Munmun(11)

I jogged across the floor looking for holes or something to climb or anything, and finally I did find a door somewhere. I was hoping it went outside. But when I squeezed underneath I found myself in a blind dark closet.

“Warner, the lynxcat can hear you,” said Prayer, and obviously I could hear it scrabbling and yowling around up there and I thought for the billionth time, how sick must riches be in the head to keep these murderous jerks around.

I bashed into mops, brooms, random shoes, jugs of cleaning acids and gels. Finally I hit something cool and round and atfirst I didn’t know what it was.

Then I figured it out.

“Prayer,” I said. “Okay. Wake up Usher, then come down here immediately.”

It was one of the cleaningcars the middlepoor maids had been using, basically a wide glasstic rollerpod. Then ontop you’ve got a littler pod that can shoot up and out on a flexy laddercrane, to clean even those hardtoreach places.

The rollerpod was built for someone atleast quarterscale. So I was too littlepoor to work the footpedals and steeringpad at the same time. But if we stuck Prayer down there in the footspace, meanwhile I’m up here steering with the pad and yelling commands, maybe that could work.

Or maybe it can’t because apparently Prayer can’t work the pedals, because her entire body isn’t as strong as an average quarterscale foot, how is that possible, Prayer can you even do a single pushup.

“Try putting your whole weight on it,” I yelled.

“Why don’t you put your stupid weight on it,” she yelled back.

So we scrambled around switching positions, her on the steeringpad, me on the footpedal, while upstairs we heard Willow thump around toward the door and talk to Bixquick.

“Bixie, you’re awake too, huh,” we heard that psycho girl say. “Ow. I know, Bix, I know. They’re so annoying. Ow. Bix, don’t bite me, you stupid freak.”

I wedged myself against the ceiling of the sweatysmelling footspace and grinded into the pedal as hard as I could and something finally worked and bam, we smashed our way through the closet door and out into the basement. Prayer immediately steered us into the leg of a tabletop. A corner of Mountainmilkcowisland fell on top of us and exploded everywhere. I got thrown around, hopped onto a second pedal, mashed it, thankgod it was the brake.

“Oh, this makes no sense,” said Prayer. “Left is right, I think.”

The basement door creaked open and we heard Bixquick snarl happily and pad down the stairs.

“Okay, hit the gopedal again,” said Prayer, and I hit it again, and we lurched into another table leg and a bunch more of Mountainmilkcowisland collapsed to the ground, throwing up paintchips and plasterclouds.

“Yeah, left is right,” said Prayer. “Well, that’s stupid, but I think I got it.”

Usher peered over the sinklip, gazing down at us with terrified eyeballs. We whirligigged in his basic direction, crunching cows and barn walls. Meanwhile Bixquick stalked us through the debris.

Next problem for Team Save Usher From Getting Eaten was, once we were under the sink, we couldn’t get the cranepod to raise.

“Ohmygod, hit the laddercrane pic on the screen,” I yelled.

“I’m hitting it, idiot, all that happens are flashing words,” yelled Prayer.

Bixquick decided it was time to eat us and bat bat batted the glasstic between me and him a couple times, fortunately glasstic is a superstrong miracle substance.

“nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnNNOWWWW,” said this huge murdercat.

“Crap, please go away,” I begged.

We stared at each other. My eyes were dumb stones, his were liquid evil.

Then he flicked his head up toward Usher, froze, unfroze, waggled his butt like a maniac.

In desperation I jumped on a third little pedal, more of a button, and the cleaningcar stopped jittering around and froze, legs tripodded out the sides and clamped onto the ground, finally the cranepod started spooling upward.

Bixquick bounded onto the sink.

Prayer was mashing the screen with both hands and staring up desperately at the dreamyslow spooling cranepod and there was no way it was going to get there before Usher got his spine broken or face ripped open or whatever.

Bixquick sniffed Usher once with his ugly slugstripey head.

Then Usher just rolled off the edge.

He fell about a foot through the air and mostly hit the top of the cranepod. Its door was spazzing openshut openshut and he just kind of dangled there in its mouth and let it chomp the middle of his body while we pulled up the tripod legs and sucked the cranepod back toward us.

By the time we got to the stairs the cranepod was sitting on top of us again and Usher was all the way inside limply settling himself. So we rolled up the steps in our amazing ball and past Willow and across the hallway floor with Bixquick scampering uselessly behind us, and we bashed the front door a few times until Willow yelled “UGGH FINE” and furiously just opened it for us, legblocking the scrabbly lynxcat as we rolled out into the night.

A few blocks away we stopped and brought Usher into the main pod with us. He was mostly okay, just a couple ribs and fingers broken and a bruisedup face.

“Than nks,” he said to Prayer.

“Hey, ofcourse,” said Prayer.

“Usher, why the heck are you thanking her,” I said.

“F for savi ing m me,” he said.

“It was her fault we all almost got killed,” I said.