CHAPTER 7

There's this one guy in town who wears a cowboy hat and hauls a coffin everywhere he goes. He says one day he's going to fill it with the body of the lumberjack who murdered his brother. The coffin, not the hat. But in the meantime, he keeps the coffin full of lumberjack supplies, in hopes it will lure out that lumberjack. If you want to lure a lumberjack, you need to have lumberjack bait. He keeps it full of bait because he wants the lumberjack to just crawl in there. Doesn't want to tire himself out hauling the lumberjack into the coffin by himself. I can see his logic. Anyway, it all comes in handy tonight, because we're able to use his lumberjack equipment to fell a tree and make a battering ram for the castle we're attacking.

We're all singing Kill the beast! Kill the beast! while beating down the door. Well, I'm not beating it down; there's something of a height discrepancy with me and the rest of the boys, where my feet wouldn't touch the floor if I tried to join them. So I'm just serving as a cheerleader. Finally we get the place open and we barge right in! Lickety-split! I helped.

When we enter, there looks to be a bunch of old furniture stacked up in the fore-room. Maybe the beast is moving out? I wouldn't blame him, this place looks like a dump as castles go. An entire layer of paint has peeled off the place since we arrived. I grab onto a candlestick and it suddenly screams "Now!" in an accent that somehow sounds more French than the accents the rest of us French-speakers have. I'm guessing it's Belgian. Could be Canadian, but I don't really get that Swiss vibe from it, you know?

Anyway, all at once, the furniture begins to attack everyone.

I don't really have more to say about it than that. It's just like any other gang-fight. You just have to fight back as hard as you can, and laugh maniacally while you do so that everyone knows you're tough. I mean, that's just basic street fighting technique, which you learn about pretty well in our town. Everyone's doing their best, but most can barely get up a good strong cackle before they're getting taken out by some chest of drawers or sentient mallet.

I notice Gaston runs upstairs alone. He had said he especially wanted to take out the beast himself, even though he had led us all in singing kill the beast together like it was going to be a group effort. But I guess everyone else is busy enough with the furniture right now, so I try not to worry about it.

Limey Bastard somehow ends up dressed in women's clothes. He screams aloud and runs away in horror, leaving the rest of us to die. You have to wonder what this perverted furniture was planning to do to him that made undressing him into a necessity anyway. I can understand why he is traumatized.

But I finally find my time to shine. Remembering to laugh-laugh-laugh, I get a torch and use it to melt that Belgian candelabra. But then a British mantlepiece stabs me in the butt with a pair of scissors. He knows to laugh maniacally the whole time, so he seems street-wise. Maybe one of those cockney gang types. I wonder if I should introduce him to Limey Bastard, they might like each other. I don't say any of that, though: I'm busy screaming my head off, and it apparently is so repulsive that the Sprout candle and the Roastbeef clock go away without bothering me anymore.

Thom and Stanley are still standing, and they come to assist me. We look around for some weapons and collect a few of the less animated things we find around. I get a pitchfork. It'll be perfect if I find a sentient lump of pitch. But instead we end up chasing a footstool that seems to be a dog into a room full of sentient knives that chase us back. You know what they say: don't bring a pitchfork to a knife fight. Well, maybe no one says that. I'm sure it doesn't come up often enough.

Anyway, we all end up outdoors. I see a few of my cousins and I give them a quick wave as they crawl away in agony. In fact, as I glance around, it appears that me, Thom and Stanley were the last ones in that place, which speaks volumes for us. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only person still in there is…

"Gaston!" I say with a gasp. "Do you think we should go back in and help him? I mean, all he has is a bunch of hunting equipment — it's not going to do any good to shoot a teakettle with an arrow!"

But just then, I hear this huge thud on the rooftop, and the sound of someone laughing maniacally, as one must do in a good fight. I look up, and — it's Gaston! And he seems to be fighting with the beast from the mirror! They end up on the end of a … what's it called, they're usually on churches. It's like a big upside down letter L or maybe like half of a U, and it's made of stone and it's on buildings. They're on one of those. I can't remember the names for them. Not a bridge. It's got a B in it though. Broadside? Blunderbuss? Brothel? No… man, I just can't seem to remember.

But while I'm trying to find the word, Belle and Maurice ride up along the bridge in front of the castle.

"No!" Belle cries to the roof, almost like she's actually crying. "Gaston! Don't!" Then I watch her talk to her horse, and she proceeds to ride it up the steps, through the already broken-down front door of the castle, and inside the building. Cuckoo as a clock, I tell you.

Maurice is left behind on the bridge, alone. He looks like he doesn't know what to do. But then he spots me.

"LeGume!" he cries, hurrying my way.

I groan, embarrassed. Why, of everyone here, does crazy old Maurice single me out?

Ugh! Now he's doing that thing where he gets up in your face and presses his nose against yours while shouting. I try to pretend like I don't see him, but I keep reacting when he's hacking and coughing all over my mouth so it's not really working too well.

"You have to help me, LeGume!" he says, pulling me towards him by the collar and tonguing me every time he starts talking. "Belle is in love with that horrible monster who kidnapped me and threw me in the dungeon! He held her prisoner for three months and he — he must have brainwashed her!"

"Aw, jeez, that's rough," I say carelessly, trying to crane my head and get a sense of how things are going for Gaston up on the roof, but this old man has a grip like iron.

"I've been telling Belle for years that Gaston is the best match in town for her!" Maurice continues. "But she's so headstrong — you can't tell that girl anything. Please! She's going to make a horrible mistake if she ends up with that beast! You and Gaston are the only people who can save her!"

"You want us to save her?" I ask. "But Gaston locked you in a cellar!"

"And he punches you senseless twelve times a day! You just get used to Gaston! Anyway, you could see he was only doing it to protect us from the mob! He loves Belle! He'll be a great husband for her! And unlike that horrible monster on the roof, Gaston's never held her prisoner and tried to starve her!"

I've got a bit of a dilemma here. I mean, this is Belle's own father begging to see her set up with Gaston now.

But on the other hand, I don't want to see Belle and Gaston together, because they have to be the worst match in —

"Flying buttress!" I say.

Maurice looks at me, confused. "What?"

"The name of the thing they were on," I say. "I guess you weren't a part of that conversation, though."

"So?" Maurice says, eyeing me intently. "Will you help, or no?"

"Hmmm…"

I think it out. Gaston and Belle, happily ever after? It could be… I mean, Gaston would be thrilled. He and Belle would live together cheerfully in the house, putting their six or seven or eight or nine kids in what's my room. I'll be out on the street somewhere, or else moving back in with my mom. Ugh. Gaston will be learning to read books, probably gathering the family around the fire for storytime, teaching the boys to hunt and his interior decorating stuff to the girls. Belle would get used to his more offensive habits, or maybe even straighten him out so he isn't such a prissy, boorish, selfish jerk.

Or maybe I am still mad at my dear cousin for chasing off Isabelle.

"You know," I say with a big, innocent smile, "I think Gaston's got this down pat. He can handle it himself. He's Gaston!"

Suddenly I hear a bunch of roaring and screaming from the rooftop. There's a unified gasp from the people surrounding me.

"Oh my God!" shouts The Sausage. "Gaston's just fallen off the roof!"

I try to lighten the mood. "Well, no one falls like Gaston. I'm sure he'll be fine!"