Eleven Worlds

It Was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 8

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam
Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?
Chapter 4: Tradam’s Warning
Chapter 5: The Yellow House Again
Chapter 6: Treffellem Tagge
Chapter 7: Ambushed

Chapter 8: The EPA Chase

No, the night was not through. No, oh dear no – the night was not through at all! Dear me, I was quite mistaken about its having been through! But no doubt you, dear reader, were at least somewhat aware that the night was not going to end there, with everybody comfortably a-bed, (except of course, Johnnie, Sam and Pumpkin, who were outside standing in the cold), – at least, you would never have supposed so if you had pursued a more steady course of novel-reading.

Pumpkin wished it would end, certainly; as a matter of fact, he wished the whole evening away several times throughout the course of the night; and began bandying nonsense about severe colds and numb extremities and sudden amputations to such an extent that Johnnie and Sam had more than once to grind their teeth and keep their tempers from lashing out into more stirring expressions.

And dear me! I was not only wrong about the night having ended, but about Rosy’s ever having ever gone to sleep, and about there being no further stir below.

My Favorite Way to Die Twice

“Tell me a bed time story, Mitch! Carry me, I’m tired. Come on, hurry up with the story, Mitch.”

“Alright, um… It was a normal night in New York City, and the rain was thundering around a dark figure dressed in a black jacket and a dark green baseball cap.”

“Was he a detective?”

“Yes.”

“What was he running from?” asked the little girl as he hoisted her up onto his shoulder.

Mitch pretended to think for a moment.

“The mayor’s son. He had exposed the underground black market the son was running, and now the blickerfones were stuck on him to track him down. He started in a coffee shop, but there was a deal about the electricity going out, and he managed to escape. Then some little girl took it into her head to fall out of a second story right into our main character’s arms, which was fortunate for him because it helped him blend right into the crowd, changing from a felonious detective agent into a normal-looking dad.”

“What was his job?” asked the little girl dreamily.

“His job, ninny? He worked for the government capturing criminals.”

“Do you ever capture them, Mitch?”

“They tend to kill me once or twice before I do.”

It Was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 7

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam
Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?
Chapter 4: Tradam’s Warning
Chapter 5: The Yellow House Again
Chapter 6: Treffellem Tagge

Chapter 7: Ambushed

Long before Pumpkin had arrived in front of AV’s hauntingly tenebrific house, Sam and Rosy had made their successful exit out of the crowd, and entered a nearby Si Galala where Sam decided they would wait for Johnnie to show up so they could talk over a plan of action.

Johnnie normally did show up, no matter where they were, at some time or other, so they hoped she would show up there, before much time had passed. (It was not a reasonable assumption, but they held to it without a second thought).

Their expectation was shortly exculpated by the sudden appearance of Johnnie herself looking in at them through the high-tech motion window, through which they saw her cross her arms after beckoning them outside.

Sam and Rosy jumped through the trapezoid in the center of the window, and landed under the fountain in front of Si Galala with dynamism.

“At your service,” said Sam, bowing as much like other people as he could.

“You shouldn’t risk getting caught for something so silly as not walking out the front door,” remarked Johnnie in a rebuking tone, as she looked at them admiringly.

Sam smiled. “No one was looking.”

Rosy raised her eyebrows, as much as to say “that’s not true” and Sam looked uncomfortable and muttered beneath his breath, “Except you.” “We’ll let it pass, but you’d better be more careful Sam, you never know who could be on your track. Why, Sam old fellow, you’ll never believe what happened-”

“I will, I promise to,” interrupted Sam, quite eager to finally have a good excuse to believe something totally unbelievable.

It Was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 6

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam
Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?
Chapter 4: Tradam’s Warning
Chapter 5: The Yellow House Again

Chapter 6: Treffellem Tagge

“Well, you’re definitely my new favorite person,” remarked Pumpkin, as he watched his ice cream slowly melting on the hot asphalt.

“I generally am a great favorite – but you really figured that out remarkably fast,” replied an unfamiliar voice with a smile in it.

“I was being sarcastic,” explained Pumpkin hastily, giving the person who had knocked down his ice cream a sidelong glance. “And I thought it was Sam there – Hello, I’m Pumpkin.”

“I’m Treffellem Tagge,” said Treffellem, introducing himself.

They shook hands.

“I was just walking towards the WAS,” began Pumpkin. “When something bumped into me and – well, here we are.”

“I work -” Treffellem was beginning at the same time, but stopped and let Pumpkin finish.

It Was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 5

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam
Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?
Chapter 4: Tradam’s Warning

Chapter 5: The Yellow House Again

“So why did you bring Sam’s electro-acoustic transducer?” asked Pumpkin, as soon as they were well out of the small throng of annoying people the world has the graciousness to call “reporters.”

Johnnie pulled her eyes violently down in an attempt not to roll them. “It’s a phone; just say phone. We can stop talking code now.”

Pumpkin shrugged. “I’m not the one who thought using three words instead of one was a good code. But anyway you know Sam gets mad if anybody answers his phone calls.”

“Well, I needed it,” Johnnie explained. “Tradam’s going to send him a picture of Mr. Semmes – and we may as well do something as not.”

“Like look at it?”

Johnnie nodded. “Might as well have as much fun as we can while Sam’s stuck in the parking lot,” said Johnnie to herself, grinning. “You don’t happen to know his password?” she added aloud.

“Oh no,” replied Pumpkin, quickly. “He doesn’t have a password, he uses one of those fingerprint things.”

Johnnie looked at the phone in sudden horror, and as she looked at it in horror she exclaimed, “Dash it! then we won’t possibly be able to break into it. Oh bother it all, now we have to go back. Oh bother!”

It Was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 4

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam
Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?

Chapter 4: Tradam’s Warning

After Johnnie had hollered through the keyhole for a solid five minutes, the secretary came in.

“Shall I show you the way out of the building?” she asked politely, as she led them all out into the hall. “The nearest exit is right over here,” she added, pulling Rosy – who was walking in the wrong direction – back by her hoodie.

(“Dear me, she’s distressingly anticlimactic,” thought Johnnie dolefully to herself. “I was just starting to feel like a real heroine too!”)

Johnnie had just said this to herself when, turning round a sudden corner of the building they bumped unexpectedly and violently into a cup of coffee (and Mr. Tradam as well).

It was All Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 3

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation
Chapter 2: Sam

Chapter 3: Who Stole the Cookie?

The steel door slid open soundlessly. (I don’t know what steel door it was, but as you don’t either it can’t much matter.)

AV waved his hand over the room and announced carelessly, “Mr. Semmes’s office.”

(–“And it really made him sound like a footman,” as Johnnie said.)

There was a rush, a scramble, and a “don’t touch anything!” from Sam to everyone except AV, who was looking on in horror.

“Is everything okay? Why does it smell like freshly mowed grass?” he asked apprehensively, when Johnnie, Sam, Rosy, and their excitement had subsided a little.

When I Am Sixty

One day when I was seven years old, I woke up with a strange thought in my head. I wonder if you know what that feels like? To me it felt a little green, and a little old, but still quite fun, sort of like my grandpa. This particular strange thought liked chocolate. I knew because my tummy was telling me it did.

So I got it some chocolate, and then it went from being just a thought to being something I decided I would do for fun.

I would tell you what it was, but if you are like my sister you probably want to know my name. She can’t read anything, not even something like “It was a bright fine sunset evening” without crying out, “I don’t understand this story! Who is the main character? What’s his name? If he doesn’t have a name than that means he’s not real!” So I will tell you my name, so you know I am real.

My name is Abernathy Benjamin Hanks. I’m American but my daddy is French.

My mother died in a building. She was building, I mean. It was a barn, I think. She was real smart, so’s my dad, but he didn’t let a barn fall on top of him, so he was still around when I was seven to tell me he was. I was seven once you know, as truly as you were. I can say that because most six year olds can’t read very well, and stopped reading this story when they got to the word particular.

The thought I woke up with when I was seven was pretty simple, like most the thoughts you have at that age are. It didn’t have any reason to be in my head, but it was there anyway. Maybe it was a left-over from one of my dreams.

It was all Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 2

Prologue
Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation

Chapter 2: Sam

It is a loss to the world no doubt, but I can’t tell you anything about how Sam found his way to the WAS highrise office; or how he bumped into Pumpkin and offended that said gentlemen greatly by knocking his ice cream over and not apologizing for it; or how he forgot to make himself look tidy, or about his desperate thoughts about not having any cookies in his pocket; and I can’t tell you any of this for the sincere reason that I really don’t know anything about what happened on his way there, for Sam is a quiet fellow, and he never did tell anyone about it.

For all I know he lost himself three times, and didn’t bump into Pumpkin at all; or stopped by his grandma’s, and didn’t have any desperate thoughts about cookies.

It was all Pumpkin’s Fault: Chapter 1

Prologue

Chapter 1: Cookie of Consolation

It was half-past five. The half-past-five train, which has nothing to do with our story, had just heaved into the station; and Johnnie, who was nowhere near the station, had just walked into someone she knew.

“Why, Sam, old fellow, where did you drop from?” she began with a smile, pulling up her hair into a quick ponytail.

“You can’t expect me to answer a question like that,” replied Sam, offering her a cookie.

“Well, at any rate, I do expect you to answer my next question. Is it true that Pumpkin ate three pieces of pickle-and-peanut-butter pie and didn’t leave any for me?”

“Quite true,” Sam replied, with a melancholy air. “I only got two. Pumpkin’s a horrid fellow.”