Chapter Eight: The One With the Truth About Chewy

By Queen Aragorn

~~~~~~~

Chewy looked on helplessly as everyone rushed this way and that. "What is this all about?" he called to Homi, shouting over the noise and bustle.

She gazed upon him with her soft brown eyes, just the color of a pool of mud. "Didn’t you ever wonder?" she asked softly. "Where you came from? Why you’re here?"

He cocked his head. "I can’t hear you!" he shouted as Jenny ran past, chasing Brian with a electric power drill.

"Did you ever wonder -" She was cut off by Brian’s scream of pain.

"I told you to get moving!" Jenny yelled. Brian just sobbed. "It’s just HAIR!" she shrieked. "It’ll grow back! Now go get Courtney and the Yoos!" She re-entered the kitchen, muttering, "Honestly, the amount of gel he puts in . . . the hole drilled straight through, and every hair remained intact."

Just then, the bus crashed through the kitchen wall. "I’m still working on my driving skills!" Marley yelled. "Hop in!"

Chewy climbed nervously aboard. "Where are we going?"

Helen was seated atop her throne, with Dominic Monaghan chained to one of the legs. "67 Main Street, Marley. And make it snappy . . . like granola dipped in Snapple."

~~~~~~~

"All right." Erica and Brian pulled up outside the Learning Cottage. "Let’s move."

Erica knocked on the door. "Courtney?"

"Who is it?" came a voice from inside. A rather heavily panting voice, Erica noticed.

"Erica!" she yelled back. "And Brian. Helen sent us. We need to get to Headquarters, now!"

The assassin let out a low moan before answering. "I don’t trust you!"

"Courtney . . . it’s about the Split."

All of the noises within the Cottage ceased. After a moment, Courtney’s voice came through, small and trembling. "Jason. Justin. Get your coats, complimentary cottage cheese, and textbooks. We’re going."

"But I want to LEARN more!" a Yoo whined.

"All right, just a little," Courtney consented.

Erica growled in frustration. "Brian, see what they’re doing!"

He peeked in the window. "They’re coming," he reported. "Jason’s in the rear."

~~~~~~~

"Everyone’s here?" Helen grinned. "Excellent."

Homi looked nervously around the room. It wasn’t that she didn’t TRUST Helen, just . . . Helen could not be trusted. Ever.

I haven’t been in here for thirty years, she realized with a start. They took out the penguin statue and put in a bronze elephant. Probably for the best, considering what Brian used to do to that poor penguin. It’ll no longer be wearing fuchsia on its wedding night.

"Homi. Erica. Helen, Rachel, Frodo -" Jenny was taking role. "Where’s Frodo?"

"Er . . ." Courtney looked abashed. "He’s kind of . . . dead."

Jenny stared. "What happened?"

Erica sniffled. "He was there one day then gone the next. Like a bar of granola, he passed into greater places. We’ll always remember Frodo." She glared. "Courtney killed him."

The assassin looked around indignantly. "I was only doing my job! We’re mortal enemies, remember?"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "Honestly! I leave you alone for three days . . ."

Rachel waved it aside. "He never did much anyway. And we have Marley now." She stroked her rock. "Don’t we, Precious?"

"Courtney, the Yoos, Mary, Brian, Sparticus -" She did a double take. "Sparticus?"

"I have nothing better to do," the gladiator replied dourly. "The evil one said something about an orgy."

Helen giggled. "Free the tiger!" Sparticus jumped up and ran out screaming. "I meant metaphorically!" she called after his retreating back.

"He must not have seen Moulin Rouge," Erica commented. "How sad."

"Indeed." Jenny looked up from her notes. "Now, it’s finally time to learn the truth."

"About how babies are made," Helen added smoothly. "It’s an interactive presentation." She cracked her whip in glee.

Jenny gave her a stern glare and she backed off, smirking only slightly.

"Moving on," she continued, "Chewy. Please come before the council." When he hesitated, she barked, "Now, you test-tube scum!"

"Bitch," he muttered, which Brian seemed to take as a personal insult.

"What do you remember about your conception?" she asked, fondling an Aragorn doll’s ‘fully detailed weapon’.

"Well . . ." he began, "There was pain. And Helen. And . . . no more Mr. Dipps."

Helen grinned wickedly. "And Mr. Dipps was mmmm-mmmm good."

Brian looked down thoughtfully. "I call mine Sally."

Mary smacked her forehead. "And all this time I thought you were calling me by someone else’s name!"

"Chewy," Jenny continued, "you are finally going to learn the truth about your past. BRING ME THE CANCUN FILE!" she added, low and menacing.

~~~ Thirty Years Earlier ~~~

"Cancun." Rachel set her bag down. "Home of the wildest llamas this side of the border."

"And the most secret organization," Homi added.

Brian looked confused. "The Mafia?"

"Us, you dolt." Homi rolled her eyes. "This is where we set up camp."

Brian opened his bag and made a face. "Guys, I think there was a mix-up at the airport. I didn’t get my bag of violas, I got -" He held up a blow-dryer. "- this."

"Hel-LO!" Rachel picked up a rock from the gravel parking lot. "And who might YOU be, handsome?"

~~~ Present Day ~~~

Rachel nudged her rock and giggled. "Remember? I was so nervous, and you . . . you were so solid."

Chewy frowned. "That’s, uh, nice and all, but what does it have to do with me?"

Jenny sighed. "I’m setting the stage. We were a young, ambitious group of scientists, full of passion, ambition, and orange vodka. So one night the air was hot, the flowers were blooming, and the mood just seemed right."

"It might have been the vodka," Rachel recalled. Helen and Courtney nodded.

"The air was full of a wild floral scent, and the pillows were silken and shimmering. Brian had been lighting his incense -"

"For burning things!" the gel-boy interrupted. "Manly things!"

"- and we had just gotten a new shipment of Crisco, which can be easily substituted for lotion. We were watching Moulin Rouge, and the next thing we knew it was over. We lay in a giant heap, panting and moaning. And then we refreshed ourselves and kept going for the rest of this night."

"It was my fantasy come true," Helen said dreamily.

"Yeah," Marley echoed, a faraway look in his eyes. "Wish I coulda been there."

"It was a night of passions, it was a night of secrets, it was a night of things long repressed coming alive in the electricity of young hearts. We had a need to feel the thunder, chase the lightning from the sky, see the storm with all its wonder raging in each other’s eyes -"

"Jenny," Homi interceded, "Now you’re just quoting country songs."

"We had to fight the heat of passion like a comet burning bright -"

"JENNY!"

"Sorry." Jenny cleared her throat. "Anyway, it seems that somehow a Chewy bar got in on the fun. Someone must have left it lying around unwrapped."

Homi hummed and stared nonchalantly at the ceiling. One tile, two tile, three tile, four . . .

"What happened next?" Chewy interjected.

Jenny paused. "I don’t know. But I think there are two people here who do." She turned to Helen and Rachel. "Why not pick up where I left off?"

They glanced helplessly at each other. Finally, Rachel spoke. "Well, not long after that, Frodo came to me with a shocking secret. And Helen, being herself, happened to be eavesdropping." She paused and took a breath. "He was pregnant."

~~~ Twenty-Nine and a Half Years Earlier ~~~

"Whose is it?" Rachel gasped, reaching out a tentative hand to touch Frodo’s stomach.

The hobbit shook his head wordlessly. "I don’t know how, but I think it could be . . . the granola bar’s."

"Oh my God." Rachel pulled him into a tight embrace. "Frodo . . . Helen ate it."

"I know," he whispered. "I don’t know what to do. But I’m going to keep the baby." He looked up at her with sorrowful blue eyes. "It can never know, though. It can never find out what happened that shameful night. I’ll send it away, far away to Bulgaria, where it can grow and learn without any knowledge of its parentage."

~~~ Present Day ~~~

Chewy gasped. "Frodo – Frodo was my father?"

Rachel nodded, bowing her head. "After you came to Buffalo in search of him, he waited for years for the right time to tell you. But he could never bring himself to disclose the shameful secret. So he looked on, watching from the shadows as you grew into a granola man."

Marley frowned. "I’m still confused, though. What’s his first memory from? And why did you split off into two groups?"

Helen sighed. "it was me, okay? After I got a taste of that first granola bar, I just couldn’t stop. I tried to deny it, you know? Like, I would say that I only ate them socially. Or I could quit any time I wanted. But one day I realized the truth. I was addicted, and there was no turning back." She paused to gulp for air. "So, naturally, I found out the disclosed location where Frodo would be giving birth and intercepted the baby. To my surprise, it was no baby at all, but a full-grown man. Granola develops differently from humans," she explained.

"And Frodo – my father? He just let you castrate me?" Chewy asked, incredulous.

"Of course not. He was doped out on drugs," Rachel explained. "And I just wasn’t quick enough. After I found out what she’d done, though, it was the end of our . . . scientific relationship. The group split into two, and that was the end of that."

Everyone sat back in shocked amazement. Tears sprang to Chewy’s eyes. "I can’t believe he was there the whole time . . . my FATHER . . ."

Jenny cleared her throat. "Sorry, guys and llamas, but that isn’t exactly the end."

"What?" Helen looked up. "You never told me there was more!"

"I just found out today," Jenny explained. She turned to Homi. "It seems that during Chewy’s time in Bulgaria, he wasn’t as . . . chaste as we all thought." She gulped. "Khrystine, come on in!"

Chewy gasped. "Khrystine? It is you? I – AUGH!" he yelled, taking in her pregnant stomach.

"Chewy?" Homi’s mud brown eyes were welling up, making them even muddier. "Is this true?"

He nodded slowly and disbelievingly. "Khrys? How did it happen?"

She shook her head. "I don’t know. But it’s a girl, made of soap, and I’ve named her Namarie."

"How is this possible?" Erica turned to Jenny. "He had nothing in . . . in his pants!"

"That’s not quite true." Jenny addressed the group solemnly. "It seems – it seems that Chewy had soap in his pants."

Dun dun DUN.

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