I am carrying a variety of items on my person: a croquet mallet, a Moroccan star-shaped lantern, a fancy silver satchel, a fire-tool, a pink retro telephone, and Zera is carrying a dream-catcher. All of the objects remind me of my zany, loving family.
"Dude, the skeleton on your back is giving me the willies," Mikey the telephone mumbles from the satchel.
Yes, I'm carrying Dr. Buck as well. I need his spirit to fly back into the cadaver, but I'm sure I have to find Martha first. It was Raphael the lantern and Donatello the Fire-Tool who had suggested I pick up Dr. Buck's skeleton and bring him with us. Just as smart as my real family; I'm glad I have them on my side.
"Zera, please don't get under my feet," I softly ask down at her small, furry body. My answer is a tail swhish and a hiss from her. "If I step on you, I'll hurt you and I have all of these items on me. Put your ears down and stop hissing at me."
The next two rooms resemble more of a warehouse and then Sensei's room from the Lair. The warehouse area has 1980s home décor and graffit that read along the lines of 'your existence gives me diarrhea'. Pleasant, I see.
Casey the mallet crows, "They added this room last year. Something about the mistress of the plantation liking hair bands."
"More precisely," Dream-catcher Splinter warmly adds to the story, "the first born son was an idiot and misunderstood his mother; she had, in fact, said wide lands. She grew to like it, however. I think it looks rather tacky."
April the purse has a complaint. "Could you scratch my bottom left? I can't reach it." It feels awkward to scratch anything remotely related to a woman's 'bottom'.
Sensei's Lair resembles the actual lair except there is a window to the North and sand dunes beyond it. "I want to go sand surfing! Did you know there are people who participate in volcano boarding?" Donatello the Fire-Tool almost leaps out of my grasp, and I'm fumbling a little to get him steady; I always knew Donny had a wild streak.
Zera has a sneezing attack, and we all stop to watch her. I compare it to tossing a cotton-ball into a windstorm. She looks at me when she's finally finished. Or thinks she is. One last sneeze escapes her.
"Better?" I smile. She hunches and shyly rejoins us. It's hard not to just watch her sniff the floor and flap her ears at feeble sounds.
Passing through the third room's corridor, one can see the back door and beyond it, but it's the only light in this new room. "Zera, stay close." She has a habit of wondering off and then squeaking at me to find her in the darkest corner possible.
She does, anyways. Squeaks from my far right. The light from the back door moves further away from us, snatching our only way to escape and possibly find answers. "Zera!" Her squeaks and shrills fade from my hearing, and the darkness is closing in on us.
"ZERA!"
Nothing.
"Speak!" Desperately, I call for the others and balance the skeleton on my shell. It's like I can't grip or hold anything. Slipping, like the light that is completely gone now.
"SPEAK TO ME!"
My voice ricochets in this pipe of obscurity. There is still weight on my arms and back. Are they still here? Have they disappeared like Zera?
"Guys..."
So much emptiness. I walk but there is no foundation. Am I drifting through space? Where is everyone? What kind of spell am I under now? Singing trees, flying walruses, purses that talk, and skeletons who practice psychiatry. Nothing has made sense to me since the flesh-eating mermaid. What is the true shape of this oil painting? Ideas, voices, thoughts, and emotions bleed together. Every time I believe I have wrestled control, my hands remain empty, and I swallow hard.
Where are you? All of you? My real family and friends with their faces full of smiles and curiosity. I've always joked that you're not much but you're all I've got. I've dreamed of climbing mountains and gliding in the halls of Enlightened Men, immersing in fogs of knowledge and philosophy. To become a better leader and teacher. To become a better person.
But, I'm a brother and a son first. I forget this. I forget how much you all mean to me, and that, like now, how no mountain or hall of testament can fill the valley you have created. Why do I bind myself so tightly to you but at the first chance I see, I escape?
The sound vacuum abounds, and my thoughts are hushed. Nowhere. No one. Nothing.
My extinction? …
….. To have perished without spilling my blood. A lonely man's death.
I might have shut my eyes and slumbered. I can't tell. It's all the same. How long have I been dozing? Perhaps just minutes but it's felt like hours. Just floating here, touching the air, is disheartening. No light of any kind or even directionless echoes. Ebony memories. Sometimes I twitch and feel like I'm falling. Anxiety, that I usually shove back with iron knuckles, crawls through my muscles and catches my throat. I can't even speak now. Words dance on my tongue but can't fight through my teeth.
Sealed completely shut in this land of Uncertainty.
"The valley is nice this time of year."
An echo?
"What do you mean we're not much?"
…...hello?
"You speak of no blood spilled. What stories do your scars tell?"
Sensei?
"I look up to you."
You do?
"You fight like a cougar with its eyes on fire!"
Rabbit down the hole...
"If I could choose anyone to protect my back, that person would be you."
…..A fox on the other side. A weak source of light pulsates down by my side.
"Don't go where I can't follow."
As the fading light burns brighter, the answer is clear: I'm not going anywhere but Home!
Zera has a sneezing attack, and we all stop to watch her. I compare it to tossing a cotton-ball into a windstorm. She looks at me when she's finally finished. Or thinks she is. One last sneeze.
"Better?" I smile. She hunches and shyly rejoins us. It's hard not to just watch her sniff the floor and flap her ears at feeble sounds.
Major deja vu. We leave Sensei's room and approach a third one. An outside light dimly shines over a back porch area, and, instinctively, I peer around the room, resembling the inside of a tent with walls flapping and wind zooms, and down at Zera. "Stay close."
She actually listens to me and with no cute, shrilly retorts.
"Straight through the door now," Mallet Casey rolls without a hitch. "Come on! Just a few little steps! Maybe I'll knock someone out!"
"Throw him in the nearest pond," bellows Raph, dimming his glow, "and bury him deep under the floor where even scum-suckers can't find him."
While the winds cane through the interior, humming noises through my head, I stroll through the room and find it harder to concentrate. It feels like I've been asleep and jolted awake. My Mirror Family rattles and jokes with each other, but I'm focused on getting out the back door. It's no longer Underlight outside, either. I have no idea how long a day or night is in this world.
The aroma hits me as soon as I step on the porch: buttery, heavenly. It reminds me that I haven't eaten since the airborne cake incident. I have no time to eat but the smell is divine.
The landscape is lush, green, and trimmed to perfection with gorgeous dots of flowers, white picket fences, and benches to admire the scenery.
It's certainly a nice change, but I must still be on guard.
April sounds excited, too. "If I had legs, I would sunbathe like crazy outside! Look at that sky!"
"Beautiful," Splinter comments and chuckles as Zera tries to scratch at him. "Perhaps I will be off your body soon enough, Lady Zera."
Voices reach my ears, and turning to my left, there are three people sitting at a long table layered with full course meals. I long to grab an apple off it and taste its sweetness. The three people at the table are eye-catching, however: a middle-aged Asian gentleman, a guy in a bandanna and eye-patch, and a huge silver grizzly bear.
Seated on my side of the table, far end, the Asian gentleman knows his table manners. The eye-patch guy looks like he hasn't seen a bath in a few days, but he seems to smile a lot and respond with "arr". A pirate, of course! Like out of a movie. The silver bear is the host and pouring liquid into pitchers.
"That skeleton must be a burden!" asserts the Bear to me, speaking eloquently and keeping his composure. "We would love to have you as a guest for tea. Please join us."
"I like me pickles," Pirate spits and chomps on his favorite food. The drool on his chin isn't entirely hygienic.
Gentleman delicately taps his mouth with a napkin. "You can sit by me. Please leave enough space between us. I'm feeding my porcupine."
He's right. I almost step on his pet. I ask my Mirror Family to calmly wait for my return, and Dr. Buck is placed beside me. His hat keeps drooping to the side, and I finally just let it fall after many attempts to keep it on his head.
"Interesting artifact there," Gentleman chews on a piece of lettuce. "Are you an avid cadaver collector? I know a posh fellow across the river who can network you to an island of people."
"Dirty Marty!" Bear screams and slaps Pirate's hand, or I think it's his hand. It looks like a... burger. "Get your maggots off the table!"
"No love for a sea-faring man and his battle wound!" Dirty Marty held up his burger hand. "I fell in love with a big fish and she had a nice set of shiny teeth."
Visibly annoyed, Gentleman sighs and pushes his plate forward. "I can't eat with all of this commotion. I have a business meeting in two hours and I have to find a caterer and photographer for my daughter's Twenty-Fifth and a Half Party." He scoots his plate back closer to him and continues, "The caterers are always busy with their side ventures. It's so difficult to find an available one and then arrange..."
While he's chattering away about caterers and their moonlighting jobs as hitmen and snorkelers, I get a sharp feeling that something, or someone, is watching me. I peer around the table; no one is looking in my direction, but I can't shake it. Suddenly, I feel a light brush against my ankle, and when I raise the tablecloth, a pair of tiny black orbs are twinkling at me. I mouth "hi" to her and Zera sniffs at my knees and then crouches so she can leap on me. I give her enough room to do so, and she's in my lap before I can blink.
I'm thinking that she wants to be around me, but her nose vacuums the table and she delicately snatches a cookie. Nibbles on it and spreads crumbs all over me. I don't mind.
"Speaking of pickles," drums the Bear and takes his seat at the head of the table, "I see that your perky furry friend has fallen under Ms. Martha's curse."
I snap to attention. "Do you know how to break it?"
"How soon you forget your acquaintances." A grin stretches across his large muzzle. Dirty Marty flips a coin in the air and it taps Gentleman on the head.
Zera squeaks and steals another cookie while my heart skips a turn. "Dr. Buck?" I casually glance at his old skeleton beside me before turning back to his new form. "You're a bear now?"
"I think silver is a nice look on me."
"Indeed, it is."
"And I can cook easier in this body. The fur catches on fire, but nothing a little dunk in the river won't clear up."
Gentleman shatters the pleasant moment by poking Pirate in the head with a golden rod. What I think is going to be a fight changes into Dirty Marty and Gentleman breaking into maniacal laughter. Extremely unnerving and pretty pointless. Inside joke, I realize.
Dr. Buck the Bear chuckles along with the two and sips from his pitcher. "Martha's spell is harmless. Simply learn the Hedgecock Incantation and your friend will be back to normal."
I know better than to think anything is simple in this world. "The Incantation takes how long to learn, my knowledgeable acquaintance?"
Flapping open a pink newspaper, Bear answers like I've asked what he's reading. "Ten years, give or take. Take more if you're slow like Dirty Marty and you have a rock for a brain."
Right on cue, Dirty Marty flashes all of his wooden teeth at me. Zera flies off my lap and disappears under the table. Dirty Marty croaks, "That big fish, arr! She be a nympho mermaid. Many a sailor want to rattle her fin. Watch out for her teeth! She ate me hand and then threw it back at me."
Gentleman sniffs his drink. "Where did you get the cheeseburger replacement? Out of CorkFoot, down by Eight Groves?"
"Me cousin owns a cafe. He owes me from saving his tail from the Lucs."
During their conversation, I search for Zera, but I don't want to leave the table. The pirate's talk of a mermaid with teeth captures my attention and I stand up immediately! "Mermaid with teeth? Where did you meet her?"
Dirty Marty's eyes overcast with deception. "For a small fee, I can happily tells ya. But you might want to gets some protective clothing or your nads will end up in her throat."
Bear mumbles, "Oh my," just as numerous little splashes sound from the distance. Before the party hosts can stand from their seats, I'm already in front of the tiny pond and glancing down at a normal-sized, drenched Zera … with a goldfish thrashing out of her mouth.