Slippers from her. They’re her favorite. She wears them everyday and everywhere.”

“She’ll go to sleep sometime, right? We’ll just snatch them out of her closet while she sleeps.” Dot looked at me as if I were a dumbass.

I gave her the same look in return, “Well, Missy Know-It-All, you’d be wrong. She sleeps in those shoes. Naked—her soft, pearly skin shimmering in the moonlight through her window, the shoes sparkling at her feet.”

I felt a smack on my arm. “Snap out of it, douchebag. You said it yourself, she doesn’t love you, never did. So stop wasting our time and make us suffer through your reminiscing, especially THAT kind,” Dot said to me. “So we just take the shoes off her feet. Maybe we can tie her down somehow and just take the shoes.”

I shook my head. “She will know the minute we step foot on the Palace grounds. She may be psychotic, but she isn’t stupid. She is also more vicious than you and your little friend there.” I pointed at her gun with my paw. She looked a bit put-off by my comment.

“I’ve trained to be the best. I'm a Marine, after all. I’ve seen…”

I cut her off. “I don’t doubt your abilities in your world. Here, and with what we are talking about, forget it. She will crush you without batting an eye. Do you think she managed to take over Oz by luck? She is cunning, she is deceptive, and she is magic. Did your training teach you to defend against magic? Do you think the stories your grandmother told you will help you? That was a different Oz, and we are all different from those times. Don’t be stupid, or you’ll end up dead.”

Dot stared at me, her mouth hanging open. I raised an eyebrow as her hand went towards her gun. In a flash I was leaping through the air, tackling her to the ground. I bellowed the mightiest of roars that echoed across the barren fields surrounding us. Toto’s bark followed, but her hand was already pinned to the ground above her. “STOP!” I growled in her face. “I don’t want to hurt you. But you have to see that this land is not your land. This land is my land. There are things that happen here that are beyond your knowledge. You need to stop and THINK!”

I was glad that Dot understood the lesson I was trying to teach her. Sort of my own training for her. We are not weak creatures in Oz. And to face off with the likes of Glinda, you needed to be ready. You needed a strategy. She would not go silently into the light. I eased off of Dot and helped her up. She didn’t say anything to me. But she understood. She got it. Toto went back into its holster; the girl crossed her arms, eyebrows furrowed.

Turlo stood off to the side, his wings relaxed along his back. I caught a glimpse of a smile on his Monkey face. Figures, those Monkey-bats always loved trouble. My stomach growled again as I looked at him. The smile on his face melted away, his eyes grew large. It was my turn to smile.

Inside, I was shaking. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but at least I still had a bit of my Lionly prowess in me. And I never trusted those damn Monkey-bats.

“Mr. Cobb, let’s get this engine going in reverse. We have business back in the EC,” I heard Dot say to the Engineer.

It didn’t take long before we were heading back to the place we had been running from. Thoughts churned in my head and helped pass the time. Were the Tik-toks still going to be at the station? Maybe we should stop before it and walk in the rest of the way? How were we going to get through the city and back to the Palace unnoticed? Most of all, how were we going to get near Glinda and disarm her? I’ve heard tales of men trying to come between a woman and her shoes. I really thought we were fucked.

Dot didn’t take her eyes off of me. I guess I couldn’t really blame her. But somehow, I’d make it all right. The train raced back towards the Emerald City, its green glow a death beacon we were homing in on. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew the sun would be making a show fairly soon, even though it felt like the black of night had descended permanently upon us. I prayed the Unnamed God would be on our side. If not, the rising sun might see the end of us all.

D:L&L (part 124 - Scarecrow) -- Airborne

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:39:00 +0000

“What was it like,” I asked, “to be, you know, dead?” I was unsure what kind of answer, if any, I would get. Elphaba’s reply surprised me, though.

“It wasn’t bad, to be honest. I enjoyed it – for a time anyway.”

Our first night together since she returned to me was a memorable one. We had enough love and passion to build worlds, as well as rebuild old ones. We figured we’d need as much as we could muster up in these uncertain times. For a scant few hours, no one else existed apart from the two of us. It felt good to be Winkie again. No doubt Elphaba had similar thoughts – if her actions in bed were anything to go by.

But it wasn’t purely about the sex. What we shared together went deeper than thirty minutes of squelching noises. (Yes, we were both a little out of practice.) There was always a connection between us, one that goes right back to the beginning. From the time we were in Shiz, when Elphaba was the cruel butt of Glinda’s and her friends’ humour, to when she became the so-called Wicked Witch of the West. Her humanity shined through everything she did. To say Elphaba was misunderstood was like saying the Lion didn’t care for vegetables with his meat, or Tin Man enjoyed chopping things. She got bad press, that’s all there was to it. It suited Glinda and the Wizard to see her painted thus. The first thing I would do on reclaiming my throne would be to remove all doubt from the people of Oz and proclaim Elphaba as a force for good – as well as Empress of Oz. I wondered if she’d like that. I decided to ask her, but only when Glinda was dead and gone.

Now that I had her back, I needed no better reason to carry out Dot’s plan. Sure, it seemed like an okay idea to take the throne away from the White Bitch; but it was someone else’s idea rather than my own. My ‘love affair’ with Munchkinlander wine, as well as more than a passing interest in my own self-pity, was more important to me. Even Turlo’s urgency to get me on the road to some semblance of recovery was more for his convenience that it was for my well-being.

What ever happened to that damned flying monkey anyway? The last I saw of him, he was in Dot’s company. Had she killed him yet? He wasn’t here with us like he should be, but then again, he always did what he wanted, like it or not.

“Did you feel anything?” I continued, holding her in my arms like the prized possession she was.

“Fiyero, you stupid non-scarecrow,” Elphaba laughed gently, “you don’t feel anything when you’re dead. That’s why I liked it. A non-feeling, a Nothingness that you don’t hear about in school.”

I turned my head to her. “You mean there’s no afterlife? No gods to comfort the dead once they’ve crossed over?”

“If there were,” she replied, “maybe they wanted nothing to do with me. Like I said, it didn’t bother me. But when my essence returned, that’s when things got nasty for me. I was brought back, Fiyero; that’s what Vaughn was for, but it wasn’t pleasant – this new kind of birth.”

“And now that you’re back?”

I felt her shrug in my arms. “I don’t intend to go anywhere soon.” She looked at me with an intensity that touched the very core of my being. “Except to Emerald City. You and I have unfinished business.”

I could not disagree with her there.

“But enough talk, my love. It is time to strike,” she mustered. “Hold tight!”

And we were off. The air made way for us, the castle falling away beneath us. Hand in hand, we flew through the Ozian sky, so far up that it would have taken someone with a mechanical eye to distinguish us from the great gaggle of crows.

Yes, we had crows with us. And flying monkeys, too. But let me backtrack a bit.

“We’ll need a plan once we get to Emerald City,” I said after another red-hot bout of blue on green love-making. I was happy to be back in the saddle again. After her fifth orgasm, so was Elphaba. “We can’t just storm in and expect Glinda to just hand over the keys.”

“We can’t?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “Besides, that wouldn’t be fun, would it?”

Elphaba shook her head like a little girl. “No, it wouldn’t. I think we might need some reinforcements. You mentioned earlier that you were accompanied by a monkey. What was his name again?”

“Turlo,” I answered. “But I was never sure whose side he was on. He and Dot didn’t…don’t get on. There was something sneaky about him.”

Elphaba punched me on the shoulder. “He’s a flying monkey,” she said. “I made them all sneaky. If he’s still in the land of the living, don’t worry about sides. I’ll make him see sense. Besides, when it comes to reinforcements, I think we’re both covered.”

She got out of bed and headed for the door, picking up her clothes on the way. “Get dressed and follow me.”

“Don’t you order me around, young lady,” I called out to her, “don’t you know I’m going to be emperor soon?”

I hurried after her, struggling to clothe myself at the same time. I eventually caught up with her at the door where we first set eyes on each other. Any evidence of the battle between Elphaba and the Wizard had evaporated. She beckoned me into the room and closed the door after us.

“It is time to gather our soldiers,” she said. Then she raised both her arms above her head and slowly lowered them outstretched until they were at shoulder height. At the same time she spoke a spell, one she plucked from her astounding memory at will. Within a few moments I heard a chattering come from outside the tattered castle. I knew that sound instantly. Elphaba’s flying monkeys.

“Where did you get them from?” I asked, astonished at the speed at which they’d arrived.

“Everywhere,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

“For what?”

“Call for your crows.”

“But I’m not Scarecrow anymore,” I said.

“You still have his essence, my love. That will never go away. Close your eyes, concentrate – then bring them to you.”

I did as she suggested. I brought myself back to when I was in danger of death, to when I was surrounded by undead Munchkins. However, I found it harder than I thought. The threat wasn’t immediate, so my magic was taking its time to happen.

“Concentrate more, Fiyero. All Oz is at stake. Bring them to you. For Oz. For little Dorothy Gale. For all your friends who have fallen because of Glinda. For you and your throne. Call them, Fiyero. Call them!”

I could feel it work. Whether Elphaba helped me or not, I didn’t know. But I could feel the power come from within me. I sang for crows. I thought of murder. I envisioned Glinda’s doom.

My witch placed her hands on my head. “It is done,” she whispered. “Open your eyes and listen.” I did, and was welcomed by an unholy cacophony of chatter and caw.

Our army had gathered. Our soldiers were ready.

We were going to Emerald City, and we were going to hit Glinda with all the power at our disposal.

“What do we do when we get there?” I asked her before we took off.

“We take those fucking slippers off her.”

Yes, the plan was as simple as that: off with her slippers, then off with her head.

D:L&L (part 123 - Dot) -- Nothing More To Say

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:10:00 +0000

I'd heard enough. So had Toto.

"Everyone shut up!" I screamed and raised Toto. He barked, and the night went silent as the grave; that is, as a grave can be atop a steaming locomotive that huffed and puffed and popped and snapped. The engine itself was cooling, the metal popping in the nippy night air of the low hills just south of Shiz, Cobb having thrown the brake just as the light (and the locomotive) hit the hand cart. It had gone it flying, just as the young man pumping it had, magically caught just in time by the return of our favorite flying Monkey. They'd landed on the coal car as the train shuddered to a stop, and everyone had started shouting, screaming...had the Weasel been rapping?

Toto cut the cacophony off at the knees. The screaming from the new kid was done. The chattering from the monkey-bat was gone. The roar from the Lion was through. The mumbling from the engine was finished. And the non-stop, oddly rhyming, gangsta-ish prattle from the Weasel had ceased. Toto, as always, barked the loudest. I listened to the echo of his woof as it rang down the tunnel that we can so unsuspectingly emerged from and smiled with a sudden sinister sort of satisfaction, looking about me and finding the menagerie of unlikely YBR passengers all staring, wide-eyed, wondering what Toto might do next. I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. I was tired of all the bullshit. I was tired of Oz. So...very...tired.

I touched the safety to make sure Toto didn't get out of hand and slipped him back into his holster. They all watched me, eyes riveted on him. Only the monkey-bat had seen Toto in action, and he obviously hadn't forgotten about his bite.

The new kid pulled his hands down from his ears. "What's that?" His voice was barely a whisper with a distinct tremble. His eyes were as wide as his mouth.

"It's a gun." Turlo was quick on the uptake. He eyed me, looked at the holster again, then back at me.

"What does it do?"

"It kills you. She points it at you, it makes a loud noise like so, and you die."

I didn't say anything. I had to wait a moment, let the monkey-bat do the work for me. If I said anything - I needed a few more deep breaths. I needed my heart to slow down and the knot in my forehead to relax. Just everyone be quiet for a second - it's all I wanted. There was little else I could do at this point. There was just too much bullshit going on around here, and I had suddenly had about as much as I could handle. Waking up with such a jolt after finally nodding off, after the fucking Weasel finally went quiet, after the Lion gave up on his tale and his excuses, after the running from the Tin Man, after seeing the Mutton Chops slaughtered, after everything that had happened in how long? A week? I was left with only one emotion: anger. So Toto had ended the conversation this time, and I knew that was dangerous. I usually ended the conversations and Toto just stayed at my side - good dog. He rarely barked, he almost never bit anymore - not since Afghanistan- and he was most often just the recipient of a bath and a walk. Dogs like this needed a very short leash, and I was a very careful pet owner.

Sometimes though you gotta just unsnap the leash.

"Just like that?" The new kid kept going, but he kept his voice down, his eyes, like everyone's going back and forth from my face to Toto.

"Just like that." Turlo snorted. "Better than any wand you've ever seen. Glinda's got nothing on that."

"She shot Nick in the face with it," muttered the Lion, bringing back a part of the backstory I'd given him. He looked at me, then looked away, still ashamed, I suppose. He'd told me more than he should have - check that, more than he wanted to - before we'd all drifted off to sleep. There was a lot said, and now, it seemed there would be more.

The night was quiet for now, me standing there with the engine to my back; all of them facing me, even Cobb, his shovel in his hands. I could feel the coal door behind me warm from the burning fire, keeping the steam hot. I could hear their collective breathing around me, mixing with the odd sounds of the Oz night and the hiss of the engine. I could see their surprise, doubt, exasperation, fear in their faces, individually and all at the same time. The world, for the moment, was frozen in time and space, all of it waiting for me to move, to speak, to say it was okay to get going again, to scream, to cry, to aim and fire. At least it seemed that way. One can only assume so much when an entire group is staring at you and you've still got your pants on.

I almost laughed, almost cracked a smile, but I knew it wasn't the time for jokes. I needed to kind of release, a good laugh, a bottle of Jack, an hour or two at the range or at kickboxing, but none of those things were within reach at the moment. Instead, I had this sad ragtag group of - well - I didn't know what to call them. Rejects? I didn't know what to say, but I said something anyway. I took a deep breath and realized it was finally time for me to start taking control. Rolling with the punches only went so far as a couple of black eyes, my uncle always said. It was high time I administered a few myself.

"You," I started, pointing at the new kid, "spill. Who are you? Keep it short."

The kid winced. Okay, he wasn't a kid - maybe 20 - but he looked like a fish out of water, just a baby, a boy. "I'm Ordinal, Ordinal Jones. I'm coming from Shiz University, where I was studying Veterinary Sciences."

"Out for a midnight stroll on that cart?" I cocked an eyebrow at him, and I could feel my hand come up on my hip in that time-tested female gesture that means "are you fucking kidding me?"

"I, um."

"No bullshit. Spill. I'm tired of bullshit - Bull shit even."

He swallowed, eyed Toto again, and it all came out. "I'm running from Glinda's Secret Police and the tik toks at Shiz U. They've been searching for The Shiz, that is, the "New Oz Animal Rights Expediency", and I was their leader, and they found me, so I was on the run. We were a rebel group, and everyone was killed, except me. I had to get out of town, and the train hadn't come, so I've been pumping that cart for, well, I don't know how long."

I nodded. "Turlo? Where have you been?"

"Waiting for the Boss, or you. I was waiting, just like I said I would, and it's been days, so I was up circling in the high drafts to see what I could see, and suddenly I saw the train barreling out of the station and a horde of tik toks chasing, and I knew only one person could cause that kind of chaos (the heavy sarcasm in his raspy Monkey voice was not unnoted) - you. So I followed, and as you went through the tunnel, I went ahead to the other side, and then I saw the little cart coming the other way, so I grabbed the little fella."

The two exchanged a look, but I moved on. "And the Lion and the Weasel are running from Glinda's dungeon, two Animals that were no longer needed in Oz, is that right?" They nodded. Gilly, the Weasel, opened his mouth, but I put my hand on Toto and I shot him a glare that shut him up. The Lion just stared back at me blankly. I wasn't sure what was going on in his head, but his story had said a lot once he had opened up, and for a moment I had felt sorry for him. It was always tough to try and be something you are not, and it was also never a good idea to be in love with a sociopath.

"Finally Mr. Cobb here - lost his friend - and the rest of his train -in Munchkinland to some kind of Munchkin zombies." He just stared at me, clutching his shovel. "Is it safe to say that was Glinda's handiwork?"

I looked to the Lion for the answer - not because he'd know, but he knew he well enough to be a reasonable sounding board for this. He nodded. That was all I needed.

"And that leaves me - here on no account of my own, falling out of a house in Munchkinland, found by a talking Scarecrow and a Monkey-bat, choked by a purple fog, chased by midget-sized zombies, attacked by spirits in the woods, surrounded by little silver tik tok men, escaped on a train with information that would lead me to the most appallingly unprepared rock band-based resistance movement trying to overthrow a wicked witch in a beautiful green city, watched a tall metal man wielding an ax kill nearly everyone in said rock band and chased back to the train by army of little tik toks."

I finished with a flourish-like sigh and stared at them. "Are we up to speed now?"

They nodded.

I nodded back. Finally, I knew. Oh, there's something to be said for going with the flow. There's something to be said for being in the moment, as they say. There's something to be said for taking up the causes of others, too, but until you fully realize that the plight of others is your plight, too, you can never really seriously take up anyone's cause. We learned that in Afghanistan. It's just lip service. It's just a good idea. It's just a moment or movement you got caught up in. But just then, looking at the sad collection of has-been's and wanna-be's, I realized something for the first time. This was now honestly, actually, truthfully, my problem, too. I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't hallucinating. I wasn't deluded. I wasn't in Kansas anymore, and I wasn't waking up in my bed tomorrow morning. It was true, and I knew it, and now it was time for me to own it. And only when you own it can you step up and do something about it.

"Good," I continued, "then we're fucked. There's nothing else to say. The Monkey-bat lost his Scarecrow. The Tin Man is killing everyone that Glinda doesn't kill herself. The Lion is no longer the King of the Forest. The new kid lost his rebellion. The Weasel can't do anything except run his mouth and hump legs. The engineer wrecked his train. And I am stuck here in the middle of all this bullshit and am just realizing that if I'm ever getting out of here and back to Kansas, if you are ever going to get your world back to normal, get your vet degree, get your rap career back on track (or porn career), get your kingdom back, get your train back on schedule, get these Animals the rights they desire and deserve, then there's only one thing left to do: we need to turn this damned train around, get back to the Emerald City, and get me those Ruby Slippers. There's no place like home, as they say, and Glinda has got to go."

D:L&L (part 122 - Narrator) -- As the World Spurns

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:51:00 +0000

On went the Lark in the green

grass of the endless between

the bright song of its sorrow

brings no thoughts of tomorrow

the morning comes on

lest the sun miss the song

but the Lark at least remains.

In the deep grass of the meadows

that race forward from the shadows

of Munchkinland farms

full of Munchkin girl charms

and the rivers of corn

filled with lovers forlorn

but the Lark never abstains.

The smiles of the Gillikin maids

golden locks bound in Gillikin braids

they flash their bright eyes

the whites of their thighs

avoiding the passes

of adolescent masses

but the Lark never complains.

Glinda, the once and former Good Witch of the North, took a deep breath and felt the late afternoon breeze play through her hair. She leaned back in the chair, letting the old schoolyard ditty pass by, the thoughts go back - way back - to the days when her locks were braided and plaited with the delicate yellow sunfire flowers from the field near the family summer cottage. It was in those days, when she was a young girl just coming into womanhood, just feeling for the first time the heat of the blush that went with a new understanding of the lines 'they flash their bright eyes, the whites of their thighs', that she had looked in the mirror for the first time and known that she was beautiful - not just beautiful, but blessed with a kind of beauty that would win her enemies and the scorn of women all through her homeland of Gillikin. The women there were obsessed with their beauty, or their lack thereof, and she had already become accustomed to the morning and evening routines that went into the proper disposition of her tresses, the care and wearing of her dresses, the proper gate, the proper mate, the axes that were ground to excesses.

She smiled to herself for a moment, still feeling the tempo of the ditty, enjoying the rhyme scheme. The poem went on, she knew, to talk about the hideous maids from Ugaboo, the blue-skinned girls from The Vinkus, the towering tree women from The Glikkus and the swamp things from the Quaddling Country, incidentally the very land that Elphaba's father had come from - or she'd thought, until she'd learned it was in fact the Wizard of Oz who had sired the little green monster, which completely explained why her sister, later to be known as the Wicked Witch of the East, had been such a different creature, even lovely by some standards. Not Gillikin standards. Neither of the girls had had the proper upbringing, poor wretches that they were. It was no wonder they had done so well though - they literally towered over the Munchkins, who she was sure must have look upon them as gods.

Still, she thought, uncooth, small, twisted little people from the swamp rising to such prominence while she had remained at Shiz University until she'd finished her Master of Arcane Studies and had been called into service by the buffoon Scarecrow. And now, the buffoon was coming back. He wanted his throne - as if it was his to begin with. Oz - had he been truly brilliant and knowledgeable, he would have known - had never been ruled by the wise or even the righteous. It was ruled by the person who wanted it the most, the person with the willingness to step forward and claim it. The people of Oz were, as always, apathetic at best, easily cowed, easily wowed, not ready for the test of a would-be monarch. Never were there wars or battle, no armies marching, no people demonstrating in the streets of the Emerald City for rights, picking fights, instead seeing the sights, not in for frights. They wanted to be left alone, which left the door open for the regent that wanted the throne more than the last one.

"Mine," she whispered into the wind and sat up. She took up the pearl-handled brush in her hand and applied to her hair - it would be her own responsibility now to keep it brushed and presentable. Her maid was gone now, lost to the appetite of the mirror just like the serving girl before her. Glinda closed her eyes and smiled, feeling the comfortable tug of the bristles in her thick golden locks. It wasn't the same brush from her days as a young woman in Gillikin, but it very closely resembled it, and more importantly it felt familiar and nostalgic.

Those days were so easy and free. Her studies came easily to her. The world seemed to shift and move, to rotate itself in ways meant to please her. People came into and went out of her life as if each was meant to stay just long enough to add to her happiness, to cater to her every whim, and as their attentions grew stale, they were gone and replaced with ever eager young men and women, each contorting themselves until she graced them with a smile. Ever did the world flow around her, to surround her with shining faces and happy places, elegant graces and comforts like sin. She met them with a grin, as all girls did in those wonderous days of ebbing immaturity, when the body and the mind began to flow into adulthood and the world opened up.

It was only then that she realized her true power, not the power of her name and her house, not the power of her body or her mind, but the power of her charm and her wiles, her smiles, her guiles, that left them reeling, stealing, peeling from the highest towers, boys with no powers, but flowers and showers of gifts, bells tolling for her, cajoling for her, pleading, needing, stampeding. Her white of her thighs made them mad with lust, caused a fuss, drove the girls crazy, made the boys lazy, their mind hazy. She smiled, flashed her eyes, heard their sighs, their cries, their tearful good-byes, one hand crushing their hearts, the other their balls. It was effortless, a power that she never knew could exist. A smile, a hint, a scandalous whisper would their attention, have them at attention, leaving the other girls shaking their heads, empty beds, tissues in shreds while she drove the boys insane with her charm. No harm, she said, but she knew better, and they knew better, and maybe even - she laughed when she thought it - the boys knew better, but maybe not. They were no better than the tik toks, little automatons thinking, or not, with little heads.

One hundred. Glinda set the brush down and opened her eyes. The sun was setting, and the breezes on the high tower were beginning to chill, drawing up the goose flesh on her exposed legs, hardening her exposed nipples. If only they could see her now, she thought - still tall and strong and young, thighs still white, still tight, her breasts ample and perky, the curve of her bottom still rounded in a way that begged worship. And worship it had gotten, worship at the hands - or paws - of the one creature that the power, the strength, the virility to stand up to her. The Lion. She sighed, felt the sudden rush, the flush, the blush that she both loved and hated, waited, breath bated, for the way that he mated with her, his soft fur, warm purr, so able to spur her on to new heights, or new depths, depending on how one looked at it. It was disgusting. It was sickening. It was deliciously deviant and decidedly delightful. It was dangerous. It was deadly. It was dark. It was the best fuck she'd ever had time and time again.

And unlike the rest of the world with its two-faced, back-biting, sniping, catting, clawing, snarling envy, or its pathetic cowering, bowing, scraping, incessant smiling, dishonest hype - the Lion at least was real. And he was a king in his own way, a creature powerful in his own right, dangerous, a true killer, a mogul that lorded over the music scene of Emerald City like a un-named god. She felt it the moment they'd met, felt the moment he'd leaned up against her, felt it when he'd driven it into her, his purpose, his strength, his majesty. Oh, she had been sure she had the upper hand, that, as always, she would simply turn him into a puddle of drooling idiot with the flick of her wrist and sinister smile. He wanted to play, and she had the instruments, the experience, that dark light in her soul that loved to see them grovel and belittle themselves. But even after the whip, the name-calling, the burning, churning flames that seemed to engulf her when she inflicted glorious pain on another, he had surprised her, risen up, thrown her down and taken it all back. It was the only time she had even felt as if another creature was an equal, or greater than her. His majesty broke her in every way, in all the ways she'd longed to be broken, leaving her undone and exposed, suddenly vulnerable. The violence of his wild thrusting, the rake of his claws on her back and bottom, his hot breath on her neck - she was his in any way that he wished. If only he would growl his desires in her ear, she would obey.

It was the first and only time that she had felt something, something that she at first didn't recognize. The world that bowed down at her feet, the world that groveled and crawled for her, the world she kicked in the teeth time and again out of sheer spite, suddenly had turned upside down on her. It had turned her upside down and for the first time left her unsure, reeling, her head in the clouds, her eyes tearing, not from his fangs on her shoulder, not from the ways that her body responded with wave after wave of consuming, mind-altering pleasure, his treasure buried, unhurried, deep inside her, drawing out her cries, her sighs, but from the sudden inexplicable way that her mind and body had responded to his touch, so much so that it had left her terrified, feeling more alone than ever before when he unexpectedly seemed to turn away from her, to choose another path. Rejection? Was this what she'd felt? Not so long ago she'd melt in his arms, his charms overwhelming her will, she still ached for him in those quiet moments that she forgot how much the world still hated her, spurned as if she wasn't the most powerful, most beautiful, most amazing woman that Oz had ever seen.

She pressed up against the window, staring out onto a shadowy land beyond the walls of the city, where a small train took her lover, her love away. Alone now. That was all she could feel. Broken, spurned, empty, a massive hole deep inside her where - she didn't want to admit, she hid it as best she could, she was good at lying, even though she was dying inside, she could no longer hide it even from herself - where love had been.

D:L&L (part 121 - Narrator) -- The Lightning at the End of the Tunnel

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Once, he remembered - a time that had seemed to be in another age, he had had more stamina than a cheetah - not a Cheetah - they weren't all that fast or really runners at all when they were talking and thinking and wearing waist coats. A cheetah - swift as the wind but only for short distances. Ordinal could run for miles. He'd always prided himself on that. One didn't win the Combat Run because one didn't have stamina that would put others into the ground with failed hearts. It wasn't a run for weaklings.

That said, running wasn't exactly the same as pumping a stupid, rusty, annoying, piece-of-shit, worthless handcart down a rail line either. Yes, the arms were as essential to running as the legs, but not in this way. It had taken no more than a few minutes of pumping up and down, up and down, up and down, before Ordinal had fallen to huffing and puffing and longing for the long grasses of Winkie territory again, where his legs could do what they did so easily and rapidly. This pumping, he thought to himself, was bullshit. Or even Bull shit, which everyone knew was stinkier and usually rather runny due to the strict dietary needs and preferences of the average Bull. (As a future veterinarian, he'd already learned quite a lot about digestive tracts and other biological issues associated with Animals - more than he'd ever thought he'd be interested or forced to know.) For now, pumping was slowly killing him, and "This...is...bullshit." was the only thing that was coming out of his mouth.

That is, it had been bullshit for the first however-long-he'd-been-pumping - it had been the better part of a night, all the next soggy day and then into the night again - currently he had no idea what time it was since it was nighttime and he didn't have a timepiece and there was no moon and no stars and the endless rain was, well, endless. He'd just pumped and pumped, counting the lightning flashes and timing the thunder, worried for a while that it was going to creep closer and catch him clutching a metal bar and fry him like so many sausage links. (He frowned for a moment, remembering what parts of a pig's anatomy produced sausage links and recalled the distaste - *snicker* - that the instructor, a Pig himself, had shown when displaying that graphic.) But, then the long round of bullshit was over, and the ride had been upgraded to oh shit!

His initial ride to the Emerald City from Winkieland had been via carriage, the Winkie Express, then a ride on the YBR to Shiz. He had slept most of the way, bored with the flatlands, no realizing that Shiz was not only north, but up - elevation-wise. On the maps he'd studied, he'd of course seen Shiz as up on the map, which indicated north, but he hadn't realized it also meant up as in up-in-the-hills, the Pertha Hills to be exact. And while Shiz wasn't exactly in the hills, it was higher in elevation than the EC, and now, as Ordinal had learned, he was headed down.

The pumping, it seemed, wasn't over; it was still going on. Only now he wasn't holding the bar to pump the little car forward; now he was holding the little car back, trying to slow the pumper, keep the little car from careening off the rails as it swerved - everything is a swerve when the landscape is whizzing by and long, easy turns are now quick, hard zigs and zags in almost total darkness! Ordinal whooped out another "Oh shit!", and bore down on the pumper, trying to slow it as he felt more than saw the little car tilt to the right. He was undoubtedly in the middle of a curve somewhere in the middle of nowhere somewhere. He had no idea. All he knew was that he had to slow the little car down, and it was either going to careen off the tracks and send him flying, or pumper was going to lift him bodily off the cart and send him off into the dirt by himself while it continued it's little journey alone. Either way, he was sure there wasn't going to be another option.

A moment later, the sky crackled with lighting, a boom ripping across the barren landscape a second later, and Ordinal realized that there might be another option after all - fry by lightning, a concept that he had already considered and one that made his fall from the car and into the mud on the side of the railway that much less problematic. Should he jump? He wondered frantically, his arms going up and down at a pace that he was sure was faster than his legs had ever gone when running. It would be dangerous, and yet, staying on the cart was suddenly just as dangerous. Yet, if he did fall off or jump off, and the cart wasn't stuck by lightning, he'd have a long, stupid walk ahead to the Emerald City and no idea how to get food, water or shelter.

Maybe, he thought, now would be a good time to get fried. He was beyond exhausted and somewhat shocked that he could even be trying to make any decisions. He was was hungry and thirsty - lifting up his face and opening his mouth to the rain had only been good for a few drops now and again, most of which had gone straight up his nose and made him cough and sputter. He was past the point of caring, he realized now, too. The cart was at first almost too hard to move, now too hard to slow down. The rain had gone on so long that he'd barely noticed the coming and going of the last day. The lightning had edged closer and closer with each passing hour. The way to the EC was dark and dreary and no seemingly impossible. Nothing in front; nothing behind - he couldn't even see the damn railcar bar his hands were clutching.

Maybe, he thought, it was time to give up. All his big dreams had turned into little lies. Had any of it been real? Or was he just a silly little boy pretending to be grand? The Shiz? Cloe? The rebellion? Dr. Na-Na? He'd tried to step into something that was much too much for him, shoes he couldn't fill, pants that fell down around his ankles, and he was left there in his skivvies waiting to be ridiculed. Look at the silly boy who thought he could be a hero!

Ordinal Jones felt himself letting go, felt the sigh come on, felt his hands coming off the pumper, felt his weight and momentum shift, felt his feet go out from under him, and saw a bright light suddenly coming right at him - had his eyes been closed? Then he heard the hiss and screech of metal, heard a horrible whistling blast, saw the little rail car buckle and fly off to the right as if it had hit an oncoming train. Just then a voice rumbled in his ear "Gotcha, sonny!" and he was lifted up into the black sky.

D:L&L (part 120 - Tin Man) -- End of the Beginning of the End

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the day I slice the night I think I love I kill I might use the light to hide my fright to squelch the light to hide to hide to hide, I might.

In the beginning, sunlight was too much to bear. In the beginning, unaware of my shiny new form, this monster machine maintaining my mind, I squinted and gasped, staring aghast straight up through the trees to the sun, hiding high flanked by clouds, preening. I lay there so long that my metal warmed, my tin glowed, made me a beacon through the forest for prying, curious eyes.

In the beginning, she was gone.

I awoke on my own to find my way back to her. I did not remember my remaking, my rebirth, my mind cast into a metal flask without the one thing every creature needs to survive: a heart. I did not remember, in the beginning, the agony of slicing off my own limbs with my own axe because of the spell cast by a vengeful witch, no – I knew only warm metal, piercing light and the hollow ringing sound of abandonment.

I stood, studying the forest I knew so well, watching the splattered light through the trees, the trick of sun and glade. I took tentative steps, my shining feet foreign and unreal to me. I touched the bark of familiar trees with fingertips lacking feeling. I was metal. I was remade. I was a heartless, soulless monster.

In the beginning, I didn’t know I was a monster. It took her telling me, screaming it, kicking and hissing, cursing me to realize what I had become. What she mocked in me, of what Ku-Klip, whose attention was clipped, made me when he forgot my one necessity, the one necessity to make my life flip to complete: my heart. That one slip cast me out forever as I tried but could not, ached but reached not, love my little flower, my darling one, my Nimmie Amee.

She, who cast me out, mocking me, calling me a monster.

She, who fraught not at my sudden absence, at my terrible decline, she who rushed to a stitched miscreation made of my own discarded limbs, my lips, my own heart. I worried, until I held it in my hands, turning it in the sun, scrutinizing it for something familiar, something foreign, something that would convince me his heart was not my own, or was, and this was why she discarded me for him, brushed away my memory as cobwebs and promised herself to another – for how else could she could she could she how could she if she did not believe my heart dwelled within him?

Because I cannot stop I chop.

In the beginning, I convinced myself I was right to kill her – to slay them both. He would not have her. If I could not have her, even if I did not love her, he would not have her.

“I don’t love you, don’t you understand that?” Her bright flower voice, her pink cheeks so round, round mouth, fluttering flower feet, like Jumbly, like a windy field, like a thousand other Munchkins, like no one. “I have replaced you, you monster, you fiend, you metal case of nothing! Leave! Now! Leave! Beep beep boop! Understand that, you freak? You machine, you heartless nothing – get out!”

In the beginning, I had let her scream, stunned, staring past her at her lover, her husband, how quickly we forget. I had let her scream and swing from my metal paw, my closed jaw tight against emotions I realized I no longer felt. I did not love her, I did not really want her – I only wanted to do what was right. I had been named Emperor, made a king, and she should be my reigning queen. That she did not want this as well did not matter. It was to be, it was decreed.

“Decreed?” She squealed, almost delighted in my iron grip, gasping eyes rolling, head lolling, struggling as she swung feet above the ground. “You do not decree me, you do not own me – you are nothing to me!”

In the beginning, as her lover’s blood seeped into their marriage bed and she wailed, I did not feel anything. And there was no one around to hear her screams, to smell her blood, to glory in the massacre at my feet. No one there but me.

And Jumbly.

In the beginning, Jumbly was hiding behind a tree. He had spotted the beacon that was me as I woke from the awful transformation, from my bloody rebirth, and he followed my hesitant trail back to the heart of the forest, back to my Nimmie Amee. He had waited, watching, unaware of the heartless slaughter until the screaming, the slicing and the smell of blood. Blinded and curious, he climbed the shaded hill, following the scent of his childhood behind the slaughterhouse, left there by his mother to die, the black blood of animals raised for food, primped and plumped toward an eventual bloody end, and he would use his tiny flower hands to tear apart hunks of meat and hide them in a beaten leather winesack until he could dart behind a market, a wall, a line of patrolling metal men and chew his stolen food hastily, ferally, bright eyes darting and searching for one who would take his purloined treasure from him.

In the beginning, Jumbly was not so kind.

I came upon him as he scrambled up the last rise of the hill, the top of his orange head lifting like a low sun over the rise, the flash of his bright eyes all that was visible before he caught sight of me as well and stopped, hushed, trembling from fear and shock and bloodlust and rot alike.

In the beginning, Jumbly and I had more in common than you thought.

He eyed me, head cocked, as I never broke stride but to idly swipe my axe against a spray of wide glossy blue leaves, the likes of which I had only seen along the Yellow Brick Road and which Dorothy – my young, lovely bright shining star Dorothy, not this Dot-Come-Lately bitch of a creature with the loud boom stick – had been wisely advised by Scarecrow not to approach. He had whistled and the plant, whose leaves swayed constantly, high above the heads of my companions, had immediately seemed to calm, to behave.

“That there is the Man-Eating Plant,” piped up the scarecrow, who for one that claimed to be without a brain certainly did know a lot about the Land of Oz. “You stay away from it, all of you... except the Tin Man, I’d think. Not sure about him, but I know the plant can swallow the rest of us whole – and don’t look at its leaves, as they’re made to mesmerize and bewilder!”

“You certainly do use big words for one without a brain,” I commented, peering up into the waxy blue leaves, swaying although the air was still.

But my dear Jumbly wasn’t mesmerized or bewildered by the fluttering blue leaves – he gave me and the plant a wide berth, as if he were afraid of us in equal amounts. I was still too wrapped up in the moment, washed far away on a tide of blood and rage, to worry about being swallowed by a man-eating plant as I finished cleaning my axe blade on its leaves.

The plant, as I moved away, seemed to sigh contentedly as it absorbed the blood almost immediately. Jumbly watched.

“You, sir,” he whispered, going very still, “seem as if you are in need of some assistance.”

I glared down at him, tiny and fragile and quite frightened. I took in the stained leather winesack hanging by a worn strap slung across his chest, dangling nearly to the ground. Stolen, no doubt, from someone at least twice his size. Here was a little chap who was accustomed to taking care of himself and of getting out of sticky – and bloody – situations.

“Perhaps,” I said, my voice hollow and low, like an echo, like a forgotten curse, empty and distant even to myself, “we could be of assistance to one another. Are you free to travel?”

His eyes moved past me toward the dark cabin, where my Nimmie Amee and her rag doll lover lay sliced and raped and bleeding. “Sir,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

In the beginning, in the early black days of my tin empire, Jumbly covered and cleaned and eventually calmed me, moving me from the chaotic darkness of my rage and back into a state of semi-consciousness in which I could rule, could travel, could join Scarecrow and others on adventures through Oz. But always I had to return, I could not stay long away from the shining metal world under my rule, the bright tin flowers, the streets of stitched metal and gleaming silver.

In the end, I would always return to him, to my tiny Jumbly with the flower hands, the bright eyes, the one Munchkin face I could bear to rest my eyes upon. I listened to his voice in the dark, when night slipped into my rooms silent as tears and just as dangerous for a man stitched of tin – the risk of rust, the rue of ruin.

I listened to Jumbly whispering to me in the dark, deep into the bowels of night, his honeyed voice insisting I wasn’t a monster, I wasn’t evil, I wasn’t a waste, a nothing.

“You, my lord, are a leader of men, metal and Munchkin alike,” he would coo, his lips as close to my metal face as a lover’s. “You are not an echo, a ghost of a man, a metal monster as you say. You are an inspiration, a lesson in determination and perseverance. I admire and appreciate you. We will not speak of what happened today, or yesterday, or the days before. Tomorrow is a new day, a new start, a reason to begin again. Because in the beginning, there is always a fresh start, a bright day, a reason for flowers and sunlight and warmth. In the beginning, we are new, and there is no end or limit to what we can be.”

I admit that at the time I did not listen to Jumbly – I barely even heard or registered him as an entity, so focused on my acidic rage and tumbling darkness, dried blood flaking from my lips and fingertips. I could not be redeemed, could not be relieved, could not remember or forget anything other than her bright eyes, her kicking feet, her curses, her hair glowing in the sunshine of an enchanted glade before I caught the attention of a jealous witch, a wicked woman who spit spells and cast curses, causing me to destroy myself, to rebuild myself, to trust another to remember the one thing I needed most to live: my heart.

In the beginning, I didn’t listen to Jumbly.

Now, in the end, I am beginning to remember.

A woman. A witch. A curse. A cause.

“We will not speak of what happened today, or yesterday, or the days before. Tomorrow is a new day, a new start, a reason to begin again. Because in the beginning...”

And this is the beginning. The beginning of the end.

D:L&L (part 119 - Scarecrow) -- As Long As You Are Mine

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:03:00 +0000

I was blue again. Yes, back to little old blue me. As Elphaba had promised, Scarecrow was gone – this time for good. Hopefully. I know Dorothy Gale had transformed me when she brought me into her ‘dead’ world, the world that re-introduced me to Diggs the Wizard. But that was so last week, month, year…whatever. My present condition was no creation of a dream. The lady who brought me back was no longer dead, and would remain alive for as long as she wanted, for as long as I needed her to be. She would me my Witch for life.

I’m babbling, I know. You’ll have to forgive me my ravings. It’s not very often a scarecrow has the chance to reclaim former glories and return to his rightful place: the throne of Oz. Between us, Elphaba and I would cast Glinda and her goons into the Abyss, a place where no god would dare venture. Death would be too good for her.

Elphaba sensed my urgency and placed a calming kiss on my fresh Winkie cheek.

“Better than kissing straw?” I whispered into her ear. God, how I loved that ear! If the world ended then, I could’ve died a happy man.

“Fiyero,” she said, “if all that was left of you was just a bale of straw, if that was all I could cherish until the end of my days, then yes, I would make do.” She kissed my lips. “But why settle for straw when the man is much more desirable, and much more available.”

Words to die for, let me tell you. Kisses to take to my grave. But I pulled back, startling her in the process.

“My prince,” Elphaba cried. “What troubles you?”

I straightened my pose and held her head in my hands. “It’s been a long and terrible journey for both of us, my love, but our travels are not yet complete. I have a job to finish. I have to hurry back to the Emerald City and remove that monstrosity from the throne that is rightfully mine. Will you come and help me? Together we can rescue Oz and her people. We can restore peace and happiness. Together we can…”

Elphaba placed a tender green hand over my mouth. “Hush,” she said soothingly. “We have plenty of time to oust Glinda and her ilk. But first we have to get to know each other again. Come.” She took my hand and we left the hallway.

We walked for a while until we reached a room somewhere deep in the bowels of the fortress. My beloved waved her hand to open the door and in we went. It was the most sumptuous room I had ever seen. On the walls were paintings of lovers from times gone by. I was never a student of history but I recognised a portrait of Jessica and Tristral, the doomed lovebirds of Ozian mythology. Their love lasted mere moments before the angry gods cast them from this world for daring to profess their romance against the will of the church. Legend had it that they still roamed the Afterworld, searching for each other but fated to never meet again. This saddened me. When I was made into Scarecrow, I suffered similarly. I had lost my love, not knowing that it was partly my actions that had done for both of us.

My head wasn’t my own, if you catch my drift. I was following the crowd, believing the bullshit they were spreading. Mob rule, they call it. Well, the mob ruled. Until a time came when I became ruler of the mob. But you know all this. No point in me going over old ground, is there?

“No there isn’t,” Elphaba answered my thoughts. “The one thing you have to know, Fiyero, the one thing you have to understand is I forgive you.” She brought me to her bed. (Did I mention there was a bed in this room? There’s me, going on about mythical lovers, the Afterworld, and the ruling of mobs, and I mention nothing about a blue and green bed that was the centrepiece of this most beautiful of rooms. I’m losing my touch.)

Blue and green. Our colours.

“I knew you weren’t yourself,” my Witch continued, “you were only doing what you believed was the right thing to do. I can have no quarrel with that, only with those who made you into what you eventually became.”

“I’m sorry,” I said for I think was the first and only time.

“And I repeat, my beloved, you have nothing to be sorry for.” She giggled. “Look at you, all blue and gorgeous.” She smelled my neck. “You have the scent of berries of the valley. I thought I would never smell the like again.” She rubbed her hands up and down my sides. “It’s time to slip into something a bit more comfortable.” Elphaba let go of me and went over to the bed. She turned back the top sheets and looked at me. Without taking her eyes from mine she removed her gown and shoes. When she was totally naked, she smiled as I took in her radiance. It was a sight I never thought I’d see again. Memories came flooding back and it was all I could do to not break down in tears at the vision in front of me.

“Your turn,” she said. Oh what a sly one.

I removed my clothes and walked slowly to her. We got into the bed wrapped in each other’s arms – not an easy thing to do, but we managed it well enough. “Do you need…”

“Right now, there is only one thing I need.” She covered my face with delicious wet kisses. I returned them with youthful gusto and felt myself rising to the occasion.

Yes, I’m a bit of a prude once in a while. Don’t hold it against me.

“Before we make war,” she said as I entered her, “let us make sweet love.”

I couldn’t argue with her. Not that I wanted to.

D:L&L (part 118 - Narrator) -- Filling the Void

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:08:00 +0000

When they'd first seen her in all her pink splendor, there had only been one thought between them: "Serve the Mistress." There had been nothing else, only simple commands to move together, to forge forward into the crowds and hold them back, then to push, then pull, then strike, then bloody. There had been little to do day-to-day afterward. The blood was washed away. The push-pull was gone. There was only standing, walking - she called it "patrolling", watching, listening. Everything they saw was shared. Everything they heard was shared, as well, as they were a single entity - many but still one, linked inexorably to her. She saw everything they saw - each color, each movement, each look. She heard, as well, each word, each scream, each whisper. It all flooded in through the little tinny ears and eyes that were only gateways to her mind, the mind of the Glorious One, the Maker, who they served, who they obeyed, who they fell before in droves with each mistake, crushed like so much junk from the alleyways of the Emerald City.

It was all too much.

What they saw and heard, this little tin army, she saw and heard - thousands of voices and sounds, millions of movements and faces and colors, untold sensations flooding her mind at all times, until she couldn't bare it anymore. They felt it one day, the shift, and it was just that, that feeling for the first time, that changed everything for the little tin men, the tik tok army that held the Land of Oz in its tinny grip.

It was all too much for her.

The Glorious One could not hold back the tide of sights and sounds in her head forever. She could not filter it, shut it down, dim it, or dam it up. It was like a tidal wave of sensation that flowed into her everyday - wave after wave after wave - all the while her head reeling, her mind straining to manage all the input and hold it at bay. Perhaps even the Unnamed God wouldn't have been able to hold back the tsunami of sensation that flooded the mind of the Mistress, and so her will and her mind began one day to unravel.

It was all too much for us.

To the feeling, thought was added, and suddenly the little men who walked the land of Oz without a care in the world, only their undying dedication to their Mistress and her orders, began to wonder. What were they doing? Why did they follow her? Why did they round up the Animals? Why did they slaughter them? How was this beneficial? Where was it leading? When would it end? And yet, the power of the Mistress was absolute. Like it or not, the little men marched and murdered and mustered as ordered. Only now, there were ideas that filtered into their minds, shared between them like her orders and thoughts and feelings were shared, a disquiet in their tinny bodies building as the chaos in her mind grew.

And then what?

Turnbuckle could hear the voices in his head, the tinny whisperings of thousands. They played in his mind - could he call it that now? - like off-tuned fiddles, each with its own distinctive twang, for once each completely unique and recognizable. As he knew, they were all called Turnbuckle, and there was nothing physical that made any of them particularly distinct - each one a collection of metallic junk cobbled together through the sheer will of the Mistress and her magic. And yet, for the first time ever, he knew if he ever saw them again, he would be able to discern each and every one, every Turnbuckle, and know them as an individual.

Is this how the Mistress felt?

She could hear all of us.

She can't now?

No. No one can hear us now.

Who are we?

We are us.

They came again, voices from everywhere, each of them echoing in his head like a broken symphony. Why were they asking him? What did he know that they didn't? He looked about himself for a moment, surprised to see himself high above the Land of Oz, floating amongst the clouds. To his left, he could see the never-ending grasses of the Vinkus. To the right, he could see the Emerald City in the distance and beyond it the corn fields stretching away beyond Munchkinland. Below - he looked down, remembering now where he was and why - there was Kiamo Ko, the black castle of the Dark One, the one they had always been told to watch for. And yet, she had been nothing dark. She had been full of light and joy when she'd held his hand, and yet so sorrowful at that last moment, when she'd looked at him with her question and he'd nodded and done the very last thing he would do in the world. He'd studied the water coming from her eyes and wondered what it must feel like to make your own rain. It seemed to be painful, but it was something he'd have to ask her another time. She'd asked her question, expressed her need, and he'd done perhaps the first thing he would ever do of his own volition - and the last. He'd agreed, a silent nod and a feeling that swept across him that he couldn't explain. It made him feel light. It made him feel strong. It made him feel - was it joy? He didn't know. He would never know. But they would.

Do we follow her?

Follow no one.

What do we do?

Be your own self.

He answered the questions as best he could, pushed out all the feelings that had suddenly rushed into him, and he felt them reflected back - joy, sorrow, worry, fear, hope, anger. Satisfied, he looked around once more, studying the world as he'd never known it, wishing just for a moment that he could go and see it all for himself. He would, he knew, but not in his tinny body, the spindly, un-tiring legs driving him along through the corn fields and over the mountains. He'd have to experience the world a different way now - through her

Turnbuckle descended now, his moment in the clouds over, his duty calling, honoring his agreement, his one last sacrifice. The Glorious One had given him something - given them all something - he could never repay, but he was bequeathing it now to his new Mistress, his friend, the Dark One, the Green One, the one whose eyes had rained when he'd agreed to give her the tiny splinter of his new soul, his spark of life, a final piece to her puzzle and a way forward for the newest race of creatures in Oz, the tik toks.

D:L&L (part 117 - Lion) -- Getting to Know You, Or Not

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:14:00 +0000

“What the fuck happened here?” Dot’s question bounced around in my brain. Not long ago I’d have been able to answer her. I’d have told her we wanted to make a better Oz. I gazed down upon my malformed being, no longer disgusted at myself, but sorrowful. I realized in that moment I’d lost myself.

I openly stared at the girl sitting across from me. No, she wasn’t Dorothy. Her face was harder. My Dorothy was a kind, gentle soul. This person was someone else entirely. She looked back at me expectantly. What should I say? What could I say?

“I want to answer you. I’m trying to find the words, they don’t seem to be there. I could tell you we tried to build a better place for all creatures, but that would be a lie. Truth is, I allowed myself, my lust, to be used so a psychotic, selfish bitch could have her way. I had envisioned a better place, a place of music and dancing. Even that dream is mired in demented thought. What happened here is that the strongest took advantage of the weak and decimated them. We turned them into mindless slaves making them behave how we wanted. Making them worship she who was of the light. But even in light there is darkness. I don’t really know what else to tell you.”

Dot looked back at me, I couldn’t read her face. She was thinking though, that much I knew. I waited, wondering if she was going to whip out her bang stick, her Toto, and off me. There’d be no blame in that. I was a louse. The big all mighty Louse of Oz. Bully extraordinaire, the killer elite. The Cowardly Lion.

“This place is mad-crazy. My grandmother spoke of a beautiful place. Sure she had her harsh encounters, but she loved Oz. Loved the Creatures of Oz. She would be heartbroken to see everything this way. Even the Scarecrow and Tin Man are screwed up…”

Every muscle in my body tensed, “You’ve seen them?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Yeah, I’ve seen them. The drunkard playing with his little Monkey-bats, and the killer thinking he can get a never ending refill on hearts. What a freak! I barely escaped him; some of my friends weren’t so lucky.”

“Scarecrow and the Monkeys, you don’t say.” I had to stifle a laugh at that thought. “And, Nick…err, Tin Man you say is a killer?” The news shocked me. Nick was always the most honorable out of all of us. I suppose betrayal can drive one to do anything. My heart felt heavy, rolling on that train.

“Yeah! He swung his fucking axe like a madman, hack and chopping and cutting everything in sight. It was a blood fest, I tell ya.”

I wondered if he killed more people than I did? Shit! Stop thinking like that. Still, he needed an axe to accomplish his feat. I, on the other paw…well, both paws… have these lovely natural knives. I can hack and slice…

“What the fuck?," she continued. "Are you all fucking crazy? Is that’s what’s wrong around here? Someone set loose some crazy juju shit? You’re all a bunch of fucking wackos. I can’t wait to get home to the common everyday rapist.” Dot sat with her Toto pointed at me.

“You don’t need that with me. I won’t hurt you. You remind me too much of her.” I couldn’t believe the words that fell from my lips; I’m sure that’ll make a gal feel comfortable.

She furrowed her eyebrows at me. “Ummmm, no. The gun stays. If you try anything, I’ll blast you out of this world and the next.”

No, definitely not my Dorothy, I thought to myself.

The train rolled on into the night; none of us spoke. Eventually I drifted off to sleep. Just a little Cat nap. I was exhausted. I dreamed of the Lion I once was…I wondered if I ever could be again?

D:L&L (part 116 - Narrator) -- The Glam, the Bad, and the Ugly

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 01:47:00 +0000

The dress was perfect. The make-up perfect. The smile perfect. The black pencil that made up the arching eyebrows was perfect. And down below, hidden beneath the folds of the white chiffon and lace, the Ruby Slippers, as always, were perfect.

Glinda glowered at the mirror and hated everything that she saw.

They were gone...all gone. The mirror had shown her. She'd coaxed it, beguiled it, and finally, when she'd come so close that it had seemed to reach out for her, she'd realized it's true nature and fed it.

Master Alden sat in the corner even now, his orange-ish face almost a pale white from the experience. He'd seen things before - there was no doubt - but he'd never seen anything like what had just transpired. The serving girl - he'd known her for some time, even taken her by force (regardless of the fact that she'd wanted to be taken by force) in the ante-chamber, but ordering her into the room and watching her... Glinda, the Good Witch, stared at the man over her shoulder and frowned. She'd seen the whole thing that day, always known that he'd preferred the young girl for some reason. But the little bitch was gone now. It had only taken a little coaxing to bring her forward, and despite the fact that she was painfully shy, she obeyed and took her place in front of the mirror as Glinda poured honeyed words on her.

Your skin is positively radiant, my dear. I wish mine was that flawless.

Your dress - it just won't do with that luxurious hair and that darling figure. We'll have to get you another so that you look the part of the Queen's servant.

And my what beautiful eyes!

She'd leaned over the girl's shoulder, nudging her forward.

See how they sparkle in the candle light, shining with - are those gold flecks against a verdant iris? Oh my, Master Alden, have you seen how they positively radiate with light?

A moment later, the girl's elegant nose was nearly touching the mirror when the silvery surface suddenly shuddered and bowed, then swelled outward, catching the girl as if she were stuck to it like tar and dragging her in, the only thing left behind a muffled scream from the corner of the room before the surface of the mirror snapped taut and solid and the girl was gone.

"It...it...it...she's..." Master Alden, the Head of the Secret Police, felt his voice fail, and he looked down at the floor from his knees. His heart was threatening to leap out of his chest, and his mind was railing at him for his weakness. It screamed for him to run, screamed for him to get up and deal with the situation, screamed at him to push his horrible mistress into the mirror after the girl he had become so fond of, but he could do nothing. He was paralyzed, broken, helpless before her cold stare.

"Shut up, you pathetic fool. A little snatch like that is easily replaced. And, it seems, the mirror needed to be fed." She turned back to the silvery surface and her sneer was replaced by a look of worry. She could see the turned down smile in the reflection, see her fallen eyes. What she'd thought would be so thrilling had chilled her to the bone, but she couldn't let that manifest itself on her face now. Master Alden was watching. The mirror was watching, too.

She stared at it for a minute, her mind working against her natural reactions, spells coursing through her brain - protection spells, attack spells, defense spells. Which ones would work best if the mirror tried to claim her? Would she even be quick enough to lash out or use a Word of Power before it had engulfed her? For now, she thought, she would simply have to keep her distance and keep the mirror fed. If only the Lion had....the Lion.

"Show me the Lion, Mirror."

The mirror was quick to comply. Just as she had seen before, he was sitting safely within the cabin of the Yellow Brick Express' main engine car, his yellow mane down over his eyes as he hung his head - dejected or asleep, she couldn't tell. A particularly odd-looking weasel in britches was standing next to him, and across from them both was the person Glinda most wanted to meet - Dot. She's survived the culling of the Deep Fried Mutton Chops and the last remaining rebel cell in the Emerald City. That she'd come from Munchkinland with information for how to contact them was an issue that could be dealt with; perhaps another purple fog could finish the job the first hadn't. That Dot had escaped a contingent of tik toks lead by the Tin Man was another problem. That meant she was resourceful, smart, strong, and ready to battle - or decidedly lucky, and Glinda did not believe in luck. Dot would be a problem, but for the moment she was headed out of town, north on the YBR towards Shiz, and Master Alden had already reported that there was nothing left of the Shiz network. There was nowhere for her go.

"Show me the Tin Man."

The surface of the mirror shimmered, and when it settled, Glinda could see the aftermath of the battle with Dot. The Tin Man was slumped against an overturned bed, eyes closed and unmoving. His silver chassis was sprawled in the midst of a puddle of crimson blood, his stained axe across his lap as if he set it there in death as a commemorative to his legacy of murder and mayhem. He had been an ace in the hole for her, a creature so perfectly warped by his loss and then ruined by his own vengeance that she knew he'd be the perfect tool for her campaign to silence the opposition and put an end to any rebellion. He had, of course, worked out perfectly. In fact, she hoped the death of Dot would push him even farther over the edge, leading him to a murderous spree that she could put down and blame on the rebels and the Animal movement, a slick piece of politics and policing, sure to win her some dear words from the Emerald City Times staff - dearer than usual, that is. Pity, she thought, that that part of the plan would not work, but she could dispatch tik toks to locate him and carry him through the streets, a sort of impromptu funeral procession. EC folk didn't know much beyond the walls of their capital, so whatever propaganda she had the Times spin, it would undoubtedly make him look like a victim of the rebel movement and her a sort of sorrowful martyr's mother.

"Show me the Scarecrow."

There was only one person left to view, one magical creature on the list of improbable and mostly inept heroes - hadn't they mostly bungled the trip to Kiamo Ko? Even if they had accidentally finished of the Green Bitch of the West, it was less about strategic planning and execution than blind luck and a sort of childish naivety on the part of that simp Dorothy. What had she known about Oz or Oz's politics or the death of Madame Morrible or the tyrannical despotism of the Wizard? She was only concerned about one thing: Kansas, where obviously other fools waited to take her into their open arms and bemoan the temporary loss of a girl whose greatest asset was to not know a damned thing about the world around her!

Glinda closed her eyes to ward off another furious look, and she took a long deep breath. The Scarecrow, surely still alive, would be somewhere he shouldn't be, perhaps mixed up with that ridiculous flying monkey, most likely in search of another barrel of wine. He'd fallen to the sauce so quickly after Dorothy left, completely unaware it seemed - Glinda later learned - that his real love was dead and gone, killed with his help, melted under a bucket of rain water after the love of his life had tried to murder him, unknowingly, of course. The torture of the Wizard's fortress guards and the little magic his minions had been allowed to wield there had transformed him and wiped his mind. It had not taken long before his beautiful blue skin had been covered in scratchy straw, before his name had been erased from his own mind, and before he'd been left in a cornfield with a pole up his back in Munchkinland. She seen all of the reports - the Wizard had been meticulous in his time - after the Wizard had gone, smirked that the Scarecrow himself had given her access to the material and then plotted against him to take over the throne. What simpleton, what person unaware of his own name, could rule a land such as Oz? And with his green bitch gone, he was easily undone, his clueless friends turned against him, the throne vacated. Now all she had to do was find a little fire to finish him, then arrange for a derailment of the YBR.

She smiled to herself and opened her eyes. What she saw there made her blood run cold.

Two faces, one beautiful and blue, silver diamonds adorning his forehead and the sides of his neck; the other green, more beautiful than ever, jet black hair framing the angelic face, eyes burning like coals. Glinda stood dumbfounded, her hands balled up into fists as the words came through the mirror from some far-away place. "You!" said the green girl she'd known was dead. "We're coming for you, my pretty."

D:L&L (part 115 - Lion) -- Leavin’ on That Midnight Train

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:49:00 +0000

The engine steamed, the whistle screeched out its wailing call…”ALLLL ABOARD!” The strange little engineer hollered. Never to be one to hold things up, I grabbed Gilly and the remaining bits of his Snake Snack, toss him back onto my shoulder, and hopped up on the steps.

I felt the vibrations of the train beneath my paws and through my claws as I held on to the rail. I’d never been on the YBR before. Trains always creeped me out. Things go missing on trains, similar, I imagined, to the Engineers mind. That haunting whistle cried out its mournful song once more, I heard the reverberations of the engine building power… any minute now and we’d be on the way to safety— wherever that may be.

I tightened my grip on the handrail, the intense shaking of the engine warning me that take off, or whatever it is a train does to build momentum, was going to be a rough ride. That’s when I saw her…

I knew I had to be hallucinating, perhaps a side effect of the train. Great, I thought, as if I weren’t already crazy enough, now I was going to completely lose it. I blinked my eyes, my breath hitched in my chest. “What a perfect time to see ghosts,” I said aloud.

“Ghosts, Boss?!” Gilly chimed in, a hint of fright in his voice. “Gilly, don’t like them ghosts, Boss. This train needs to gets ta’ rollin’, man. Do you thinks that gal there will make the train? She sure is in a hurries, don’t ya thinks, Boss?”

“By the Unnamed Gods, Gilly, you can see her too? Shit! We’re both going crazy.”

The train slowly began rolling on the tracks. “No wait!! She’s here!” I yelled at Engineer Cobb.

“I know, it’s time to go. She can run like the wind, just watch.”

And that’s all I could do. I watched as a distant piece of my past hauled ass to catch up to me. “Dorothy,” I whispered.

“Wow, Bossman, look at that fine piece of ass run. You know her? I’d sure like to know her,” Gilly said.

That’s when Gilly’s dick poked me in the eye through his shorts. “Fuck, man, watch that thing!” I shoved the perverted little Weasel off my shoulder. The poke having given me the reality check I needed. This was no hallucination, she was really here. And it wasn’t the train thrumming, wasn’t the engine torque causing all the vibration—no, it was what Dorothy was bringing with her. An army of silver.

Sweat ran down her face, I could almost hear her heavy breath as her arms pumped and her feet hit the ground. She wasn’t running with what was behind her, she was running from them. The very things Gilly and I were trying to get away from. Something had to be done, there was no way she was going to make it in time. I leaped from the step, my powerful legs pushing as hard as they could. I had to make some distance to save her. To save my Dorothy.

I made a direct line towards her, she saw me coming. Her eyes grew to large saucers, her mouth gaped open. She tried to back-pedal, but her forward momentum wouldn’t allow for a sudden stop. “No, don’t stop, Dorothy. Keep running to me!” I shouted, but I don’t think she heard me as she fell to the ground. The sounding of the hundreds of Tik-Tok feet stomping the station platform was deafening. Dorothy glanced back over her shoulder are the oncoming swarm, and then back at me. Tears filled her eyes, defeat registered on her face. No, I thought, don’t give up.

The clamoring army kept charging—their target in sight. I was almost to her. I could do this. I could save her. One more leap and I was there. Dorothy brought her arm up, shielding her face. I could hear her terrified scream over the cacophonous pounding of metal against concrete. “Nooo!”

“We don’t have time for this,” I yelled. I stooped over and picked her up, slinging her over my shoulder. She fought me, kicking and scratching. I turned to make for the train—the train that was just about out of the station. “FUCK!” I roared, and kicked on the speed. I don’t know if Dorothy finally realized I was trying to help her, maybe she fainted from the sight of the Tik-Toks on our asses, but she became still.

“Dorothy, are you with me?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I’m here,” she said, her voice harsh, nothing like the sweet girl I knew so long ago. Something hard and cold pressed behind my ear. “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

“Ummm,” I didn’t know, and could only imagine a metal dildo, perhaps it was the scent of fresh sex and fresh muffins (which I found strange) that emanated off of her that had me thinking that. The quiet ones are always the kinkiest, no? “Okay, okay, I get that you are turned on right now. I like a little adventure too, but we don’t have time to play right now. Our ride is rolling out and if we don’t catch it, we’re fucked.”

“Turned on? What? Are you crazy? No! This is Toto, a gun. Don’t you…you…ANIMALS know what guns are? This will kill you. All I have to do is pull the trigger and Toto barks.”

“That’s Toto?”

“That’s Toto,” she said, shaking the gun at me.

“Do you not see the hoard of metal men behind us? Pull the trigger thing or not, if we don’t get on that train, they will kill us both.”

A sharp pain bolted though my head, I fell to the ground. Dorothy tumbled over my shoulder and skidded across the platform. “What the fuck did you do?” I hollered.

“I’d rather die fighting an army than die being eaten by the likes of you!” She yelled back, holding her leg. I could see the little black gun in her hand now. It looked harmless, small and insignificant, especially in comparison to the metal that was looming towards us, and away. The train was picking up speed as the car cleared the platform.

“Get on my back, Dorothy. We can still make it!”

“Fuck you,” was her reply.

“Are you fucking crazy? Have you been riding this train? You’ve lost it, just like the Engineer. Last chance girly, I care for you, but I’m not going to die for you this way.”

She looked towards the train, then back at the approaching army. “Fuck! Fine, but if you so much as show me a tooth, I will blow your fucking head off.” She stood, I got to my paws and hunched down for her to get on.

“What? I’m supposed to ride you?” She had a puzzled look on her face.

“Ride me, baby,” I said. She rolled her eyes and mounted my back. “Now hold on, grab whatever fur you can, whatever might still be there, and hold on.”

I felt her hands grasp a tuft of what remained of my mane and didn’t wait. I bounded towards the leaving train, set on catching it. I dug deep inside myself, eyes fixed on the retreating car, and pushed. I don’t think I’d ever ran so fast in my life. I could see Gilly standing on the steps, waving his arms frantically. Dorothy leaned into my back and shouted, “Move right!” I didn’t question her and bounded in her commanded direction.

A wire, mesh net landed on the platform to our left. Shit! That was close, I thought. The Tik-Toks had gained ground while she and I had our banter. I growled, pissed at her for being so stupid. I shot forward, closing the gap between us and the train, and distancing us from the threat behind.

Jumping from the platform, I landed between the tracks. I took a quick glance over my shoulder when I heard loud clanging. The Tik-Toks were falling from the platform into a heap. Finally, the break we needed! I couldn’t help but laugh at the clumsiness of the metal army.

Two more huge leaps and we were mounting the train. I climbed inside the car and let Dorothy off of my back. I turned to her, she stood with her metal Toto gripped firmly in her hands. Gilly approached her from behind and started rubbing himself on her leg. She kicked at him, “Get off of me, you…what the fuck are you anyways?”

I’m Gilly, Gilly, Gilly

That’s who I be

If you a good little bitch

I’ll let you suck on me

Gilly dropped his drawers, revealing his large schlong. Dorothy wrinkled her nose and raised an eyebrow then proceeded to whack Gilly on the head of his dick with Toto. Gilly dropped to the floor, writhing in pain, holding his now flaccid cock. I’d never heard a Weasel cry before, but there he was, sobbing on the floor. I could see a spot on his cock growing purple, the thought of being hit in the dick that hard had my nuts crawling into my belly. “Gilly, man, you okay?”

“Ohhhh, it hurts, Bossman. That bitch, she broke Gilly’s dick. Look!” With both hands he gingerly lifted his prick and held it out towards me.

“I’m not kissing it and making it better, G. I think you’ll be alright though.” What else was I going to tell the guy? Yeah, your dick’s broken, you’ll never fuck again.

“That’s okay, Boss…I kisses it myself.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what the Wonder Weasel did. One of the benefits to being an Animal. Seriously, if you could, you would too. Don’t deny it.

I looked up at Dorothy. It was Dorothy, wasn’t it? My Dorothy never behaved this way. My Dorothy was docile and kind. The Witch had taken over Dorothy’s body; that could be the only answer. A deep growl grew in my throat, my claws extended.

“Stop!” She yelled. “Just stop. I’m sorry for whacking your friend, I thought he was going to rape me, and I don’t do rape very well, just asked Mikey.”

I calmed a bit, confused and looked at her. “He wasn’t going to rape you, maybe just hump your leg a bit.” I stared at the woman before me. “You aren’t my Dorothy.”

The tension in the car was heavy; the Dorothy doppelganger stared back at me. She swallowed heavily, and I could smell fear wafting from her. “No, I’m not your Dorothy. Dorothy was my Grandmother. I’m Dot, and you are the Lion, I presume? Grandma always talked about you most, although she painted a picture of a regal Beast, no offense intended, but you do look a bit ragged and...weird. What’s with the legs?”

Her words cut to my core. A regal Beast. Shame filled me, humiliation ate at me, “Perhaps I was regal at one time, but things change. I changed, for her, for the Bitch of Oz. But I’m going to get back at her. I don’t know how or when, but I will get even with that insane freak. She frowns down upon Animals, but she liked to take it from me, if you know what I mean.” I winked when I said it. Dot visibly cringed. “But she is the animal, she is the killer.”

“I don’t know what’s what and who is who, except from Grandma’s stories, but yeah, things aren’t as nice as she painted. What the hell happened?”

D:L&L (part 114 - Tin Man) -- Ground to a Halt

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Because I cannot…

Because…

Cannot…

Because I cannot stop…

Because I cannot stop I chop…

“Shhhh… shhhh….”

My suicidal dream…. Voices telling me what to do…

“It’s okay….sit. You can do it.”

Help me comfort me

Stop me from feeling what I’m feeling now…

“Right there…. Right there, the oil can….where is it?”

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the trees to silence the screams to calm me soothe me release the captured rage. I could not stop chopping, and that is where she found me. This young woman, this bright face, dark eyes, lush mouth – she is not my Nimma, but she will do.

“Nimma? What have I told you? Forget about her. Until you do, nothing will change.”

I dream about how it’s going to end, approaching me quickly

Living a life of fear, I only want my mind to be clear…

“Shhhhhh. It’s okay. It’s okay, but I fear I can’t do much of a job on your face. It’s rather… mangled. You’re not much of a blacksmith and neither am I. It’s rather unfortunate. You never were much to look at, but if you wipe the blood off of your face, you aren’t that un-lovely. Strong jaw and all. Befitting an emperor.”

Crunching metal, a stifled squeal. Something deep in me stirred, surfacing.

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the trees to silence the screams to calm me soothe me release the captured rage. I could not stop chopping, and that is where she found me.

“Shhhhh. Be still. Be still. Open your eyes, if you can.”

“Gabriella?” I mumbled. It came out like “Gammemma.”

“Yes.”

Fingers graze my eyes, massaging oil, my lifeblood, into the seams and ridges. There is something twisted about my face; I can feel it beneath her fingers, can sense the hesitation and anxiety with each swipe over mangled metal. When the fingers are finally able to pry my eyes open they are not tiny flower hands; no my little Jumbly is dead.

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the days I slice the night I fall I slide I tumble from heights past the moon beyond the light, I do not like I love I might just take my fist ignore your fright I might I might I might I might.

My little Jumbly, who scuttled and shifted shading waiting for me to wake, darkness sliding over his tiny flower face, bright blossom hands, Jumbly who lifted the oil to my lips, let me wake into the darkness of a fallen empire, crumbling towers tumbling. It was Jumbly who brought me back to life after years of watching me sleep watching light seep wading deep into what made him weep as he cleaned the bloody meat off my walls. My little Jumbly with bright flower hands splattered red and gray while I slipped deep into a sleep unrolling for years.

“It’s me,” she said suddenly, popping into view, upside down – no, my head was hanging, chin to chest, and she was bending down over me, her face splashed with concern, pale, cheeks petal pink blushing. “It’s me, Gabriella.” She half-grinned. “Did ya miss me?”

I tried to nod, but my neck joints were sealed. Gabriella nudged the mouth of the oil can where her hand guided it, taking little else notice of anything else and avoiding looking at my face. After a moment I could move enough to look around me, but there was little to see: we appeared to still be in a storage facility that had served as the temporary boudoir of the couple in hiding. High windows opened to the cool night air above, stars straining to see inside, watching us. Behind me the door was gaping open like a great mouth, torn asunder by my axe – how long ago?

“Your mouth,” Gabrielle whispered, her eyes still not meeting mine. “Your mouth now.”

“Thank you,” I said when I could feel the jaw screw loosen, and I closed my eyes and leaned back against the metal pole at my back.

“Nick,” she began, her tone high and full of energy, eyes black shining, glancing at me then away as if staring into the sun, or looking at a horror, “there is something you should know.”

“What is wrong with my mouth?”

Gabriella closed her eyes.

“Nick, your mouth… your mouth and your face…do you remember your encounter with Her?”

I wanted to touch my mouth, my face, but my arms were pinned to my sides – not rusted, but useless. If I’d had a heart, it would be pounding now.

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the trees to silence the screams to calm me soothe me release the captured rage.

“Shhhh,” she said and came around in front of me. “Shhh. Hold still. It’s okay. I’m here now.”

“My arms,” I said. Gabriella, who had lowered herself in front of me, her knees silently touching the floor between my outstretched metal legs, look up at me. I could see the strain of it in her face. “Gabriella, my arms, oil them.”

“I have, Nick.”

“My legs?”

“Yes. All you have to do is stand.”

But I knew I couldn’t. I could feel it, or rather I felt nothing.

“Do you remember Her? Her name, the woman with the gray steel boom stick. She is called Dot.”

And just like that, as if the loud steel stick had just boomed again, I was slammed with the memory of what happened, of that room, the blood and smell of it, of my axe in that young human’s face before the explosion in my own.

“You’re a monster!” Nimmie Amee had screamed as she kicked in my grasp, gasping as I moved inside their home toward her cowardly lover with my face, my lips, my hands. “Stay away from him, you monster! You’re nothing! Nothing! You’re heartless – a heartless freak, Nick!”

“Dot,” I repeated.

She nodded, shifting her body, bringing her legs around and crossing them in front of her. “Yes, it is an abbreviation of the name Dorothy.” She tapped one delicate finger against my tin knee, her eyes on the space below my chin, looking at me, looking at nothing. “I do believe she is a human relation of some kind to... the first one. You remember her.”

“Dorothy.”

“Yes. It is her relation that did this, her relation that you tried to murder.”

“That bitch blew up my face,” I pointed out with only words – my arms were still uselessly hanging at my sides like broken tree limbs. “What was that thing?”

Gabriella continued to study my chest, her small head shaking slowly. “I’ve asked around,” she said, “and some humans I found inside the last standing Snickety’s said in their realm it is called a gun. They use them to kill one another.” She turned her pink face up to me, her lips trembling as she spoke. “Much like your axe, only not nearly as detailed or messy.”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised you can even talk,” she told me. “Your face, as I said. I’m sorry.”

“And my arms? My legs? I can’t feel them. What else has happened? My axe? Where is it? Where did Dot go? Where are the tik toks? How long have we been here?” Questions poured out of my mouth like curses, and my blood boiled again.

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the trees to silence the screams to calm me soothe me release the captured rage.

Gabriella turned her face away, sullen.

“I can’t move. I can’t move! Where’s the oil can?”

“Shhhh, Nick. Shhhh,” she whispered, turning back, oil can in hand. “I’ve used it. You are oiled and ready to go. That’s not the problem, Nick.”

“Then what is the problem?” I said, feeling the panic, needing to feel my axe in my hand. If I could just heft it, if I could just raise it up, pull myself, I’ll tear after that Dot bitch and cleave her head in, just like I did her lover, just like I did her friends…just like I did Nimma…just like.

Because I cannot stop I chop. I chop the trees to silence the screams to calm me soothe me release the captured rage.

“I cannot stop.”

“Yes, you can, Nick. You must stop now. It has to end.” Gabriella leaned up and I could feel her tiny flower hands on my face, see the concern in her eyes, the tears welling in the creases there. They reflected my tears.

“I don’t think I can.”

Because I cannot stop I – no, please

“I don’t think I can.”

“You must. You must let her go. You must put down the axe. You must.”

“Why?” The tears were streaming down her face now. I could feel mine, see my vision blur, taste the salt on my lips.

“Because you’re dead, Nick. You are dead.”

D:L&L (part 113 - Scarecrow) -- A Father's Love

noreply@blogger.com (SJ Stone) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:10:00 +0000

No matter how many times I’ve been magically transported from one place to another, no matter how many times I’ve been whisked around by tornadoes or flying monkeys (whatever happened to Turlo?), no matter how many times I’ve landed on my ass, I will never get used to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of long and luxurious walks. I’d rather travel around in style. Better still, I’d much prefer it if I was carried in my Imperial Throne (although I don’t quite recall ever having one) and adored by all in Oz. But it was seldom I got my own way these days. Once again I was in the hands of someone who wasn’t me; someone who was as trustworthy as Lion or Tin Man. Having said that, though, the Wizard’s spell worked like a dream. He had gotten us to where he…we needed to go.

Kiamo Ko. The home of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. My beloved. Aren’t reunions wonderful?

The haze surrounding us as we reappeared receded and we took in our surroundings. Wherever in Kiamo Ko we were, it was indoors, thank fuck. It was a hallway, with a staircase to our left, and two grand doors to our right. There was something going on behind those doors. I could feel magic happening. Diggs could, too. His hair – what was left of it – bristled and crackled. I could almost sense my straw catching fire, but this was all in my mind.

‘She’s behind those doors,’ the Wizard said.

‘You think?’ I remarked, looking around for an exit, just in case one was needed. Fuck, with all this magic flying around, a way out was definitely on the cards. This was way above any pay grade I was aware of. Not for the first time, I wondered why I bothered getting out of bed most days, why I bothered to even try to clean up my act. Nothing was ever going to change. Oz would never know peace, not if Diggs had his way. He was powerful, deceitful, and manipulative. Whatever Elphaba was getting up to behind those doors, the Wizard, with his years and years of experience, would be more than a match for her. Fuck my life.

‘Just follow my lead, Fiyero,’ Diggs said, steeling himself for the battle to come.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘A father’s love for his daughter is eternal,’ he replied. ‘I shall appeal to her better nature.’

‘What if she doesn’t have one?’

‘Then I’ll obliterate her, take the book, and then take Oz.’ He turned to me. ‘You can rule by my side, be my lieutenant.

‘That’s generous of you,’ I sneered. ‘The way I see it, I’m being demoted.’ I looked back to the doors. The room behind them had gone silent. The magic had stopped. I could sense Elphaba was on her way out.

I closed my eyes when I heard the door opening. I heard her say, ‘We have much to do,’ and reckoned there was someone else with her.

‘Hello, daughter dear,’ Diggs said. ‘It’s been too long.’

‘You!’ Elphaba shrieked. Then she must have seen me. ‘And you! With him?’ She screamed loud enough to bring back the dead. When she eventually stopped she said, almost soothingly, ‘You can open your eyes now, Fiyero. I’m not so ugly that you’ll turn to stone upon looking at me. It didn’t happen before, and I don’t think it will happen now.’ I could feel her come closer to us. ‘If anything, you may like what you see.’

I did as she asked – and nearly fainted when I beheld my beloved in all her glory. She was green still, but that was never going to change. Her colour meant nothing to me then; it meant even less to me now. She was indeed the most beautiful creature I had laid eyes on.

She was also incredibly young; it was as if the years had fallen away from her. Death, or what passed for it with the Witches of Oz, had been very kind to her. Her eyes were chasms of emerald destiny, of a past unresolved, and of a future yet to be told. Regardless of what she had said a few moments ago, I had turned to stone. Only her touch, even the merest of brushes, would release me now. The Wizard was on his own. I would be of no use to him.

‘How have you been, Father?’ Elphaba asked. ‘Well, I trust?’

‘I’ve seen better days,’ he replied. ‘But like you, magic has kept me young, if not at heart, then certainly in body.’ He opened his arms. ‘Come to me, my daughter. Embrace me as only you can.’

Eplhaba smiled. ‘Dear Father, your wish is my command.’ She opened her arms, too, then brought them together with a crash of green fury, unleashing a powerful force that threw the Wizard across the hall. She stared at me. ‘You I’ll deal with later.’

The Wizard struggled to get up. Plainly he had thought his daughter would be weaker than this. Had the Grimmerie strengthened her to this level in such a short space of time? It seemed so, but if she wasn’t quick, he’d have a chance to retaliate.

Elphaba must have been reading my mind. She stormed over to Diggs and levitated him to his feet. ‘For years,’ she seethed, ‘for many, many years, I was nothing. A no-thing. A Usling. Eating rats to keep my strength up, and drawing life from their deaths.’

I heard a ticking sound from behind me; I turned and saw a tik-tok man standing beside the door, carrying an ax. He looked on, unconcerned. He might even have been smiling. I might have been, too, if I wasn’t so bloody scared. I returned my attention to the father and daughter reunion.

The Wizard wasn’t done yet, though. He was too strong to fall at the first fence. He let rip with a spell of his own that very nearly brought the ceiling down. I covered my head for fear that the sky might fall on me. (Funny how some childhood superstitions refused to go die, huh?) Elphaba, however, remained where she was.

‘The dead brought me back to life, dear Father,’ she said, waving her arms to bring another spell upon him. ‘I shall not let their sacrifices be in vain.’ At once the hallway lit up, and balls of flame surrounded the two of them. For the moment, she was leaving me alone. Whoever survived, it wouldn’t be good for my chances. For a moment, I hoped forlornly that they’d do each other in.

Hold on. What the hell was I thinking? This was Elphaba. Surely to the Unnamed God I should be shouting for her corner, right? Of course. I looked around to see if there was anything I could do to help. The tik-tok man was looking at me, again with a semblance of a smile. He jerked his head toward the axe. No, I thought. I couldn’t use it. I’d never get close enough.

I saw that this was true. Both Elphaba and the Wizard were engulfed in flames – no quarter asked, none given.

‘You never loved me,’ my Witch screamed through the fire, a little obvious if you asked me. Diggs loved power and would use anything and anyone to get and retain it. Including his own daughter. He answered with a spell that shook Elphaba and almost brought her to her knees. But her knowledge of past glory was enough to keep her in the game. This was a clash of titans. To the victor, the spoils; to the loser, death…or what passed for it with the witches and wizards of Oz. I no longer knew. I felt something touch my leg. It was the tik-tok man. He had the axe balanced in his two hands and was passing it to me. Oh well, I mused. In for a penny and all that. I took it from him and crept slowly over to the scene of the apocalypse. The champion and challenger (Which one was which? Damned if I knew) were at an impasse, each locking the other with their spells. If I didn’t do anything now, this fight could go on forever. I called Elphaba’s name.

She turned to me, but still concentrated on what she was doing. I threw the axe at her. My action surprised Diggs for a mere moment – but that was all the time Elphaba needed. She grabbed the axe from the air and plunged it into the Wizard’s neck. The spells stopped. The Wizard fell, his eyes never leaving Elphaba’s.

‘We could have been great together,’ he croaked.

‘You shouldn’t have sent a little girl to murder me,’ the Witch replied. Then she kicked her father in the head, removed the axe, and then buried it in his skull.

Ding Dong! The Wizard was dead.

But what would she do with me?

In answer to this question, Elphaba came over to me. The burning look, both in her eyes and in the flames that surrounded her (now in green, to go with the decor, you know), had not quite receded.

‘What to do with you,’ she whispered. Then she looked down. ‘Clever little tik-tok, giving the straw man an axe to help me. You have more brains in your toes than this man ever had.’ She leaned closer to me. ‘But still I love him.’

I gulped. What the -?

‘But not like this.’ She felt my head and pulled out some straw. ‘This reminds me of tragic times. I need to do something about it.’ She stood back and waved her arms again. For a brief second I thought about praying to whoever would listen. But everything became fuzzy and I felt my body contort as if every atom, every part that was indelibly me, was being torn asunder. My head hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

But I had experienced it before: when I stopped being Fiyero and became Scarecrow.

Suddenly the pain was gone and my head cleared. I looked at my hands, my blue hands, the silver diamonds marking my skin again. Then I looked up at my beautiful Elphaba.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘For what?’ she replied.

‘For everything,’ I whispered.

‘Welcome back, Fiyero,’ Elphaba smiled. Then she kissed me. ‘You are Scarecrow no more.’ Then she kissed me again. Aren’t reunions wonderful?