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"My handmaiden is all ready for your Make Living Concoction, my dear," the Puffy Beaver said to her super best friend. But the Chimpanzee Alchemist replied:
"This powder must not be used before tomorrow morning; but I think it is now cool enough to be contained."
He selected a small gold snuff box and very carefully placed the Make Living Concoction in the box and then locked it up in a drawer of his cabinet.
"At last," said he, rubbing his hands together gleefully, "I have ample leisure time to share a bowl of roachberries with my old friend Karl Olheiser, King of the Schlings. So let us sit down cozily and enjoy ourselves. After stirring those four kettles for six years I am glad to have a little rest." He let out a low, contented fart.
"You will have to do most of the talking," said Soda, "cuz uncle is called the Silent One and uses few words."
"I know; but that renders your uncle a most agreeable companion," declared the chimp, packing roachberries into his rubber pipe, which was an orange with a green-and-yellow eye on the bowl. "Most people talk too much, so it is a relief to find one who talks too little."
"I thought it was against the law to practice alchemy," said Soda.
"I am not allowed to perform alchemy, except for my own personal, private amusements- and, er, needs," he told his visitors, as he lit on the pipe and inhaled deeply, then passed the pipe to his super best friend Sheila the Puffy Beaver. "Yes, it’s ‘technically’-” The chimpanzee made air quotes with his long fingers- I've feel I’ve the right to make a handmaiden for my super best friend, you know, or a Spork Armadillo to catch wild protogophers- which unfortunately she refuses to do- but I am forbidden to work alchemy for others, or to use it as a profession."
"Alchemy must be a very interesting study," said Soda. Sheila passed Soda the orange roachberry pipe and Soda handed it to her uncle without hitting it.
"It truly is," asserted the alchemist. "In my time I've performed some alchemistical feats that were worthy the skill of Nobgoblin. For instance, there's the Make Living Concoction, and my Liquid of Vomitfucation, which is contained in that open bottle on the shelf yonder- over the window."
"What does the Liquid of Vomitfucation do?" inquired the Soda. Uncle Karl had taken a puff off the pipe and passed it back to the Chimpanzee Alchemist.
"Turns stuff into vomit. It's an invention of my own, and I find it very useful. Once two of those dreadful quinacridone meatidongs came here from the forest to attack us; but I sprayed some of that liquid on them and instantly they turned to piles of puke."
"Fine!" said Uncle Karl, wagging his head and stroking his periwinkle beard.
"Dear me; what a chatterbox you're getting to be, Karl," remarked the old chimp, who was pleased with the compliment. But just then there came a scratching at the back door and a shrill voice cried:
"Let me in! Hurry up, can't you? Let me in!"
The Puffy Beaver got up and went to the door.
A pink, shiny armadillo entered, came to the center of the room and stopped short at the sight of strangers. Soda and Karl both stared at it with wide open eyes, for surely no such curious creature had ever existed before- even in a thaumaturgic country like Bonertania.
The armadillo was made entirely of Spork, a popular tinned meat-flavored product known for its bright pink color and greasy texture.
"Well, alchemist, do you mean to introduce us, or not?" demanded the armadillo, in a tone of annoyance. "Seems to me you are forgetting your manners."
"Excuse me," returned the chimpanzee. "This Karl Olheiser, my old film school roommate and the descendant of the former kings of the Schlingians, before this quadrant became a part of Bonertania."
"He needs his beard trimmed," observed the armadillo.
"True," replied Karl, with a low chuckle of amusement.
"Who is the dwarf?" asked the armadillo.
"That is not a dwarf, but a child," answered the alchemist. "You have never seen a child before. She is now small because she is young. With more years she will grow big and become taller than Sheila."
"Oh. Is that thaumaturgy?" the Spork Armadillo inquired.
"Yes; but it is nature's thaumaturgy, which is more wonderful than any thaumaturgic art known to man. For instance, my alchemy made you live; and it was a poor job because you are useless and a bother to me; but I can't make you grow. You, my Spork golem, will always be the same size- and the same saucy, inconsiderate armadillo, with pink brains and a hard iguana steak heart."
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"No one can regret more than I the fact that you made me," asserted the armadillo. "Your world is a very uninteresting place. I've wandered through your herb gardens and berry bushes and in the forest until I'm tired of it all, and when I come into the dome the conversation of your fat super best friend and of yourself bores me dreadfully. And your taste in movies is atrocious."
"I gave you different brains from those we ourselves possess- and much too good for an armadillo," returned the chimp.
"Can't you take 'em out, then, and replace 'em with pebbles, so that I won't feel above my station in life?" asked the armadillo.
"Perhaps so. I'll try it, after I've brought the stitchwork golem to life," he said.
The armadillo walked up to the bench on which the chunks golem reclined and looked at her attentively.
"Are you going to make that hideous thing live?" she asked.
The alchemist nodded.
"It is intended to be my super best friend's handmaiden," he said. "When she is alive she will do all our work and mind the dome. But you are not to order her around, Sporky, as you do us. You must treat the chunks golem respectfully."
"Don’t call me ‘Sporky’. And I won't respect it. I couldn't respect such a bundle of chunks under any circumstances."
"If you don't, there will be more chunks than you will like," cried the Puffy Beaver, angrily. "Greasy pink chunks."
"Why didn't you make her pretty to look at?" asked the armadillo. "You made me pretty- very pretty, indeed." She went to a long mirror, as she said this, and stood before it, looking at herself with an air of much pride. "But that poor stitched-and-stapled crazy-quilt creature will hate herself, when she's once alive," continued the armadillo. "If I were you I'd use her for target practice, and make another handmaiden that is prettier."
"You have no taste," snapped the Puffy Beaver, much annoyed at this frank criticism. "I think the chunks golem is beautiful, considering what she's made of. Even the Licorice Rainbow hasn't as many colors, and you must admit that a rainbow is a pretty thing."
The Spork Armadillo stretched herself upon the floor and rolled on her back, with her four little claw-like feet sticking up in the air. Eventually Sheila turned on the TV and they watched a feature film motion picture about anthropomorphic dental equipment that went on an adventure.
Soda and Karl slept that night in the Wankenstein’s dome, and Soda was nervous as this was her first time sleeping away from the drive-in, and her first time sleeping on a bed rather than in the Murdermobile or a hammock. However, the tween was glad to stay because she was anxious to see the chunks golem brought to life. The Spork Armadillo was also a wonderful creature to little Soda, who had never seen or known anything of a golem before. Back there at the Schmahoning nothing unusual ever happened. Uncle Karl had moved to drive-in theater when Soda was just an infant, and they had lived all alone there. But now they had started out to mingle with other people, and the first place they came to proved so interesting that Soda couldn’t fall asleep and stared at the stars through the dome’s transparent ceiling.
Sheila the Puffy Beaver was an excellent cook and gave them a fine breakfast of scrambled cockadoodoo terds (a terd was what they called an egg on Sifillis) and deliciously soggy biscuits. While they were all engaged in eating, the beaver said:
"This is the last meal I shall have to cook for some time, for right after breakfast Frank has promised to bring my new handmaiden to life. I shall let her vacuum and clean the toilet and wash those kruddy dishes. What a relief it will be!"
"It will, indeed, relieve you of much drudgery," said Dr. Wankenstein. "By the way, my dear Sheila, I thought I saw you getting some brains from the cupboard, while I was busy with my kettles. What qualities have you given your new handmaiden?"
"Only those that a humble handmaiden requires," she answered. "I do not wish her to feel above her station, as the Spork Armadillo does. That would make her discontented and unhappy, for of course she must always be a handmaiden."
Soda was somewhat disturbed as she listened to this. She realized she didn’t care much for the Puffy Beaver, but she also began to fear she had done wrong in adding all those different qualities of brains to the lot Sheila had prepared for the handmaiden. But it was too late now for regret, since all the brains were securely sewn up inside the chunks golem's head. She might have confessed what she had done and thus allowed the beaver to change the brains; but she was afraid of incurring their anger. He believed that Uncle Karl had seen her add to the brains, and Uncle had not said a word against it; but then, Uncle never did say anything unless it was absolutely necessary.
As soon as breakfast was over they all walked over to the alchemist's workshop, where the Spork Armadillo was lying before the mirror and the golem made of chunks lay limp and lifeless upon the bench.
"Now, then," said the Chimpanzee Alchemist in a brisk tone, "we shall perform one of the greatest feats of alchemy possible to man, even on this marvelous continent of Pus." The Chimpanzee Alchemist unlocked his cabinet and took out the gold snuff box containing the Make Living Concoction.
They all bent over the bench on which the chunks golem reclined. Uncle Karl and the Puffy Beaver stood behind, near the bookshelf, Soda at one side and the chimpanzee in front, where he would have freedom to sprinkle the powder. The Spork Armadillo came near, too, curious to watch the important scene.
"All ready?" asked the Chimpanzee Alchemist.
"All is ready," answered the Puffy Beaver.
So the alchemist leaned over and shook from the bottle some grains of the powder, and they fell directly on the chunks golem's unique multi-colored, stitched-and-stapled face.
"It will take a few minutes for this powder to do its work," remarked the alchemist, sprinkling the body up and down with much care.
But suddenly the chunks golem threw up one arm, which knocked the bottle of powder from the chimpanzee's hand and sent it flying across the room. Uncle Karl and the Puffy Beaver were so startled that they both leaped backward and bumped together, and Uncle Karl fell against the bookshelf behind them and upset the bottle containing the Liquid of Vomitfucation.
The Chimpanzee Alchemist uttered such a wild screech that Soda jumped away and the chunks golem sprang after her and clasped her stitched arms around Soda in terror. The Spork Armadillo snarled and hid under the table, and so it was that when the powerful Liquid of Vomitfucation was spilled it fell only upon the super best friend of the alchemist and the uncle of Soda the Cursed.
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