"…You sure you can't get it here any faster? Oh...oh, okay…thank you very much for your help…bye."
Frances "Frankie" Foster hung up her cell phone, took one glance at the little boy sitting right at her side, and immediately elicited a long, aggravated groan.
It wasn't as though she usually found Mac's presence itself to be a major annoyance, however. In all reality, when it came right down it, in most situations she'd gladly prefer the company of her charge to most others.
Despite this, at this particular moment Frankie found it almost impossible to be severely exasperated; after all, most days they didn't often find themselves hopelessly glued at the wrists.
"Hey, what're you looking at me for?" Mac snapped testily. "I warned you to be careful with the model glue!"
Frankie automatically grew flushed as she embarrassedly averted her gaze.
"I know, I know." She confessed as she writhed about uncomfortably under his harsh glower. "Mac, do you honestly think I wanted some bonding time, I meant it this literally?"
While her raging blush intensified until to the point where her skin and fiery crimson hair became nearly indistinguishable, the normally good-natured child found himself unable to fight off pangs of guilt for the torment he was putting her through. Hastily, Mac wiped away his glare and replaced it with a weary frown.
"I'm sorry, Frankie," he apologized sincerely as her patted her knee. "I'm sorry, it's just…well…"
He pointed to the top of his wrist just below the back of his right hand, which currently lay firmly attached to the young woman's left wrist.
"I know, I know…" Frankie murmured. "I understand, it's kinda hard not to be mad when we're…y'know…"
Mac nodded wordlessly, and for a few moments they sat quietly as a long, painfully awkward silence descended upon them.
"So…how long is this gonna last?" the boy whimpered. Frankie just moaned, which as expected, did woefully little to alleviate his worries.
"Well, the company who makes the glue told me that they also make a solution that should do the trick…unfortunately, the earliest they can get it to us is in two days, and-"
Rather than explode into a fierce outrage over the sheer injustice of it all, Mac took the horrific news oddly calmly, and if anything was only wearied by the bad news.
"I knew you were going to say something like that," he groaned. "I knew it."
"Oh, lighten up." Frankie admonished. "C'mon, you know just as well as I do that we've been through worse than this."
"But during the 'Funny Bunny' Incident, were we stuck to Mr. Herriman for forty-eight hours straight?" Mac grumbled sourly. "OW!"
"Cut the sass, mister." Frankie scolded sternly as she pinched his ear. "Attitude like that isn't going to get us anywhere."
"Frankie, we're glued at the wrist!" Mac reminded her grumpily. "I told you, it's a little hard to keep cool when-"
"Will you knock it off with the drama?" she implored. "Mac, c'mon! If we're gonna get through this, we can't be at each others throats like mad dogs! Either we buck up and work together to try and learn to cope with this for the next two days, or …Mac? You okay?"
Much to her befuddlement, the child had somehow gone through a most radical transformation. In less than a moment, all his bitter anger had vanished into a thin air as his face suddenly began to pale rapidly and his expression became foully distorted with unspeakable terror.
"Mac?" Frankie continued to inquire worriedly. "Pal? What's wro-"
"How do we go to the bathroom?" Mac managed to whisper hoarsely.
The second she understood the most hideous of conundrums that they now had on their hands, the color abruptly drained from the redheaded caretaker's face as her jaw nearly plummeted to the floor. For a few moments, the terror-stricken duo nearly resembled a pair of ghosts as they unblinkingly stared wordlessly into each other's bulging eyes.
After what felt like an unbearably agonizing eternity of the terrible silence, Mac took a hard gulp before attempting to reluctantly suggest in a low murmur,
"I…I-I guess that one can just look away while the other-"
Before he could finish, Frankie clamped a hand tightly over his mouth and hissed defiantly, "Don't you dare even think about it."
Mac had never before in his life willingly ignored nature's call for ten hours straight and counting. Unfortunately, he had now learned the hard way precisely why most rational human being undertook such an unreasonably painful endeavor.
To say simply that he needed to use the little boys room would hardly have done justice in describing the torment he was going through; the child felt as if someone was mercilessly squeezing his bladder in a red-hot vice grip and increasing the excruciating pressure with every passing second. As he fought bravely to try and keep his mind off his agony, Mac bounced up and down inadvertently where he sat upon the couch, as if he was in the midst of a massive earthquake.
Frankie was in no position to gripe about his incessant squirming, or even notice it for that matter considering her discomfort was just as severe, possibly more. The young woman wasn't quite sure, and didn't exactly care; all she knew was that someone could've forced her face-first inside an industrial furnace and the torture wouldn't be a quarter as unbearable as what she felt at that very moment. As the pressure began to actually force her to break out into a sweat, Frankie rubbed her bare knees together and chewed so hard upon her lower lip it seemed like she was about to bite the entire thing clean off any second.
There the two sat upon the TV room sofa, wriggling about in an agony no master poet in any language could possibly even come remotely close to describing. Earlier, that had managed to distract themselves by tending to the lanky caretaker's chores. Unfortunately, their success there had been limited at best, for since Mac had no choice but to be there to help her with every duty, they had managed to accomplish quite a hefty list in only half the time it would've taken Frankie to accomplish it all on her own. Although a profoundly bemused Mr. Herriman had tried to acquiesce to their pleas and find them more busywork, there were only so many rooms in the house that had to be dusted, and so many floors to be swept and mopped.
At the moment, it looked as if the Victorian mansion had never been lived in, and every filth-free room practically sparkled from the duo's earlier frenzied cleaning in their desperate attempts to divert their attention from the sharp strain on their bladders. However, pride in a job well done wasn't nearly enough to keep them sufficiently distracted, so for now the two tried to watch some television out of the hope that it'd keep their minds off their torment.
Sadly, it appeared that even that was too much to ask for, as Mac held the remote and flipped from channel to channel.
"…And so, heavy rainfall should be expected later this week…" a chubby weatherman announced cheerily with a fat smile.
"Change it." Frankie ordered flatly with a wince of discomfort. Hastily, Mac did as bid.
Click.
"….Construction on the Hoover Dam began in early…"
"Augh! Change it!" the young woman yelped in panic. The boy was all too eager to comply.
Click.
"…Next up on the Discovery Channel; Niagara Falls, one of the great natural wonders of…"
"Change it!"
Click.
"…And with the Waterwizard Sprinkling System, your lawn can be the envy of…"
"Change it!"
Click.
"...Niagara Falls straddles the US and Canadian borders…"
"Augh! Wrong way! Change it, change it!" Frankie cried piteously as the very sight of the massive flowing waterfall on the screen increased her urge to relieve herself just an unaffordable tad more. As the strove desperately to find a TV program that didn't remind them of the punishment they were forcing their bodies through, they failed to ignore the sole spectator of their heart-wrenchingly pitiful performance watching through her thick glasses until she rapped her cane upon the ground and sighed heavily.
"Good gracious, please don't tell me you two are still at it!" Madame Foster murmured as she shook her head in disbelief. "Heavens, you two must be close to bursting by this point-"
"We'd prefer it if you'd not say anything like that!" Mac begged shamelessly and shot her a pleading gaze, to absolutely no avail. The old woman gave the two a reprimanding glare as she hobbled into the room.
"For heavens sake! Just go to the bathroom; now." She demanded sternly.
"Hello? Have you forgotten something?" Frankie replied incredulously as she raised her arm, lifting Mac's along with it. "Model-glue, remember?"
"I don't care if you're chained at the neck." Madame Foster scolded. "Do you honestly think you can keep this up for another whole day?"
"Grandma, I'm not going to use the bathroom with Mac right at my side!" her granddaughter protested defiantly.
"Ditto." Mac chimed in with a determined nod.
"Oh, really? Well I'm not going to give you one of my kidneys after yours explode in the next half-hour!" Madame Foster countered before switching to a more pleading tone, "Dearie, please! This can't possibly be healthy for either of you. I know you don't like the very thought of it, but for your own sake, can you just-"
"No way!" Mac immediately refused steadfastly.
"What's the other gonna do while one goes? Wear a blindfold?" Frankie exclaimed as her face contorted in revulsion. "Not on your life!"
"Dearie-"
"No, Grandma!" Frankie stubbornly rebuffed the appeal while she continued to squirm about uncomfortably. "Whatever you're going to say, no!"
"Frankie-"
"No! I'm not stepping foot within five feet of a toilet until the glue company sends us the solution in the mail! You hear me? The next time I go to use the little girl's room, I'm going to go alone! Mac is not going to be forced to stand next to me while I-"
At wits end with the unreasonably stubborn pair, Madame Foster exasperatedly threw her arms up in the air, as she appeared to finally lose all patience.
"You two are absolutely unbelievable!" she sighed. "Do you know that? Simply unbelievable!"
With this, the sorely frustrated old woman promptly whirled about and hobbled briskly from the room, all the while grumbling under her breath about the infuriating obstinacy of some people.
Believing that the battle had been won and that they were once again free to struggle to endure the horrific strain on their bladders in peace, Frankie heaved a sigh of relief and tousled Mac's hair with her unstuck hand.
"Don't worry, we can get through this." She murmured encouragingly with a wan grin, while Mac just gritted his teeth tightly as for the third time that hour his discomfort reached record proportions.
"I hope so-" he tried to reply, but he had barely began to speak before with a clack of a cane, a very familiar old woman reentered just as abruptly as she had left, much to Frankie's obvious annoyance.
"Grandma, I told you." The redhead groaned with a roll of her eyes. "For the last time, Mac and I are not-"
"Just hold on a sec dearie." Madame Foster interrupted as she stood directly in front of the television, where Mac was able to spot a rather out of place article clutched in one of her wrinkled hands.
"Huh?" the child grunted confusedly. "Hey, why do you have one of Frankie's bathing suits-"
Before he could finish, Madame Foster wordlessly lifted the coat hanger upon which the baby blue two-piece swimsuit hung, prominently displayed it before them all, then requested curtly in a no-nonsense manner as she held it up to her wizened figure, "Now…imagine this on me."
The results were instantaneous; the second the unimaginably horrific sight had been burned into the minds of her audience-
"AAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGHHH!" A scream of indescribable repulsion ripped from their throats. Unable to endure the uncalled-for assault on their vision, the two turned about and desperately tried to get away from the ungodly image the old woman presented. However, in their haste to get away the child and girl accidentally tried to dart off in opposite directions, and at first where only hopelessly anchored in place by the other.
However, their disgust was too overwhelming to allow them the clarity of mind to properly coordinate their retreat. With a strength borne of unfathomable desperation surging through every ounce of their bodies, Frankie and Mac both dug in their heels, put on an incredible burst of effort, and with a clamor akin to someone taking apart two attached Velcro straps they wrenched their hands free from one another in frantic haste.
Even after the immensely successful though highly unorthodox separation procedure was complete, the panic-stricken young woman and mortified child nearly exited the room completely before comprehension of what had just happened simultaneously hit them with the force of a speeding bus. Moving eerily in almost perfect unison, they stopped dead in mid-retreat, paused, gawked dumbstruck at their liberated wrists for a few moments, then slowly craned their necks towards the jubilant old woman nearby.
"…G-grandma…you…y-you…" Frankie began to stammer incredulously.
Awash with relief, Madame Foster struggled to modestly stifle her victorious smirk before she inquired gently, "Don't you have some business to take care of right now?"
Neither needed absolutely no second bidding. Instantaneously the young redhead appeared to have transformed into a veritable scarlet blur, as Mac likewise suddenly became a human bullet as they raced off into opposite directions towards different bathrooms.
"THANK YOU!" the pair managed to yell hoarsely in strained unison, and within less than a second they had vanished from sight.
However, only about one second later, Frankie raced right back to ask worriedly as she did a mad hopping dance of discomfort. "Grandma?"
"Yes, dearie?"
"Thanks, but….please don't ever do that again." She begged.
The old woman just grinned as her granddaughter raced off. "Let's just hope it never comes to that."
"….Grandma?"
The old woman glanced up from her knitting once she heard the familiar voice call for her. As soon as she saw the lanky redhead and the brown-haired little boy holding hands in her bedroom doorway, Madame Foster burst out chortling.
"Oh, please!" she implored modestly with a light smile. "I told you earlier, there's absolutely no need to thank me anymore, I-"
"Um….no, it's…uh…it's not about that…" Frankie cut in meekly. It was right about then that Madame Foster realized both of the pair were sporting a bright scarlet blush in blatantly obvious embarrassment over something.
"Dearie?" she asked softly. "Is everything okay?"
"I…I just…" the girl murmured softly in reply as she fidgeted anxiously with her ponytail. "See, once we were free, we…w-we had decided to get a little celebratory snack, and…well, I wanted to show Mac how to make a favorite of mine, see, but…uh, we had just gotten all the ingredients together when….um…."
Too humiliated to attempt and explain it any further, Frankie sighed heavily and raised her arm. Immediately it became perfectly clear to the stunned old woman that Mac wasn't holding the redhead's hand as much as he was clearly cemented by the palm, as shown by how he was hefted a clear floor of the floor along with the rest of Frankie's arm.
"Oh….oh, dear…." Madame Foster managed to whisper incredulously at the ludicrous sight.
As Frankie fidgeted about uneasily under her grandparent's disbelieving stare, Mac just whimpered apologetically, "Peanut butter mixed with caramel seemed like a good idea at the time…"
The End