All-righty then, not wishing you folks to lose faith, I will hereby be uploading the five chapters of what will eventually conclude the "Funniship of the Ring" trilogy. Please be aware that it is still a work in progress. Thank you all for your support over the year, and Tweak and I deeply appreciate your patience.
And now, without further ado, what passes for...
The Return of the Swamp Thing. Book 1
Or, In Which Handoff Is Humiliated and Tom Gets The Ring.
Handoff woke them early the next morning seemingly unaffected by the previous day's beating.
"Come on," he said, "We're going to visit Sillyman!"
"Oh, joy," grumped Legless.
"Why should we visit Sillyman?" demanded Theoldone. "Should he not be visiting us? Are not we the better hosts? Do we not serve better refreshments?"
"Not if you count that junk we ate last night," said Arrogant.
"It's not a friendly visit. It's a business visit," said the blizzard. "He owes me money."
"Hey," said Arrogant. "Don't you owe me money?"
"Let us get a move on!" said Handoff.
**************************************************************************
"Hey, Snakelips, ol' buddy ol' pal," said a voice.
Snakelips looked up from jotting down pancake recipes to see Sillyman the Plaid standing in the doorway.
"Did you come to look at my pancakes?" he said.
"No, not exactly," said Sillyman. "I need you to do me a favor. In my seventeenth floor study is my Lookinhere. I need you to set it on a windowsill to recharge its solar batteries. Would you be a lamb and do that for me? I have a meeting to attend."
He turned and with a swish of robes went off to attend his meeting with our heroes.
Snakelips got up and walked down twelve flight of stairs to the study. He lifted the Lookinhere off of its handy pedestal and set it precariously on the windowsill. He fingered the bright and cheery yellow curtains.
"Eggyolk yellow," he murmered. "Three eggyolks, two tablespoons sugar, half a cup of butter..." and he rushed off to jot down another recipe.
Sillyman opened the door to the balcony room. He took a deep breath. He made a note to send Snakelips in with a mop and a duster. He walked to the balcony and stepped outside. He tried to appear stern and lordly, but he had a hard time keeping his face straight. To his utter dismay, as he looked out, he noticed that Handoff was wearing the same suit as himself. (A festive yellow and purple plaid shirt, matching pants, and a green and blue plaid cloak.)
"Sillyman, Sillyman, come down!" cried Handoff.
"Can't you give a moment to let a guy come outside before you start shouting at him?" snapped Sillyman, still devastated from having to wear the same clothes as the obviously un-fashion concious blizzard below.
"Oh, sorry," said Handoff, giving him a moment. "Are you ready now?"
"Yes," said the other blizzard, taking a breath and control of himself.
"Ok, here goes. Sillyman, Sillyman, come down!" said Handoff sternly.
"No," said Sillyman.
Handoff blinked, not expecting him to say that.
"What, you chew a guy out for being too quick and then you don't comply with his demands? We have you outnumbered, you know."
Sillyman shrugged.
"Simon says come down," Handoff said.
"I won't," sneered Sillyman. "And you can't make me!"
"Who's Simon?" whispered Yawner to Theoldone.
"Please come down?" said Handoff.
"Maybe I just don't want to," said Sillyman, leaning on the railing and grinning idiotically at those below.
"Oh, come on, Sillyman!" whined Handoff stomping his foot. "You're making me look silly!"
"Preeecisely," said Sillyman.
Handoff whined loudly and threw his staff onto the steps.
"Pleeeeeeze!" he said jumping up and down.
"Who looks like the silly man now?" said Sillyman, finally exacting revenge for all of the taunts about his name.
Handoff threw himself to the ground and screamed.
"Crybaby crybaby crybaby!" chanted Sillyman wildly.
Yawner tapped Handoff on the shoulder.
"If I may say so," he said, "You are quite bungling this up."
"Yeah?" said Handoff sitting up and wiping his eyes. "You think you could do better?"
"Yes," said the man. "You should handle these things with dignity, honor, and above all, maturity."
"Like you would know," muttered one of the men.
Yawner looked up at the blizzard in the tower.
"Are you going to come down?" he said.
"No," said Sillyman, putting his thumbs in his ears and sticking out his tongue.
"Well, give me some baloney and call me a sandwich, you aren't coming down?"
"Yoouuuuuuuuu got it!" cried Sillyman.
"This is your last warning," said Yawner in a deep voice.
Sillyman seemed to find this last statement extremely amusing.
"What are you going to do?" he hooted, clutching the railing for support. "Throw fits at me?" He collapsed cackling for all he was worth. Yawner let him calm down some before he went on.
"For many long years," he said sternly, "You have been lying to my people. We are getting angry."
He paused as Sillyman collapsed again.
"Act your age!" Yawner snapped. Sillyman lay on the floor of the balcony and screamed with laughter.
"If that's the way you want it," growled Yawner, bending down and picking up a rock. He threw it at Sillyman and missed by a mile. Suddenly everyone there started throwing rocks. Sillyman danced around and nearly fell off the balcony laughing.
After a moment or two of this, Piping chanced to look up and saw a queer little man dusting a round ball. Piping admired the ball. The ball was round. The ball was shiny. The ball looked new. He wanted the ball. He wanted to feel the weight of it in his pack pulling comfortably on his shoulders. Somewhere within Ithinc a phone rang, and the man whirled around and dashed inside, bumping the sphere off the balcony. To Piping's eye, it seemed to fall in slow motion.
Now Piping Take was not a complete dunce in school, and he casually noticed that unless it's present course was altered, and taking into effect the wind speed, gravitational drift, sunspots and Huminum's Law, the sphere would fall right on Sillyman. But before he could voice his intelligent observations worthy of a Nobel Prize, the ball landed plunk on Sillyman's head. The blizzard looked dazed and the object plummeted from the balcony to land on Handoff's head. It then bounced from Handoff's head to Arrogant's, from his to Theoldone's, and from there to several of those standing by.
"Cool," breathed Mary looking at those laid flat.
But Piping, who had been keeping his eye on the shiny object, followed it to where it almost fell into a pit. He had caught it and was trying to stuff it into his pack when Handoff revived.
"Wha?" he said. Then he saw Piping. "Gimmie that!" he snapped. After several minutes of furious fighting and yelling he wrenched it from Piping's grasp and turned again to Sillyman.
"Give up, Sillyman!" he said. "It's over. You are greatly outnumbered. I have your shiny glass ball. Give up!"
Sillyman shrugged. "I won't come out, and you can't come in! I can live here for many years in great comfort." He turned and started to walk back in.
"Perhaps," said Handoff slyly. "But can you live without your refrigerator?"
Sillyman stopped short. He turned slowly and his face was ashen. He walked to the railing as if dragged by some other will and leaned over, breathing hard. "What do you mean?" he gasped.
"I mean," Handoff said slowly, "Can you live in even some comfort when you have no food in your refrigerator?"
"What has that got to do with anything?" said Sillyman suspiciously.
Handoff lifted his staff. "Sillyman," he said in a loud voice, "The contents of your refrigerator are now eaten!"
A loud belch came from within Ithinc. Sillyman gave a cry and flew from the railing.
"Ha! You still are and always have been the silly man, Sillyman!" shouted Handoff. "I have won, and you have lost! Ha ha hahahahaha!!" Piping sighed. This did not seem to be his week.
Piping walked back to the gate. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up into Arrogants face.
"Alright, you Blobbit, give me my wallet back!" he hissed. Piping blanched.
"Don't you have mine and Mary's wallet?"
"No," said Arrogant.
"Well," said Piping, "I know I don't have yours. Oh, I know! We gave them to Boring to hold, remember! By the way, where is Boring?" His question for now would go unanswered, as Arrogant's face twitched, opened his mouth to say something, and collasped.
****************************************************************************
The Stairs passed uneventfully for the most part, Tom kept throwing pebbles and shouting "Hello!" every chance he got. The tunnel was dark and no one was happy. But finally, they came to the end.
"Yipee!!" said the blobbits skipping ahead into a small clearing amongst the rocks.
"Shh!" said Solemn.
A crunch sounded behind them. Hoho whirled. To his amazement, out of the tunnel came not a huge beast, as he expected, but a cute little puppy.
"Aww," he said. "C'mere, little cutsie thing."
The puppy eyed him with a look commonly associated with extreme hunger.
"I don't like this, Mr. Hoho," said Tom.
Hoho only laughed derisively and reached out to pet the little dog. He was saved only by a hair as Tom jerked him away from the clamping jaws. Tom slapped the puppy on the nose.
It reeled and snarled, and then ran away yipping. Never before had anyone dare to harm her, or set their hand against her.
"Congratulations!" cried Solemn, appearing out of nowhere. "You have defeated the great Shelia, who has terrorized this place for eons and eons! Now Mortar will be open to all who wish to come!"
"Well, thanks! I think, um, Hoho?" Tom looked around to see signs of a struggle. Shields and broken swords, tattered strips of cloth and broken glass were scattered about.
"Hoho? This is no time to play hide and seek. Hoho?" But there was no sign. That is to say, no board with lettering that said "Hoho is been captured by Corcs". All the evidence pointed that way, but Tom would not have read it correctly if it had not been for Solemn.
"Y'all has to go get that durn blobbit from them ol' Corcs!" he cried lapsing into a southern accent. Tom noticed suddenly on the ground a huge iron chain. He picked it up with some difficulty, and noticed that attached to it was a small band of gold.
"The ring!" cried Tom. "Oh bother!" He looked again and saw a small flashlight, and Thing. He picked them all up. "Bother bother bother," he muttered. He looked up at the sun which was rapidly going down behind the mountains.
"Oh well," he muttered. "No use traipsing around in a strange country when you're half asleep, right?" He was just about settled into bed, when a bunch of corcs marched up. He hastily without thought (as usual) put on the ring. The corcs went on into the tunnel. Tom stood at the mouth and listened with his brand new supersonic hearing. He heard two of them talking.
"So, what about that rat we captured?" said one.
"What about him, Dishcloth?" muttered the second.
"Didn't he seem, I dunno, heavy to you?" said Dishcloth.
"Yeh, now that you mention it, he could stand to lose about sixty-four and a half pounds."
The voices faded. Tom heard a tapping and looked up. To his amazement, he saw Hoho making faces at him through a window. Tom roared with rage and raced blindly up the steps. He leapt up the last 6 steps and crashed into a heavy metal door. He crumpled to the ground. He was outside, but Hoho was inside. He was in the Twilight Zone, and wasn't even awake enough to enjoy it.