Ridicula Read online

  Swearing never to ride a hot air balloon again in this lifetime, Kenny tried to remain patient as he groped the bottom of the gondola. He didn’t think he’d try again to stand up until they were safely on the ground. Even from his limited vantage point, he could see the pilot manipulating some gear and then felt the balloon lighten and begin its descent.

  “I think I see a slight clearing in the woods, and the rain has let off enough for us to land,” the pilot said shakily, giving Kenny little confidence.

  “Are you sure this is a good place to land?” Maria asked, echoing Kenny’s thoughts.

  “As good as any, especially since we are so low on fuel,” replied the pilot.

  Ah, no fuel. Sounds right, Kenny thought, his hands trembling ever so slightly as he imagined plummeting into the trees. But at least there would be less of a chance of the balloon exploding due to an empty gas tank. That was Kenny—always the optimist!

  In other words, he was certain that the outcome would be a fiery death.

  The air balloon drifted downward quickly. The plummet was beginning. His feet joined his hands with the quivering sensation.

  Maria knelt beside him. “Why are you men such wimps? Bobarino looks like he’s about to have a heart attack, but at least he stopped puking and panicking. George is frozen with fear. And you, forget about it,” she said like one of Tony Soprano’s goons might. “We’re through the storm. Why don’t you try again to get those shaky legs to stand up?”

  “I’m fine right here,” he replied. “I’ll wait until we’ve landed.”

  “No, you’re going to help us land,” Maria ordered. Kenny thought she was Jade for a moment; Jade did the commanding, not Maria.

  “Oh, my poor feet,” he heard Jade moan for the millionth time. For some reason, that gave him strength. He did not want to be so pathetic. He really didn’t.

  But a little more encouragement was necessary.

  Maria must have seen his uncertainty about what he should do next. He guessed that was pretty obvious by the way he still cowered on the floor. “Get up, you good for nothing fool!” What had gotten into her?

  Kenny decided to at least lift himself to his knees. That showed some bravery, right?

  “You are such a coward!” exclaimed Maria and kicked him lightly in the shin. “Mice are braver than you.”

  Okay, that was enough. He leapt to his feet and found that he could stand without the wind knocking him off the railing. That was a relief. The wind had died down a great deal, but he said, “I’m much taller than you, Maria, so I’m much more likely to lose my balance.” Even wimps had to defend themselves sometimes.

  “Oh, so you’re calling me short now,” she yelled over the wind, but she laughed before he could take her seriously. “Standing wasn’t THAT hard, was it?”

  “I almost did fall before. I could have already been ant meat by now,” he pleaded, another weak attempt to justify his cowardly actions.

  Then the pilot interrupted. “You better all lay low. Navigating these trees may be difficult.”

  Kenny quickly sat down again. “Back down after all that effort,” he jibed.

  “And you sit so well,” Maria jibed back. The others joined them in the lower echelons of the basket, huddling together as if calling a play in a football game. George ruined that image for Kenny because he plopped down in the middle of them all and stared up at nothing in particular like a paralyzed zombie unable to rise from the dead.

  Jade looked at him with disgust. “Just pathetic.”

  “Right on,” Maria added.

  George seemed always to be the disparaged one no matter what he did. Kenny had to admit that his friend wasn’t helping his cause now. George hadn’t reacted to anything said about him during most of the hot air balloon voyage and remained silent now.

  Kenny decided to speak out for George. “Why don’t you just leave him alone?”

  “He got us in this mess,” replied Jade. “He’s such a putz.”

  “He never dragged us anywhere. We’re responsible, too.” And then, at the oddest moment he ever could have imagined, as the balloon descended and the wind picked up once more, he asked Jade, “Whatever happened to you two anyway? You used to actually care for each other.” With these words, he felt courageous for the first time in a long while. He had always been afraid to ask, because it seemed they both wanted it that way, but he just had to find out the scandalous details sometime. It might as well be right before he died.

  “Now you finally become brave,” Maria said, echoing Kenny’s thoughts. She had a knack for that—almost a kindred sense.

  “What the heck? We’re all going to be dead in a few moments anyway.” Kenny laughed, but Maria responded by smacking him in the face, not at all amused but not offended, either.

  The pilot took that moment to speak up. “We’re in for a bumpy landing—if we can avoid the trees, that is.”

  In other words, they were smashing into the trees for their untimely and excruciating deaths. But somehow, this thought gave him more bravado, and he asked again, “What the hell happened to you two?”

  Jade grimaced at him. George stared at nothing. It looked like he wasn’t going to get his answer.

  Then Jade suddenly yelled, “He cheated on me, all right?” That was the last thing he would have expected. She cheating on him, sure, but not the other way around.

  “Bloodshedder!” George screamed, possibly the first word he said since the storm encroached. Insanity aside, George has spoken!

  Kenny immediately rethought his optimism, because George then spouted nonsense as if acting in a dizzying one-camera slasher movie. “Bloodshedder will get me! Bloodshedder will take my blood and soul! Bloodshedder will harvest my intestines! Bloodshedder! Bloodshedder!” What or who the fuck was “Bloodshedder” anyway?

  He could not readily ask George’s meaning for two reasons: 1) George stared into oblivion, not appearing to have the intellectual capability to elaborate or even say another word, and 2) The balloon was about to smash into a tree.

  “Fore!” the captain yelled with no sense. First off, they were not mishitting a ball in golf, unless the balloon was the ball. Secondly, who was he telling to watch out: the tree?

  Kenny had known it all along; they were doomed.

  In golf, when the ball is hit correctly with a driver, the ball’s flight reaches its pinnacle in the air before arcing downward to the fairway. Luckily or perhaps due to some skill of the pilot, the air balloon acted like a golf ball and dipped below a branch of the tree just in time.

  Or nearly so, anyway.

  The tip of the envelope of the balloon grazed the branch, but all seemed well when the balloon continued to drift down steadily—

  Until it didn’t.

  The balloon plummeted faster as the scratch in the envelope became a hole. There went the perfect flight of the golf ball, spiraling down into the rough or worse.

  Kenny resumed his thoughts of doom.

  Everyone screamed in terror, including the pilot. All except George, that is. He made no sound, calm as could be, only watching the balloon deflate like a tire on a spike.

  Was “Bloodshedder” a premonition? Was the air balloon the “Bloodshedder” he had referenced? Would all of them be bleeding as they were horribly ripped to shreds? But then the name would have been “Bloodshredder”!

  Kenny dared to look down, seeing another smaller tree directly below the basket. Before he could scream louder, the basket bounced off the tree like a beach ball in the sand. For an instant, they flew upwards. Then, gravity took hold, and they continued to plummet.

  Except they didn’t. Instead, the basket bounced off another tree, the friction causing the balloon to slow. Hitting the ground, the basket bounced once, then again and one more time until settling on its side a few meters from the previous spot.

  As the basket flipped, so did Kenny. He slammed hard to the ground, stunned but otherwise uninjured.

  Had they all miraculously escaped unharmed?


  The envelope of the air balloon deflated and tumbled around them, narrowly missing Kenny as he crawled to safety. Rain patted his head and dirt smeared his face before he realized that it might be better to lift his head as he crawled. He dragged his legs, though. His pants ripped, causing him to yell out, “Damn it!” even though that should have been the last of his worries.

  “Are you all right?” he heard the pilot ask in a squeaky voice, as if he had suddenly turned into a talking mouse.

  Kenny turned his face toward the noise and found that the pilot was not talking to him; he was talking to Bobarino, who was facedown and unmoving in the dirt. The pilot shook him, but Bobarino did not respond.

  “I’ll get help, I will,” the pilot squealed. Then he ran off crazily, raising his arms and yelling “Help!” as he dashed out of sight. Kenny didn’t think to stop him. He was too busy spitting out dirt.

  His legs too wobbly to stand, Kenny managed to crawl to Bobarino’s side. He shook him and then turned him over on his back. The effort was clumsy, but he still felt he had done it close to what he’d learned in CPR class about a dozen years ago. (He had just finished two years of college, and having little direction in life, had become gung-ho about joining the Peace Corps, based on a TV ad. That excitement had lasted all of two weeks, but that had been enough time for him to sign up and take the Red Cross class.)

  This extensive two-week experience allowed him to tell that Bobarino was still breathing and that nothing was blocking his throat passage, or whatever the doctors called it. Then he was able to deduce that the Italian man was unconscious. After all, he still wasn’t moving.

  That’s where Kenny’s recollection of CPR class ended. He looked around for the others. Maybe they would know better what to do.

  But he didn’t see anyone.

  What happened to them? Had they been thrown from the balloon like ragdolls? Were they all lying in a ditch, unconscious, too? Were they dead?

  His unfounded fears subsided when he saw Maria walk into view, unhurt, unbloodied, her hair only slightly disheveled, and lovely.

  Behind her, Jade looked annoyed but was also uninjured. Her hair lay perfectly in place, but that did not appeal to him. And she wore no shoes once more, for her most recent pair must have gone flying off in the wind.

  At that moment, Bobarino jumped to his feet. “Blimey,” he said, a rather unusual word coming from an Italian.

  “Are you all right?” Kenny asked, concern arising more from Bobarino speaking British than because he had just been unconscious.

  “Bloody good,” replied the Italian, and he didn’t seem at all sarcastic.

  What the hell? Kenny thought but decided not to inquire further about the other’s condition. If he says he’s all right, then he’s all right.

  “Where’s Waldo—I mean, George?” Jade asked, and then added, “Missing again. What a dimwit!”

  “Maybe he’s finally gone to get you those perfect glass slippers,” Kenny answered but instantly regretted it as Jade smacked him.

  “Perhaps he went to get help, like the pilot did?” asked Maria.

  “No, he’s not smart enough,” Jade replied.

  “Maybe he’s lost, hurt, or dead,” Kenny avowed, echoing his glum mood.

  “No, I’m not lucky enough,” Jade responded, but she wasn’t fooling him. She had asked about his whereabouts with a little concern in her mocking.

  “Well, he didn’t just disappear,” Maria declared.

  “He did with that woman.” Jade professed. There it was. The crux of it all said at last. “And he acted all innocent when he finally did return. But I knew better.”

  “Let’s just find him,” Kenny suggested, perhaps the first sensible thing he had said this entire trip.

  They searched through the balloon wreck and nearby bushes, trees, ditch, and dirt. They couldn’t find any footprint, ripped clothing, or any other sign of him. George was simply missing.

  Perhaps he had vanished after all.

  Chapter 18

  The Dawn of Reckoning

  The old man could be infuriating, Freckles thought. Don’t humans know that starting battery-charged weed whackers in the forest could alarm other animals, including our marten target? Man-made crap always concerned the animal denizens. That’s why Harrison wasn’t supposed to start the whacker till later. So what if the old man had a few thorns prickling him? Just stop clearing stuff out whenever a thorn threatens your fragile piece of skin. Take the prick, old man!

  It’s dawn, too, with patches of darkness still lurking. He probably can’t see. He’ll injure himself with that whacker.

  Meanwhile, the demented cat was enthralled with her catnip, running around the forest like a crazy chipmunk, scratching every leaf and stick she could find. Well, at least the marten wouldn’t suspect the noise to be something which should concern him. After all, what predator would announce themselves with such noise? Perhaps a stupid human. That’s why Harrison infuriated the Rottweiler so much—not so much the noise, just the foolishness.

  Since Freckles was a rather large dog, he couldn’t sneak through the forest all that quietly either, so perhaps all this racket might be for the best. Deception might prove more valuable than all-out surprise. At least he hoped so.

  Although he was always confident of success, Freckles knew that his new archenemy was both smart and wily and had made a fool of him in the past. Now, he would get the best of the marten at that same location: The Douglas-fir tree, the Grand Fetcher, where the ultimate chase was bound to go. His archenemy would be trapped and begging for Freckles’ clemency.

  If his accomplices didn’t bungle things up.

  They moved onward. The marten would be appearing near the tree when the sun rose just above the Grand Fetcher. Freckles had noticed that pattern from the marten while scouting out this location in preparation for this glorious day. No matter what he was doing: chasing prey, sleeping, or causing havoc, the marten always went to the Douglas-fir tree. That’s why he had decided to have the marten come to the trap, rather than Freckles seek his archenemy out. That just made sense.

  Not like those humans, Freckles thought while dropping his ears to avoid listening to Harrison’s weed whacker. Their wars, inclinations, and logic were “Ridicula,” which in Freckles’ vernacular meant: well beyond ridiculous, approaching stupidity and insanity; mostly associated with humans.

  Since the marten already knew or would learn immediately after arriving that they were in the vicinity, Freckles had to trick the marten by exposing his biggest weakness: his bravado. That little weasel thought he was smarter and faster than any of them, and he might be right about that. After all, the cat continued to act like a possessed bouncy ball while the human was, well, human. But the marten would consider this ragtag team incapable, and thus his overconfidence could be his undoing. Therefore, the element of surprise via sneaking wasn’t needed; Freckles had other surprises waiting for the dastardly marten.

  The Grand Fetcher was in plain sight now and they didn’t need to move closer, so finally Harrison stopped that confounded weed-whacker, for he had no more weeds or brush to clear. Now, the primary purpose of bringing the weed whacker would be employed, if Harrison understood what he was to do. A big if. Ridicula!

  As for that cat, acting crazy on catnip suited Freckles’ plans, although he hoped Pebbles hadn’t expended it all already. The cat loved catnip!

  But now, they waited.

  After two minutes, Harrison said, “How long must we wait?” Impatient human.

  Freckles did not have the proper vocal appartus to answer in a way that the man would understand quickly, so the dog did nothing in response.

  “Just don’t ruin my plan,” said Harrison. His plan. Yeah, right! Freckles laughed uproariously in his thoughts but just kept it to himself. Let him think what he wanted, as long as he played his role.

  They continued to wait. After five more minutes, Harrison said, “This is ridiculous. That marten ain’t coming. I’m
going home.”

  Freckles knew that Harrison could be impatient but had not anticipated him to be this hasty. After all, Harrison could fish all day and catch nothing. He just waited there with a fishing rod. Wasn’t this waiting business much the same? It’s not like he splashed around the lake scaring all the fish when they did not bite, like Freckles would have done. The guy just didn’t know how to have a good time.

  Then, Freckles heard a familiar sound of rustling. The marten was close. Now the fun would begin.

  The marten popped out of a bush that Harrison had just weed-whacked, scaring Pebbles half to death, causing her to jump out of her fur and twirling in the air like ballerina on catnip. In return, the marten gave them all his sardonic smile.

  “Damn nuisance,” Harrison said, starting back up his weed whacker. “You’re asking for it now.”

  The marten cackled, not at all fearful of the bumbling man. So instead of retreating, the marten advanced on the man, probably trying to trip up the old man for another good laugh.

  Luckily, this action was exactly what Freckles had expected the marten to do. Harrison, however, was surprised, almost dropping the weed whacker when the marten ran right over the man’s foot. Pebbles, meanwhile had landed on her feet, but the marten tripped her up when he zigzagged by, taking out her front paws.

  Not exactly as Freckles intended, but it would do.

  Freckles reacted, running after the marten like a dog after a mailman. The chase was on again.

  But this time, the dog was more controlled and more prepared. Ready for this particular chase. Ready to win.

  Rascally Rascal saw his chance to be mischievous again. This dog, Freckles, and his ragtag team didn’t know when to call it quits. Let’s see. Who should he pick on first? The inept old man, the scaredy-cat, or the mulish dog? He thought about it for only second, and then had his answer; he’d pick on all three.

  Frightening the cat was easy. All he had to do was show his face, for that cat was on something, jumping around like a crazed bunny. And the old man’s reaction was priceless, starting up his cutting-hedge contraption. Did he think he was going to scare me with that thing? Ha!