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Chapter 5: Housework
"Absolutely not!" Stated the purple wraith-like creature who was now in front of Doopliss.
"But Beldam," whined the Duplighost, "I need a job. Please! You guys have loads of money!" Doopliss then mumbled to himself, "Come to think of it, I have no idea how that's possible..." he then turned back to Beldam. "But it doesn't matter! I need a job. Oh yeah. And this guy, too." He gestured to Fawful.
"I'm sorry, Freak-in-a-Sheet, but you're not one of us anymore." Beldam crossed her arms, looking sour. "So you can't get a job with us. You up and left as soon as Mario defeated the Shadow Queen, so we like to consider you something of a traitor."
Doopliss flailed as he tried to explain his point of view to the Shadow Siren. "It wasn't my fault! It was...someone else's fault! Yeah! Come on! When have I ever asked you for a favor before?"
"Hmmm," Beldam said, pretending to think, "How about the time you asked to become one of the Shadow Sirens?"
Doopliss screamed.
"I am wanting the jobness!" Fawful declared, despite the fact that no one was listening. He often declared things when no one was listening, actually.
Beldam pointed at Fawful. "And you! If I need someone to run around screaming unintelligible sentences, I'll get back to you!"
Doopliss got down on his knees with some difficulty, considering the fact that he didn't really have knees. "Please, Beldam! I'll be your loyal servant! I'll clean your house and do your errands and cater to your every useless, demeaning whim!"
Beldam turned to Marilyn and Vivian, whom she had not yet given the chance to speak up. "I don't know. What do you think, girls?"
After her adventure with Mario, Vivian had rejoined her sisters and was now on good terms with them. She remembered what Doopliss had done to her traveling partner, but she also knew that Doopliss had cut down on his habit of turning citizens of Twilight Town into pigs. "I think you should give them a job. We should definitely help anyone who's down on their luck."
Beldam looked annoyed, but refrained from saying anything to Vivian. Instead, she addressed Marilyn. "And what do you think, Marilyn? After all, you have a right to express you opinions as well."
"GUH!"
"Respond properly, you great idiot!" Beldam had obviously wanted Marilyn to dismiss the idea of employing Fawful and Doopliss. "I swear! I'm in a house full of people who act like talking is the most complicated thing in the world!" She then shook her head, sighed, and turned back to Doopliss. "Fine. I'll give you and that moronic friend of yours ONE chance. If either of you mess up even once, you're out of here before you can even beg for your obviously undeserved forgiveness."
Doopliss hopped up, regaining his composure almost immediately. "Don't worry, Beldam. I've got this all under control! Got a little dirt on the windows? No problem. I've got cleaning skills that are unmatched." He suddenly trailed off, appeared to think for a bit, and then blurt out, "so how much ya payin' us, Beldy?"
Hearing this, Vivian slapped a hand over her face and Marilyn cringed slightly.
However, Beldam just smiled in a way that she thought was sweet. "You will each be getting six coins per hour, to be paid at the end of each day." Her expression suddenly became ominous. "And if I hear one word of complaint, I'm reducing that amount!"
Doopliss did his best not to utter several dozen complaints, and simply nodded. "Of course. Six coins should be...sufficient." Sadly, six coins happened to be minimum wage. That meant that Ms. Jolene had been paying him below minimum wage, which made Doopliss rather annoyed.
At that point, Fawful bounced happily over to Beldam, who was just about to scream at Doopliss for the heck of it. "I am getting the coins of sixness also? I am having the wantingness of the coins to be completing the mission of the paying back of-"
Beldam cut him off, as people often did. "Shut up. I don't care why you want the money. I really don't. The answer is 'yes.' I'll pay you to wait on my every beck and call. Now. First thing's first. Listen up, you two." She gestured to the living room of the house that she shared with her sisters. Said house was located on the outskirts of Twilight Town, and they had moved in not long after the Shadow Queen had been defeated. "I want this room spotless."
"Of course," Doopliss began, "I'm the master of many talents, so this shouldn't be a-"
"Glad to hear it," Beldam replied, getting steadily more irritated by the duplighost, "but let me elaborate. You didn't think you'd get away with cleaning just one room, did you? Well, I'm sorry to say that you're about to be sorely disappointed. I want every room in the house completely dirt-free." In reality, Beldam was actually doing this to try and get Fawful and Doopliss to quit. "That includes each of our bedrooms, the bathroom, and the attic. Oh, and if there are boos in the attic...just ignore them. They came from the Creepy Steeple down the road, and I'm somehow starting to get the impression that they have a grudge against you, Doopliss. Something about locking them in a box..."
Oh yeah, Doopliss thought rather nervously, I remember that. Those boos were hindering my greatness, so I locked them up. He made a sound that bore some resemblance to the sound of air leaking out of a tire. Come to think of it, everyone was hindering his greatness lately. Beldam was doing an awfully good job of it at the moment. "Don't worry about a thing," Doopliss replied, trying to keep from severely increasing the volume of his voice, "I'll be able to handle it. No prob!"
"Hmm. Yes, well," began Beldam doubtfully. She seemed to change her mind about continuing to talk to Doopliss, and turned to Fawful instead. "You'll being doing something different, though."
"WHAT?" Doopliss' rage multiplied ten-fold. Now the old hag was saying that he wouldn't even be getting any help with the massive cleaning job!
Beldam ignored him. "You're going to make dinner for my sisters and I. How does that sound?"
"I am not knowing how to-" began Fawful.
"You better be 'knowing how to,'" Beldam responded sweetly, "Or you'll not be 'obtaining your moneyness' anytime soon. Here. I'll show you to the kitchen." With that, Beldam took Fawful by the collar and began dragging him towards his work station.
Doopliss began ranting to himself as soon as Beldam had left. "I CAN'T believe that she would treat a former member of the Shadow Sirens like that! When will she understand that I'm not to be treated as a doormat! I should just up and quit! That would show her! She wouldn't be able to be graced with my presence anymore if I did that!"
"Yeah, she can be kind of cruel at times," Vivian said. She and Marilyn had been there the whole time, listening to Doopliss complain.
Meanwhile, Beldam was giving Fawful a rather 'abbreviated' tour of the kitchen. "That's the refrigerator. It has food in it. Make something good, or you're not getting paid." She pointed to the oven. "That's the oven. It cooks the food. Are you getting all of this?"
Fawful had been staring at something on the floor, but quickly turned his attention back to Beldam. "I am having the understanding! I will be making the foodness of much taste! You will be enjoying the foodness which I am having the preparing of!"
Beldam stared, realizing that having this weirdo and her food in the same room was probably one of the biggest mistakes of her life. It was too late for that now, though. If he messed up, it was just one more excuse to get both him and Doopliss fired. After all, she held the duplighost directly responsible for anyone that he might drag into her home. "Yes, yes. Whatever you say. Have our dinner ready by six o'clock tonight. It's only one-thirty now, so you should have plenty of time. Make sure it's enough for three, and make sure it's good. Marilyn, Vivian, and I are going out on some... 'errands,' so I'll trust that you don't make a mess of anything." With that, the Shadow Siren turned to leave. However, she said one more thing before she went. "Well, at least make sure that dinner's not terrible"
Fawful watched Beldam leave, and then began to muse to himself about how he going to make the best meal in the known history of the world, despite the fact that he had no experience whatsoever. "I am making the food of much greatness!" He stated, opening the refrigerator and getting out an assortment of random products. These products included, but weren't limited to, several mushrooms, cheese, a dozen eggs, vinegar, a coconut, olives, pickles, salsa, and chocolate syrup. He then looked around for a little and located flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and a strange brown substance that looked rather like it had been found in a lake. Fawful stared at all of this for awhile, and then said, "And yet I am still not knowing the order in which to be putting these together."
Meanwhile, Doopliss had already begun to clean, but was getting distracted so often that he really hadn't made all that much progress. He kept seeing things that looked rather breakable and rather expensive, and was wondering how much he could make off of them if he sold them somewhere. "Or is I broke them," he wondered aloud. He dropped his feather duster in order to examine a particularly ornate vase. "Hmmm..." he said, "I wonder how ol' Beldy can afford this type of thing? And why she would want it! This is probably the ugliest expensive object that I've ever seen!" He poked the vase, trying to see how hard he would have to tap if for it to fall over. It was a stupid thing to do, but it didn't really matter anyway. The vase didn't budge. "Well, I guess that I'll have to be real careful in this room. Darn. I hate being careful."
In the kitchen, Fawful had gotten out a huge bowl and was now pouring all the items he had found into it. "This is being for the textureness," he said as he added the mushrooms, flour, and a whole coconut. He then dumped in the pickles, vinegar, and cheese into the concoction, exclaiming about how they were for flavor. He put the rest off to one side, saying "These are being the toppingness !" With that, he placed the bowl of random foods into the oven, and set it to cook at an alarmingly high temperature for about four hours. Convinced that he was finished, Fawful then went to look for Doopliss to tell him of the amazing news.
Doopliss was in Beldam's room. He had actually managed to do a slipshod job of cleaning up the rooms of the other two Shadow Sirens, as well as the family room. He had just accidentally vacuumed up a coin, and was now sorting through the vacuum bag. He was making a big deal out of just one coin because he figured that Beldam would notice even the smallest thing that either he or Fawful did wrong. "I can't believe she would just leave a coin out like that for the world to see!" As always, the duplighost figured that nothing he did could be wrong. Everyone else was always in the wrong, unless they agreed with him. In that case, they would be in the right. He continued sifting through the vacuum bag, getting increasingly annoyed. "Coins aren't even that small! I swear, I don't even know how that coin fit in the vacuum! My greatness will not allow this kind of misbehavior from a machine such as this!" Sadly, Doopliss was now spilling dust all over the floor.
"I AM HAVING THE FINISHEDNESS OF THE COOKINGNESS!"
The duplighost jumped up in surprise, upsetting the vacuum bag all over Beldam's floor. He glared angrily at Fawful, who apparently felt the need to announce things in as loud a voice as possible. "That's real swell, slick! So did you make them a good dinner? I'm telling' ya that it better be good, or I'm gonna have to oust you outta this house before Beldam and her lackeys even come home!"
"I am using the book of recipes to be making the food," lied Fawful, "It is going to be having the taste of much niceness!"
Doopliss was a bit relieved by the fact that Fawful had apparently used a cookbook to make dinner for the Shadow Sirens. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he looked. "Good for you, buddy. Isn't there something else you could be doing? Other than bothering me, that is?"
Fawful shook his head. "I am having nothing to be doing. Can I be helping you with the cleaningness?"
Doopliss didn't even have to think about his answer to this question. "Of course you can help me!" He somehow pointed to the vacuum bag, forgetting all about the coin that had gotten stuck inside. "You can start by cleaning that up. Yeah. That sounds like a good plan, now doesn't it? I'll just go ahead to another room to see what I can do about - you know - cleaning up." With that, the duplighost sauntered off, in fact looking for more valuable items that he might be able to kidnap and sell later. If he got fired, he would be sure to take a few "souvenirs" with him.
Fawful just couldn't figure out the vacuum. He had even tried prodding it, but that certainly hadn't worked. He had gotten as far as zipping up the vacuum bag and had even flipped the switch. Sadly, he had never checked to see if the vacuum was plugged in. So, instead of vacuumingup the dust, Fawful just kind of spread it around the room. He then trotted out into the hallway, and then into the bathroom.
The bathroom itself was fairly clean already, except for a few spots here and there. This seemed to give Fawful the idea that it would be an easy cleaning job. He began to look under the sink for a cleaning agent and just succeeded in spilling shampoo all over the once-clean floor. Needless to say, the shampoo happened to be Vivian's. The other two Shadow Sirens mad it a habit not to use shampoo. Fawful surveyed the shampoo-coated floor. "I am now having the needingness to be removing the project of hygiene which is being on the floor!" With that, he climbed up onto the sink and opened the medicine cabinet. Sadly, there were no cleaning agents in it. There was only...medicine.
Fawful suddenly caught sight of a piece of paper wedged in between two medicine bottles and took it out. He then hopped off of the sink, avoiding the shampoo. The paper turned out to be a brochure for some place called "Isle Deflino." The front cover had a whole bunch of Piantas on it. Fawful read some of the inside, looking at an advertisement for Bianco Hills. It read, Please enjoy the peaceful Bianco Hills, which includes a Pianta village with a welcoming attitude towards tourists and absolutely no Piranha plants on top of windmills.
Fawful threw this aside, and it was sucked down into the depths of the shampoo. He immediately began searching once again for cleaning products under the sink, and spotted something he had not noticed before: a large bottle of bleach. "This is being of much goodness! I will be doing the cleaning, and I will be earning the moneyness to be paying back Cackletta, and Cackletta will be accepting me with much happiness!" He declared triumphantly. At this, he proceeded to pour the entire gallon of bleach onto the floor of the bathroom, not noticing as it began to leak out into the carpeted hallway.
Doopliss, meanwhile, was heading up to the attic. "I bet the old hag keeps something really valuable up here!" He muttered knowingly to himself, "that 'boos from the Creepy Steeple are up there' story was obviously her way of trying to keep me from taking all her precious stuff! She knows me too well, but she should know better than to think she can lay one over me that easily!" The duplighost laughed mischievously as he opened the door to the attic. "Beldam must feel so threatened by how amazing I am that she has to resort to lying! How sad! That's so pathetic that-"
"BOO!"
Doopliss shrieked and wheeled around, scrabbling for the door. It was too bad that it had already closed behind him and locked. The duplighost then slowly turned around, giving the boo that was now floating in front of him an irritated, yet somehow smug, expression. "So, what do you want, slick? Why don't you go haunt somewhere else, or something?"
The boo pretended to think about it for a second and then said, "You know what? How 'bout I don't?"
Another boo appeared next to the one that had been talking. "Hey! Aren't you the jerk who locked us in a box?"
"I believe he is," the first boo said, and then turned back to Doopliss. "Do you know what we do to people who lock us in boxes?"
Doopliss began edging his way along the side of the room, trying to inconspicuously look for the key to the door. "You...let them go with a warning?"
The boo chuckled. "You always were a clever one, weren't you, Doopliss?"
Doopliss gave him a strange look. "Well, you know how us big stars are. We're naturally witty."
Both boos ignored him, and the first one began talking again. "Sadly for you, we believe in the policy of giving people a taste of their own medicine."
Doopliss stared. "Which means you're going to lock me in a box?"
"Precisely."
"Hmm...yeah," Doopliss said carelessly, "I don't think so."
"But we do," the second boo informed him, "and you can't exactly prevent it, now can you? You're locked in."
Doopliss considered his options, still looking for the key. He wasn't sure if the boos were actually capable of locking him in a box, but he didn't really care to find out. He didn't enjoy the prospect of being locked in a box. It somehow presented itself to him as being rather distasteful. Finally, he got an idea. He rather thought that it was quite an impressive idea, no less. "HEY WEIRD GUY WHO TALKS FUNNY!" He yelled, hoping Fawful would hear him, "GET UP HERE RIGHT NOW BEFORE I HAVE TO COME DOWN AND DRAG YOU MYSELF!"
Fawful heard Doopliss' shriek, and yelled, "I am making the comingness!" With that, he left the bleach bottle, a sponge, and the growing pool of combined bleach and shampoo where it was, and followed Doopliss' voice to the attic. He opened the door, and the duplighost came flying out.
Doopliss slammed the door behind him and tripped his way down the stairs, Fawful following close behind him.
"What are you having the need of?" Fawful asked, watching Doopliss fall on his face. He kept staring until Doopliss got up.
"Nothing." Doopliss replied nonchalantly, "I just wanted you to unlock the door. Good job, slick. Are ya done cleaning yet, or what?"
"I am completing the job of the cleaningness with much haste!" Fawful looked ecstatic about this.
Doopliss was suddenly doubtful. "You don't say? You think I can check it out, then? Gotta make sure ya did a good enough job, ya know..." Doopliss began walking towards the bathroom, his pace quickening as he approached it. When he saw the bathroom, he stopped dead. For awhile, he just watched the shampoo-and-bleach-mix happily make it's way onto the carpet. After the initial shock, Doopliss screamed, flailed, and dashed for the cabinet underneath the sink. There, he found a roll of paper towels. Wadding up paper towel after paper towel, he began to coax the shampoo-bleach away from the carpet, which had once been red. There were now hideous white blotches all over it. "Great," Doopliss stated dully, "Just great." He suddenly turned to Fawful accusingly as he dried he floor with an immense wad of paper towels. "What the heck is wrong with you! Are you possibly able to handle any type of real-life situation? I swear! It's completely pathetic that-" Doopliss stopped short and stood still.
"What is being wrong?" questioned Fawful.
"What is that smell?" Doopliss asked, not really wanting to know what the smell was, but somehow having to know. "It's coming from the kitchen." He turned to Fawful and said in an over-polite voice, "You know what that smells like? It smells like burning food. You know what it better not be? It better NOT be burning food!" The enraged duplighost rushed into the kitchen, afraid of what he would see.
Smoke billowed out of the oven as Fawful's "amazing meal" burned into an "amazing crisp." Doopliss opened the oven and started hacking as the smoke billowed out.
"I will be putting it out! Do not be worrying!" Fawful declared. However, since he couldn't find a fire extinguisher within five feet of himself, he just stood there and watched Doopliss. Besides, the food wasn't really on fire at the moment. It had been a few seconds ago, but now it was just sending smoke to the far corners of the room.
Doopliss fanned the smoke away and stared at the "food." It wasn't food at all. It was a large hunk of something black and crusty that was sitting in the bowl that was supposed to contain dinner for the Shadow Sirens. The duplighost picked up the bowl and shoved it towards Fawful. "What is this! Tell me what you see here! Tell me!"
Fawful examined the contents of the bowl. "It is being burned," he said observantly. "It is being possible that it was having the cookingness for too long."
"Ya THINK!" Doopliss exclaimed, completely not surprised that Fawful could be this stupid. He had the strange feeling that a cookbook had not been involved after all. "Throw this away and I'll fix something else! You go hide the bleach stains some - on second though, just stand right here where I can see you in case you spontaneously decide to do something stupid." The duplighost spotted several eggs that Fawful hadn't used, and picked them up. "Now watch the master cook at work. I'll bet you haven't seen talent like this in a while. In fact, I'm sure you've never seen talent like this before!"
Fawful watched as Doopliss made three omelets, accidentally spilling liquid soap into the pan. "You are being right. I have never been seeing talent that is being like that before."
Doopliss shrugged. "Maybe they won't notice the difference. After all, it's just soap. It'll give a clean taste."
Suddenly, the front door opened. Both Fawful and Doopliss stared in semi-horror as the Shadow Sirens came into the house. They werethirty minutesearly.
Beldam was sounding particularly irritated when she came in. "Well, that went horribly! Our errands didn't even get close to being finished, and aside from that, my day was still ruined! I swear, if we bump into that Crump guy one more time, I'll have to throw him off the face of the earth!"
"Oh, don't be too harsh on him," Vivian told her sister, despite the fact that she herself had something against him.
"I don't want to hear anything from you!" Spat Beldam, coming dangerously close to treating Vivian as she used to. "You're the reason he follows us around like that! He fancies you, I think!"
Neither Vivian nor Marilyn had anything to say to this.
"The house better be clean and the food better be ready!" Beldam called from the living room, sounding angry. Her temper was particularly short after the day's events, apparently.
The three Shadow Sirens came into the kitchen and somehow sat down at the table.
Beldam spotted Doopliss and Fawful, and was also glad to see that the table was already set. It was really a surprise that they could do anything right at all. "So?" she asked expectantly, "where's dinner? I'm not paying you two to stand around all day like idiots, you know."
"Cool yer jets, Beldy," Doopliss called nonchalantly, taking their plates one at a time and putting the soap-omelets on them. He brought Vivian's first, and was really starting to dread the reaction that they would have when they tasted that extra ingredient.
Vivian was the first to try Doopliss' amazing cooking. She slowly took a bite, chewed, made a face, and then put on a fake smile. "Why, it's...interesting! That's really something, you know? The only thing it needs is a little salt..." The Shadow Siren reached across the table and, in doing, so, managed to knock all three omelets on the ground.
Beldam stared, and then exploded. "VIVIAN! How could you be so careless! You do realize that I expect you to make something else for us to eat after that little display, don't you!" Maybe the Shadow Siren really had started to revert back to her usual harsh treatment of Vivian.
Vivian lowered her head and nodded.
Doopliss stared at this scene, silently thanking Vivian for something he believed she had done on purpose.
Fawful, meanwhile, was heading back to the bathroom to try and hide the bleach stains, despite the fact that Doopliss had told him not to. "I am having to hide the stainess," he said to himself, "for if I am being without the jobness, I am not being able to be paying back the coins!"
However, Beldam saw where he was heading and quickly followed him. Vivian followed after both of them.
When Beldam saw the bleach stains, she was both angry and ecstatic at the same time. Finally, she had a chance to fire this weirdo and that idiot duplighost. "I see that you ruined my carpet," she said in her usual irritated tone, "Now, what was it I said again about messing up even once? Oh yes. You're fired."
"Wait!" Vivian called to her sister. She had felt sorry for both Doopliss and Fawful, so she really didn't want them fired. "I did that! I spilled the bleach right before we left, but I forgot to tell you. So don't fire them. It was my fault."
"Well, this is a surprise," Beldam stated, sounding rather suspicious. "In that case, you'll have to find a way to either replace our carpet, or clean this up, won't you?"
Fawful, at this point, had gotten that Vivian was taking the blame for everything that he and Doopliss had messed up on. And he then remembered that there was one room that hadn't been cleaned. He stood near Vivian, and began gesturing upwards, wondering if she would get the point.
Apparently, she did. She turned to Beldam, who apparently hadn't noticed Fawful's wild gesturing. "I think I left something in the attic," she said, "I have to go and look for it, okay?" With that, she left to go upstairs.
By the time that Beldam checked every room in the house to make sure they were clean, Vivian had already finished all of the housework required in the attic. Beldam hadn't even seemed to notice the dust that Fawful had spread across her room, probably because Vivian had come in directly before Beldam had come in and swept it all under the bed.
Later that night, Beldam faced Doopliss and Fawful, looking more irritated than ever. She was extremely sore at having not been able to fire either of them. Nonetheless, she handed them each their pay. "You both get twenty-four coins for your services today. I don't care where you two go tonight, as long as it's not near me." She turned to leave, but then addressed Doopliss one last time. "Next time, I'll catch you in the act. I'll make sure of that."
Doopliss nodded cheerfully at Beldam, and then shuddered when she left. "That's one creepy hag."
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A/N: Yes! Chapter 5 is complete. I'm sorry that the whole chapter took place in Beldam's house. I'll definitely have them go somewhere else in Chapter 6. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. As always, don't be afraid to R&R.