Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Colonel Popcorn’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Chapter 5

River watched the sun disappear over the hills. Even though she didn’t want to admit it, she was beginning to worry. Aniko and Marigold had yet to come out of the portal, and Colonel Popcorn was still in the town. Maybe he was staying there for the night?

River sighed and went back to reading her murder novel. She was almost through with it, which thoroughly disappointed her. She was enjoying it very much. It was one of those books that you really want to read all day, but you don’t want it to be over, so you spend a good percentage of your time debating whether or not to read it. River was not a huge reader, but the occasional book here and there would catch her eye. Particularly ones about murder. And death. And destruction. Honestly, River wondered many times if she was a psychopath.

“Aw,” River sighed to herself, “Only three chapters left.”

Pop.

Something large and heavy slammed into River’s back. The force of the collision sent her tumbling down the hill again. She landed in a heap at the bottom, sprawled next to a humanoid figure.

River sat up. Turning her head, her gaze fell upon…

“Aniko?”

“Owwwww….”

“I was wondering when you’d show.” Unspoken relief flooded through her. “Where’s Marigold?” she added, less concerned. She knew Aziminil and Colonel would be heartbroken if Marigold didn’t return, but honestly, she wasn’t really feeling that friendship vibe.

“Right behind me,” Aniko said, standing up and brushing dirt off her legs.

Where right behind–“

“Woooaaah!!!” There was a flash of blue light, and Marigold appeared, tumbling down the hill after Aniko.

“Perfect,” River groaned.

River and Aniko stepped out of the way of the rolling elf as she fell down the hill and came to a stop right between them.

Standing up, River walked over to Marigold, who was lying right where Aniko and River were a few seconds ago.

“Owwwww, my face hurts…” Marigold suddenly gasped and sat up. “Are my crayons okay?” She rummaged through her crayon satchel. “Nooooo! Elusive Violet is broken! How can I move on from this tragedy?! I’ll need a therapist! Wait… I am a therapist! How will this case play out? I think this will be my most difficult one yet!”

River rolled her eyes. “It’s just a crayon, Marigold. You’ll be okay.”

“She’s never okay,” muttered Aniko.

“So… where’s the rest of the gang?” Marigold asked as she stood up, absentmindedly chewing on half of Elusive Violet.

Wondering when Marigold had decided to call them a ”gang,” River explained their situation. “Colonel’s gone to check the nearby village for your graves–“

“What?”

“–and Aziminil’s been chasing butterflies for the past five hours, but eventually moved on to squirrels.”

“Dang! She must be getting her exercise for the day,” Aniko turned to watch Aziminil flail her arms in an attempt to climb up a pillar.

“I wonder how she feels about that… but! More importantly: River, how did you feel about our long and unexpected absence?” asked Marigold.

“Relived, at least in your case.”

“And why is that?”

“I’m not gonna answer that question.”

“And why is that?”

“I’m not gonna answer that one, either.”

“And why is that?”

Breaking the loop, River turned to Aniko. Pulling her a few feet away from Marigold, who was furiously doodling in her “Therapist Casebook” she muttered to her, “I’m getting a little concerned about Colonel. He’s been gone awhile. It’s not like him to do this.”

Aniko shrugged. “He’s probably fine. Honestly, I think now would be a great time to leave, y’know? We could ditch these two crazies and do our own stuff.”

“No, Aniko. How many times are we gonna have this conversation?”

“A lot.”

Staring blankly at Aniko, River turned on the spot to round up the rest of the party. “We’re going to find Colonel Popcorn, guys!” she yelled. Aziminil stopped her desperate attempt to climb the pillar and ran over to River.

“He’s LOST?!” she gasped, “Oh no! We’ll have to make missing posters! OOH! We could put squirrels on them! River, can we put squirrels on them?”

“No!” River said forcefully, “He’s not lost! Just… misplaced. So no missing posters. Plus, if we did have to do that, we won’t be adding squirrels to them. But, it proooobably won’t come to that. He’s probably fine.

“Aww. Can we put squirrels on something else?”

“Marigold!” River called to the still scribbling ranger, ignoring Aziminil’s question. “Let’s get going!”

“Okay!” she replied cheerily, packing up her crayons.

The party walked together to the town gates, River and Aniko chatting, Marigold quizzing Aziminil.

“And how come you feel such a close relationship with squirrels? This may be the root of our problem.”

“What problem?” Aziminil asked.

“It doesn’t matter, sweetie. Just answer the question.”

The party stopped in front of the closed gate Colonel had knocked on all those hours ago. It loomed above them, tall and foreboding. River walked up to it.

Knock, knock.

Silence.

Creeeaaak. 

“Hello?” A pale face peeked around the corner, thick black strands of hair obscuring one eye.

“Hello?” River called back.

“Who’re you?” The voice had a strange accent too it. Almost British, but it sounded very fake.

“People!” Aniko glared over River’s shoulder. “Who’re you?

“A guard. A none of your business!”

“Well, if you’re guarding this village, why can’t we come in?” River cocked her head.

“‘Cause there have to be two people here to let someone in. It’s protocol!”

“Then why don’t you go get someone else?”

“They are in the loo.”

Aniko shook her head. “They’re in the what?”

“The loo,” said River, “is a fancy word for the bathroom.”

And the British word!” the girl said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Now will you let us in?” River asked.

“No, of course not!”

River’s nostrils flared. She did not like this girl. Neither did Aniko.

“LET US IN OR I WILL EAT YOU!” Aniko roared at the guard.

“You can’t eat me! I have a sword!”

“I”LL EAT THAT TOO!”

“Hey!” interjected River. “What if, instead of eating her, she GETS THE OTHER GUARD AND LETS US IN!”

“I guess that does make sense,” the girl said. “Sorry. I’m not much of a thinker.”

“That much is clear,” River muttered under her breath.

“I’m Autumn, by the way,” Autumn grinned. “Bet you can’t guess the season I born in!”

“Autumn,” River rolled her eyes.

“Nope! It was winter!”

Aniko started to crack her knuckles, making a low growling sound in the back of her throat. But Autumn had already darted away from the crack in the gate, slamming it shut as she went.

“I hate her!” Aniko punched the rock wall, leaving a small crack in the stone.

River didn’t say anything, but you could tell she was just as angry. Her breathing was slow and hard, and her fists were clenched so hard that her knuckles were white.

Aziminil, though, apparently had different feelings on the matter. “What a nice girl!” she said, “Maybe we can be friends! Maybe she even has squirrels!”

It took far too long for the party’s liking, but eventually Autumn came back out with another, older girl beside her. This one also had black hair, this time in curls framing her light brown face. Throwing her hip to the side, this girl turned to the group and asked:

“Who are you?”

“Well,” River began, gesturing to each of her friends in turn, “this is Aniko, Aziminil, and Marigold.”

“And who’re you?”

Without hesitation, River replied. “Icingdeath.”

“Icingdeath? Really? Yeah, no,” the guard said.

“Hey, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to! It’s just my name.”

“What do you want?”

“We just want to get into your lovely little town before Aniko here eats you all!” There was no disguising the sarcasm dripping from River’s voice at this point.

“See, Cordelia, isn’t it so weird that there are suddenly so many visitors?” Autumn tilted her head up to her companion. “We usually get none!

“You’re right Autumn, this is certainly a new development!” Whipping out a recording device from her pocket, Cordelia hit a button on the side and spoke into the gadget. “This is C-Girl tuning in again at 7:47, day five, month ten. I’m standing outside the town gates here with my lovely companion Seasonal Sensation. Got anything real quick to tell our viewers, Double-S?”

“Not currently, no.”

“Um, what is go-” River tried to begin, but was cut off by “C-Girl.”

“Today, we are standing by the gate, possibly about to welcome,” she paused for a moment, counting the party in front of her, “four new strangers into our town! Much like the first welcomed here by Sophia and Albert York only a few hours ago! What is going on to warrant all these strange new foreigners?”

“Wait, are you talking about Col–” Aniko attempted what River had failed. It didn’t work for her either.

“So, standing here in front of me are, let me remember, Akiko, Icingdeath, Aziminil, and Petunia.”

“How do you even get Petunia from Marigold?!

“Shush! You’ll get your time to speak later!” Cordelia scolded before plowing on, “Seasonal Senstation, do you have a hypothesis to as why they are all here?”

“Well, C-Girl, I think they are here for our really good biscuits!”

“Cookies, you mean?”

“Well, for us Anglophiles, biscuits mean cookies!”

“Double-S, how many times will I have to tell you, you’re not British!”

“I’m an Anglophile! So I talk in a British accent and use all their fancy words!”

“For those of you viewers out there who don’t know what an Anglophile is, it’s a person with an unhealthy obsession with England!

“Hey! It is not unheal–“

“What are we doing? We’re getting off topic! It’s time for my hypothesis! I think that they are adventurers here to solve our… problem.

“Problem?” River raised her voice over Cordelia’s. “Someone here explain to me immediately what is going on before I completely lose it!”

“After being cruelly forced to explain what’s going on by this little je-” But, Cordelia was cut off by Aniko, who grabbed the recording device from her hand and promptly threw it on the ground. Aniko crushed it with her foot.

“NOOOOOO! THAT WAS MY LIFE, YOU JERKS!”

“No, it wasn’t’,” said, River. “About time you learned that. Now, spill. What’s. Going. On.”

“And why should I answer you, you, you… LIFE CRUSHER?!”

“Because if you don’t,” River’s voice dripped with menace, “I’m going to let Aniko break this wall down. Then, I’ll chop your heads off and let Aniko eat your corpses.”

Aniko bared her teeth from behind River.

“Pff!” Cordelia’s face was trying to keep it’s nonchalant expression, but it was slipping, “You couldn’t really do that.”

“Try me.” 

There was a brief staring contest before Cordelia slumped a bit. “Okay, fine,” she muttered.

“There’s a mad scientist up on that hill,” Cordelia pointed upward. “And she kidnaps people all the time. Believe me, I know! I’ve had many a friend lost to the evil grip of that cruel tyrant–“

“No you haven’t!” Autumn scoffed, “You were just pretending to make our podcast more interesting, but now the podcast’s gone! Gone, I tell you! Gone with the wind! It was the only solid thing in my life, literally! I can only eat soft foods ever since I got this cavity! And I can’t get it fixed because the dentist’s been captured! Now, the thing that kept me going is crushed into the dirt, just like my soul.” Autumn sunk to the ground and moaned.

“Why don’t you just buy another one?” asked Aziminil.

Autumn’s moaning abruptly stopped. “Oh,” she muttered. “Oh!” And with that, she was jumping up and down all over again.

“Wow, oh wow!” she cried. “All hope is not lost!”

“Can we please get back to the evil scientist?!” Aniko shouted from behind River

“Oh, yeah, right!” Cordelia took a deep breath and launched into the rest of the explanation.

“So, Lux (she’s the mad scientist) has been here for quite awhile. At least more than five years. Honestly, I’m beginning to lose count. Anyway, her goons come out around sunset. We’re talking to you guys from out our window in our curfew-approved location. Otherwise, we’d probably have been taken ourselves long ago.”

“Technically we still have to guard this wall after curfew,” Autumn explained, “but we don’t want to get caught, so we go in the gatehouse so as to avoid the henchman. It allows us to watch the wall and talk to outsiders but stay safe from within!”

Cordelia continued, ignoring Autumn’s interruption. “When her henchman do show, they take anyone that’s not in a safe spot.  If you’re out in the streets or not in a OSFL approved location, you’re dead meat. Well, kinda dead meat. We assume you’re dead meat, but we don’t really know what happens when Lux takes you. No one’s ever made it out, you see.”

“Wait, hold up,” River put up her hands. “What’s OSFL?”

“OSFL,” Autumn replied, “stands for Organization of Safety From Lux. They go around giving houses and other buildings better locks and general safety protocols. Prior to OSFL, people were getting snatched up from their own homes! No one felt safe, so Matilda Popperlock founded the organization to keep people safe!”

“Okay, thank you for finally explaining!” River sighed, “Now, will you please explain about this other visitor you had today? And who are Sophie and Albus?”

“You mean Sophia and Albert, sweetie!” Autumn said.

“Don’t even think about calling me that.”

“Noted,” Autumn muttered.

Cordelia turned back to River to answer her question. “Like, one or two hours ago, guards and siblings Albert and Sophia welcomed a newcomer into our town. I wanna say his name was Sargent Popcorn?”

“Colonel Popcorn, actually,” Marigold cut in.

“Whatever! Sargent Pop, same thing! Anyway, they tried to warn him about the curfew, but he was so distracted with trying to look for some dead people that we assume he didn’t hear ’em. Unfortunately, this tiny mistake not only probably cost him his life, but the lives of our two best guards! When this guy stayed out past curfew, our two heroes (Albert and Sophia) valiantly sacrificed their lives to try and save him! He was still captured, though. Along with Sophia and Albert.”

River’s heart plummeted at the news. She had guessed that was where the story was headed, but it was still awful to hear it out loud.

“Anyway, if you guys are gonna come into this town, please just say so. You’re kinda wasting quality D&D time for us.”

“D&D stands for Dungeons and Dragons,” Autumn explained, “It’s a role playing game! My character is currently an elf wizard named Thesandoral Phoenixwhirl while C-Girl’s character is a–“

“Cool, will you let us in now?” Aniko asked.

“Okay!” Autumn opened the gate wide enough for the party to squeeze into the OSFL-approved break room. Once inside, River pulled her group to the other side of the room. Away from the earshot of “C-Girl” and “Seasonal Sensation,” River whispered to her comrades.

“We are going to go rescue Colonel Popcorn and take down Lux.”


When Colonel Popcorn finally regained consciousness, he became vaguely aware that he was on something very cold and very hard. He was also vaguely aware of someone shaking his shoulders.

“Uuuugh,” he groaned in reply.

“Sir? Colonel Popcorn? Hellooo? Please be okay!”

“Yeah,” another voice came, more masculine than the first. “We’d better not have risked our lives trying to save him and have him die on us!”

“Albert! What the heck, that’s so dark! And, like, not polite!”

The name Albert sent memories flooding back through Colonel Popcorn’s mind, and he struggled to sit up.

“Oh, he’s alright! Colonel Popcorn?”

“…Yes?”

 Colonel Popcorn heard Sophia’s voice through the dark. “You should be careful! Albert and I were trained in first aid and that was a nasty hit you took to your head.” 

Cracking his eyes open, Colonel took in his surroundings. He was locked in a huge prison cell with Sophia and Albert, hence the cold, hard floor he had been lying upon. There were five straw beds, one of which was occupied by Albert. There was also another little girl on the one next to Albert who had remained silent the whole time. There was an attached door on the opposite wall of the prison which sported a sign labeled “Bathroom.” The bars to the cell were close together, leaving no chance of sliding through them. Beyond them was long hallway with four other cells. Colonel thought he could see other people in them, but he wasn’t sure. At the end of the long hallway were two guards. At least, Colonel assumed they were guards.

Standing side by side next to each other were two other odd creatures like the ones Colonel had seen previously. These, though, were different. One seemed to be a shark with tiger legs and stripes, while the other was what looked like a one-eyed spider with human arms instead of legs.

Shivering at the sight of them, Colonel turned his attention back to his companions.

“Where are we?” he asked them.

“Really?! You don’t know?! Oh my god, Sophia, he doesn’t even know!” Albert shouted. “He dragged us into a battle we had no chance of winning, got us caught, he’s probably the reason we’re gonna die, and he doesn’t even know where we are!

“Calm, down, Albert, he’s not–” Sophia began.

“Oh, don’t try and defend him! Don’t even try!”

“Too late, I’m trying! I am so trying that–“

“How could you defend this guy, Sophia? He’s got us in a position where we’ll be killed!

“You and I both know that’s not true!”

“Really? Y’know I don’t think you’re right! You know you’re wrong! Stop helping him, Sophia!”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Albert! It’s not his fault! Sure, he should have listened, but I’m the one who went to help him! Us being here is entirely my fault, so if you’re looking for a scapegoat, keep your accusations away from Colonel Popcorn!” Sophia cried, all in one breath.

Silence fell across the party like a cold blanket.

“S-so,” Colonel began again, “W-where… where are we?”

Albert’s gaze was still cold and angry, so Sophia, who honestly looked pretty mad herself, answered.

“Lux’s castle,” she said.

“Oh,” Colonel Popcorn muttered. “Thanks.”

Colonel rocked back and forth on his knees, wondering what to say or do. He wanted to plan an escape, but didn’t really want to break the icy silence of the room. Conflicted, he took to staring out at the guards who were deep their own quiet conversation. If Colonel Popcorn was very silent himself, he could just barely hear them.

In a nasal voice, the weird hand creature said, “T’ree new ones in one night! Ain’t it amazin’, Socrates?”

There was a low grumbling from the shark that was apparently named Socrates.

“Oh, stop bein’ so grumpy all de time!” the hand said, seeming to understand the other beast. “Issa a good thing! We might even git more friends!”

At this last part, Colonel’s insides went cold. Surely the weren’t planning to make them into creatures like that?

“Ya see that kiddie in da red hat o’er dere in da cell wi’ dat supposed Colonel?” the hand gestured with one of its fingers over to Colonel’s cage, “I heard dat da Master’s gonna zap ‘er!”

Colonel turned to look at the silent child. Atop her small head was a furry red hat. Trying to gulp down his fears, he turned his head back to the conversation before him.

“Not ta mention da lil’ Colonel ‘isself! I can’t help but say dat Master got even bigger plans fer him! And,” the hand leaned in closer to the shark and whispered in a voice no lower than the last, “I heard ‘e’s gonna be one a ‘er biggest experiments yet!”

At this point Colonel was shaking uncontrollably. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he buried his head into them, pretending that they were walls that kept him safe from the dangers around him.

Colonel Popcorn spent the next few hours wondering what his life would soon become. A weird Frankenstein abomination like the other guards? Taught to kill and catch his friends and innocent people? Would these hands in front of him be the ones to bring fierce River and sweet Aziminil to their dooms? And what about naive little Marigold? Or tough Aniko?

Before too long, the need for sleep pulled in Albert and Sophia, each of them lying upon their separate straw beds. They didn’t look comfortable.

The little girl went to sleep soon after that as well, and was followed eventually by Colonel. While the comfort of sleep wrapped around them all, Colonel got to briefly forget his troubles of reality, but only traded them for the nightmares that came with sleep. Evil abominations with weapons and huge sticks chased him continuously in his dreams untill they finally lead him to a huge chair upon which sat an evil cloaked figure. Laughing maniacally, the figure pulled a strange device from within the folds of her cloak. Aiming it at Colonel, her finger slid forward on the trigger. A bright bursting light shot forward at Colonel and hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him back into the day.

Sitting upright, Colonel looked around him. Shivering in the cold cell, he wrapped his arms around himself and let his eyes slide over to Sophia. Shivering herself, she looked just as Colonel had imagined he himself had looked moments before. Albert and the girl were not much better themselves.

Colonel wondered if he should wake them, but realized he would only be trading one problem for another. The day brought no other comforts than that they weren’t already dead.

What would happen to them now? Colonel shivered when he remembered what he heard those guards say. 

Colonel leaned his head against the cell bars and sighed. Closing his eyes simply to bloke out his surroundings, he just sat there. 

Suddenly Colonel felt a jab in his arm closet to the bars. Scrambling away from the bars, Colonel looked up to see the two guards standing in front of his cage.

“Le’s go, Colonel!” the hand said in his scratchy voice, “Rouse yer friends, we’re a-going on a li’l trip!” The hand’s huge mouth stretched open in the most terrifying smile Colonel Popcorn had ever seen. “Yer all gonna be lab rats by de end a’ terday!”

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