Wake Me When It's Over

Chapter Eleven- “Pull Down Your Pants and Slide on the Ice.”

Dr. Sidney Freedman - The final episode of M*A*S*H

"Stu. Stewart George Martin!"

"It's okay, dear, Legs isn't pregnant."

"What? Dammit, Stu, get your lazy ass out of that bed this minute. Mom and I want to go to the yard sales and you promised you'd drive us."

Stu rolled over and peeled open one eyelid. A digital clock inches from his face blinked 7 a.m. and he frowned at it. Rough hands shook his shoulder and his eyes focused on his wife. Brenda.

Brenda?

"What are you doing here? Did we defeat the orcs?"

Brenda rolled her hazel eyes. "Shit for brains. You were dreaming. Get up. Mom's waiting on us."

Stu crawled out of the bed and stretched. Pale sunlight streamed through the pink and white checkered curtains and illuminated the pink rose emblazoned bedspread. He padded over Pepto Bismol pink carpet to the bathroom. Pink vertical stripped wallpaper and delicate shell pink porcelain accessories greeted his bleary gaze. Stu scratched his ass, hitching up his shorts, as he tried to concentrate.

He'd been dreaming, he supposed. But the dream had been so real. The people in them had been closer to him than his own family. He glanced down at his feet and realized he couldn't see them for his beer belly. Damn. As he splashed water over his face, he started humming.

"One ring makes you larger and one Ring makes you small
And the one's that the elves give you don't do any thing at all…
Go ask Boomer
When he swallows…"

"Stu? What the hell are you singing?" Brenda leaned in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest.

"What Rabbit," he answered rather absently as he dug out toothpaste.

"That is not White Rabbit."

Stu's hand shook so violently that white paste spurted all over the mirror and fixtures. He looked down at his boxers. White with multi-colored lips all over them. He looked at his wedding band for a second and then slipped it from his finger. He turned the gold circle slowly, examining it carefully.

"Shit for brains! Look at the mess you made. What's wrong with you?"

Without a word, Stu turned around and brushed past Brenda. He never stopped, merely went outside and got in to his truck.

"Where do you think you are going?"

"Someplace where you aren't, I'm thinking." Stu leaned out the of the window. "You and I are aren't married anymore. I don't know how this happened, but somehow, when I came back, I was sent back too far. Now I have to figure out why I was sent home and what I have to do to get back to where I belong."

He froze. Where he belonged? He knew this timeline was incorrect. But, where did he belong?

"What are you talking about, idiot? Of course we're married."

"Good luck with Rich." He said as he started the truck and threw the transmission in to reverse.

"Who the fuck is Rich? Stu? Stewart Martin?"

Stu backed out of the drive way and turned the truck down the street. At the stop sign he looked left and right, before easing on to the main street.

"Hello, Stu." A woman with flaxen hair smiled from beside him on the bench seat.

Stu slammed his foot on the brake and realized as the truck coughed and lurched that he needed to also put his foot on the clutch. The vehicle came to a sputtering halt in the middle of the two lane road and there was the sound of squealing tires and curses as the motorist behind him just avoided putting his shiny new car in the bed of Stu's beat up Ford. He stared for a long moment, listening to the driver behind him shout obscenities as he tried to figure out the blond's identity and how the hell she ended up in his truck.

"Do I know you?"

"No. But I know you, Stewart Martin. Perhaps you should drive."

The gears ground as Stu found first and the pick up lurched forward. He watched the road and the woman beside him at the same time. Her hair was long and straight and reminded him of ripening wheat. Her delicate pointed ears peeked teasingly from her thick tresses and her deep blue eyes sparkled with mirth and mystery.

"Do you mind introducing yourself? And, maybe while you are at it, you wouldn't mind explaining how you got in my truck and why." He realized that her eyes were focused on his lap and glanced down. In his haste to vacate the house, he'd neglected to put on pants and his cock protruded from beneath the hem of his boxers. He yanked at them self-consciously.

"Not yet. First you must answer a question for me. Where do you want to be?"

"Right this minute?" Stu frowned at the road ahead. "Krystal. I'm hungry and I haven't had a …" he turned and stared at the woman. "I want to be back at Helm's Deep, with the rest of the party, where I belong."

She nodded slowly. "Are you sure? You are not of Middle Earth and you could stay here."

"Stay here? You gotta be kidding me. This is the wrong timeline. Brenda and I are divorced, that much I remember."

"You could have her back." The woman prompted.

"Why would I want her? I hate pink. I hate crushed velvet Elvis pictures. Rich deserves her. No, if I could chose where I want to be, I'd be in Helm's Deep. My friends there need me. Listen, this is all fucked up, if you'll pardon my French. I answered your question. Will you answer mine?"

She smiled radiantly and her eyes were lit with a deep inner light that reminded Stu of Legless. "My name is Varda and I am the wife of Manwe."

Stu thought about it for a moment. "Did we meet at Im-Lad-reese?"

Varda's merry laughter echoed in the small cab. "No, Stu, you and I have never met, nor, I believe, have you met my husband. We are the gods of the elves."

"Oh, shit."

"If I send you back, you can never return. You will be bound to Middle Earth for all time. You may, if the elves allow, cross the ocean to the Undying Lands. But you will become an immortal, like the elves and you will never be able to come home to your wife or children."

Stu swallowed. He hadn't thought about his children. Would they be all right without him? Could he stand giving them up? In truth, he had. Brenda made seeing his children an ordeal that he frequently by-passed by not seeing them at all. He took a deep breath. What did he have here, really? He left the Navy because Brenda wanted him to be home with her. Now, they were divorced and he was stuck at a job in a carpet mill, which he hated more than anything else. He lived in a dumpy one bedroom flat, drank too much and spent his free time channel surfing and wishing. Wishing for what?

"Send me back to Middle Earth."

A pale blue Lincoln Continental suddenly swerved into Stu's lane and he jerked the wheel, trying to avoid a head on collision. The F-150 jumped a curb and plowed through a Chrysler dealership parking lot before coming to rest inside the class fronted showroom floor.

The last thing he heard before darkness took him was "Damn, Legless is right. That man has one fine…!"

"Steward?"

"It's okay, Legless, Brenda's not pregnant."

"What did you say?"

Stu grunted and opened one eye. The first thing he saw was a small lantern. The next thing he saw was a length of silvery blond hair. Stu blinked.

"Legless?"

"Why did you tell me your wife is not with child?"

Stu scrubbed at his face and ignored the question. "Where am I now?"

"You are in Helm's Deep."

Stu's shoulder and back stung, but the pain was not unbearable. He looked around and realized he was lying in a large bed with the covers pulled just past his hips. He wriggled around a bit and realized that he was completely naked except for a bandage wrapped around his left shoulder and part of his chest.

Legless took Stu's hand in his and held it against his chest. "How do you feel? Are you in pain? Can I get you anything?"

Stu tried gently to pull his hand away. When that did not work, he gave up. There was little sense in arguing with the elf. He would believe and think as he wanted. "How goes the battle with Sorry Man?"

"Sorry Man and his orcs are defeated. Thanks to you Haldir lives and is waiting for Argyle to finish with his quest so that they can wed. Grandlaf wanted to continue on to Mount Doom without you, but Frito refused to be budged. So did I and to that end, bonded with you so that I had to stay behind. Between Frito and I, we convinced Grandlaf that you were much too important to be abandoned."

Stu rolled the word bonded around in his befuddled mind for a moment. He remembered waking up with Brenda yelling at him. Then he remembered the woman in his truck who claimed to be some sort of goddess named Velma or something like that. He also, vaguely, remembered a car accident. Had he been cited? Had they taken him to jail? But if so, how was it that he'd awoken in Helm's Deep with Legless clutching his hand?

"I don't remember being arrested."

The door opened and one of the objects of their discussion poked his head in the door.

"Arrested? What is arrested?" Legless asked.

"You know, put in chains, hand cuffed."

"I did not place your hands in any restraints. Would you like for me to?" There was a hopeful note in Legless' voice.

"I'll come back later," the wizard muttered as he closed the door behind him.

"You said you bonded me." Stu half sat up in confusion.

"I bonded with you, yes."

"But you said I wasn't arrested."

"I did not put any restraints on you."

"Then why did you bond me?"

"To save your life, of course. Now your life force and mine are one."