And Now For Something Completely Different…

It's…

(Liberty Bell March starts playing)

The Life and Times of Bradley Watson

Chapter (Record stops) Wait, this isn't right at all. Try again!

The Life and Times of Bradley Watson

Chapter Nine, Part Two

In Which Something Important Happens

(Or: In which there are like, a million references to Monty Python)

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No, the something important is not the Monty Python references. Speaking of which, the violin sheet music for the theme song, (Liberty Bell March by John Philip Sousa) is currently inside my house. I have played it. That is awesome in a million different ways.

()()()

The very next day, Bradley was incredibly distraught. The group, the only people that had ever stayed in his house for more than a week, were gone. He couldn't imagine why they had left, but at the same time, he could easily imagine it. He was boring. He was a loser. He hadn't done anything for them. They had no reason to stay.

"Damn it." It was almost time for him to go to work, but he could hardly think about work in between blaming himself for this.

()()()

Meanwhile, Paul and the group had already made their way to Salt Lake City, Utah. Not only that, but through Riley and Emily's (Okay, mostly Emily's) combined efforts, they had human disguises, so they wouldn't stand out in a crowd.

By now, you may be asking, "What are they wearing?" Well, dear reader…I'm a lazy arse, so I'll just say that their clothes were the same color as their original fur. However, a few of them had some other form of accessory. Shannon had large braids (To match up with those whip things), Riley had a very silly looking hat (The equivalent of that silly looking whatever-it-is), and Amelia gained large earmuffs (Do I need to explain everything to you morons?)

"All right, now what?" Asked Paul.

"Huh?" Said Amelia, who was rudely awakened by Paul's query.

"Now what should we do?"

"What time is it?" She checked the radio clock, confirming it as seven o' clock. "Just five more minu…" She never finished the sentence, because she went right back to sleep.

"Amelia!" Paul yelled.

"Officer!" Amelia shouted, jolting awake. "That horse wasn't mine!"

"…I'm going to pretend you didn't say that and ask you a question."

"What?"

"I wanted to know where we should go next."

"Oh."

About this time, Emily was waking up. Well, sort of; she was still half asleep mumbling something in her sleep. It seemed to be some sort of children's story.

"One day," it began, "Ricky the magic pixie went to visit Daisy Bumble in her tumble-down cottage and found her in the bedroom." Okay, this is starting to get somewhat questionable.

"Roughly, he grabbed her heavy shoulders and put her on the bed." Yeah, I see where this is going, and I feel I have an obligation to stop it.

Okay, maybe a bit more for the sake of comedy.

"He ripped off her shirt and started…"

"Emily!" Paul yelled.

"Huh?" Emily was now fully awake.

"What the bloody hell is wrong with you!" He interrogated.

"What are you talking about?"

"Does the phrase 'Ricky the magic pixie' ring any bells?"

"Oh. That…uh…It's no fault of mine what Bradley keeps in his bedroom!"

"Oh, that's sick."

"What, Monty Python?"

"Oh, I thought you meant…never mind. There's a gas station up ahead, I'll look for some pamphlets."

()()()

At the same time this was going on, Bradley was just getting into his cubicle. However, just as he was sitting down, Mr. Ruthers interrupted him.

"Bradley?" He asked.

"What?" Bradley asked, sounding annoyed.

"In light of your excellent performance as of late, I'd like to congratulate you with…a promotion."

"Yeah, that's great…promotion? What kind of promotion?"

"Managerial stand-in. If, for some reason, I can't make it to work, you are the one who will take up the duties in my stead."

"Oh…wow, uh, thank you, Mr. Ruthers."

"You're quite welcome, Bradley. You deserve it."

He started to walk away, but he realized something before he got very far at all.

"Say, Bradley, you seem awfully…glum about something. What's wrong?"

This really was not something Bradley wanted to discuss. "They, uh…they ran away, sir."

"Wha…why, that's awful! Why would they do such a thing?"

"I…don't know, sir."

"Well, anyway," Mr. Ruthers continued, clasping his hands together, "I'd also like to allow you to test out our latest product: the cubicle door. Basically, it allows the cubicle to become more like an office. If we can get it to work, along with the cubicle roof, we could cut down on transmission of diseases quite easily!"

"That's…fascinating."

"Wonderful! It'll be installed very soon, Bradley! And…I'm very sorry about your loss. I know what it's like to lose somebody close to you as well."

"Oh boy…" Bradley had been through this before; Mr. Ruthers blabbing out some old life story that didn't relate to anything.

"Several years ago, I was…"

()()()

"All right, what do we got here?" Asked Paul. He had, of course, gone into the gas station (after a particularly slipshod parking job) and was looking at a rack of brochures resting on a counter. Right next to him was a man talking to the cashier, apparently not from America.

"I will not buy this record, it is scratched."

"…What?" asked the bewildered cashier.

"I will not buy this record, it is scratched."

"I-I don't understand…"

"My nipples explode with delight!"

"Right then," said Paul. "We've got…the Grand Canyon? That sounds interesting." He grabbed the pamphlet, but several things were working against him:

One: A human body is significantly different from his normal body, meaning his center of gravity was in a completely different spot.

Two: He was tired, and not exactly at full thought capacity.

Finally: He wasn't used to pulling brochures out of racks.

All this added up to him pulling out the pamphlet, and sending the rest of the rack crashing to the ground. Everybody else in the mart began staring at him.

"Uh…pamphlet racks work a lot differently in Britain, let me tell you!" He could tell this excuse wasn't working, and dashed out of the station, only to find a policeman writing a ticket. Amelia was arguing with him.

"Hey, copper, what's going on here?"

"I don't know how it works in London, but here, you're not allowed to park on the sidewalk."

"Oh, well you see…" He reached out his hand, but noticed some peach-colored fur on it. He gasped, and shoved it behind his back before the cop saw it.

"See, if you park where you're not supposed to, I have no choice but to write you a ticket."

"I understand completely, officer." Then he felt a strange tingling sensation across his body. When he realized what that entailed…

"Oh no." Not wanting the cop to figure out what was going on, he ran back into the mart.

"Hey, where are you going?" The cop chased after him, but it was too late. The wish had worn off. Paul had gone back to normal.

Everybody in the mart stared at him for a few seconds, before screaming and rushing for the door, including the cop.

"Was it something I said?" Paul asked.

Those in the car were noticing the effects, too. In the next minute, they were all back to normal.

Paul jumped in the car through the open window and yelled, "Step on it!" To Amelia, now back in the pedals.

"Right!" She hit the gas (again) and zoomed off, the policeman in hot pursuit on his motorcycle.

()()()

Meanwhile…

"So I was trying to resuscitate the porcupine with a cactus stuck to my spine, and somebody is trying to sell me a dead parrot and a packet of larch seeds…" continued Mr. Ruthers, in Long Rambling Story #142.

"Gah!" Bradley was trying to work, but Mr. Ruthers' incredibly boring story was making it rather difficult. Neither of them had any idea of the goings-on in Utah.

()()()

"This is the police! Pull over!"

"If you touch the brake, Amelia, I'll kick your arse!" Shouted Paul, desperately steering away from pedestrians (clearly, he wasn't interested in those extra thousand points).
"Thanks for the encouragement," Amelia said dryly.

"Just put the pedal to the medal and stop whining!"

"You know, Paul, with you being an arse all the time, I can't say I really want to put the 'pedal to the metal', as you put it."

"Will you just shut the f…" His curse was short lived, however. He was coming up to a canyon. Not the Grand Canyon, obviously, but it was still fairly deep. His almost-f bomb simply degenerated into a random scream. He released the wheel, sending the car into a spinout. Nobody, not even I, is exactly sure what happened next. The closest approximation is that Amelia ended up falling out of the car somehow. Perhaps she jumped out so Emily could right the car. Perhaps she fell out accidentally. The point is, she fell out somehow. Because of this, Emily was able to right the car, and Paul continued driving. However, he felt something was missing…

"Where's Amelia?" he asked, the hint of fear in his voice.

Everyone else looked around, not seeing her anywhere.

"Oh…oh, God no…AMELIA!"

()()()

"And that's how I lost my saguaro cactus."

By this time, Bradley was asleep completely.

"Bradley? Oh, not again."

()()()

Late upload! Sort of! This is none other than AwkwardVulpix, over and out.

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Figure Three: The Larch.

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EPILOGUE

At the bottom of a particular canyon in Utah, a dog-like creature slowly got to her feet, groaning. How far had she fallen? That didn't really matter. She just wanted to go home.