--in which we get the moral of the story over early, so we can goof off for the rest of the book--
"Georrrrgie!" called the Evil Queen Lydia, in a vile, squawking voice. "I've brought up your supper!" The old, hideously ugly woman opened the door to the castle's highest tower. She spotted a skeleton in the corner." You've only been up here two days, you shouldn't be dead yet."
"We both wish I was," a voice said from the opposite side of the room.
"Oh, dear boy, there you are." said the startled Queen, and handed him a tray. " Eat up! A growing lad like you needs to be good and strong!"
"No, mother." he protested, and threw the tray out the door, and down the long and winding staircase that led to the tower.
"Aaak!" she shrieked." I spent all day preparing that for you! Why I should beat-"
"Oh, I'm sure you did, mother! I'm fully aware that your intentions were on poisoning me!"
Lydia gasped. " How dare you say-"
"You're trying to kill me off so Linda will be Queen, being your loyal puppet. You're poisoning me like you did father!"
"I never-" she started.
"Yes you did!" he snapped.
"THAT'S IT!" Lydia shrieked, "YOU ARE NEVER LEAVING THIS TOWER AGAIN!"
"Couldn't you at least give me a little privacy though?" he asked. "I mean, Uncle Samuel over there is giving me the creeps."
"Fine! I'll take him for the Moat Monster to chew on!" she said, taking the pile of bones out with her. "You might not be so lucky, son! I'll feed you to him while you're still alive!" She left, slamming the door in fury, and locking it.
George walked over to the small window and sighed. "I'm never gonna get out of here. The window's large enough to climb through, but it'd just be a one-hundred foot drop to my grave. And if I stay up here, I'll starve. What am I going to do?" He started to mope, believing that all hope was lost when he suddenly discovered a tall ladder in the corner that 'Uncle Samuel' had previously occupied.
Prince George laughed. He laughed very long, and very loud, almost even to a level of maniacal laughter. Down the long stairs, his sister Linda heard, and assumed that he'd cracked.
"He'll soon be dead!" she thought to herself. "Then I can kill mother, and I'll finally be Queen! QUEEN! QUEEN LINDA! Bwaahaa!" Like her mother, Linda was very power-hungry, dumb, selfish, and demented.
Anyway, George carefully lowered the ladder down through the opened window. When it looked as though the coast was clear, and the ladder was sturdy enough, he climbed down and headed for the woods surrounding the castle. "I'll run away and claim the throne in a few years," he told himself. He was heading for the neighboring Queendom of the Moon, where he could seek help from the Moon Queen.
As George ran, he heard his bratty little sister hollering to the Evil Queen. "George has escaped!" she shouted. "Into the woods!" George did not look back at his Kingdom, but kept running, hoping that he could reach the Queendom before his mother caught him.
"I'm afraid that we cannot continue this relationship any further!" she sobbed as she pushed him out the door.
"Oh, I couldn't agree more!" he shouted back. "I can't stand being treated like this!"
"YOU can't stand being treated like WHAT?!" she screamed. "I'm the one being treated unfairly! You've never been true to me, always running around with other girls! You-"
"Hey!" he shouted, offended. "I wouldn't have to if you'd treat me like I want to be treated. You never let me come within three feet of you in public, not to mention even holding your hand when we're alone! It's over! Au revior, Janey baby!" he sang, storming out.
"Don't you dare speak French to me!" she growled. "Save it for that little 'French Fry' of yours, ya loser!"
"I plan to... she treats me better than you ever could!" he shouted, slamming the door. He chuckled for a moment, thinking of all the fights he'd lasted through with her. "Well, it's all over now," he muttered to himself. "Women! My God, what I think of women!"
"Your views of women are academic to say the least of it," a voice said.
"Martha...?" he asked, unsurely.
"Who else would it be?" she replied, "Unless you're cheating on me, Paulsy dear."
"Oh," he stuttered, "...uh...of course not...Martha, my dear, you have always been my inspiration..." he sang, comforting her.
"Oh, you cutie-mootie, dooklie-smooklie, honey-"
"Please, stop with the pet names," he complained. "despite what some girls may think, I'm not a dog."
"I'm sorry," Martha pouted. "I'll never again."
"Oh, great!" he exclaimed, noticing the sun beginning to set. "I have to get home! I need to take care of my mother! I'll see you...oh, say...three o'clock tomorrow?"
"Alright," she agreed, giving him a peck on the cheek. "Bye, now!"
"Buh-bye," he said smugly, then headed down the street.
As he walked, he thought to himself, "It's a wonder Jane didn't know about Martha. I mean, they live only two houses apart..." He chuckled to himself as he reached his front doorstep.
"Bonjour, mon cheri," another voice said, right into his ear.
"Oh," he said, startled. "Uh...bonjour, Michelle,"
"Ca va, mon amour?" she asked.
"Tres, tres mal! Je regrette, Michelle, mais j'ai-"
"Vas-y, Paul! Allons-y-"
"No!" he cut her off, "I'm sorry, but I have to take care of my mother, she's dying you know..." His voice began to trail off.
"Je regrette, mon cheri. C'est terrible." she said, obviously disappointed that her plans were ruined. "A demain...?"
"A demain." he responded softly. She then grabbed him by the shirt, and began kissing him - alot. "Not now!" he shouted.
He looked up to see Martha running down the street, looking for him. "Michelle," he whispered. "Get down! Hide!"
"Quoi?" she asked, confused, as he hid her behind a bush in the garden.
He ran up to Martha. "Martha! Qu'est-ce que tu fais - er- I mean, what are you doing here?" he asked, trying to wipe off Michelle's bright red lipstick.
"Paul..." she started. "What's that all over your face?"
"Nothing...nothing at all!" he said, trying even harder to wipe it off.
"Here," Martha said, handing him a handkerchief. "Let me help you."
"No! Really, it's fine!" he shouted, but she'd already seen it.
"NO!" she shrieked, beginning to cry. "Paul, how could you?!" She slapped him in the face. "You liar!" she growled, crossing the garden, and noticing Michelle.
Michelle went over to Paul, and gave him a vicious kick in the stomach, causing him to fall on the ground.
"Quelle chameu!" she growled at him, and both she and Martha took turns kicking him. He was very glad when they left.
He eventually got up and limped inside of his house. "Mom, I'm home...I think." he called weakly.
"Oh, dear." his mother said, even weaker. "What happened to you?"
"Girls," he replied with a groan.
"You're a heartbreaker, just like your father was," his mother said with a weak smile.
"Please, don't say that, mother," he groaned again. She just looked back at him, smiling with affection. He decided to change the subject, before she started comparing him to his father again, "So, what did the doctor say?"
"He said that it's very serious," she replied. "I won't be around much longer, you know. Your Uncle Bill's here."
"He is?" he asked. "It's that bad, isn't it?" He said with a laugh, to hide his worried thoughts.
"Yeah, I guess," she said, falling asleep.
"I love you, Mom." he whispered back. "You're the only person left that I do love..." He sat down next to her, and he too began to doze off.
"She's dead." announced a voice from the kitchen.
"What?!" shouted Paul. "No she's not, her heart's still..." he started, but noticed that she was, in fact, dead. He got up. "How did you know?!" he shouted, angered.
"The doctor told me," the voice answered, and Uncle Bill appeared from the kitchen. "He gave her some potion or somethin' so she would die without any pain," he said.
"Why didn't anyone tell me this?!" Paul shouted, almost in tears. "I should've been first to know!"
"You weren't here." Uncle Bill reminded him, "Besides, she's better off this way."
"What?! Dead?!"
"Well, she's not suffering," Uncle Bill affirmed. Paul stormed upstairs, and returned a moment later, holding a small bag and a guitar. His uncle cut him off as he headed for the door. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Far away!" Paul answered, "Maybe to the Kingdom of the Sun. Mother always wanted to live there...well, before that Evil Queen Lydia..."
"What about money?" his uncle questioned.
"I'm going to become a bard." he announced, holding up his guitar. "I'll travel, and become rich, and-"
"Yeah, right!" his uncle laughed. Paul ran out the door and slammed it behind him.
"Yeah, right!" Paul muttered.
He walked all night, traveling from the Queendom of the Moon, to his destination, the Kingdom of the Sun. He knew old family friends there, who would help him if he needed it, but he doubted he would. Soon he grew tired, and set his meager belongings down underneath a tree, where he sat down next to them. "I wonder where I am..." he yawned, looking around the dark woods.
"Me too," said someone, or something from the tree.
"Oh, great!" Paul shouted, "Now the trees are talking to me, what next?!"
"I'm not the tree, you idiot! I'm IN the tree, who are you?"
"Wow, what a name, In-the-tree. Is that Indian or somethin'?" Paul laughed.
"No," the voice growled. "My name happens to be George. And who are you?"
"My name's Paul." he stated, "I've run away from home. What are you doing up there?" He asked, looking up.
"Really? Neat! I've run away from home, too." George said. "My mother's probably out looking for me right now, with her dumb-stupid Evil Cookies."
"EVIL COOKIES?!" Paul exclaimed, "GEORGE?! As in PRINCE GEORGE?!"
"Well, yeah." George said, just before he hopped down out of the tree, landing directly on Paul's guitar, smashing it.
"Aaaah!" Paul screamed. "MY GUITAR!"
"Oh, George mumbled. "Uh, sorry."
"Now what am I going to do?!" he shouted.
"Hey, it'll be alright," George said, getting up. "I'm sure you could get a new one."
"How?!" screamed Paul. "With what money?! That guitar was all I had, I'll be dead in a week without it!"
"Oh, I'm sure you'll live," the prince comforted.
"Listen," Paul started. "I've had a horrible day, I can't-"
"YOU'VE had a bad day?!" George shouted back. "I've been locked up in a tower for the past two days! I finally got away, but my bratty sister caught me so now I'm being chased by a bunch of demonistic deserts!"
"Yeah," Paul challenged. "Well, I was dumped by my girlfriend, dumped by my other girlfriend, dumped by yet another girlfriend, beaten up, then my mother, the only person I really cared about, died, I ran away to become a bard, and now...you broke my guitar, my only hope! And what were you saying about a bad day?"
"Oh," George said overwhelmed, "Well, I guess that's pretty bad. Three girlfriends? Man, 'don't blame them for dumping you."
"Yeah," Paul said, looking down. "I really only liked the one, but ya see, it's this dratted song that I wrote. It just popped into my head one day. This song is so 'shmarmy,' as it's been called that girls just seem to fall in love with me when they hear it. I guess I got a little carried away," He finished, rubbing his stomach, where he could still feel that punch of Michelle's.
"I'd say so." George said, then added, "My mother detests shmarmy songs. I think that if she heard something as shmarmy as you say that is, it'd give her a heart-attack."
"Heh," laughed Paul. "Well that song has gotten me into a lot of trouble. It's called 'Toast of Tomorrow' and it's about this guy who has to eat a cold breakfast alone every morning, or something crazy like that, but the chicks love it. Anyway, I'm hoping, or WAS hoping, to leave that curse behind me and find some nice, pretty girl who will respect me for more than some dumb song about bread, ya know?"
"No, actually I don't." George admitted, "I'm a prince; I've already been picked a bride from birth. Some Princess from the Queendom of the Moon. I know nothing about her, except that she's short and Jewish. But I think that I've got you beat in the field of women, you don't have to deal with an evil mother and sister, who are constantly trying to murder you. Royalty..." He said with a sigh.
"Poverty..." Paul added sadly looking down at the scattered chunks of his guitar.
"Here." said the prince, handing the to-be-bard some money. "Sorry about busting your guitar. This should be enough to buy a new one."
"Thanks," Paul smiled back at him. "Must be nice to be a prince."
"Huh," George remarked. "Must be nice not being one."
"People always seem to want everything they don't have, and then once they spend their whole life trying to achieve it, they probably decide that they had everything to start with." Paul sighed.
"Yeah," George sighed back.
Suddenly, they heard something rustling in the bushes. "Oh, great," whispered George. "It's the Cookies!" He began running and called back to Paul, "I think you'd better get outta here too," Paul grabbed his bag and took one last look at the remains of his guitar. Then, a very large llama hopped out from the bushes. They looked back to see it and stopped running.
"Come here," said the llama in a gruff, yet relieving voice. George and Paul looked at it in shock, then shrugged and did as it said. Then, the llama's head fell off, and out popped a batch of Evil Queen Lydia's Evil Cookies. George and Paul started running again, the Evil Cookies chasing after them, also releasing their back-up secret weapon, the Notoriously Vicious Rabid Chipmunk, named Clieve.
They ran faster and then faster, until Paul suddenly realized that he was running alone. He looked back to see the prince getting a lecture from his mother.
"Mothers," Paul thought to himself. "Who needs 'em?" He then sat back down under a tree and fell asleep.
He woke up the next morning to find it raining. The sky was full of thick, dark clouds, and the only reason he'd realized it was morning at all was from a small patch of inspirational light to the east, the direction to which he was heading. He mearly mocked it, thinking about how he wished he'd never run away last night, but kept walking anyway.
When Paul had finally reached the Kingdom of the Sun, the rain had gotten considerably worse. The people he saw appeared to not even notice the weather, but they still didn't look terribly happy about it. He saw a gloomy looking girl who was wearing pointy sunglasses.
"Nice weather for this time of year," he commented sardonically to her.
Her only reply was by looking up and muttering "Loser," as she turned the page of the magazine she was reading out in the rain.
Paul noticed that she was sitting on the steps leading into a small music store. He ran inside, then realized that as he shut the door behind him, it had immediately stopped raining. "Huh," he thought, looking out the window to see the cloudless blue sky. He opened the door again and stuck his foot outside, and it began raining again. He put his foot back inside and shut the door.
"May I help you?" asked a man from behind the counter, as Paul rang out his soaked shirt. "Yeah, could you give me a second, though? It's been a long morning."
"Every morning's a long morning," retorted the man. "You're not from around here, are you?"
"No, actually I just came in from the Queendom," Paul stated, brushing his shaggy brown hair that had been matted to his head by the rain. "I need to buy a guitar."
"You've come a long way for just that," the man said.
"That's not originally why I came," Paul started, "but if I did, you'd be right."
"You've come to the right place, though." stated the man, "I'll let you look around for something you like."
"Thanks," said Paul, who began looking around.
A girl with dark red hair walked passed him and to the front counter. She had an orb-like peace symbol dangling from a long chain around her neck and wore a black beret on her head. He heard her ask the man, "Are guitar strings really made of cat-guts?"
The man let out a sigh. "Yes," he replied. "For the last time, yes!"
"Eeew, gross," she commented, making a face. "Oh well, I'll take a G and a high E. "
"How many times have you broken that G string?"
"Only twice this month," she replied coolly. "I'm getting better."
Paul chuckled to himself as he watched the girl leave the store, thinking, "She was kinda cute," He quickly picked out a new guitar and bought it with the money that the prince had given him. As he left the store, it immediately began raining again. The girl who'd just left the store was talking to the girl with the sunglasses. When it began raining again they looked over at Paul, who looked back, gave a nervous wave, and apologized for the wetness. "Sorry, I can't help it."
He began walking down a dank, dark, dirty, dinky, disgusting, and depressing road. As he walked, he decided that he needed a plan to save George and maybe even find a way to put him on the throne so the Kingdom would once again be as great as his mother had remembered it, before Evil Queen Lydia. But first, all he really wanted to do was find someplace where he could maybe, possibly get dry.
Paul eventually came across a small cafe which reeked of Limburger cheese. He opened the door and walked inside, noticing that, once again, the dreary storm outside had ceased to drown out innocent life-forms. He shrugged, and then looked around to see a large group of little weasels, each existing from a body made entirely made out of a specific variety of cheese. Every one of the creatures in the cafe looked up in unison to see him standing nervously confused in the doorway.
"Hello," greeted one of them. "We don't get many PEOPLE in here, but as long as you don't bother us too much, it's alright, I suppose. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Cheddar, King of the Cheese-weasels. Would you like to take a seat?"
"Sure," Paul guessed, staring at the sight around him.
He sat down at a table of mozzarella and ordered a slice of cheese cake. As he finished, one of the weasels spotted his guitar, and asked the bard if he could play something. Paul eventually ended up on the weasels small stage, putting on a small concert.
He was in the middle of his third or fourth song when the door burst open and Evil Queen Lydia stormed in. Behind her was Prince George, looking very depressed and embarrassed. Lydia noticed that Paul was singing a shmarmy song, which she hated strongly.
"George, arrest him!" ordered Queen Lydia.
"Mother, no. He's not doing anything wrong." objected the Prince.
"He's singing shmarmy songs!" she hollered. "I HATE SHMARMY SONGS! Now arrest him, or I'll lock you up in that tower again!"
"No, mother!" he hollered back. "I won't arrest Paul! I don't really care if you lock me up there. In fact, I'm beginning to like it!"
"THAT'S IT!" Lydia screamed and pulled out her magical silver spoon, summoning her Evil Cookie henchmen and the back-up Notoriously Vicious Rabid Chipmunk, Clieve.
"ARREST HIM!" she ordered as she pointed to Paul, who looked behind him, hoping there was someone behind him and that he wasn't who she was pointing at. He got up, and with some help from the weasels, got away quickly. As soon as he left the A Block of Cheese Cafe, or the ABC Cafe, it began raining again. Paul groaned and tried to find somewhere else to get dry until he could think up a way to help George.
