"What kind of problem are you having with the formula?" I asked. "It can't be any worse than randomly turning into a doodle for a second, can it?"

"Actually, yes. It can be worse." She bleated in goat fashion. "I've been like this for an hour. It's stable, but in the wrong way."

"How long do I have?"

"Judging by when you first dosed?" She checked her watch. "Half a day or less."

"Perfect. Hopefully this will give me just enough time to get things fixed at the bank." And then, as an afterthought, "Just the same, if I take a second dose..."

"You can try it," Holli said. "But it doesn't seem to have any affect on Rommel."

"Do you...have any newer mixtures that work better?"

Holli shook her head. "The last rat I tested exploded."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Cupcake said as she massaged my shoulders.

Holli frowned. "What's she doing here?"

"Well," I said. "She's my new boss, and she was nice enough to fly me over here."

"He also loves me," she purred.

"I...like her," I said. "Love's kind of strong for someone I just barely know..."

Holli just shrugged. "Sleep with whoever you want. Just be good to my daughter, okay?"

"Of course," I said.

And then, noticing how bad that sounded, I quickly added, "No one said I'm going to sleep with Cupcake."

"But the thought has crossed his mind," Cupcake said.

I winced. "Let's talk about this later."

Holli showed me into the lab, handing me a couple bottles of chemicals. "I probably wouldn't use these except as a last resort."

Cupcake swiped something, stuffing it into her cleavage, but I turned a blind eye to it. If she wanted to turn into Frankentweetie, that was her decision. It would only make it that less likely for me to sleep with her.

We took the rip in space/time back to Dane's place.

Although it was uncomfortable to have Cupcake and the mouse around, I was thankful for them when they helped me open the portal.

Once through the hole, we waded through the piles of musty junk in the girl's bedroom.

I frowned at the unmade bed, the sloppily stuffed dresser drawers, the posters hung in haphazard fashion.

"What a dump!" Cupcake complained.

"Finally!" I said. "Someone who gets it!"

"I don't get it," Sneezer said.

I rolled my eyes. "You wouldn't."

The moment I stepped out into the hallway, an unmuscular body with tattooed arms shoved me into the wall, pressing a knife to my throat.

My bottles of chemical fell to the floor, but fortunately they were plastic, and they fell on carpet, so nothing was lost.

"What have you done with my girlfriend!" he yelled.

I suppose I could have fought back, but then again, I wasn't really that interested in interfering in their relationship.

"She's alive and well," I said. "She just likes being in cartoon world better than she likes being here."

Greg punched me in the face.

"Look," I pleaded. "She clearly has no interest in me, so we don't need to fight over this. In fact, I can take you to cartoon land, if it'll make you feel any better."

"So you killed her, now you're threatening me?"

"No..."

He punched me again.

"Don't you touch my boyfriend!" Cupcake screamed, and then I saw nothing but a cloud of black and tan feathers.

A second later, the young man was flat on his back with his knife buried in the carpet just an inch from his throat.

"Jesus," he whispered as he stared up at the demonic creature standing on his chest. "I'm never smoking that shit again!"

I got away from the guy as quickly as I could.

The clocks in the house said 4:40 PM.

Well, the one on the Greg's open laptop actually said 4:40, the DVD said two PM, and the oven said twelve o' clock.

Although I never understood bankers' hours, I respected them. We'd have to hurry.

Not wanting to interrupt Greg's fat people pornography browsing, I opened a new tab on his browser, getting directions to the nearest branch of my bank.

I used a golf pencil to write the directions down on an envelope of an insurance cancellation notice, and we were out the door.

"Um, Cupcake?" I asked.

"Yes, my king?"

"Would you have any objection to flying me over to twelfth street?"

"None whatsoever." She spread her wings in her usual indecent manner. "You just wanted to see me in my underwear, didn't you?"

"Um," I stammered. "It's more like icing on the cake."

I mostly said this to encourage her to fly me to the bank. Mostly.

"Icing! On a Cupcake! I like it!"

It turned out Cupcake had a photographic memory. I guess it comes with the territory. Classic animated storks don't use Mapquest.

We got stared at, but she carried me and Sneezer over the roofs of tobacco stores, used car lots, and those damn tax offices with the guys in Statue of Liberty costumes out front, landing at the Las Vegas Bank of the West.

I told my companions to stay outside, and try not to get into trouble. I suspected all my activities would be on Facebook later, but I wanted to minimize the damage.

I took a seat along the wall facing the only clerk able to handle fraud disputes (as opposed to the tellers, which happened to be abundant), waiting patiently as she showed a skinny geezer with missing teeth how to read his online bank statement and view his stocks.

I worried that they'd continue to ignore me until closing time, but I had faith in the system. No one can occupy a bank chair for more than a minute without being asked if they needed help. That's good and bad.

While I waited, I flickered doodle a few times. People muttered and pointed at me, but I pretended to read a copy of Forbes.

"Can I help you?" The clerk had finished showing the guy how to use the Internet, it seemed.

She reminded me of a high school math teacher. Conservatively dressed, dark skinned, hornrimmed spectacles, sour expression on her face, hair in a tight bun. She was everything I looked for in a banker. I prefer honesty to plastic smiles.

I hurried to her glass topped desk, whipped out my ID, and told her my story.

Okay, not my whole story, but the easy to digest version.

While I was doing this, I changed into a doodle a few more times, but kept serious, thinking serious thoughts until I changed back. I acted as if nothing were wrong. Better check your prescriptions again, Mrs. Jennings, I implied nonverbally.

As I signed the dispute forms, my hand became useless due to becoming Parasaurolophus and staying that way, but I got sad and depressed enough about it that my hand flickered real and I was able to turn the papers in.

The woman stared at me, but I refused to act uncomfortable or nervous. I was determined to repair this blight on my account.

"Has that check gone through yet?" I asked. "The one for the rent?"

Mrs. Jennings frowned at the screen. "I'm sorry, Mr. Deebes. That check already shows a decline."

I sighed. "I guess I'll just have to write another check."

"This is going to sound silly," she said. "But I could almost swear that you look like a dinosaur."

I shrugged. "Maybe I am one...You know, one time a kid I met said I was old because I remembered when Reagan was president."

"No, I mean, like a real dinosaur."

She nodded her head toward the tellers. "You see them pointing?"

I played dumb, glancing over at them. "They're pointing?"

And then, after pretending to think about it for a moment, "You're sure they're pointing at me?"

Mrs. Jennings rubbed her eyes. She looked disturbed, but processed the forms anyway, typing something on the computer. "I think the coffee's wearing off."

After telling me I had a provisional credit on my account, she showed me my online statement to make sure she'd done it right.

I told her it was correct got up, and immediately found my animated jaw dropping to the tile floor.

A shapely young woman with perfect coffee brown skin, short cropped dark hair, dressed in clothing suspiciously similar to my royal bird friend came clopping into the room on her high heeled boots.

I gawked at her plump but visually pleasing facial features, the wide flat nose, forming sort of an odd beak shape, the dark glittering brown eyes...

The chains were real. I heard them jangling around her breasts. The polo appeared to be actually made of the rough Peruvian cotton weave you'd expect one to be made of, likewise the skirt. The gloves and boots seemed to be leather. It was hot.

When I put my jaw back, I found my heart beating out of my chest, and I was making a weird saurian bellow.

She clopped over to me, giving me a coy smile. "Is there a problem?"

The voice. It was unmistakable. "Cupcake?"

"Dolly Madison, actually," she said in a seductive purr.

I chortled. "And all this time, I thought your name had something to do with breast size."

`Dolly' only twisted her lip. "Is it done?"

I nodded. "Did you...drink something?"

She slid her hands down her hips. "Sneezer said you had a thing for noids."

Hearing a chirping sound, she reached into her purse, taking out a phone. "Hold on. I just got a Tweet."

She giggled and typed something.

Was this one of her informants, or just some real life weenie complaining a tiny brained celebrity doing something stupid? I didn't ask, out of politeness.

She put away her phone. "Carlos is waiting for you in the parking lot."

"Carlos?" I said.

"Carlos Queso. You know, your friend."

I stared at her for a moment. "That's okay. I don't really want to know."

I found out anyway.

The moment I turned human and pushed open the glass door, I found myself staring at a little guy that bore a striking resemblance to one of those `Homies' toys you see in certain gumball machines, specifically the `Mousey' one.

The hombre was skinny, with a backwards cap and rodent-like features, but still a man. I would have stared for a moment and passed by without a second thought, had he not been wearing Sneezer's costume, the jacket, slacks and all.

"How'd it go?" he said in Sneezer's voice.

I glanced at him, then at `Dolly.' "You both drank that stuff, didn't you."

Sneezer just shrugged.

"Whatever. Let's go have lunch."

I would have said, `Let's go back to my apartment,' but that implied something I wasn't ready for, even with a suddenly humanized Cupcake.

I would have preferred to go out, but I couldn't afford it, even with provisional credit.

As we stood in the parking lot, the full weight of Cupcake's action struck me. "Cupcake, we're, uh, in for a long walk."

Out in the parking lot, the attractive young woman grunted and wiggled for a few moments, apparently trying to pull the bird stripper routine as a human.

Failing to shred her clothing like the Incredible Hulk, she pulled off her chains, tried it again, and when she failed a second time, she pulled off her top.

"Cupcake. Dolly. You probably shouldn't be doing that in public. There are laws here..."

"It won't matter once we're in the air," she said as she yanked off her skirt. "Plus, I like seeing you squirm."

I had nothing to say to that last comment. She did look very...nice. "All right. Let's hope this works."

As luck would have it, wings actually did pop out of her back. As I stared at her silky blue underwear, cartoon bat wings spread out from behind her.

"You know, I'm not sure this is going to be safe. Maybe you should fly low."

"Definitely," she said. "On the way in, I tripped on a rock and fell on my knee. I'd rather not experience any more pain today."

She stuffed her clothes into her purse, which, though real looking must have had Hammerspace in the bottom, then grabbed me, flapping her wings.

In attempts to keep her afloat, I taught her Three Months To Kill by Hueylin Duvall, School Day by Chuck Berry, and some other mindless songs.

As I directed her to my apartment, her wings fluctuated between leathery horror B-movie bat wings, cartoon wings, and no wings, wherein we remained suspended only by the theme song to The Great Space Coaster. I was rather pleased to defy the laws of physics in the real world for once, instead of having it defy me.

We crash landed on the roof of a McDonald's two blocks from my house. It would have been convenient had I not been broke, and hanging out with a half naked chick. Fortunately for us, the building was as rigid and wooden as their French fries, so we didn't cause any property damage.

Once Cupcake was decently clad, well, the equivalent, we climbed down from the smoking area, hurrying across a busy intersection and down a sidewalk lacking curb to the complex.

I had the keys, but it turned out I didn't need them.

Someone had bashed in my door.

The handle and the locking mechanism had been knocked in so much that it couldn't lock, or even click into the hole to make the door stay closed. Instead, it stayed closed due to the splintery piece hanging askew from the caved in door handle piece. All you had to do was push it in to access the room, and pull the damaged portion snug in the frame to close it again. Not secure at all.

It got worse.

When I walked into my apartment, I found it clean.

Too clean.

My TV was gone.

My computer.

My Amazon Kindle.

My games and game systems.

My radio.

No bills, no paperwork of any kind, no bank statements or checks anywhere.

No trash.

Paradoxically, I also found no trash, the dishes spotless, stacked in my cabinets, my bed made.

It was like I had been robbed by Mary Poppins.

When I thought about reporting this, I slowly began to comprehend the evil of this scheme: No one was ever going to believe that my things were stolen.

On my bed I found an oversized greeting card envelope, tied with a shiny red bow.

Seething at the audacity of this bipolar vandal, I ripped the envelope open, scowling at what I found inside.

`Thank you for your business!' the card said on the outside, beneath a pretentious looking image of a wooden bird.

The interior was blank, save for one brief message, written a neat cursive script.

We're even.

-M.T.

I ripped the card in half, crumpling the pieces in my fists.

"That bitch!" Cupcake cried.

I couldn't help but smirk a little at her appearing to sympathize with my plight. This definitely was a doodle who `got it.'

"Did you say we could have lunch?" Sneezer asked.

My journey to Cool World had happened long before I had a chance to go grocery shopping. I treated my guests to peanut butter sandwiches.

We ate in silence around my little table, staring at each other, I and Sneezer in office chairs some company discarded, Cupcake on the bed, legs under the table. In case you're wondering, from time to time, I have rolled over in my sleep and knocked dishes to the floor.

"I have no checkbook," I said. "Which means I can't write anything to pay the rent."

"Still," Cupcake said. "You disputed the charges. When was your rent due anyway?"

That reminded me to charge the phone.

Unfortunately, `Mary Thievins' had taken my charger too, along with my calendar and my alarm clocks. My microwave was an older model that didn't tell time. Even the stove didn't have one.

I glanced at my phone, its battery now down to one bar. "I got a week."

She smiled. "So you can still make this work!"

That made me feel a little better. "I guess you're right. I think I could even maybe drive to work to get that straightened out."

"That's the spirit!"

I took another bite of my sandwich. "I'm sorry about this. I'd take you somewhere nicer if I wasn't so broke."

"It's okay. I understand. You were robbed." She ate a piece of her own sandwich, pausing for a moment to fight the dry peanut butter down her throat. "I...noticed you've been...treating me differently."

"I...I dunno," I stammered. "I mean, you're real right now..."

"I mean, before that."

"Well, I kinda did feel sorry for you...And you do seem to have matured since we last...met." That wasn't quite the word I wanted to use to describe my visit to bird land, but it was the first one that came to mind. "You work at a bank. A real bank. You obviously know something about the real world and finances or you wouldn't be where you are. And then you help me out...You don't do that diaper thing anymore, do you?"

"No...Did you want me to?"

"Uh, no," I said.

"I thought a lot about that when I was in the Shadow Realm. After that first year alone, I asked myself, `Do I want to please my king, or do I want to spend a life alone, pooping on myself?' I answered, `Although pooping is indeed pleasurable, it does not compare to winning the heart of someone I truly care about.' And so I stopped. Anything to please my king."

"He prefers bird poop on his windows," Sneezer said.

I thought about disagreeing, but instead I said, "That's right. It's better there than in my bed."

Still, probably implied more than I wanted anyway.

I took a deep breath. 'You were crazy before, like all the other doodles, but now you're...professional, for lack of a better word. You get me. I like it."

She turned into a demon bird. "Drew, you flatter me!"

"Uh, as long as you don't let it get to your head, queen."

Cupcake giggled. "We'll have to work on putting the `my' or at least an `oh' in there."

She became human once more.

Once that meager repast was finished, I sat down on the end of my bed, staring at the tidy floor.

The leasing office was already closed, so I couldn't do much about the unwanted packages, or the rent.

I dialed work, but after ringing a few times, the phone died, the screen going black. I tossed it on the carpet.

"You can drive to work tomorrow," she said, pushing me onto my bed. "Let's have some fun."

Sneezer pulled up a chair to watch.

I admit I had thought about it, but I was trying to get myself out of this whole mess, not dig myself in deeper. "I, uh, I'm not sure I want to have that kind of fun yet."

She wrapped her legs around my waist. "Why not? You like me, you like how I look, maybe really really like how I look...It sure feels like it..."

"Cupcake," I protested as she unshackled her top. "Regardless of what I feel about you, I went through a lot of trouble to cure myself. I don't want to mess that up."

"Drew, is being a doodle really all that bad?"

I swallowed. "Somewhat, yes."

"Somewhat," she said, turning into the demon. "That implies that there's some things about being a doodle that you actually like."

"Well, yeah," I admitted.

Just when I thought I found her logical mind refreshing.

She pulled off her top.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but the first thought that came to my mind was, `If I sleep with you, will I grow wings?' I shook my head, forcing myself to be serious, and not stare at her breasts. "Wait. C'mon. I don't want to be like this forever!" And then I turned into a dinosaur and bellowed for emphasis.

I figure if I had stayed a doodle, she may not have had as much fun with me, but, of course, I didn't stay animated for that long. I guessed the side effects would happen a few hours later, or something.

She turned human, rubbing her crotch against me. "How about now?"

"I'm sorry. It's like an STD. Just because I don't see it doesn't mean I can't get infected."

Cupcake frowned, pulling a shiny silver package out of her bra.

"Would this help?"

I stared at her in shock. "Not you too!"

"Don't worry, my king," she said, tearing the package open. "Unlike your French Tickler, this one doesn't actually talk."

I paled. "How did you know about that?"

She gave me a wink. "I am the bird queen."

She undid her skirt, then worked on undoing my shirt buttons. "Don't worry, Drew. Tomorrow we can check with your job, and get you those checks you need."

That's when Carlos Queso stuck a little rectangle of paper printed with my routing and account number in front of my face. "Is this a check?"

I frowned as I examined it.

It was blank.

Well, not blank, signed and blank.

I sat up, accidentally bumping my face into Cupcake's bra.

Ignoring her giggles, I snatched the check out of Sneezer's hands. "Where did you get this!"

"I grabbed it on the way in," he said with a shrug. "Someone stapled a whole bunch of them to a telephone pole."