“Attention,” Mae Blockinschlokinberg shrieked in a voice that could break glass. “I have a few words to say to you lowly underlings.”
“Silence!” Bob bellowed. He'd graduated to plucking the hair on his head since he’d demolished his unibrow. “The great one speaks.”
Mae Blockinschlokinberg paced the stage as her four icky lackeys oohed and ahhed.
Again, I felt an uncomfortable foreboding sensation in my gut. Again, my radar could be skewed. It was definitely skewed—it seemed as if Zach was flirting with me. Ridiculous. I needed my head examined.
The director glared at poor Bob. Her beady eyes narrowed to slits. “No one is to make eye contact with me. No one is to disagree with me. And I need a snack table with eye of newt, tacos and Mountain Dew. Am I clear?”
Mae Blockinschlokinberg was a nasty piece of work. That had to be the reason for the icky feelings. I disliked people like her.
“Yes, your majesty,” Bob said bowing.
“What the heck is happening here?” I muttered. “That woman is an ass-pipe.”
“I love that word,” Sassy whispered. “Is it Puntreelish?”
“No, it’s Pissedoffish,” I replied. “Learned it from Zelda and thought it fit.”
“It fits perfectly,” Zach said, eyeing the woman with disgust.
Mae Blockinschlokinberg was just getting started. “So, beaver,” she said with a sneer. “I published your play to Cramanon last night.”
“WHAT?” Bob shrieked. “It was a rough first draft. It was nowhere near ready for publication.”
“Silence,” Mae Blockinschlokinberg snapped. “It’s your punishment for not pleasing me. After I published it under your name, I reported it.”
Mae Blockinschlokinberg’s foul posse cackled like idiots and hung on the disagreeable woman’s every word.
Bob paled and yanked most of the hair out of the left side of his head. “But… but… but I…”
“But nothing,” she snapped. “All great art is developed in humiliation, drunkenness, constipation and misery. I have helped you, you pathetic tree gnawer.”
“Total heinous cow sphincter,” I whispered.
“You’re speaking Swedish,” Sassy whispered back.
“Yep,” I said with a small grin. “Thanks to you, I am.”
“I barely know the guy, and I want to rescue him,” Zach said angrily. “I have half a mind to cover that abomination in boils.”
“Boils might be an improvement,” I muttered.
“As fun as that would be, don’t do it,” Sassy advised. “It would mess up the play, and the whole town would be devastated.”
“Explain,” Zach said through clenched teeth as he watched the horrible little woman terrify the masses.
“Okay,” Sassy said. “It’s like this, it’s totally cool to lose your shit because someone is being a dickwad. And I understand that if you hold your shit inside, you could become full of shit and then explode like a bomb and there will be shit everywhere—a shitstorm so to speak, which is the Hawaiian word for a stinky doody pile. And, I just don’t see how everyone covered in poopoo would help right now.”
“Sassy, you’re going to have to do better than that,” Zach said, closing his eyes and trying not to laugh.
“Right. I’ll speak a language you can understand. Hawaiian is difficult. I’ll speak British,” she said with a nod. “They already paid Mae Blockinschlokinberg the entire budget for two years. If there’s no show, the Assjacket Community Theatre will be ruined and become the laughing stock of the Tennessee Man-Titty Thespians. No one wants to be laughed at by the Tennessee Man-Titty Thespians. It’s a fate worse than death, according to Bob.”
Zach winced. “Sassy, is that really what they’re called? Seems kind of politically incorrect.”
“What? Thespians? Did you think I said Lesbian Man-Titties? Because I can see how that would be bad. Lesbians have woman-titties. So, no, I didn’t say Lesbian,” she explained to an aghast Zach.
“Umm… no,” I said, helping Zach out and digging the Sassy hole deeper. There was no telling what could come out of her mouth next. “The man-titties part.”
“Nope, that part is true,” she told us. “They have big bouncy man hooters.”
“Got it,” Zach said. “Very visual.”
Sassy nodded. “Thank you. I’m good like that. Anyhoo, Bob and Roger think the little blob is brilliant. I personally think they ate too many magical berries. However, as bulbous and disgusting as Mae Blockinschlokinberg is—which is Spanish for fucking wiener-faced skank folds fungus—if she gets fired, she’ll keep the money and we have no play. And on top of that stinky news, Bob is up for some international communist theatre award for this show. He says his life will be complete if he wins.”
“There’s an international communist theatre award?” I asked, confused.
“Totally,” Sassy confirmed. “The winner gets an all-expense-paid trip to a motel forty miles from the Jersey shore and a lifetime supply of ticket rolls to use for upcoming productions.”
I was speechless.
Zach was not. “Not sure the prize merits the abuse,” he said, eyeing the squat terror on the stage with disgust. “I’m done standing by when people are getting hurt.”
I was very aware of what he was talking about. He’d had no control when he was under the curse and had helplessly watched as Henrietta Smith had harmed and killed others. The curse had blocked him from stopping her. It had been a heavy load to carry. Zorro and I knew he hadn’t been at fault, but I also knew that Zach didn’t believe it.
“Can you do it and not get caught?” Sassy asked with an excited gleam in her eyes.
Zach’s smile grew wide. “Yes. Yes, I can.”
“Go for it,” Sassy said. “But make it look real, not like magic.”
“Not. A. Problem,” Zach said, sinking lower in his seat and waiting for an opening.
I was sure something was about to go very wrong, but I was all in for the plan. Mae Blockinschlokinberg was asking to be taken down a peg or two or ten. Her mere presence was vile. I sat back and waited for the show to start.
“Here’s what I reported to Cramanon from your abomination of a play,
