Jabberwocky III: The Retread
an excerpt

Daniel closed the door behind him, water still dripping from his hair onto the terrycloth robe that the West Best Urn had given him to wear from the room of bathing to the room of sleeping. This place was just the absolute best! He didn't know how he had ever managed to make it out on the streets without the comforts provided by this full serviced inn. Okay, it was not really FULL service, but it was a very nice place to be staying. Even his feet had slippers made from the skin of some small woodland creature so that his feet would not get dirty on the walk back to the room.

He pulled his second set of clothes from his pack, clothes that had been cleaned in a river two days back and probably still didn't smell as clean as would the clothes he had been wearing before his bath, thanks to the wonderful laundering service also provided by the West Best Urn inn and tavern. Uh, at any rate, he got dressed. Sorry for having sounded like a commercial for a place that doesn't even exist. Seemed kind of random, in fact, to be spouting off all the virtues of a fictional inn and tavern while in the middle of a writing spree. Did you know that I need nearly 8,000 words tonight to even have a hope of hitting my word count goal? Do you think it's going to happen? I sure as heck don't. Especially considering how little I've written so far tonight and how little time I have in which to write tonight. But let's move on, shall we?

Once he was dressed in a somewhat almost cleanish kind of state, Daniel sat on his bed, facing toward the chest of drawers, and that's when he saw it.

The Candace mermaid statue was somehow out of his bag and moving around. Writhing, in fact, as if in some sort of ecstasy kind of state. It was somewhat unnerving in some ways to see a piece of ceramic on the verge of orgasm, but what was even more unnerving was the fact that the statue was out of the pack at all. He hadn't taken it out of his pack before he had gone down the hall, and he hadn't thought it was autonomous in any way. In fact, he remembered that he had to pull it out of the pack at one point to let it out of the pack because it wanted to get out and stretch a bit.

And here she was on the chest of drawers. Completely without his aid at all. He didn't know what the deal was. Was there a problem of some kind? Had he done something wrong somehow? Could he ask the statue about it? Would she answer? Would the author ever stop talking long enough to let him try?

Sorry, Daniel. Punk.

He walked to the chest of drawers, not taking his eyes off of the statue. The waves waved at him. Her hair flowed around her head at him. She arched her back at him. And because I'm at the Girls Night In Podcast right now, which you can find at www.girlsnightinpodcast.com, I will refrain from talking about a specific piece of her anatomy, because they've been making fun of me for having put that anatomy piece in my novel twice already. They're mean. But I heart them so very much, so it's all good.

When he reached the place where she was, he bent down and whispered, "How did you get up there?" Yes, he knew it was a lame thing to ask, but it was direct, to the point, and an answer to that would be, frankly, precisely the information he needed. If the author didn't like the simplicity of his logic, the author could very well bite him.

Apparently Daniel wasn't around for Our Hero's epic fight scene in the previous chapter.

The statue seemed to look at him before answering. "The one who last laid hands on me excused himself for privacy. In just a moment he'll return. His reasoning you may then learn."

I hate writing in rhyme.

Daniel nodded a bit. What she said had made sense, except that he still didn't know who had taken her out of his pack and placed her here on the chest of drawers. Did it really matter? Was it not as transparent as every supposed plot twist in Rush Hour 3?

"Was it Our Hero?" Daniel asked, though whether the question was posed to the author or to the statue was up for debate.

The statue writhed a bit more and said, "The one who last laid hands on me..."

"Okay, okay!" shouted Daniel. He supposed it wasn't really that important after all.

He sat on his bed, watching the movements on this rather hypnotic creation, wondering how it was that the arrow at the base of such a statue could always point in a direction that had nothing to do with the magnetic poles of a planet. Don't worry; Daniel wasn't getting all scientific on us, just marveling at the magic that must have been involved and trying to eat up a few words while the author tries to come up with something even partially interesting to happen at this point in time. The battle in the last chapter was pretty much the last lengthy bit I had in me.

"Yeah, right."

Hush, you, or I'll stick you in a waiting room, bored out of your skull, while Our Hero is scheduled to have his brain scrambled in the morning.

"Uh, check the last Interlude, why don't you?"

Oh yeah. Forgot about that part. I'm really sleepy at this point, you know, but I am determined to get at least two thousand words before hitting the sleeping spot tonight. It's not going well, I might add.

He didn't know how long he had spent sitting on the bed, watching the statue, and arguing with the author when Our Hero finally walked into the room, his own hair moist, his clothes dusty and splattered with drops of magenta. His sword shined as if it had been freshly cleaned and oiled, and Daniel suspected that was precisely what had happened, and that's why Our Hero wasn't actually in the room when Daniel had returned from his bath, which he admitted, took longer than had been necessary, because he was enjoying the hot water and its relaxational properties after such a hard journey, and after having spent such an unspecified time sleeping on the ground and bathing in rivers where the temperature of the water was heavily dependent upon the temperature of the air and the water's nearby sources. How was that for some completely unnecessary expositional material?

"Hi there," Our Hero said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened in the last few chapters. He seemed to notice the robe Daniel had hung from the hook on the closet door. "Nice bath?" he asked.

"Yeah. What's with the sword?"

"Well, sometimes I have to use it to fight evil, so I like to keep it clean and sharp. Why do you ask?"

"Because your sword is so clean and shiny. I've never seen it like that before. And your clothes..."

"Damned painters," Our Hero explained. Something about the way he said it made Daniel wonder. Those magenta spatters did look a little like paint... but they also looked like something else he couldn't quite put his limited experience on. And combined with the sudden cleaning and oiling of the sword... There was something Our Hero wasn't telling him.

"Yeah. Painters," he said, trying to just drop the topic, even though he knew this was going to eat at him until he knew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the big pink elephant in the middle of the room that neither of them was really addressing.

"Yeah. Painters," Our Hero confirmed.

Daniel nodded at the Candace mermaid statue thing doing her sensual pulsations on the chest of drawers. "Did you do that?"

"No, I did not carve that statue, assemble the structure upon which it sits, OR cast the spell that lets it locate Candace and point us in the direction where she may reside. I thought you already knew that."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "I mean, did you put her up there like that? On the chest of drawers?"

"Oh, that." Our Hero placed his oily sword carefully on the bed, making sure to prop the hilt on the pack he carried when Daniel wasn't carrying it for him and the tip of the blade slightly into the wood of the bed frame so as not to get the bed coverings oily and allow the blade to dry. "Yeah. She was whining about being cramped in your pack. It was driving me nuts."

Daniel nodded at that. It seemed to be the statue's Modus Operandi. She didn't seem to have much to say on the road, or in the camp sites they slept at between towns, but once they hit town, as soon as they hit an inn, she wanted out. It was kind of weird, but it gave him an excuse to look upon the beauty of a Mary Sue with unabashed directness. He had always been afraid to look at a Mary Sue in the past, not that he had been given much opportunity. He heard that they craved the attention, but when they got it they shunned the giver of said attention with scorn and utter dislike.

This had been pretty much proven when he had read Jabberwocky II: The Revenge, for it was the way Candace had treated Our Hero for much of the book.

"You can stop referencing your own work at any time, you know," Our Hero growled. "It wasn't that interesting three years ago, and it's even less so now that many of the references you made in that book are moot, thanks to celebrity deaths and dated allusions."

This is absolutely true. But it still happened to you, and is therefore part of your past, so the constant reminder that you have another book out there for other people to read if they want to know more about you is... whatever I'm trying to say.

"Some writer YOU are."

Let's not even open that can of worms, shall we? I think I've stated quite publically how I feel about people trying to call me a writer. I am the author. Of this and a limited number of other novels written during November of the last several years. But a writer I am not. So knock it off, already.

"Panties. Wad. You."

Daniel interrupted. "This is all so much fun and yawns have commenced all around, but can we move on with the story or something? What was the purpose of this chapter?"

"There was no purpose," Our Hero explained. "Except maybe to let you know what I know because of the narration of your point of view and to let me know that you know it. Maybe this particular piece of dialogue is to let you know I know you know it, but I don't really know. You know?"

"I think I understand. I know that you know something, but I don't know exactly what you know, and you know that I know you know something, but you don't know that I don't know exactly what it is that I know you know."

"Exactly. But even though I know you know that I know it, what it is I know is something that I know you'll know when you know it, so I don't think I'll bother to tell you right now anyway."

Oh for the love of all the gods of this world! He killed a monster disguised as an incredibly obnoxious woman, and the supposed "paint" spatters on his clothing is actually her blood! Holy crap, you two are like a bad Abbot and Costello routine!

Daniel couldn't help but smile that he had that much power over the author, and the author was starting to regret giving Our Hero a sidekick for this adventure. Yes, Daniel was a smart kid. Too smart. But he was also developing that nasty habit that kids sometimes get, where he's really obnoxious and irritating.

"Hey, why is this all on me? Our Hero started it!"

Kids also had a habit of pointing fingers whenever they were being called out for something. Go ahead and try to argue THAT one.

"This bites," Daniel complained.

"Welcome to my world," Our Hero sympathized. "He's been doing that to me since the day he decided my life needed to be messed up in true literary fashion."

You know, you two should be happy. Most characters don't even know they're characters. They just think they have rotten and horrible lives.

"And we don't?" asked Our Hero.

Well, okay. You do have a point there. I guess. But still, at least you have an outlet for your hostility that doesn't have to involve heavy firearms and innocent bystanders.

"What are firearms?"

Right. Fantasy world setting. I keep forgetting that with all of my anachronistic references and your seeming acceptance of them. Let's just say a homicidal rampage and innocent bystanders.

"Sounds fun. When do we start?"

You don't start! You're the good guy, remember? You're supposed to fight evil, not BE evil. That whole Wizard Alliance thing?

Daniel watched the exchange with more and more amusement with every passing second. For some reason he did enjoy knowing that his actions weren't really his fault, even though they really were, and got a huge kick out of the arguments he and Our Hero could have with the author.

"I do," he agreed with the narration. "I used to argue with the gods a lot, but they never respond. It's much less fun that way."

Glad to oblige. Please note the sarcasm.

"Sarcasm noted and quickly forgotten."

This was not going anything like the author had anticipated. In all seriousness, he had thought this story would be much different than it was turning out. He had come into this one with a plan of action. An intent that he hadn't bothered to develop for Jabberwocky II: The Revenge. Most of the things that had developed over the course of Jabberwocky III: The Retread were truly surprises to the author as well as to Our Hero, and he wasn't liking that one bit. By now he had hoped to have merged the Chapters and the Interludes so that he could be on the way to the wrap up of the story, but considering the pacing of tihs one, he wasn't even halfway to the merging point. It sucked like Dragon Wars, and though he really wanted to just blow up this whole world and make everyone pay for his misery, he was determined to somehow finish this atrocity.

"Uh... are you okay?" Daniel asked the author. "You seemed to have a soliloquy there for a second."

I'm fine. Where were we?

"Our Hero was just about to answer the door."

"I was?"

A knock on the door startled both the author and Our Hero, but Daniel seemed completely unsurprised by the event.