Chapter Ten
Ritual Dance
"Alright, everyone settle down," Benson announced to his coworkers.
Veronica laughed satirically as she slammed a coffee mug down in front of her ex-lover. "Yes, yes, everyone! Let's calm down and listen to the man who can help run a park but can't keep an evil monster from possessing a little gay boy and destroying half the surrounding area?" She smiled and looked around the Coffee House with satisfaction on her face. "How's that relationship with you hand going, by the way?"
The park staff all sat in a single booth with shock on their face, even Muscle Man who relished at people getting told off. Perhaps it had something to do with him having issues with his own woman off and on, but it just wasn't funny. Rigby cracked a smile at first, but upon thinking about it at length, saw that comment as an insult that even Benson didn't deserved. Maellard even found that to be crossing the line, but didn't dare defend the gumball machine. The booth remained quiet with mouths agape, and eyes wide in surprise.
"Veronica!" Margaret yelled, emerging from the counter. "You're being rude to our customers! If I hear that again-"
"No, Miss Margaret," Veronica jeered, "I'm not being rude. I'm only telling the truth. What's rude is the horrible little song and dance you put all your potential lovers through."
Margaret was taken back by that statement, only to reaffirm herself by taking an angry step forward and snapping her beak.
"Did that hurt?" Veronica quipped. "So sorry. I'm afraid I'm not having the most pleasant of days."
"Veronica!" Eileen screamed as she too came from behind the counter. "The mugs are piling up in the back. They need washing!"
The female gumball machine gave Eileen a tired expression, but smiled through it. "That's fine then. I'd rather take orders from you, Eileen, instead of this mess here." As she made her way to the kitchen, she bumped into Margaret and winked at her. No one said anything until she was completely out of the room.
The red robin breathed heavily as she looked in the direction where Veronica had gone. The glint in her eyes told anyone that at any moment she could spin into a tizzy of anger and frustration. The group could swear that her feathers were turning the same discolored and furious shade of purple that Benson so often shifted into.
Mordecai, above everyone else, could sense the hurt and turmoil in his crushes soul. Veronica seemed like a cruel woman, and had no right to attack Benson or Margaret. The blue jay felt bad for the two of them, Margaret specifically.
"Hey Margaret," he sputtered.
"NOT… NOW!" the girl screamed at him.
This caught the attention of everyone in the shop, including those outside of it even. A low laugh could be heard in the backroom, fading away like white noise.
Eileen frowned sympathetically at her friend and shook her head. "Margaret, take a break."
A break sounded wonderful to Margaret actually. She quickly removed the dirty café apron and tossed it over to Eileen, who caught it, and set it behind the counter. The red feathered woman then turned around, went up the steps, and right out the door – grumbling incoherent curses as she did.
Everyone watched her leave, and then looked over at Mordecai. He had a slight bit of embarrassment on his face, as well as regret. He slid down his seat some and hoped everyone would stop staring at him. Rigby took a sip of his coffee and patted his friend on the shoulder.
"Your old fling's a bitch, Mr. Benson," Tim said, breaking the silence. "I like her!"
"I could use someone like that when dealing with hostile takeovers," Maellard added.
"Seriously Benson, why did you date someone like that?" Skips asked.
Benson grumbled. "She was a lot more fun when we were actually dating; a lot nicer too. Then she just… started acting different. Don't know how it happened." He began to tap his fingers on the table repeatedly. "Maybe it was me."
Me…
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Me…
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"I can't get this tuning right," Benson whined. He slid tip his thumb along the strings of his guitar and studied the sound.
"It sound's alright to me, Chiclet," Veronica said as she turned the page of her book. The sounds of a soft guitar always seemed to work well with a romance novel. Unfortunately for her, when it was out of tune and was nothing but random strums, it tended to break the mood she tried desperately to fall into.
He sends his thumb along the strings again and shakes his head. "It sounds great, yes – but it doesn't sound perfect. I can't write the perfect song if I don't have the perfect sound."
"Why not just use your drum set?" she asked. "Music is music, isn't it?"
Benson laughed and pushed the brown strings of hair out of his face. "It goes further than that, babe. Each instrument has its own sound and voice! I can't make a song dedicated to you using something as forceful and powerful as a drum song. I gotta use something that expresses my feelings for you. Something soft and loving, like a guitar."
The girl smiles and closes her book, placing it on the bed she was laying on. "But can't a guitar be just as loud and enforcing as a drum though?"
"It can be, yes."
"Well then, why can't a drum set be as soft and loving and a guitar?"
"It just doesn't work that way babe," Benson continued. "I don't see you as something loud and in the background. You deserve the center stage. Can you tell me what instrument usually gets the center stage?"
The girl smiles at her boyfriend, enjoying the conversation. "Most of the time it's the vocals. But I guess you're trying to tell me that most people are interested in a guitar than a set of drums."
"Vocals are nice," Benson admitted, "but they're nothing without an accompanying sound of course. I mean, all those rock ballads wouldn't be the same without a lead guitar and a bass. Drums really add to it as well."
"You know there are a lot of people out there who would argue that vocals can stand on their own pretty well," Veronica argued playfully.
"Well then those people don't know music," Benson snapped.
"Or maybe you just haven't come to fully understand it yet," Veronica sneered.
The two glared at each other with a lovers stare.
Benson smiled and shook his head. "Maybe you're right," he said in defeat. "What am I saying? I know you're right. Maybe I should try making you something with the drums then."
"Maybe you should," she agreed. "Whatever instrument you use, I'm sure it'll be absolutely wonderful. I'll love it no matter how it sounds."
Benson's smile widens as he listens to his girlfriend's loving words. He looks at his guitar and sighs, placing it on the hard wood ground next to him, and crawling over to the small twin sized bed they shared. A guitar and a bed: the only two possessions that they owned. It was all they needed besides each other. All those and a library card for Veronica to keep herself from going crazy with boredom.
He wrapped his arms around her and brought her close. She cooed comfortably into his grasp and kissed his cheek lovingly.
"Do you know what you do to me sometimes?" Benson asked. His fingers walked along shoulder quietly as the two looked into each others eyes.
"The same thing you do to me I'm sure," she replied with wink. Her hand grazed along his side, sending little shivers along his body.
"Does that mean you're gonna write a song about me then?" Benson asked with a raised eye brow.
The girl laid there and thought about it. She didn't have any musical talent of any sort like Benson had, nor did she have a voice soothing enough to sing him a lullaby. But what she did have was wit and charisma. "Maybe I'll write one, but that doesn't mean I'm going to perform it."
Benson laughed and brushed some of the blonde locks out of her face. He gently rubbed the glass on her dome and slowly leaned in to kiss her.
They fell into each other's lust, keeping their hands busy across the other's body while their mouths opened and closed with a slowly rising passion for one another. She laughed and moaned as his mouth kissed at her cheek, and gradual made its way down to her neck, and then onto her metallic body. She happily moaned out his name as he began to lick at the risen metal door between her legs. His hands turned and poked at her crank, eliciting the appropriate reaction of moans and pants of euphoria.
Benson was happy with this. The two of them didn't need much to get by. As long as he had her and his guitar, then life was wonderful. He closed his eyes and listened to the music that flowed from her gasps.
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Benson sighed and held his flap closed as the memories rushed back to him. He shouldn't be thinking those type of things, especially around his coworkers. None of them would let him live it down if they saw him getting excited over a moment of lust from his past, let alone from the woman who just out and out ridiculed him a moment earlier.
"Hey guys," he continued from earlier, "do you mind if we change the subject? She and I are kind of a mix of good and bad memories for me."
None of them seemed to mind, save for Mordecai and Rigby who were at least a little interested in why Benson would fall for a dragon like that. Skips shut them up though.
"We should probably talk about why we're here," the yeti said, after shushing the two boys.
"Good idea," Benson replied. He took a clipboard he had brought with him and looked at the things that needed discussing. The list wasn't that long, as they really couldn't do that much while Skips was purifying the grounds, which brought him to his first bullet point. "As you all know, after the problems we had with the fundraiser a few days ago, Skips is having to work hard to clean the place up of Bad News."
Rigby mumbled something inaudible about how his name was better, which was silenced by Mordecai punching him in the shoulder.
"How's that going by the way, Skips?" the blue jay followed up.
"I've got about 40% of the park done so far," Skips answered. "If I work without rest, I should be able to finish sometime before the end of the week."
"And if you do rest?" Benson asked.
"Then probably sometimes around the start of next week."
Maellard tapped his cane against the table, trying to gather attention. "I expect this to be done as soon as possible. I don't need any of that Bad News coming to get me every time I visit the park."
"It's being taken care of," Skips sighed. He didn't like doing the ritual, as it only encompassed a small area and he had to repeat it over and over and over until the whole place was purified of the putrid black ooze. It wasn't hard; just annoying.
"Which brings me to my main point," Benson continued. "If Don's any indication, then that stuff doesn't just affect the park – it affects living things too. And almost all of us were covered in that gunk the first time when it exploded. Everyone who was at the park was covered in it."
"Tell me about it," Tim laughed. "What do you plan to do?"
"Well, Skips is going to perform the ritual here for all of us, so that should take care of any lingering pieces of it that may have decided to attach itself to us."
Skips groaned at having to do that damned ritual again. It was for his friends though, so he could suffer through it. "I'm just warning all of you, once I finish with it, you're gonna get real messed up with that stuff trying to leave your body. Mine bled out – hurt pretty bad."
Benson nodded in agreement. "Skips already performed it on me yesterday when I was visiting. Mine came out through my fingers… and it hurt. It really pissed me off. You should see the damage I did to my Skips' shack during the ritual."
The group gulped.
"I've already gotten permission from Eileen to go ahead and do it today in the Coffee Shop, so Rigby, you're up first."
"WHAT!" Rigby moaned. "I wasn't anywhere near that thing when it blew its mess all over the park. Why do I have to get the ritual?"
"Because you were close to Don when he was possessed, and I don't want to take any chances," Benson argued. "Now get out there and get your self purified!"
Rigby groaned and jumped out of the booth. Skips was already up and pointed to a small empty kiddy pool he had brought with him and inflated. Rigby stepped aside and waited.
The yeti pulled out a rain stick he had brought with him from his shack, and began to dance around the pool, chanting some unknown lyrics in some unknown language. Any other customers in the shop looked on in total fascination as Skips jumped around the pool with enthusiasm and commitment. He slammed the stick onto the ground and looked at Rigby.
The entire room, including Eileen behind the counter, stared at Rigby and wondered what would happen. He suddenly didn't like the attention.
"Why are you all staring at me?" Rigby complained. "Quit doing that! I don't like it! Stop staring at me!" The raccoon began to rub at his eyes and whimper. Eileen quickly rushed to his side, but was stopped short by Skips.
"Dude, are you crying?" Mordecai asked.
Sure enough, Rigby's tears were coming down like a waterfall. They were pitch black and stained his fur. He dropped to a sitting position in the pool and cried in both distress and extreme pain as an unusual amount of tears poured out of his eyes.
"The ritual can cause emotional flare ups when used on actual people," Skips said. "It's temporary though."
"How temporary is temporary?" Mordecai asked as accompanied Eileen next to his friend.
"Probably about a day."
"You mean I have to deal with crybaby Rigby for the next day?"
Muscle Man laughed from the booth with High Five Ghost. "How is it any different from regular loser Rigby?"
"Listen dudes," Mordecai continued, "Don's letting us use his place to crash until the parks up and running again. Every room in that house echoes. I don't want to have to deal with that and crybaby Rigby for the next 24-hours."
"Deal with it," Benson said.
A few moments later, Rigby was clean, with fresh salt water tears streaming down his face. Mordecai was happy that he was exempt from having to do the ritual (along with High Five Ghost), but he believed out of all of them that he got the raw end of the deal. Rigby sat in his lap, crying into Mordecai's blue feathered chest, while Eileen passed by every so often to give the raccoon a pet on the back. And while Rigby would later admit he hated the attention, he secretly loved it, even from Eileen.
Pops was up next, in which his came out as a sort of nose bleed that, while it still hurt, was very ticklish too, causing him to laugh the whole time. When the ritual ended, he was bursting with energy and started talking and playing with everyone in the shop.
Muscle Man's came out through his hair and actually stained his once proud dirty brown, a raven black. He panicked. He panicked so much in fact, he ran out of the Coffee Shop screaming towards the closest hair dresser he could find. HFG followed after him with worry, but with some slight amusement too.
Maellard actually played dead for a while, which alarmed every one of them thinking that the ritual had killed him. It didn't, but the ooze did come out of his spine, which essentially paralyzed him for the good part of a half hour. Tim took him, and dropped him back in the booth until he could move again. Maellard stayed silent and incredibly afraid the rest of the time there.
Tim was up next. Everyone found his to be the most entertaining of the bunch.
"You stupid little endangered fuck!" Tim screamed as loud as he could. A wave of nausea crept over him and he wretched the black sludge out of his system like a jet stream. When his mouth was clear, he looked back up to Skips and continued his rant. "I oughta snap your neck right now and drink the marrow for putting all of us through this." Another wave of ooze poured out of his mouth into the kiddy pool. "Do you have any idea how much this hurts and how much I want to pull out my pistol and riddle your tiny skull until there's nothing left?" Another flush of blackness.
It was a disgusting, albeit surprising comical show. When Tim was finished, he wiped his mouth, weakly collected the still terrified Maellard, and slumped out of the Coffee Shop very slowly with a loud and raspy "fuck you" as he exited. The café roared with laughter and applause at the show that just went on in front of them. Skips even gave a grin and a bow.
With that out of the way, Skips pulled out a match, struck it ablaze, and dropped it into the kiddy pool. A roar of fire erupted from the pool, evaporating itself as screams and moans gave way and disappeared. The pool then sprung a leak and deflated. Nothing remained inside of it. Skips took the deflated pool in hand and chucked it into the trash.
"Well," Benson sighed, "that takes care of us. Now we gotta worry about the other 200+ people who got infected with that crap."
Skips shuddered at having to perform that ritual again and again and again. But it was his job at the moment.
Benson then produced a few papers and placed them on the table. "Mordecai and Rigby, these are for you. They're sheets with the names of everyone who was at the park when they thing went off the first time. I need you guys to call each and every one of them and schedule an appointment for Skips to perform the ritual."
Mordecai groaned at the busy work, and looked at the paper. "There has to be at least fifty people per page on here. You want us to do all of this by tonight."
Benson shook his head and placed his clipboard down. "I just need you guys to get it down before the end of tomorrow. And some of those papers are going to Muscle Man, High Five Ghost, and Pops too, so you won't need to worry about the work load being so large. After you finish with that, you guys can have the next few days off until Skips finishes."
"And what about you?" the bird asked. "Don't you have to do any of this?"
Benson gripped at his clipboard and took a deep and worrisome breath. "Maellard has me doing something much worse."
"Really?" Eileen asked walking by with a tray of empty mugs. "What does he have you doing?"
Benson grunted and laid back in his seat. He looked at Skips, who already knew exactly what Maellard had planned for him. He gave him a sad look and returned to cleaning up the ritual area.
The gumball machine then straightened up and took a sip of his drink. "He wants me to go on the news and explain what happened at the fundraiser… tonight."
"That doesn't seem so bad," the mole said. "I bet it'll be pretty fun to on TV!"
"Yeah…," Benson groaned, "except, he wants me to appear on the Nine O'Clock Info Hour with Connor Wong."
Everyone around him went silent. The customers nearby who had heard brought their mugs down from their mouths. Eileen nearly dropped the mugs, and even Mordecai and Rigby were surprised by the assignment Benson was given.
The entrance to the Coffee Shop chimed, and Margaret came in refreshed and in high spirits. She looked down from the railing and asked, "What did I miss?"
The ghost like expression on Benson's face said it all.
Ritual Dance - Kaki King
Author's Notes
Not much to say about this one. Much shorter compared to the last couple of chapters, which is kind of a break for me. Though, I wouldn't have minded adding more. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything else to add, even in regard to the future chapters. At this point, by the way, I've written up to chapter twenty-six. Not much else to say beyond that. This does lead us up to our next arc though, which I really had fun writing. And you all will adore the next chapter. I had the most absolute fun writing it. I think you will really enjoy it.
So Until Next Chapter...
Adieu...