Sixteenth Chapter – Ooh Lolly-Lollipop

When last we saw our recklessly handsome and cavalier heroes, they were committing arson, which is a federal offense if you’re in America. Luckily, they were in Candy Land, inside the Mountain of the Most Unpleasant Things Imaginable, which is located in the Desert of Even More Unpleasant Things, where arson is just another helping of apple pie and cherry cobbler.

Fresh from flaming Grandma Nut’s roadside Nuthouse, Tuck, who was paying uncommonly close attention to the narrator, wondered aloud, “Is apple pie and cherry cobbler unpleasant?”

“It is if you put arsenic in it,” Double Eleven answered with disturbing quickness and knowledgeability.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Tuck wisely decided. He then declared, “It’s time for my exercises,” and unraveled his bullwhip to use as a jump rope.

Double Eleven walked and Tuck hop-skipped along down the color coded Candy Land road, whilst Tuck chanted a charming ditty: “My mother, your mother, got in a fight. My mother punched out your mother’s lights. How many times did she punch her?”

Soon, they came to a forest, but it was unlike any forest they had ever come to before.

“That’s not quite true,” interposed Tuck, breaking his rhythm. “This reminds me a bit of the Peppermint Forest, in that the trees are made of candy.”

“This,” said Double Eleven, rustling the map with an air of authority, “is the Lollipop Woods. It is inhabited by many woodland sprits, the chief of them being Princess Lolly.”

“Three thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four!” Tuck declared, winding up his bullwhip.

“Eh?”

“That’s how many times my mother punched your mother.”

A moment of utter quietness ensued as Double Eleven gave Tuck a withering glare. Tuck’s fedora wilted a bit, and he took it off, smiling sheepishly.

“As I was saying,” Double Eleven resumed, giving the map a snap, “Princess Lolly is a creature of pure evil, and we must tread carefully through her woods, lest she ensnare us and we become Lost in Lollipop Woods. It is said that many have become distracted by the sound of incessant giggling and wandered through the woods for years, growing long beards with lollipops stuck in them.”

“That would seriously damage our credibility as manly heroes.”

“Agreed. Now, do not lick the trees, for they are poisonous and make you the slave of Princess Lolly forever.”

“I didn’t say I was going to lick the trees.”

“Yes, but I know you were thinking about it.”

“I was not.”

“You were too.”

“Was not!”

“Were too!”

A twig snapped in the distance, snapping the bickering buckaroos to attention. Tuck instinctively drew his vorpal blade and Double Eleven whipped out his ACME Infrared Twig-Snapperer Identifier (with Night Vision). “Zounds,” he breathed, “there are a bunch of wood sprites having a sprightly orgy on that rotting tree stump over yonder.”

“Let me see,” Tuck grabbed for the ACME ITSIw/NV. Double Eleven held it just out of his reach and laughed in a taunting fashion. In a fit of pique, Tuck chopped off the hand which held the desired equipment.

Double Eleven stared down at his hand in consternation. “Oy now,” he exclaimed. “I made up the bit about the sprites. It was only a squirrel collecting nuts.”

Tuck made a vaguely apologetic noise while wiping his blade clean on the lush grass growing in tufts between the mult-colored roadbricks. “It’s all fun and games until someone loses a hand,” he observed sagely.

“It’s a good thing I carry a spare for just such an occasion,” Double Eleven said with a shrug, pulling forth an ACME prosthetic hand. He connected it to his bleeding stump of an arm and and arranged his sleeve neatly over it. “There, good as new,” he declared.

They continued on, as they were wont to do, keeping a close eye out for fornicating faeries and evil enchantresses. After a while, Tuck broached a touchy subject. “Is it just me, or have you been hearing giggling for the past hour or so?”

“Yes, yes I have,” Double Eleven said. “Do you think…?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“Am I growing a beard yet?”

“No. Am I?”

“No, but you have a lollipop stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

“So I have.” Tuck lifted his shoe and was about to lick the lollipop clad sole of it, but Double Eleven leapt forth and wrestled him to the ground. There he slapped Tuck silly and wrenched the offensive candy off his foot, throwing it far away into the depth of the woods.

Tuck’s face was quickly becoming a big mottled splotch of a bruise, for it is nasty to be slapped silly be a prosthetic hand. But he took it like a man and slurred, “Thank you, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Clearly, you weren’t,” sneered Double Eleven, standing up and pulling Tuck up along with him. “Now gather your wits about you, for we must find a way out of these accursed woods.”

They spent a few minutes mucking about in the woods gathering their wits, and once they had enough wit to suffice, they amused each other with bad puns for a while. Even though it was great fun, and they had tears of laughter in their eyes, Double Eleven finally sucked it up and pointed out, “This isn’t doing us much good now, is it?”

Tuck agreed that it wasn’t, and they continued on.

Several hours later, after wandering in circles and finding no way out, Double Eleven finally came to an astounding conclusion. “This isn’t working, either.”

“Oh, I think it’s working great,” Tuck said with the sarcasm which would have normally endeared him to Double Eleven but at this juncture only caused the latter to hit the former solidly in the jaw with his plastic hand.

“Now, as I was about to say, I think what we need to do is draw out Princess Lolly.”

“The happy, giggling child?”

“Yes. The only way to break the spell is to draw her out into the open and do battle with her.”

“But how?”

“It is simple: we must wantonly destroy her beloved Lollipop Woods, one tree at a time. I shall zap them with my ACME Lollipop Tree Liquefier and you must chop them down with your vorpal blade.”

“I like the way you think, when you think,” said Tuck with dubious admiration.

They set about this task with unholy glee, and after a time were covered in sugary sweet ickiness. But it had the desired effect, and soon the giggling stopped. It was replaced by indignant waling, which was followed soon after by unhappy mewling, and finally undignified gurgling. Lolly’s magic, it would seem, was wrapped up in the trees, and with each confection they destroyed they weakened her grip upon them.

In an impressive display of wanton destruction, they managed to decimate the forest and drive many a woodland creature from its home. The sprites fled in horror. The squirrels abandoned their nuts. Many an owl went extinct. Finally, they came upon a lonely woodland sprite sitting upon a stump, weeping.

Noticing her curly purple hair and expertly deducing her to be Princess Lolly, our dauntless yet self-preservative duo steered clear of her. Tuck observed that he’d expected her to be taller, and Double Eleven smacked him upside the head while pointing out that the very phrase “woodland sprite” indicates smallness.

Tuck, now swollen and bleeding from one ear, asked what was next on the map. Double Eleven perused the now slightly sticky brochure, and announced, “The Ice Cream Sea.”

“Oh, goody,” replied Tuck with childlike innocence. “I love ice cream!”

Next Chapter:
The Ice Cream Sea

Tags: 1111, Princess Lolly, Tuck