“Oh. My. Gawd, Harry, will you look at this? It’s disgusting the way people behave these days. Ain’t you boys got no manners? Did yer mommas’ raise ya in a barn?” The shrill voice ricocheted off Stu’s inner ear and traveled down his spine until his leg twitched. “Ya’ll’s just indecent, that’s what you’ens is.”
“Hey, this is a family place. Ya’ll take that some place else ‘fore I call the po-lice,” a male voice joined the female one.
With a loud groan, Stu rolled over and coughed up water. “Whatdafuck?” He howled as he climbed to his feet. He’d lost most of his clothing somewhere, but he couldn’t for the life of him think how. He self-consciously tugged at his silk tie-dyed boxers that the elves of Murkwood made for him. He felt dizzy and disoriented and the people yelling at him barely made any sense to him at all. Red clay clung to his skin and hair.
Red clay? Stu raised his hands to his face and sniffed and then stared around him in disbelief. There was nothing like the rich, earthy smell of red Georgia clay. Glancing up, he saw the two who’d been yelling at them. She wore yellow pants that came just below the knee with flip flops and teased hair and a flowery yellow print tank top. He wore long shorts and black polyester blend socks with his knock-off Birkenstocks and an Izod golf shirt. Both were in their early fifties.
“You boys need to take yer drinking someplace else,” the man repeated, trying to sound menacing.
“Yeah, yeah. Look--Ah,” Stu spied the dwarf dangling from the lower branches of a stunted pine tree. “Yeah. Um, let me get my friend here. Hey, have you seen a tall, pale fellow with a Mohawk?” He walked gingerly over to the dwarf and pulled at the dangling beard. “Yo, Glimmergroin, up and at ‘em, big boy.” During times of stress, his heavy southern accent became more pronounced.
“Beloved?” Legless tottered into view holding he remains of his broken bow. His bone handled knives still protruded from the sheath at his back, but his tunic was shredded and there was a long tear in his leggings that exposed most of his thigh.
“Here, Legless. Look, um, maybe you shouldn’t be calling me that here, okay?” Stu hissed and glanced over at the offended couple. “Excuse me, do you know--ah, if there’s a phone nearby? My buddies and I need to, ah, you know, like make a call.”
“Drunks,” the woman sniffed huffily and turned away.
“Try down by the boathouse,” the man pointed to a deserted looking building just a few paces away.
“Oh, yeah,” Stu laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah. Damn it, dwarf, c’mon down outta that tree.”
Glimmergroin came to with a snort and started at Stu’s chest from an awkward angle. “I’m upside down,” he said lamely, as if it wasn’t perfectly obvious to everyone he was suspended by his ankles from a tree. “My axe! Where the hell’s my axe!”
“Here,” Legless rushed forward into the muddy shallows and retrieved the heavy weapon, much to Stu’s consternation. Of all the things to lose, the axe would have been the best, as far as his feet were concerned.
“Put that thing up, Legless,” he said while making shushing motions with his hands. “Don’t go flashing that stuff around or you’ll have the law out here sure as shit.”
Legless bared his teeth at the man, who’d had the wherewithal to take one step too many towards Stu and lowered the axe a fraction.
The man gulped and shuffled backward. “This used to be a nice place,” he muttered as he back-peddled toward a blue mini-van.
Stu was too busy getting the half-naked dwarf out of the tree and trying to be inconspicuous to pay much attention to the man’s whining. “Legless, come on over here and help me out. Don’t pay that fellow any mind. We’re sort of in his world now, I guess.”
“This is not the Undying Lands,” Legless said as he grasped a handful of the dwarf’s hair and pulled.
“Not the beard!” The dwarf shouted. “Not the hair!”
After much tugging and struggling, they managed to get Glimmergroin out of the tree and on his own two feet. He’d lost one hobnailed boot and his thick toes curled into the sticky mud. “If this isn’t the Undying Lands, then were are we?”
“Georgia.”
“Where?” Legless frowned and handed Glimmergroin his axe. “I know of no such place.”
Stu took a deep breath and tried again. “Wrangled Gorge. I think.”
“Well, fuck me with a spork, laddie,” the dwarf planted his axe soundly on the top of Legless’ foot.
*~*
Stu stared down the dusty road and tried not to fidget. It had taken a lot of work to convince his elderly Aunt Sue to come down to Carter’s Lake. At first, she’d even refused to accept the collect call from him. He’d had to try three times before she finally lamented and the long distance operator retreated from the line to allow Stu to explain. The first part of the conversation consisted of Stu explaining that, no, he wasn’t dead. No, it wasn’t a prank call. Yes, dang it all--one didn’t say dammit to one’s aunt, no matter how frustrated one was--he was stranded at Carter’s Lake and he’d be happy to explain if only she’d come out and give him a ride. He hadn’t mentioned his friends.
Now, however, he stood on the side of the road with a half naked dwarf and an elf with a Mohawk and tried to think of a reasonable explanation. But nothing came immediately to mind. In fact, his mind was still reeling from the shock of waking up in Georgia. “Listen up, Legless, you can’t go groping my ass, okay? My aunt, well, she’s got a bum heart, you see, and I don’t think I’d be able to explain about the being bonded thing. It’d kill the poor soul to think I’d been in jail all this time. And you, Glimmergroin, do something with that axe, right? She’ll take one look at you..ah..your weapon and think you’re gonna chop off her head or something. She’s old and sweet and a bit hard of hearing. Poor thing wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Legless crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t understand what happened,” he mused as he stared around him. The grassy area was dotted with trees and strange series of metal objects that his beloved called a ‘playground’.
A shiny large box on wheels crept out of the dust and drifted towards them. “There, that’s her.” Stu excitedly waved his arms while Glimmergroin and Legless exchanged startled looks.
“What is that, laddie?”
“What? Oh, hells bells. It’s a car. Like a wagon, only without horses.”
“What makes it move?”
“A combustion engine,” Stu answered as he stepped aside and the car came to a rolling stop just inches from him. He leaned down and peered inside the window. “Aunt Sue? Oh, man, am I glad to see you.”
Aunt Sue opened the door and pulled herself from the car. She wore a black pleated skirt with large orange and pink flowers on it. A bright pink t-shirt was knotted at her waist. She had on knee-high stockings and orthopedic sandals and her short, curly wig was slightly askew. She peered myopically at Stu and then at the dwarf and the elf. “Stewart George Martin, is that you, boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Stu beamed happily and rushed around the car.
“Harumph,” she said and immediately whacked Stu in the chest with her massive purse.
Stu yelped and tried to back up, but bounced off the open car door while his aunt flailed away with her heavy handbag. Legless growled and rushed in to the fray to save his beloved, but the elven assassin was no match for the aging southern belle with a ten pound handbag and he ended up crouched at Stu’s feet with his hands over his head.
Glimmergroin swung his axe in an arch and remembered what Stu said about how the poor thing wouldn’t hurt a fly. He let loose a battle cry and rushed forward while Stu screamed for him to stop. Sue, pausing to catch her breath, took one look at Glimmergroin and fell backwards with a long wail. The dwarf skidded to a halt and gave Stu a disgusted look. “I thought you said she wouldn’t hurt a fly?”
“I did,” Stu agreed as he squatted down next to his aunt. “And she won’t. A wayward nephew is an entirely different kettle of fish.”
“Elves, too, it seems,” Legless crawled away and sat in the dust. “Did he kill her?” He tried to hide the glee he felt at that thought.
“Naw,” Stu checked his aunt’s pulse. “She just fainted. C’mon and help me get her in the backseat. I’ll drive.”