Chapter 48

Sean returned home having left the majority of the odor of garlic behind in the sauna. He would have stopped by Suzie’s house on the way home, but his clothes still smelled of garlic. He figured that he would change clothes and then head over to her house. He parked his truck in the driveway and walked around the house. There in the center of the lawn was a construct made of acrylic. He walked over to it and examined it. It was completely different than the thing he had been trying to build.

He looked around, but the dwarves were nowhere to be seen. He sniffed the air and said, “I don’t smell garlic. They either didn’t eat the sandwich or they aren’t around here.”

He went over to the door to enter the house and ran into it when it didn’t open. Stepping back, he said, “That’s odd. We never lock the backdoor.”

He knocked on the door. He could hear his mother shout, “I told you a hundred times — there’s no more meatloaf! You ate it all.”

“It’s me,” Sean shouted.

“Who?”

“Sean, your son.”

“Prove it!”

“You owe me two months allowance!” Sean shouted back.

“I just had to make sure it was you.”

Sean frowned and asked, “Who else would it be?”

There was a little rattle at the door. The knob slowly turned. The door opened about an inch which was just enough to make out his mother’s eye. She asked, “Are you alone?”

“Yes,” Sean answered little around to see if there was anyone else around. The only one in the yard was the gnome and he was still lying on his side.

“Quick, get in the house,” his mother said opening the door a little.

Sean found himself flying through the door and landing on the floor. Little feet scampered across his back. He looked up to find his mother shouting at the Dwarves. They were crowded around the refrigerator and wrestling with each other.

Sean shook his head to clear it and asked, “What hit me?”

Chom managed to grab the door of the refrigerator and swung it open. He said, “We’ve got to have some more of that stuff.”

“Get out!” Sean’s mother screamed.

“Where are you hiding it?” Pip asked pulling things out of the refrigerator.

“She’s hiding it?” Chom asked turning to give Sean’s mother a look of distrust.

Pip answered, “She must be hiding it. Wouldn’t you hide it if you had some?”

“Yes, I would,” Chom answered.

“Hide what?” Sean asked picking himself up off the floor.

Chom said, “If we take him hostage maybe she’ll give us some more.”

“You know better than that,” Clea said.

“She’d never make any of that meatloaf ever again if it meant getting him back,” Pip said. He held up a jar of pickles and looked at it.

Chom said, “I forgot. She hates him.”

“Hey!” Sean’s mother said. “I don’t hate him.”

“You could have fooled me,” Pip said. He opened the jar of pickles and smelled the contents.

“He’s my baby boy. I love him,” Sean’s mother said.

“She does care for him,” Pip said drinking the juice in the pickle jar. He belched.

“That makes him a good hostage,” Clea said.

“Grab him,” Chom shouted.

“Grab who?” Sean asked looking around wildly.

Ten minutes later, Chom was standing in the backyard with his arms crossed. They had fled the house without getting anymore meatloaf. Disgusted, he said, “We should have used a Leprechaun negotiate for us,”

“And share that Ambrosia with a Leprechaun?” Pip asked as if the suggestion was beyond ridiculous.

“We didn’t get any of that Ambrosia so what would it matter if we had to share it with the Leprechauns or not?” Chom asked.

Considering the degree of failure their attempt to get more meatloaf had achieved, Pip said, “That’s a good point.”

“That’s the whole point,” Chom said shaking his head. “At least we escaped that vile woman who lives inside that chamber of horrors that masquerades as a house.”

Thinking about the kinds of things that came out of that woman’s mouth, Clea said, “It is hard to believe that she’s a mother.”

Sean shrugged his shoulders and said, “I was quite proud of her.”

“She begged us to let her be the one who tortured you,” Clea said looking at him with a puzzled expression. It was impossible to understand how Sean could defend his mother after what they had heard come out of her mouth.

Putting his hands over his stomach, Chom said, “I was never so sickened by anything in my entire life.”

“It just goes to show how much she cares for me,” Sean said.

“What do you mean?” Clea asked wide-eyed.

“She would have avoided permanent scars. When you are as attractive as I am, you worry about things like that,” Sean answered. He took a moment to run his fingers through his hair.

Pip said, “The tortures she described were diabolical.”

“She was going to make you to go to an ACME seminar on door to door sales techniques!” Clea said horrified by the idea. Even Genghis Khan had never come up with a torture that nasty.

Chom shivered and said, “That’s a fate worse than death.”

Looking proud, Sean answered, “You just have to admire her imagination.”

“I thought I was going to die when she insisted on forcing you to watch an entire Kevin Coster film festival,” Pip said. Just the idea of it gave him a headache.

“We’d have had to watch Dances with Wolverines,” Clea said shuddering in horror. No one knew just how long that movie was because no one had survived to see the end of it.

“There’s nothing worse than a bad story told poorly,” Chom said shaking his head sadly.

“I tell you, she’s an evil woman,” Clea said.

Chom said, “It wouldn’t have been so bad except she kept insisting that we go along to make sure the torture was being performed correctly.”

“We were lucky to get out of that house with our lives,” Pip said looking back at the house with an expression of terror on his face. He felt a little bad about having climbed over Chom during the great escape.

Rubbing the spot on his back where someone had run over him, Chom said, “Very lucky.”

“Kevin Coster,” Clea said in revulsion.

Pip said, “I’ll have nightmares for a week after listening to her description of the pain that would produce. I’d look horrible with my eyes popped out of their sockets.”

Sean said, “She was just warming up. I figure that she would have suggested an H&R Black tax preparation class next. I would have.”

“Pure evil. What kind of mind could come up with those kinds of things?” Clea asked.

“Blood would have been running out of our ears after a half an hour of listening to the American tax codes,” Pip said.

“She would have followed that up by a concert of the worst singers from American Idiot. She would have insisted that they all sing ‘I Likes Virgins’ by Madame,” Sean said.

“Brain damage. That’s the effect she was trying to achieve,” Chom said holding his hands over his ears at the thought of listening to that song.

Pip said, “It makes spending a year in the digestive system of a dragon sound like a vacation.”

“You and dragons,” Chom said.

“I hate dragons,” Pip said. He spit on the ground.

Sean said, “I would have ended it with a visit to Congress.”

“Senate or House of Representatives?” Clea asked wondering to what extreme Sean’s mother would take her cruelty.

“House of Representatives,” Sean answered.

“Just when I thought it could get no worse,” Chom said collapsing on the ground.

“Death would have been the result,” Pip said.

“You can say that again,” Chom said finding that the world was spinning.

“Death would have been the result,” Pip said.

“A most horrible and gruesome death,” Clea said.

Pip said, “To think that she insisted that we go with her on that tour of horrors.”

Sean said, “Well, she wanted you to know how much pain I would have suffered.”

“Evil. We have met evil and it defeated us,” Clea said sounding depressed.