Author's Note: Would you look at that? Another chapter already? Will
wonders never cease! Anyway, I just saw the April Fools' episode, and it
inspired me no end. But, um…what's going on? Rhonda has boobs, and
they're all obviously older, and I think Stinky and Sid have new voices,
and Helga is ten now, I guess, since Arnold said her birthday was last
week, and, um…Arnold and Helga like, had sex. They totally did. That
tango was…it was raunchy. It was suggestive. It was kinda hot. I know, I
know, I have a dirty mind.
Speaking of which, I was far too lazy to change the rating, but I'm really pushing it with this chapter. I had to get quite creative to stay away from profanity and explicit sexual words, but it's still a little more mature. So if it'll bother you, stay away…then again, how do you know if it'll bother you if you don't read it? It's not that bad. You know what? Just flame me if it's too much, and I'll change the rating. I won't change the story, though. It was appropriate, and it fits Eddie's character—and no one can accuse me of being OOC with HIM—he's mine.
Disclaimer: STILL not mine. Is there no justice in this world? I ask you.
Part XV
"Torment"
Helga let herself doze off during the ride in the van, and later the flight. She slept for longer than she thought possible, but it was better than being awake to feel the awful void Arnold's death had left in her. She felt drained, and why shouldn't she? Her reason for living was gone; the love that had fanned the fire of her poetry had been quenched. Unconsciousness was preferable.
She awoke when they touched down in—wherever they were, and she was roughly jostled off the plane, still with her hands tied. They were not in an airport, as they had not taken a commercial plane. They were on a wide, grassy plane, strangely alien and yet somehow familiar. Helga wasn't sure what this place was, as no civilization was around to pinpoint it for her.
In the distance, the grass petered out to dusty flatlands, and there was some kind of full-scale excavation going on down there. Tents dotted the landscape like canvas mushrooms, and people walked back and forth, digging, carrying things, conversing. They were obviously at some kind of archaeological dig—she should have known that Eddie fancied himself an archaeologist.
She was made to walk far faster than she wanted, in the heat and with her hands bound behind her and rough hands on her shoulders to prevent her from running. They led her across the fields, to the largest tent in the cluster. She was ushered inside.
The tent was sparse—after all, how many furnishings can a tent have? There was a straight-backed wooden chair in the dead center of it that she was forced to sit down on. Her hands were unbound and retied to the chair. Pride prevented her from struggling, though she cursed her captors in colorful and shameless language.
After tying her, they left her there. She had barely a chance to try and wriggle her way out of her bindings when Eddie entered. It was strange. He looked the same as the last time they had crossed paths. She would have thought that killing the most wonderful creature the sun had ever shone upon would change someone's appearance.
"You bastard," she spat out upon seeing him. "You disgusting, despicable, low-life piece of maggot-ridden flesh. How dare you presume to come into my presence?"
He chuckled darkly. "Helga, darling, you'll wear yourself out. Please, there will be plenty of time to curse me before I'm through with you—and bless me."
"Don't hold your breath for my blessing, because you'll never have it," Helga snarled, pulling so tightly at her ropes that they cut into her wrists. She felt her hands grow sticky with blood. "You killed the man I love."
Eddie looked mildly surprised. "Arnold?" he asked. "You loved him? I thought it was a casual flirtation."
Her glowered deepened, if it was possible. "Try not to reveal how incredible brainless you are, you revolting excuse for a creation of nature," she warned him. "And don't you dare say his name. You're not fit to say it. You're not fit to lick the dog crap off his shoes, you pathetic, foul, impotent turd."
At least one of those words hit home, because Eddie stiffened. "I would watch my mouth, if I were you," he informed her tersely.
"What do I care?" Helga said. "He was my reason for living! Do what you will, you lump of excrement, because I won't feel it." Her voice rose as her insults became more creative. "You idiot. You honestly thought I would ever come to you voluntarily? The only reason I would ever go near you would be to spit on your rotting corpse and dance on your grave." She was screaming now, red in the face. "You are no man, not even a human being. You're just a sad, stinking excuse for a walking, talking blob of putrescence! I hope you get ravaged by a mad goat and then slowly crushed beneath a cement mixer. You'll go straight to hell, where you can be reunited with the whore that is your mother and the warthog that is your father—!"
Eddie had been growing redder and more angry with every word. At the last comment, she smashed her across the face with the back of his hand. She felt a stinging pain in her eye and cheekbone, but she ignored it.
"Go ahead, Eddie, hit me. If that's the only way to make yourself feel better about your complete and utter lack of manhood, go ahead. It doesn't hurt, anyway."
He smiled, and now she shuddered inwardly. Nobody smiled like that unless they were insane.
"Oh, don't worry," he purred darkly. "I'll make you hurt before I'm through."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter. As he lit up a cigarette, Helga felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She knew exactly what he was going to do.
He blew a smoke ring into her face. "Turnabout is fair play, my sweet," he said maliciously, before shoving the red, glowing end of the cigarette into the soft, defenseless flesh of her lower arm and holding it there.
Helga had thought that she was beyond pain, with Arnold's death, but she had been wrong. It hurt, more than anything she had ever felt except that death. She smelled her own flesh burning, the pungent scent mixing with the smell of tobacco smoke. Every nerve in her body was concentrated on the searing, screaming pain in her arm.
And yet she didn't scream, didn't cry out. She set her jaw as she trembled and turned pale with pain, but her lips issued no sound, her eyes no tears. He would not triumph over her.
After what was only a few seconds, but felt like much longer, Eddie removed the cigarette. Helga felt the pain even sharper as relatively cold air rushed across the wound. She couldn't even see it, as that part of her arm was too far down and behind her.
"Is that all you got?" she asked finally, her voice full of false bravado.
He shook his head, smiling faintly. "Oh, no," he said silkily. "There's much more to come. Much more."
She knew what he was insinuating, what he was after. It had almost happened to her a few times, but her own cunning and self-defense know-how had saved her from many a sticky situation. Here, she feared, they were of no avail.
Eddie pulled a knife out of an ankle sheath. Setting it in the hollow of her throat, he pressed down, just hard enough to break skin. He drew the knife down, cutting through the material of her shirt but leaving her bra intact, slitting open just the top layer of skin from her throat to just below her navel, except the space between her breasts that her bra covered, so that blood trickled slowly down her torso. Her shirt fell open, revealing her lacy pink bra, a little pink bow in the center, and her bare, pale skin, stark white against the crimson blood.
"What's this?" Eddie asked, fingering the bow.
She smiled haughtily at him, tossing her hair back. "It's for Arnold," she declared proudly. "A reminder of him."
Eddie's face contorted and he ripped the bow off, yanking her body forward and letting her slam back painfully into the chair. He let the bow drop to the floor and ground it under his heel.
Turning his attention back to Helga, he raised the knife to her throat. She immediately tensed up, warily eyeing the blade as he brought it closer and closer to her neck. He placed the cold flat of the blade against her neck, smearing her throat with her own blood, careful not to cut her.
"I could kill you right now." He seemed to expect her to fear that.
"Why don't you?" she challenged. "It'll save you a lot of humiliation trying to break me…or get it up."
His grip on the knife tightened, and for a moment she thought he would kill her. Then he relaxed and lowered the knife.
Without speaking, he bent his head and kissed her, violently. She bit down on his lip, hard, until she drew blood, and he pulled back, grabbing his lip and staring at her.
"I was the bully on the playground," she informed him coolly. "I can be just as violent as you can."
He seemed unable to speak with rage. Reaching down, he ripped at her shirt, pulling it away. Helga tensed, knowing what was coming next. She didn't mind dying, but this was something she was no longer willing to give to anyone but Arnold—and certainly not to Eddie. She readied herself for the fight of her life.
"Mr. Niles! A strange plane's landing in the airfield!" a voice called from outside.
Something seemed to come over Eddie, calming him. "So go see who it is!" he replied.
"Uh, Mr. Niles…I really think you ought to come see this yourself," the voice called back.
Eddie sighed and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbing at his still-bleeding lip. "Coming," he called. He looked back at Helga. "Don't go anywhere," he taunted, before walking out of the tent.
"Mr. Niles, what happened to your lip?" Helga heard the voice ask as they walked away. Immediately, she began to struggle out of her bonds. She wondered faintly who could have landed in the airfield that would get that guy so worried.
* * * * * * *
"See that? That's the excavation site," Arnold informed Curly, pointing down at the tents that dotted the Australian landscape. "I guess you can land near all those other planes. Hopefully no one will take any notice."
"I think they're taking notice," Curly replied as over a dozen armed men headed over to their planned landing site.
Arnold thought for a minute. "Okay, here's what we'll do. You land. Maybe we can talk to them."
Curly laughed. "I doubt it. How about this? I land. I'll taxi around a bunch and go behind a couple of other planes. I'll slow down, and you jump out and hide. Then I'll keep taxing around and distracting them, and you make your way over to the tents. Your guy is probably over there, sipping his Evian while these poor saps do his dirty work."
"That could work too," Arnold admitted. "Okay, we'll try that. Are you sure you want to? Those guys have guns."
Curly grinned recklessly, and Arnold thought he saw a bit of the old wild gleam in his eye. "Are you kidding, Arnold? They didn't call me Old Crazy Curly in flight school for nothing."
"We called you that in elementary school, too," Arnold reminded him.
"Oh, yeah." They touched down, and Curly taxied quickly behind some planes. "Ready?"
"Yeah." Arnold opened the cockpit door.
"Okay, I'm slowing down…Now!"
Arnold leapt out of the door, falling the eight feet or so to the ground and rolling, absorbing the shock painfully. It hurt, but nothing seemed broken. He glanced up at the cockpit just in time to see Curly mouth 'good luck' before tearing after the armed men on the ground. Arnold shook his head fondly, then began to slink his way from plane to plane, heading towards the tents.
When he reached the last plane, he checked to make sure no one was looking at him, then broke away from the plane and ran pell-mell for the tents. He covered the distance faster than he thought possible, aiming for the biggest tent, which was probably Eddie's personal tent. He burst in.
Sitting tied to a chair in the dead center of the tent, struggling with her bonds, her shirt ripped off her body and her torso bloody, was Helga.
She looked up as he came in, and they both froze, staring at each other. "Helga?" he whispered.
"Arnold?" she mouthed back.
Suddenly something broke in the tension and he was on his knees in front of her, kissing her as hard as he could, his hands buried in her buttery yellow hair. She kissed him back just as passionately, as hungrily, as they both had had a recent reminder of what they stood to loose.
They came up for air, gasping desperately, Arnold still cupping her face in his hands.
"I thought you were dead!" they both blurted out, then laughed, more for joy than the humor of the situation. Then they kissed again, joyously.
"We've got to get out of here!" Arnold realized as they broke apart, again.
"Yeah, no kidding," Helga replied. "This guy's a maniac." All thoughts of revenge were gone from both their minds—they were too wrapped up in the delights of each other.
Arnold walked behind Helga and, picking up the knife that Eddie had dropped, cut the ties that bound her to the chair. She gazed at her wrists, rubbing the circulation back into them, then jumped up and flung her arms around Arnold's neck, kissing him again and again, as if she couldn't get enough.
"I'm sorry," she breathed between kisses. "I'm sorry…"
"No, I am," he murmured back when his lips were free, holding her as close as humanly possible.
"I really think you both are," a third voice drawled.
They both spun to see Eddie standing in the opening to the tent, aiming a gun directly at them. "Or if you're not yet, you will be," he added dryly, looking faintly amused. He glanced at Arnold. "I don't know why you're not dead yet, but don't worry. You will be soon."
Arnold pushed Helga gently behind him, blocking her with his body. "Don't you dare touch her, Niles," he said in a low, challenging voice. There was the faint noise of propellers in the distance.
"And what are you going to do about it?" Eddie asked, advancing on them. "But I tire of teasing you. I just want you dead. Good-bye." He pulled the trigger.
"No!" Helga screamed, pulling Arnold to one side. She was fast, but not fast enough. The bullet clipped his side, spilling bright red blood across his shirt. Still, it was only a minor wound.
The force of her pull, coupled with the bullet, made Arnold lose his balance, and he fell onto his back, Helga on her knees half-under, half- behind him. The propellers were growing louder and louder.
Eddie stood over them, the gun centered directly over Arnold's heart. There was no time to move, no time to react. They were defenseless. The propellers were almost deafening, but Arnold could still hear Eddie laughing as he pulled the trigger again.
This time there was no dodging, no last-minute reprieve. The bullet hit Arnold's chest dead center.
The propellers were loud, but not loud enough to drown out Helga's anguished scream.
Speaking of which, I was far too lazy to change the rating, but I'm really pushing it with this chapter. I had to get quite creative to stay away from profanity and explicit sexual words, but it's still a little more mature. So if it'll bother you, stay away…then again, how do you know if it'll bother you if you don't read it? It's not that bad. You know what? Just flame me if it's too much, and I'll change the rating. I won't change the story, though. It was appropriate, and it fits Eddie's character—and no one can accuse me of being OOC with HIM—he's mine.
Disclaimer: STILL not mine. Is there no justice in this world? I ask you.
Part XV
"Torment"
Helga let herself doze off during the ride in the van, and later the flight. She slept for longer than she thought possible, but it was better than being awake to feel the awful void Arnold's death had left in her. She felt drained, and why shouldn't she? Her reason for living was gone; the love that had fanned the fire of her poetry had been quenched. Unconsciousness was preferable.
She awoke when they touched down in—wherever they were, and she was roughly jostled off the plane, still with her hands tied. They were not in an airport, as they had not taken a commercial plane. They were on a wide, grassy plane, strangely alien and yet somehow familiar. Helga wasn't sure what this place was, as no civilization was around to pinpoint it for her.
In the distance, the grass petered out to dusty flatlands, and there was some kind of full-scale excavation going on down there. Tents dotted the landscape like canvas mushrooms, and people walked back and forth, digging, carrying things, conversing. They were obviously at some kind of archaeological dig—she should have known that Eddie fancied himself an archaeologist.
She was made to walk far faster than she wanted, in the heat and with her hands bound behind her and rough hands on her shoulders to prevent her from running. They led her across the fields, to the largest tent in the cluster. She was ushered inside.
The tent was sparse—after all, how many furnishings can a tent have? There was a straight-backed wooden chair in the dead center of it that she was forced to sit down on. Her hands were unbound and retied to the chair. Pride prevented her from struggling, though she cursed her captors in colorful and shameless language.
After tying her, they left her there. She had barely a chance to try and wriggle her way out of her bindings when Eddie entered. It was strange. He looked the same as the last time they had crossed paths. She would have thought that killing the most wonderful creature the sun had ever shone upon would change someone's appearance.
"You bastard," she spat out upon seeing him. "You disgusting, despicable, low-life piece of maggot-ridden flesh. How dare you presume to come into my presence?"
He chuckled darkly. "Helga, darling, you'll wear yourself out. Please, there will be plenty of time to curse me before I'm through with you—and bless me."
"Don't hold your breath for my blessing, because you'll never have it," Helga snarled, pulling so tightly at her ropes that they cut into her wrists. She felt her hands grow sticky with blood. "You killed the man I love."
Eddie looked mildly surprised. "Arnold?" he asked. "You loved him? I thought it was a casual flirtation."
Her glowered deepened, if it was possible. "Try not to reveal how incredible brainless you are, you revolting excuse for a creation of nature," she warned him. "And don't you dare say his name. You're not fit to say it. You're not fit to lick the dog crap off his shoes, you pathetic, foul, impotent turd."
At least one of those words hit home, because Eddie stiffened. "I would watch my mouth, if I were you," he informed her tersely.
"What do I care?" Helga said. "He was my reason for living! Do what you will, you lump of excrement, because I won't feel it." Her voice rose as her insults became more creative. "You idiot. You honestly thought I would ever come to you voluntarily? The only reason I would ever go near you would be to spit on your rotting corpse and dance on your grave." She was screaming now, red in the face. "You are no man, not even a human being. You're just a sad, stinking excuse for a walking, talking blob of putrescence! I hope you get ravaged by a mad goat and then slowly crushed beneath a cement mixer. You'll go straight to hell, where you can be reunited with the whore that is your mother and the warthog that is your father—!"
Eddie had been growing redder and more angry with every word. At the last comment, she smashed her across the face with the back of his hand. She felt a stinging pain in her eye and cheekbone, but she ignored it.
"Go ahead, Eddie, hit me. If that's the only way to make yourself feel better about your complete and utter lack of manhood, go ahead. It doesn't hurt, anyway."
He smiled, and now she shuddered inwardly. Nobody smiled like that unless they were insane.
"Oh, don't worry," he purred darkly. "I'll make you hurt before I'm through."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter. As he lit up a cigarette, Helga felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. She knew exactly what he was going to do.
He blew a smoke ring into her face. "Turnabout is fair play, my sweet," he said maliciously, before shoving the red, glowing end of the cigarette into the soft, defenseless flesh of her lower arm and holding it there.
Helga had thought that she was beyond pain, with Arnold's death, but she had been wrong. It hurt, more than anything she had ever felt except that death. She smelled her own flesh burning, the pungent scent mixing with the smell of tobacco smoke. Every nerve in her body was concentrated on the searing, screaming pain in her arm.
And yet she didn't scream, didn't cry out. She set her jaw as she trembled and turned pale with pain, but her lips issued no sound, her eyes no tears. He would not triumph over her.
After what was only a few seconds, but felt like much longer, Eddie removed the cigarette. Helga felt the pain even sharper as relatively cold air rushed across the wound. She couldn't even see it, as that part of her arm was too far down and behind her.
"Is that all you got?" she asked finally, her voice full of false bravado.
He shook his head, smiling faintly. "Oh, no," he said silkily. "There's much more to come. Much more."
She knew what he was insinuating, what he was after. It had almost happened to her a few times, but her own cunning and self-defense know-how had saved her from many a sticky situation. Here, she feared, they were of no avail.
Eddie pulled a knife out of an ankle sheath. Setting it in the hollow of her throat, he pressed down, just hard enough to break skin. He drew the knife down, cutting through the material of her shirt but leaving her bra intact, slitting open just the top layer of skin from her throat to just below her navel, except the space between her breasts that her bra covered, so that blood trickled slowly down her torso. Her shirt fell open, revealing her lacy pink bra, a little pink bow in the center, and her bare, pale skin, stark white against the crimson blood.
"What's this?" Eddie asked, fingering the bow.
She smiled haughtily at him, tossing her hair back. "It's for Arnold," she declared proudly. "A reminder of him."
Eddie's face contorted and he ripped the bow off, yanking her body forward and letting her slam back painfully into the chair. He let the bow drop to the floor and ground it under his heel.
Turning his attention back to Helga, he raised the knife to her throat. She immediately tensed up, warily eyeing the blade as he brought it closer and closer to her neck. He placed the cold flat of the blade against her neck, smearing her throat with her own blood, careful not to cut her.
"I could kill you right now." He seemed to expect her to fear that.
"Why don't you?" she challenged. "It'll save you a lot of humiliation trying to break me…or get it up."
His grip on the knife tightened, and for a moment she thought he would kill her. Then he relaxed and lowered the knife.
Without speaking, he bent his head and kissed her, violently. She bit down on his lip, hard, until she drew blood, and he pulled back, grabbing his lip and staring at her.
"I was the bully on the playground," she informed him coolly. "I can be just as violent as you can."
He seemed unable to speak with rage. Reaching down, he ripped at her shirt, pulling it away. Helga tensed, knowing what was coming next. She didn't mind dying, but this was something she was no longer willing to give to anyone but Arnold—and certainly not to Eddie. She readied herself for the fight of her life.
"Mr. Niles! A strange plane's landing in the airfield!" a voice called from outside.
Something seemed to come over Eddie, calming him. "So go see who it is!" he replied.
"Uh, Mr. Niles…I really think you ought to come see this yourself," the voice called back.
Eddie sighed and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbing at his still-bleeding lip. "Coming," he called. He looked back at Helga. "Don't go anywhere," he taunted, before walking out of the tent.
"Mr. Niles, what happened to your lip?" Helga heard the voice ask as they walked away. Immediately, she began to struggle out of her bonds. She wondered faintly who could have landed in the airfield that would get that guy so worried.
* * * * * * *
"See that? That's the excavation site," Arnold informed Curly, pointing down at the tents that dotted the Australian landscape. "I guess you can land near all those other planes. Hopefully no one will take any notice."
"I think they're taking notice," Curly replied as over a dozen armed men headed over to their planned landing site.
Arnold thought for a minute. "Okay, here's what we'll do. You land. Maybe we can talk to them."
Curly laughed. "I doubt it. How about this? I land. I'll taxi around a bunch and go behind a couple of other planes. I'll slow down, and you jump out and hide. Then I'll keep taxing around and distracting them, and you make your way over to the tents. Your guy is probably over there, sipping his Evian while these poor saps do his dirty work."
"That could work too," Arnold admitted. "Okay, we'll try that. Are you sure you want to? Those guys have guns."
Curly grinned recklessly, and Arnold thought he saw a bit of the old wild gleam in his eye. "Are you kidding, Arnold? They didn't call me Old Crazy Curly in flight school for nothing."
"We called you that in elementary school, too," Arnold reminded him.
"Oh, yeah." They touched down, and Curly taxied quickly behind some planes. "Ready?"
"Yeah." Arnold opened the cockpit door.
"Okay, I'm slowing down…Now!"
Arnold leapt out of the door, falling the eight feet or so to the ground and rolling, absorbing the shock painfully. It hurt, but nothing seemed broken. He glanced up at the cockpit just in time to see Curly mouth 'good luck' before tearing after the armed men on the ground. Arnold shook his head fondly, then began to slink his way from plane to plane, heading towards the tents.
When he reached the last plane, he checked to make sure no one was looking at him, then broke away from the plane and ran pell-mell for the tents. He covered the distance faster than he thought possible, aiming for the biggest tent, which was probably Eddie's personal tent. He burst in.
Sitting tied to a chair in the dead center of the tent, struggling with her bonds, her shirt ripped off her body and her torso bloody, was Helga.
She looked up as he came in, and they both froze, staring at each other. "Helga?" he whispered.
"Arnold?" she mouthed back.
Suddenly something broke in the tension and he was on his knees in front of her, kissing her as hard as he could, his hands buried in her buttery yellow hair. She kissed him back just as passionately, as hungrily, as they both had had a recent reminder of what they stood to loose.
They came up for air, gasping desperately, Arnold still cupping her face in his hands.
"I thought you were dead!" they both blurted out, then laughed, more for joy than the humor of the situation. Then they kissed again, joyously.
"We've got to get out of here!" Arnold realized as they broke apart, again.
"Yeah, no kidding," Helga replied. "This guy's a maniac." All thoughts of revenge were gone from both their minds—they were too wrapped up in the delights of each other.
Arnold walked behind Helga and, picking up the knife that Eddie had dropped, cut the ties that bound her to the chair. She gazed at her wrists, rubbing the circulation back into them, then jumped up and flung her arms around Arnold's neck, kissing him again and again, as if she couldn't get enough.
"I'm sorry," she breathed between kisses. "I'm sorry…"
"No, I am," he murmured back when his lips were free, holding her as close as humanly possible.
"I really think you both are," a third voice drawled.
They both spun to see Eddie standing in the opening to the tent, aiming a gun directly at them. "Or if you're not yet, you will be," he added dryly, looking faintly amused. He glanced at Arnold. "I don't know why you're not dead yet, but don't worry. You will be soon."
Arnold pushed Helga gently behind him, blocking her with his body. "Don't you dare touch her, Niles," he said in a low, challenging voice. There was the faint noise of propellers in the distance.
"And what are you going to do about it?" Eddie asked, advancing on them. "But I tire of teasing you. I just want you dead. Good-bye." He pulled the trigger.
"No!" Helga screamed, pulling Arnold to one side. She was fast, but not fast enough. The bullet clipped his side, spilling bright red blood across his shirt. Still, it was only a minor wound.
The force of her pull, coupled with the bullet, made Arnold lose his balance, and he fell onto his back, Helga on her knees half-under, half- behind him. The propellers were growing louder and louder.
Eddie stood over them, the gun centered directly over Arnold's heart. There was no time to move, no time to react. They were defenseless. The propellers were almost deafening, but Arnold could still hear Eddie laughing as he pulled the trigger again.
This time there was no dodging, no last-minute reprieve. The bullet hit Arnold's chest dead center.
The propellers were loud, but not loud enough to drown out Helga's anguished scream.