In his parent’s garage, Stu found his belongings, including his second-hand recliner. The silver duct tape over the tears in the seat peeled at the edges and the dust was an inch thick, making him sneeze. A stack of boxes revealed clothes and memorabilia from his days in the Navy as well as from his marriage. It made him smile a bit. His parents would never understand it, and neither would he, but the memories of Middle-earth were every bit as important.
He shook out the clothes and sniffed at the scent of mothballs. Holding up a pair of jeans, he shook his head. He’d have to go shopping if he wanted pants that didn’t end up around his ankles.
In a clear zip-lock bag, Stu found his wallet, birth certificate, passport, and credit cards. He nearly whooped for joy as he glanced at the driver’s license still in his wallet. They had yet to expire, which meant he hadn’t been gone nearly as long as he’d feared. Only long enough for his parents to give his Hog to his brother and his brother to wreck it while skiing in Aspen.
Stu figured it was time to get his life back in order, since it seemed he had returned to the Earth he remembered. He did stop and think, for all of two minutes, about how he’d been sent back to Earth and why. He remembered a conversation with Velma--or whatever that goddesses name was--and recalled being told he’d never be able to return if he elected to go back to Middle-earth and save his friends. Had there been some truth in the idea that they had been sent back to right some evil? Stu shook his head. No way.
With the plastic bag clutched in his hand, Stu returned to the house and entered through the kitchen. He stood sheepishly in the dinning room watching his mother and Aunt Sue cutting out fabric and measuring patterns. Legless looked on with great interest while Glimmergroin did things with his hands that Stu tried not to see. He sucked his teeth and did something he hadn’t done since he was eighteen.
“Hey, mom,” he said, “Can I borrow the car?”
*~*
With the windows of his mother’s Nissan Sentra rolled down and Nirvana on the radio, Stu cruised through his hometown. Part of him hoped no one would notice him, and another, smaller part, wished they would. That was the vanity part of him talking, Stu knew. He’d shed nearly sixty pounds and looked better now then when he played high school football.
Getting out of the house without Legless in tow had been a major feat. At first the elf had gathered up his knives and hitched up his too-large overalls and looked around for the cowboy boots Aunt Sue loaned him. Stu had nearly had an anxiety attack. The last thing he needed was a knife-wielding elf around a bunch of State Troopers. The potential for disaster was endless and left Stu with images of sharing a four-by-six cell with Legless at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for the next twenty years. Depseration prompted him and he’d resorted to pointing out shiny cloth and explaining that the women couldn’t very well sew his new clothes without Legless around to try them on. In the end, he’d managed to convince the elf and now, he was able to relax for a moment, unconcerned that he’d have to explain the presence of the over-possessive elf. Or elf, even.
Of course, he had a lot of explaining to do all the way around. His first stop was to the police station where he hoped to explain his ‘disappearance’ and let the officers know he wasn’t missing or in any danger. Well, not really, although one might be inclined to think differently when confronted by an over-possessive elf with bone-handled knives and a dwarf with a penchant for slamming his axe-butt down on the tops of unsuspecting and helpless feet. Then he’d have to go to the DMV and make sure his license were clear and then over to the bank, where he hoped his mother‘s predictions were correct. He’d had quite a bit of money in the bank at the time of his leaving and, with his pension on direct deposit, he could only hope that he had funds that would enable him to get on with his life. Maybe get an attorney who wouldn’t consider having him committed as he tried to help establish an elf and a dwarf with some sort of identification.
And how was he going to explain his absence? He sat at a red light, waiting for it to turn green while he mulled over the possible explanations in his mind. “Well, you see, officer, it’s like this. I was sitting in my dead uncle’s recliner having a lite beer and Oreos, trying to find something on the boob-tube when I felt the stabbing in my chest. The next thing I knew, I was layin’ in the middle of this dirt road with some fella dressed up for Halloween poking me with his sword.”
Stu rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah, that’ll go over real big. And then I can explain that Boomer mistook my wedding band for a cursed ring and swallowed it so that the Elves had to give him laxatives so he'd shit it out and Hal-drear got Argyle drunk and tricked him up into the talen and got himself in a family way, upsetting Arween's plans to be Queen of Gonads. And I can tell ‘em about the fighting the orcs and how I dumped water on Sorry Man and he melted like the Wicked Witch of the East…”
“Dude! That’s some serious shit you’re smokin’.”
Stu glanced over and saw a skinny kid wearing white pancake make-up and dark black eyeliner staring at him from the passenger side of a Cutlass Sierra idling at the traffic light next to Stu and staring at him like he had two heads. The boy’s lime green hair stood straight up. “What?”
“I said, you’ve been smoking’ some serious shit,” he flung his black-clad arm out of the window, reaching across the small space separating the two cars, and tapped Stu on the forearm. “Give, man.”
Stu caught movement in his rearview mirror and there was a bright flash followed by loud screams. The Cutlass lurched forward as the driver, taking one look at what was climbing out of Stu’s window instinctively put his foot down hard on the accelerator and slammed into the next car in line. Stu felt his head shoved forward as something hard and strong pushed past him.
“Legless, no! Whatdafuckdoyouthinkyou’redonin’? Stop! Sit!” He screamed as his face pressed against the steering wheel, setting off the car horn.
*~*
In the end, Stu didn’t have to drive to the police station. They came to him, with sirens and flashing blue lights. They arrived as Stu shoved open his door, with Legless still hanging out the window, his bottom jutting in the air, while his knives flailed in wicked arcs and scored the gray primer of the Sierra.
The officer on the scene got out of his cruiser and eyed the scene with a cautious expression. People had poured out of their vehicles and, in a state of panic, fled to the road shoulder. Steam hissed from the front end of the Sierra and two frightened teen-age boys, dressed for either Halloween or a Rave, were huddled a few feet from it, staring in terror at what appeared to be a blond Edward Scissorhands.
As for the knife-bearing blond, it--the officer couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman--hung suspended from the door frame of a Nissan Sentra while a bigger blond pulled on the feet and shouted commands like ‘sit’ and ‘stay’.
With one hand on the butt of his gun, Officer Robert Roberts approached the big man cautiously. “You need any help?”
“No, sir, I got him,” the man grunted as, at last, he pulled the stranger from the car window. They staggered back against the car before landing in a heap on the hot asphalt. The slimmer of the two bared his teeth in a feral snarl and his blue eyes promised murder.
The policeman took a quick look around. The Nissan was undamaged. The accident seemed to involve the boys in the Cutlass and the driver of the Camry, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out where the blond man and his odd looking companion fit in. After a moment, the officer realized he knew the blond sitting on the asphalt. “Stu? Stewart Martin!”
Stu winced and then offered a tentative smile. He recognized the graying brunette from high school. His brother, James, and the cop had been good friends, back in the day. “Hello, Robert, good to see you again.”
“Yeah,” he glanced around and motioned with his hands, indicating the Sierra, the universe, and every thing. “So what happened?”
Lost for a moment, Stu gave his by now stock-answer. “I went out to find myself.”
“And I’m what he found,” Legless repeated the oft-heard phrase.
“Are there any more like him?” The skinny kid with pancake make-up and lime green hair asked with a dreamy smile, his eyes bright.
The cop blinked and shuddered. "Oh, God.