Novels2Search
Soda and the Ineffable Concoction
Chapter 13: Meet Montana Shingles

Chapter 13: Meet Montana Shingles

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The Fairy Tremorroid’s home is referred to as Videotape Palace and it’s the most striking structure in Schmegma City. It’s a massive facility build from millions and millions of old videotapes, and the door to the palace is shaped like two huge videotapes. Various tubes and pipes ran in and out and around the walls. The building featured four tall towers, each one circled with three neon lights of purple, pink, and blue. On top of the towers were metal-and-glass hexagonal domes, and atop the domes were huge flags bearing the Schmegma icon. In the center of the roof was a flying saucer landing pad and a dumpster, and there was a slide leading to the pool next to the miniature golf course that surrounded the building.

The palace employed over 100 Bonertanians, including handmaidens, butlers, pizza chefs, sandwich artists, librarians, documentarians, sculptors, muralists, janitors, balloonists, ushers, concession stand employees, press agents, film bookers, and vault maintainers, plus hundreds of unpaid interns, all working for the betterment of Bonertania, mostly through organizing motion picture feature film festivals.

Inside the palace Montana Shingles the Vice-Tremorroid of Bonertania was sprawled out on an ugly purple-and-pink couch in the spacious living room she shared with her super best friend, the fairy tremorroid. Sporting a blue and purple jumpsuit, the rotund young twenty-something, whose wavy hair was blonde, was watching her 100 inch TV: A stop-motion animated movie about a sarcastic fringehead and his quest to become a professional coxswain. Curled up at her feet was a little brown and white puppy dog yokai with very bright brown eyes and two glittery antenna. The puppy was half Jack Russell terrier and half Shih Tzu and her name was Elvira Daisy Shingles.

Montana Shingles grew up on her mother’s farm on faraway Toosh Island. No one was quite sure how to get to Toosh from Pus Continent. When she was thirteen Montana was accidentally transported to Bonertania via a portal opened by Hepatitissa the Rancid Hoo-Hoo of Schling Quadrant. Since then Montana had many adventures and met many wonderful friends. Eventually she was contacted by the famous feature film motion picture director Tarantella the Quartz Tarantula, who made a movie about Montana’s exploits starring herself and her friends Cydroidobot and the Ratsack Golem. Shortly thereafter Montana decided to move to Schmegma City and her mother Mizzy had moved here along with her, so there was nothing to go back to on the tiny isle of Toosh. Although she had been made Vice-Tremorroid of Bonertania by the fairy tremorroid Montana did not care much to be a ruler and remained as humble as when she was a farmgirl.

Jodo, the peppy young royal flackfizer of Videotape Palace, entered holding a clipboard. She was wearing a new skirt she had crafted out of recycled toilet paper. She came to say that Rumplemuss the Dirty Wanderer wanted to see Montana.

"All right," said Montana; "tell Rumple to come right up."

"But he has some queer creatures with him- some of the queerest I've ever laid eyes on," reported Jodo in her brown dress.

"Never mind; let 'em all come up," replied Montana, muting the TV but leaving the feature film motion picture running.

But when the door opened to admit not only the Dirty Wanderer, but Chunks, Gary and the Spork Armadillo, Montana jumped up and looked at her strange visitors in amazement. Vira yipped and hopped around on her hind legs.

"Don’t let it eat me!!" screamed the Spork Armadillo, running to hide behind Rumplemuss’ legs.

"That’s enough, Vi Pie! Enough! Settle!" shouted the vice-tremorroid, picking up the squirming puppy dog.

After the puppy had settled down Montana invited the adventurers to sit on one of her comfy couches or recliners. Rumplemuss made the introductions and the vice-tremorroid was particularly interested in Chunks.

"You look like a mixed up, jammed together Pussloid!" Montana said. The Pussloids were a race of people on Cronenberg Island who regularly fell to pieces when startled. "Where did you come from?"

"Who, me?" asked Chunks, looking around the interesting room instead of at the vice-tremorroid. "Oh, I came from buckets of parts, I guess. That's what they say, anyhow. Some call me Crazy-Quilt-Face. But my name is Chunks- and now you know all about me."

"Not quite all," returned Montana with a smile. "I wish you'd tell me how you came to be alive."

"That's an easy job," said Chunks, jumping upon a big dark-blue couch and making the springs bounce her up and down. "The Puffy Beaver wanted a handmaiden of her own, so she made me out of parts of a dozen different yokai and humanoids. I think I might also have some robot in me, I’m not sure. The beaver’s super best friend made an alchemistic concoction, sprinkled me with it and- here I am. Perhaps you've noticed my different colors, beautiful stitchwork, and golden staples. A very refined and educated gentleman named the Ratsack Golem, whom I met, told me I am the most beautiful creature in all Bonertania, and I believe it."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Oh! Have you met our Ratsack, then?" asked Montana, a little puzzled to understand the brief history related.

"Yes; isn't he cute?"

"The Ratsack Golem has many outstanding qualities," replied Montana, avoiding the question.

Gary had dozed off almost as soon as he sat down in a leather recliner. The Spork Armadillo was keeping at a respectful distance from the little brown and white puppy dog. Vira trotted over to an elaborate contraption where by pushing a lever with her paw set off a string of events involving buckets, ball bearings, a model ferris wheel, rubber bands, dominoes, colorful toy construction blocks and a voodoo doll in an electric chair, culminating in her getting a single dog treat on a silver platter.

"I'm sorry to hear all this about the beaver’s super best friend,” said Montana while picking up Vira. “Titiana will be mad as a soiled wobbegong when she hears he's been doing alchemy again. She told him not to." The tremorroid’s name was Titiana.

"He only practices alchemy for the benefit of his own family," explained the Spork Armadillo.

"Gee," said Montana; "I hadn't noticed you before. Are you made of greasy meat, or what?"

"I'm all Spork, which is a popular tinned meat-flavored product," answered the armadillo. "Also I have an iguana steak heart and some lovely pink brains"

"Oh; is that so? Come over here and let me see you closer."

The Spork Armadillo hesitated, eyeing the puppy dog.

"Send that yokai away and I will," she said.

"That's Elvira Daisy Shingles, and she's the kindest puppy dog in all of Pus. Vira knows a good many things, too; almost as much as I do, I guess."

"Why doesn't she say anything?" asked Chunks.

"Dogs from Toosh Island can only bawk and yip," explained Montana, “but that's a good deal; and I understand her, and she understands me, just as well as if she could talk." Montana gave Vira a squeeze and set her back down on the floor.

"This armadillo, Vira," she said to the puppy dog, "is made of Spork, and you mustn't bother her, or chase her, any more than you do Bruce or Jo or Gash or Crassgass or Cockadoody."

"YIP!" said Vira, and that meant she understood.

"Tell me more about the beaver’s super best friend." said Montana.

"He made me," replied the armadillo; "so I know all about him. Chunks is new- only a few days old- but I've lived with the fat beaver and scrawny chimpanzee for years. Very unclassy people, awful taste in feature film motion pictures, especially comedies. They made Chunks come to life so she could clean the toilet and the bidet and krud like that."

"Wow, why did you ever leave them?" asked Montana sarcastically.

The little greasy pink armadillo told the vice-tremorroid about how her friend Soda’s Uncle Karl Olheiser the Silent One and Sheila Wankenstein the Puffy Beaver had accidentally been turned to steaming piles of vomit by the Liquid of Vomitfucation. Then she related how the she and Chunks and Soda had started out in search of the things needed to make the alchemistic concoction, which would restore the unfortunates to life, and how they had found Gary and taken him along because they could not pull the antlers out of its head. Montana listened to all this with much interest, and thought that so far Soda had acted very well. But when the armadillo told her of the Schling girl's arrest by Agent Orange, because she was accused of willfully breaking a law of Bonertania, the vice-tremorroid was greatly shocked.

"What do you suppose she's done?" she asked.

"I’m afraid she picked a stench blossom," answered Rumplemuss, sadly. "I told her not to do it, and I didn’t see her do it; but its pretty obvious that is what she did. It’s a real bummer."

"That really sucks," said the portly young lady said gravely, "for now there will be no one to help her poor uncle and the beaver… except this chunks golem, the green jackalope and the Spork Armadillo."

"Ugh," said Chunks. "Piddily-Cum-a-Zyn, that's no affair of mine. The Puffy Beaver and Uncle Karl are perfect strangers to me, for the moment I came to life they turned to puke."

"I see," remarked Montana, a tad put off by Chunks’s attitude.

While they were talking Chunks had been roaming around the room and looking at all the cool things it contained. There were several arcade games that you didn’t need coins to operate, and bunch of Titiana’s interesting sculptures which were made from hot-glued pieces of toys. One wall of the apartment was covered floor-to-ceiling with iguana-milk crates filled with books and videotapes. Chunks turned her head sideways so she could read the titles. She had carried Soda's dark blue backpack in her hand, until now, when she randomly decided to see what was inside it. She found the jars of alien feces, which she had no use for, and a plastic container of some alchemistic concoctions, which she didn’t know how to use. Then she discovered the feces jar containing stench blossom which Soda had plucked.

Chunks recognized the fact that Soda was her first friend. So, turning her head to see that no one noticed her, she took the jar from the backpack and hid it behind some videotapes in a nearby milk crate. Then she came forward and said to Montana:

"I wouldn't care to help the uncle or the beaver, but I will help my friend Soda. She did not break the law- no one can prove she did- and that orange jerk-face had no right to arrest her."

As it was nearly time for Montana’s movie night with her friends, which she did almost every evening, she rang for an intern and ordered Chunks, Gary, and the Spork Armadillo be taken to a nice apartment. Rumple already had his own golden suite in the palace.

"Give Gary whatever food he likes best." said the vice-tremorroid.

"That's flying scaterpillars," yawned Gary.

"You can't eat scaterpillars, or any other yokai, but you'll be given something just as nice," Montana told him. The green jackalope farted and sighed and then he and the armadillo left with the intern.

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