Bonkers wasn't in much of a mood to deal with cockroaches, either. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he sing-sang. In his left paw he clutched a blue bottle marked with a big black bug, surrounded by a circle that had been crossed off. In other words, a can of toon bug-spray.
A knock on the door sent him skittering to his feet, but not before he slammed his head into the table and knocked a decorative vase of flowers over upside-down onto his head. It fit firmly on, the neck of the bottle surrounding Bonker's own neck like a tight sweater. Staggering and making weird cat-like noises, Bonkers made for the door, pulling it open while trying to rip the offending vase off his head at the same time.
"Bonkers?" A gentle female voice rang in his waterlogged ears. "Do you need some help?"
His heart skipped about a kabillion beats. Fawn! The lovely, precious, adoring, did he mention lovely, Fawn was visiting HIM! And he had a stupid vase on his head!
"Just cleaning the inside of this vase!" he cried, trying to sound as much like he meant to have his head stuck up it as possible.
"Do you need any help?" Fawn asked, genuinely concerned for her somewhat eccentric friend's safety.
"Nah, I'm doing fine!"
"Are you sure? I can help pull it off…"
"I've got it!" Bonkers declared, yanking hard right as Fawn put her small hands on it to help him. He managed to pop it off right at the perfect time to startle Fawn and throw himself off balance. In one less than graceful swoop he knocked into her and sent both of them sprawling onto the cheap carpet of his mansion motor home.
Lifting his head, he found himself nose to nose with Fawn. Her deep, brown eyes reflected surprise, as well as perhaps a little bit of embarrassed happiness. Her cheeks turned a deep red as she pushed him off her lap, adjusting her now off-kilter pink headband.
"Fawn, what a surprise! My place is a mess! Let me clean it! A lady shouldn't have to sit on this awful couch!" He declared, more as one word than an actual sentence, sweeping a pile of unwashed uniform tops off the couch to make a Fawn-sized spot to sit in the chaos zone that was his home.
Fawn smiled ever so slightly. "Thank you, but I can't stay long. I have to work tomorrow. I just came by to ask…"
Bonkers leaned forward on his toes. His hands were clutched over his chest, trying to stop his thudding heart from jumping into his throat. "To ask…"
"If you're done with my DVD."
Bonkers, mentally at least, dissolved into a puddle of ink and paint. "Yeah, sure… it was really great. I liked it," he said, passing the object of interest from her to him. His gloves brushed against her fingertips for a second, causing him to blush and her to give him another of her timid, gentle smiles.
"I'm glad you did. See you some other time?"
"Yeah, that would be great…" he said as the door shut behind her. Damn. Why, why didn't the words ever come out when he needed them? Why couldn't he just… ask her out? He hadn't nearly gotten himself killed delivering all those spatulas for nothing!
Outside the door, Fawn wondered the same thing. "Why don't you ever call me?" she wondered aloud as she stepped down the winding driveway. "Can it be that you like Miss Kitty better? Or maybe… I'm just invisible Fawn," she whispered to herself as she vanished into the strangely bright darkness of a Hollywood night.
Elsewhere in the city, Miranda was aware of the fact that she was dreaming. Dreaming, or lost somewhere within the psychotic confines of Studio 13. After all, donuts did not fall out of a green sky in the logical world dominated by human thought and physical laws.
She'd had this dream before. "Baabara?" Miranda called into the darkness, squinting in attempt to see further into the distance. "Baabara? Are you out there? Hello?"
Her voice echoed off seemingly empty, endless hallways. She walked slowly down the halls, watching closed doors move past on either side. She tried the doors. Every last one was locked tight, and she didn't know where to find the key.
In time, the hallway did end. It ended in an empty hole, stretching as far as her sparkling baby blue eyes could see. A cold wind blew out of the hole at her, blowing her overly yellow-blonde hair around to the point where it was almost completely horizontal.
"Miranda!" her dead father's voice called, and then she woke up.
The window was open at it had started to rain, sending a cold wind into the room and up the thin sheets on her bed, freezing her bare arms and legs. Muttering to herself about having to get better screens, Miranda stormed over to the window and slammed it shut.
Peering into the darkness, she saw a pair of crows huddled together, battered by the rain. Miranda wondered if crows formed mated pairs, or if the two were merely trying to use one another as shelter from the blinding rain and driving winds. Still, having someone, any someone, to weather a storm with you was far better than doing it alone. She knew that all too well.
Miranda studied the small "promise stone" ring on her head. It had been a present from the brown haired, bright-eyed young officer named Denis. They'd been together since he'd broken up with his last girlfriend, whom he'd met after helping Bonkers rescue her from a date-kidnapping porcupine. Despite the fact that Miranda was almost two years his senior they'd really hit it off, leading far beyond kissing at the front door but not far enough to yield an engagement ring yet, or in the foreseeable future.
"When I get my big promotion I'll have time for you again! I have to work really hard now if I want to get it, and when I get it, I'll get a raise. Once I have my raise, we can be happy. I promise." It was a promise that took an entire paragraph to write out but that Miranda had heard so many times that she didn't have to write it to recall it word for word.
It seemed something her happiness was always on hold for something. A promotion, a better assignment, another day…
Several loud banging noises drew her attention as she was returning to bed. Miranda froze in place, knowing those sounds anywhere or any time, even with thunder roaring outside. Gunshots!
Throwing her coat and her shoes over her pajamas she ran out into the street, gun drawn. She'd dialed 9-1-1 but she hadn't had time to explain the situation to them, as she didn't want the ones that were shooting to get away.
Mud sloshed beneath her shoes as she cut across her yard, jumping over her yard fence and landing lightly on the rain-soaked sidewalk. Another shot sounded, tearing through the night air. Wet gun drawn and ready, Miranda shot through the pouring rain. She could hardly keep her eyes open as large droplets struck her face.
She was, perhaps, defying every police code of conduct she knew of by pursuing the shooters alone in the rain in her pajamas, but she wasn't about to let them get away if she could help it. She could only hope she'd arrive to the situation in time…
Lightning flashes illuminated two fleeing figures in the darkness. "Freeze, police!" she shouted. "Stay where you are!"
Neither figure seemed to care, if they could even hear her over the rushing torrent of rainfall. Her shoes slapping hard against the pavement she ran after the darting forms.
A blinding flash of purple-white light stopped her dead in her tracks, throwing her a good five feet on her back. Her nightgown and the back of her coat tore open from the impact of sliding across brick. Even her pale skin was not spared, her dark blood intermixing with the rain pouring down from overhead.
The cuts hurt like hell. Miranda staggered to her feet, clutching a battered aluminum trash can for support. She'd fared far better than the two men she'd been pursuing; all that remained of them for the evidence teams were their guns and their silver fillings.
The two crows, watching the situation as Miranda clung to the burned brick wall of the alley, turned to one another and took wing, departing into a sky flashing with brilliant streaks of lightening. They had a report to make.