THE LYIN', THE SWITCH & THE MONTGOMERY WARD ROBE

from the Blarnia for Filthy Unbelievers Series

by C.S. Slew Us

Chapter 1: Loosey Checks Out the Robe

Once there were four children whose names were Pewter, Sudsy, Edmundane and Loosey. Their last name was Peeve-Antsy. And the reason for this is because, like most children, half the time they acted peevish, and the other half of the time they acted like stinging insects were biting their buttocks. (Their mother and father had the last name Smith. How they got such a queer last name involves legal documents, tax codes, unwarranted searches and seizures, brutally efficient exploitation of the working class in the time-honored tradition of imperialist societies everywhere, the eradication of entire languages, and of course, mass movements of nomadic tribes over thousands of years—at least, according to Them.)

This story is about something that happened to the children when they were sent away from London because their parents were heartless and cruel people who did things Differently, though of course in their own minds they were just being Sensible, which is what happens to those who don't believe in the power of Deep Magic. Since their thoughtless children would just as soon rather throw monkey dung at a Bible as believe in the War, they were sent to the house of an old Professor, who taught at Oxford but would much rather have spent his time writing books such as this one. When he came to greet them, he was so odd-looking that they forgot to mind their manners and laughed so hard that snot ran out of their noses and Loosey without giving it much thought wiped her mucous-laden hand on the Professor's robe. So they were sent to bed with no supper.

"What a dear man," said Sudsy.

"I wasn't hungry anyway," said Pewter. "I say, Edmundane, why are you scratching yourself? And not even on your buttocks!"

"I'm not scratching, I'm just searching for my Turkish Delight," replied Edmundane with a dark look that foreshadowed his ultimate betrayal of his siblings.

"The ones you nipped?" asked Loosey with an adorable grin.

"Shut your yap!" groused Edmundane in a most disagreeable manner.

"I say, let's forego this unpleasantness and have some fun!" cried Pewter. "Let's ransack the house!"

And so they did.

It was a very quiet ransacking, of course, as the children had already grown so fond of the Professor that they wished not to wake him from one of his numerous naps. And after they'd smashed all the pictures in a very long room and put a good dent into a suit of armor and cut the strings on a harp and burned holes in dozens of books with a box of curious matches that never went out and drew pentagrams on the floors of all the bedrooms and put soggy toilet paper in the dumbwaiter, they came upon a room that was quite empty except for a giant robe bunched up on the floor, with a tag on it that said "Montgomery Ward."

Well, except for a blue-bottle on the windowsill that was buzzing its brains out. "Let's catch it and pull its legs off," said Sudsy. While she and Edmundane and Pewter did that, Loosey decided to hide under the robe. There was nothing Loosey liked so much as the smell and feel of an old robe.

Only the more she tunneled under, the more loose folds she encountered. "This must be a simply enormous robe!" thought Lucy as she swam through the folds. "I never realized how great a man the Professor truly is!"

Next she found that she was rubbing her face against something hard and prickly. "Tree branches? No, just pipe cleaners," she said to herself. "And goodness, here's his stinky tobacco pouch. Oops, and those must have been his spectacles," she added, the glass making a satisfying scrunching sound as she dug her heel into it.

"And, oh my. I can't believe this. He stuffed his pockets with shaved ice! Except, he spilled it all over the floor. Except—I say, is that Edmundane's electric torch?"

And she saw that where the floor should have been was actually snow-covered ground. She looked up, and saw snowflakes softly settling on her cute, turned-up nose, just like one of those ornament balls with fake snow in them that swirls around when you shake it. Only this was real. Sort of. Then she noticed she was actually in a wood. And the robe was somewhere Over There or something.

"Whatever," she sighed, forgetting that kids hadn't started using that word yet. "And then, what's Edmundane's electric torch doing there? And it's abnormally huge!"

As she stood there wondering, a delightfully magical snowball sang silently through the air and thumped her on the back, right between the shoulder blades, sending a shower of shivery crystals cascading between her collar and neck. After doing a faceplant in the cold wet stuff, she heard a cackling laugh and the pitter patter of hooves coming her way. When she lifted her head up, she saw a very strange person stepping out from among the trees and into the light cast by the electric torch.

He was only a trifle taller than Loosey herself and he carried an armful of snowballs in one arm and he held a tiny package in his other. From the waist downward he was like a man, but he had a terribly hairy chest, and most remarkable of all, the head of a goat. Though he was a pleasant sort of goat. Around his neck was an enormous red tie, the only clothing he wore other than the immaculately tailored trousers that appeared to magically repel the snow even as it fell on them.

"Gotcha!" he exclaimed.