Chapter 12

Thursday

"Hey! Look alive!" Stan ordered. "I'm not paying you all to slack off!"

I peeked my eyes over my D,D, and More D Monthly as I pointed out, "You're not paying us at all, Grunkle Stan." I closed my magazine and leaned against the edge of Wendy's counter that Mabel laid on and Mason leaned against the other end. "Actually, don't you think you should be paying us? We're part-time help, not volunteers."

"Oh look at that! Someone just pulled up!" Stan said, looking out the door's window. I looked out to see someone in an old beat-up RV pulling up and looked back at Stan. He gave me a smile before pulling down his eyepatch and rushed to throw open the door.

I tossed my magazine under the counter as Mabel jumped off the top.

"Hello! Welcome to the one and only Mystery Shack!" Stan's voice boomed as he started his spiel. "I am the Mr. Mystery, back from my trip around the world and I've found even stranger things to hold in my museum of the unknown."

"Where's Soos?" I asked, just noticing the last I saw him was at breakfast.

"Where were you? Melody's plane is arriving today," Mabel said.

"Oh, ok." I liked Melody and it was great the two were still dating, even with their first date being overshadowed by .

"Yeah, we'll go through the tour." I looked up to see an old man that's pot belly could rival Stan's standing in a Hawaiian shirt. He looked thrilled where as his two grandkids both were pouting with their arms crossed over their chest.

"Great! Fifteen bucks for adults, ten for children under ten. Come this way!" Stan led the three through the gift stop and leaned towards me as he noticed the man stopping to pull out his wallet. "Quick, I need awkward wolf boy."

I just stared at him, not dignifying it with a response as I heard the girl say, "Seriously? Under ten?"

"Fine, we'll talk about you getting paid, alright?" Stan eyed the three getting the money out before saying, "And get Mason dressed up too." Stan left me rolling my eyes and quickly held out his hands in a greeting posture. "I see you three've already been traveling quite some way for summer. I myself have traveled the world and seen creatures far beyond your imagination."

"I doubt it," the boy grumbled, messing with his large watch.

"Ben," the old man gilded.

I pushed myself away from the counter and said, "Come on Mason, we better get paid for this." I headed to the Employees Only door, only knowing Mason was following me by his footsteps echoing mine into the house.

"What are we doing?" Mason asked, following me up the stairs.

I itched the scratch on my wrist, glad Ford had let me go without the bandaging now. "He wants us to dress up like Wolf Boy. I guess he thinks we'll get them to buy more junk or something."

"Wolf boy?"

I stopped just in the attic, before the part sectioned off that was my room, and opened a box to find all the costumes Stan, and now Soos, used. Digging through I quickly found the coarse fur that made up the pants. I pulled them out, finding both pairs quickly, and passed one to Mason. I kept digging until I found two sets of ears and two tails on belts and we quickly got changed. As I was putting on the tail belt Mason came out of the room dressed in his costume still with the weird heart necklace around his neck.

"The necklace really does make you look like an awkward wolf boy," I pointed out.

Mason grabbed the heart in his fist and looked at me. "I don't take it off," he said simply.

"Why?"

"It was Mabel's."

Oh, that made sense now.

Mason let go of the heart and said, 'Come on, Stan's waiting on us, isn't he?" He walked passed me and headed down the stairs, showing me a burn that stretched across his back. Stunned, I let him disappeared from sight before following him.

I rushed down the stairs, careful not to let my tail trip me up, and caught up to Mason in the living room. We hurried in silence through the gift shop, I made sure not to look at Wendy, and rushed into the museum. We managed to stay out of the three's line of sight and got to where the human wolf stood. We joined the strange taxidermy of Frankenstein and waited.

"I feel like I'm half naked," I mumbled, grabbing my elbow to try and cover my stomach.

Mason let out a quiet laugh and said, "You are half naked."

"Here we have the last two remaining Wolf Boys, I was lucky enough to find these two, the survivors of a terrible poaching incident up north," Stan said, leading the family to us. The red head girl looked at us with sad eyes, making me look down, hoping my bangs would cover my blushing. Beside me Mason dripped down in a crouch and let out a growl, stepping in front of me.

"You poor things," the girl said.

"Gwen, it's just two guys dressed up!" Ben exclaimed, holding both hands towards us.

The old man clicked a picture of us, Mason playing the part of a now blinded wolf kid and rubbing his eyes with his wrist, and said, "Kids, just enjoy it."

"And over here we have the world famous Sascroch," Stan said, moving the small tour along. I looked up, hoping to see them walk away only to catch the red head's eye. Quickly I looked away, wishing they would hurry up and move on to the next section of the tour so we could leave.

I itched my thigh, as close as I could get to the real itch from these stupid pants, as Mason asked low enough the guests couldn't hear, "Does Stan make you do this a lot?"

"You've no idea," I rolled my eyes. "It could be worse, he doesn't know about the lamb thing."

"Oh, the lamby dance?"

"You had it too?"

"If only we had known what we were getting ourselves into, huh?" Mason said with a nod.

I heard a picture being taken and looked over to see Stan had brought the tour out of sight of us and the door. "Let's get outta these costumes while we have the chance."

-.-.-.-

"Quack quack!"

"But of course! The butler! No one would suspect him!"

"But there's no way it was the butler!" Grenda exclaimed to the TV from her seat on the floor next to Candy and Mabel. "He was serving at the party outside when it happened."

"But didn't she say he had disappeared?" Candy asked.

"Right! He disappeared right after the neighbors showed up," Mable said as the Duck-tective's subtitles said the same.

"Do you really like this show?" Mason whispered, leaning towards me as we sat on the other side of Stan's legs from the girls.

I shrugged my shoulders. "It's ok. Who can say no to mindless entertainment?"

"But it's a duck."

"Duck-tective," Stan corrected. "Shush."

I looked back to the screen as the butler was put in cuffs, "and I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for that medaling duck!"

"Quack qu-quack," the duck said. Just my job.

The TV cut out, just showing us a screen of blue, as cries of despair came from the girls.

"This stupid TV, someone go over and kick it," Stan said.

I leaned to uncross my legs only to lose my balance. I held out my hands, confused why I felt like I was falling only to start floating.

"Whoa!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Gravity's not working again!" Grenda said, grabbing hold of Candy and Mabel.

"Ford!" I turned my head and saw Stan had gripped both armrests to stay in the seat.

I went ahead and straightened my legs, hoping to be prepared when gravity came back only to drop to the ground as it did just that. I landed on one foot and fell towards my right, landing on Mason's lap. The TV came back on, showing a commercial for Throwing Controllers, as I pushed off of him and got to my feet. Looking around to assess the damage, somehow the aquarium survived though I could see the kitchen table had fallen over and some of the chairs made it through the doorway.

"Everyone alright?" Mason asked as he stood up.

"Yeah," Grenda said.

"I think so," Candy said

"Give me a moment to answer that," Stan offered. I looked back at the man and smiled, his hands still gripping the armrests as a pained look crossed his face.

"Sorry! Everyone alright?" Ford said as he and McGucket rushed into the living room.

"Warn us next time, Poindexter!" Stan yelled, eyeing his brother from his seat in the chair.

"We're getting the portal working so there might be a few more," McGucket said.

"I might be able to go home?" Mason asked.

"Maybe tomorrow or Saturday," Ford offered. "It was easy enough to get it up and running again but getting rid of the bug that works against the Earth's magnetic field and finding your dimension's going to take some trial an error."

I glanced back at Mason to see hope clear on his face. "I'll do what I can to help."

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AN: OK, so not much happens on Thursday…

AN: Shameless Plug Time! If you like my stuff, be it Gravity Falls, Danny Phantom, or Disney then check out my published book Harley Davis: Teenage Superhero! It's on Amazon where you can buy either the e-book or the paperback.