Munmun(8)

“Warner,” hissed Prayer. “Shut up.”

Grant was quiet. Then he sorrowed, “I have to tell you, that hurts my feelings. As if I would ever do such a thing.”

“Mister Grant,” said Prayer, “my brother was being rude and terrible, and later I’ll slap his stupid face. But the reason he is freaking out is, we have jobs at the law school earning munmun, and he’s worried we’re going to be late.”

Grant frowned and nodded, like we had just reminded him of something he didn’t like.

“So our question is,” said Prayer, “can you give us a few munmuns to be in this film? Because I think that would make all the difference.”

Grant breathed in and blew out about a gallon of hot stinking air, his lips flapping, like, manohman, you guys are making this really hard for me.

“Ten munmuns each,” I said.

“Oh, okay,” said Grant. “So, thirty? Yeah, no problem. Oh, this is great! Let’s shower you up and get you into costume.”

Prayer wore the princess outfit, I wore the soldier outfit, and Usher wore the Japanese robe. The fabric of mine was like treebark.

“Holy crap, this itches and hurts,” I said.

“I can’t even really move,” said Prayer.

“Mi ine feels nice,” said Usher. His robe was silk and looked great, a little too big for him though, pooling around his feet.

“Can we all wear what Usher’s wearing,” I asked, but Grant said no.

“I can sw witch with p ppp p Pprayeratleast,” said Usher, but Grant said no to that too.

“We need a princess and it has to be her,” explained Grant.

Like I said, we were way too big to ride the trains like passengers, so we alternated between sitting on the tops of them and squeezing into opentop boxcars.

“May I?” asked Grant, and he picked up Usher and mashed him into a boxcar with his thumb.

“Holy crap, be carefull with him please,” I yelled.

Prayer had the most lines. It was a lot of stuff like, “What a glorious day for a ride on the Old Bavarian Line!” and, “Now, I wonder who can be waiting for me at the station! Why, it’s the vicar!”

As the soldier, I had to do stunts. A lot of them involved the tunnel. One stunt was where as the tunnel swallowed the train, I had to run screaming along the top from front to back, eventually not make it though and get smacked by the mountainside.

Usher wasn’t great with lines so Grant brought in some white pinkeyed rats to sit in the boxcar with him and pretend to play cards.

“They’re completely domesticated and have never harmed a soul,” Grant explained to sweaty rapidbreathing Usher.

Then Grant took the tops off of some passenger trains and told me and Prayer to squeeze in and lie down in them. That was really notsogood. We were smushed inside like in toosmall coffins and the tops of the little seats dug into our bodies and faces, worstofall, we couldn’t move because Grant clamped the tops onto our backs until they snapped shut.

We zoomed around the track like monsters, completely unable to move and trying not to throw up.

“I do believe my stop is approaching,” I said with my face smashed into some windows.

“Why, Loottenant, what a coincidence,” mumbled Prayer.

“Can we try that again a little louder and clearer, please,” said Grant.

“WHY LOOTTENANT,” yelled Prayer. “WHAT A COIN CIDENCE.”

It got even more weird and bad when Grant took Prayer out, wrapped her up in twine, set her back down on top of the tracks, left me in the train meanwhile.

“Okay now while the train approaches, the princess needs to struggle, but not too hard, make it look like you can’t escape, and you, I need you to steeple your fingers and laugh like a supervillain while the train approaches,” he said to Usher. “Like this: OH, HA HA HA HA. YESSSS, YES. OH, HA HA HA HA HA HA. Like that.”

But Usher wouldn’t do the evil maniac laugh, couldn’t but also wouldn’t, instead he kept stumbling all panicky onto the tracks in front of Prayer waving his arms so that the train with me inside would kill him first.

“This scene is really important, infact I would say it’s pivotal,” grumbled Grant. “Can you please just do what I asked for one take.”

Nope, Usher just shook his head desperately and stood on the tracks with arms outstretched like a zombie.

“For God’s sake, I’m not going to let the train actually hit her,” huffed Grant. “Anyway it’s lightwait and plastic and not even going very fast, so, worstcase, I mean, no one has anything to worry about.”

Lucky for us, Grant’s wife opened the door at the top of the stairs and yelled, “Grant, dinner.”

Unlucky for us, as soon as she opened the door the psycho lynxcat came jailbreaking down, this yowly murderer made it up onto the table before Grant got ahold of him, lifted him up scratching and scrabbling, all we could do was watch and scream.

At dinner, we met Grant’s kids, a son Prayer’s age, a daughter my age. The son ignored us. The daughter was called Willow and she wanted us gone completely, so she was sort of our best hope for getting out of there.

“Dad. They don’t even want to be here,” said Willow.

“Don’t you think they deserve a good meal, honey,” Grant asked her.