NescaFrodo and the Stairs of Insanity
With special recognition to The Princess Bride

After leaving Faramocha, the half-caff's found their guide again rather easily. Gulp'um was sitting in the road, waiting for them. Sanka and Gulp'um exchanged their usual greeting; death-threats and sarcasm. NescaFrodo intervened before blood was actually shed.

"Why can't we just get along?" asked NescaFrodo. Sanka and Gulp'um gnashed their teeth a little at each other behind his back. They then headed on toward the mountains ahead where a bank of fog or smoke hung, and a strange odor came wafting in the wind. It was not unlike burned olive oil.

After a while, NescaFrodo began to wish that Sanka and Gulp'up would start fighting again. They were driving him nutty. In an attempt to find peace between them, he had (foolishly) suggested that they play a game, and since Gulp'um was dislezic and Sanka was tired of NescaFrodo winning all the time at Highway Scrabble using triple-point Elvish words, they had chosen instead to play Rhymes. Now every time NescaFrodo spoke, each of his companions offered a phrase in response. NescaFrodo tried hard not to speak unnecessarily.

They walked through the gloom of night into the gloom of day. No sun rose that could pierce the noxious fog that had thickened as they neared the dark valley. NescaFrodo paused in the road and turned to Gulp'um.

"Do you know where we are?" he asked.

"The Morgul Bistro iss not far," answered Gulp'um.

"I hope they have a 'tater bar," said Sanka. Gulp'um hissed at Sanka.

NescaFrodo said to Sanka, "How much food do we have left?"

"Not much... um, my backpack is easier to heft," said Sanka after a moment. He smiled. 'That should stump the old slinker!' he thought.

Gulp'um leered at him. "We'll finds no more inside the cleft." Sanka stuck out his tongue at Gulp'um.

NescaFrodo sighed. This trip was just getting longer and longer. At least they weren't arguing anymore. "Which way do we go from here? Is that the opening to the Dead Restaurant, away over there beyond that black mass?"

"That is the opening to the ssecret pass," confirmed Gulp'um with a smirk at Sanka.

"I'd do anything for some chips and grilled bass," said Sanka, rubbing his stomach.

NescaFrodo hefted his backpack and began walking, rolling his eyes heavenward. We wondered, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, if he was going to get Optical Strain Syndrome from all the times he had rolled his eyes during this epic. Sanka and Gulp'um followed, stepping on each other's heels.

A long tilted valley, a deep gulf of shadow, ran back far into the mountains. Upon the further side, some way within the valley's arms, high on a rocky seat upon the black knees of Ephel Gúlash, stood the booths and buffet of the Morgul Bistro. All was dark about it, earth and sky, but it was lit with eerie green neon, advertising the Special of the Day, (or 'Sloppe d'jour' in the black speech). On a signpost beside the road, a board exclaimed,

"Welcome to the Morgul Bistro,
Restaurant and Karaoke Bar!
No Skin, No Sinew, No Service!"

Gulp'um whispered, trembling with terror, tugging at their cloaks, "This iss it! Follow uss, and be very, very quiet!"

"We don't want to start a riot," mumbled Sanka. NescaFrodo flicked his tufted ear with a finger, grinning a little in spite of himself.

But as they neared the dread restaurant, NescaFrodo's humour failed him. The coffee-ring became heavy on him, dragging him to the ground like a holiday fruitcake. The fumes of singed oil and overcooked pasta make his head dizzy.

They came to the bridge at last. Across the span, littered with olive pits and spoiled pepperoni rose the Bistro, and the thick fog of cooking saturated the air. Empty booths and tables stood here and there, with wilting flowers drooping on each next to a soggy menu. From where they stood, across the bridge they could see the dessert display, leaking an ill-smelling fog of Freon and stale chocolate.

NescaFrodo felt his senses reeling and his mind darkening. Then suddenly, as if some force were at work other than his own will, he began to totter forward, arms outstretched like the monster in a bad Frankenstein film.

Gulp'um had a mild heart attack, and Sanka ran forward and grabbed NescaFrodo and hauled him back, before he could place an order.

"Not that way!" said Gulp'um in a panicked squeal. There was movement in the restaurant, and several horc were peeking out of the kitchen door to discover what was making all the noise. "Now we musst climb! There iss the stairses! Up them we must go quickly; we hears some gobblings croaking!"

NescaFrodo raised his eyes, and then he tilted back his head, and still the stairs climbed before him, up, up, and up the mountain, as if they had been pained on the stone by M.C. Escher. He kept looking up and raising his eyes until he toppled right over onto his back, in the middle of the road.

"You have got to be joking!" NescaFrodo mumbled.

Gulp'um giggled in spite of his fear, his hands clasped tight over his mouth. "Masster makes a rhymeses!"

Sanka dragged NescaFrodo out of the road. The lights in the Bistro had begun to flicker ominously. He helped his master sit up.

NescaFrodo shook his head. "Gulp'um! Say you're not serious! Whoever made these stairs was crazy!"

Sanka squinted upward through puckered eyes, "Climbing them will be no daisy."

"I'll beat you to the top, 'cause you're fat and lazy," muttered Gulp'um.

"Enough! I'll climb, I'll climb! But I don't want to hear another rhyme!" NescaFrodo began to draw himself up the stairs.

In whispers that their master pretended not to hear, there came the two dreaded responses:

"Sheesh! It's not as if we committed a crime..."

"Smeagolatté thinks we best calls a truces for some time..."