Lukiv

QUIBILS AND QUIRKS©
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

            “You ARE orange,” she said.
            “Do you eat a lot of carrots?” the professor asked.
            “I hate carrots,” Hooper said.
            “Don’t blame me just because you have ugly ears,” Miss Snapdragon said.
            “Yeah?” Hooper said. “Well, at least I’m not mean. I didn’t say you’re as skinny as a bean pole.” Then he thought he saw the professor wink at Miss Snapdragon. That made the lump in his throat burn. “I could have said your hairdo looked like an upside-down hornet’s nest.”
            Miss Snapdragon secured loose locks of hair with bobby pins. She actually appeared thoughtful. But Hooper figured she looked too cheerful.
            “You’re the cause of the war. Don’t you know that? You made fun of me. That made King Quibil mad. The quibils and I went to town to find out why you were so awful. But we got chased out. That really made the king mad.”
            Professor Hamburger had been pulling at his beard. He stopped. “So that’s why the quibils invaded—”
            “It’s all your fault!” Hooper told Miss Snapdragon.
            “Maybe I did insult you. I said ‘maybe.’ But I won’t stand for this.” She pointed a finger at Hooper as if it were a six-gun. “I won’t take the blame!”

            The professor and Miss Snapdragon seemed to have gotten over their headaches.
            “We, um, have a big problem,” Professor Hamburger said, lost in his own concerns. “The moment we change time...to stop the war...so that Miss Snapdragon will not be where she was when Hooper picked her up...” Worry made him look old. “You see, you, Miss Snapdragon, will disappear. You’ll be gone. You’ll have never even met me.” He pulled so much at his beard that his face looked as long as an eggplant. “Do you understand? You can’t be here if you weren’t there...at the war...you know...tomorrow. And that would be a shame...because...” He winked.
            “Professor Hamburger!” she said.
            “Yes, well,” he said, “you’re a pretty thing.”
            “Professor Hamburger!” she repeated.
            Hooper felt like throwing up.
            “Another thing—you’re from the future,” the professor explained. “That means right now there are two of you. There is you, here, and...” He checked a clock in the cockpit’s control panel. “It’s seven-thirty.”
            “Seven-thirty?” Miss Snapdragon said, looking peculiar. “At seven-thirty I was still at home.”
            Hooper thought that she seemed, at least sort of seemed, ashamed...
            An argument started. Miss Snapdragon wanted to go to her home. But the professor wanted to work on a plan to stop the war.
            She finally told him to shut up.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 75: This Miss Snapdragon watches the other Miss Snapdragon.

          “All right!” Professor Hamburger said. “I’ll set it to land behind the school...It’s not just a time machine, you know. It can move through space too...But I’ll have to switch on silent mode and turn off the lights.”
            Hooper asked what the banging and the flashing lights were for.
            “Don’t you think they make it more interesting?” the professor said.
            The time machine, containing all three people, landed in the baseball diamond behind the school, at nine o’clock.
            Miss Snapdragon tiptoed through dewy grass, edging by the log school. In front of the teacherage, she stopped. She leaned into a lilac bush, before a murky window, and peered between blue curtains.
            As this Miss Snapdragon, wearing the white dress with red roses, gawked through the window, the Miss Snapdragon inside, wearing a beige dress, sat on a love seat, heaving and jerking. Pepper juice had landed in her windpipe. Her chest ached. She coughed and gasped.
            Meantime, in the time machine:
            “Why do you think she wanted to come and see herself so badly?” the professor asked.
            “Because she’s a grump-bag,” Hooper said, “and nothing makes a grump-bag happier than to see another grump-bag.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 76: The professor worries about Miss Snapdragon meeting “herself,” and messing up the future.

            The professor sighed: “I hope she doesn’t speak to herself.” He and Hooper stood in tall grass. “I warned her—they shouldn’t meet. She could change the future. And we need to know the future to know what to change. Do you understand?”
            “Miss Snapdragon is a horrible person,” Hooper said. “That’s all I know.”
            “She’s a spunky thing,” the professor said. He plucked an unusually long hair from his beard. “Ow! Um, don’t you think she taught that bear a thing or two?”
            “Too bad he didn’t eat her,” Hooper said.
            “If you two hadn’t come along,” the professor said, “he might have taken me home for supper.”
            “Have you figured out how to stop the war tomorrow?” Hooper asked impatiently.
            The professor raised his eyebrows. “Not exactly. But I have an idea.”
            “You’d better hurry,” Hooper said. “My mum is a worrywart—I’ve got to go home.”
            “Yes...” The professor paced back and forth.
            “And seeing Booger Jimm for an antidote was a waste of time,” Hooper told him. “Quibils don’t stink.”
            The professor looked at Hooper. “They stank at the war. I almost passed out.”
            Hooper shook his head. “You know why you’ve got the eye for Miss Snapdragon?”
            The professor stopped pacing. “The eye?”
            “You’re both weird,” Hooper said.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 77: The professor is kind to Miss Snapdragon; that disgusts Hooper.

            The telephone inside Miss Snapdragon’s house rang.
            “Hello!” Miss Snapdragon, in the beige dress, said.
            “Hello.”
            “For goodness sakes!” She coughed. “Who is this?”
            “Arthur, the baker.”
            “Well, whoopee-do!” Then she thought she saw a face at the window above the velvet armchair. She took a second look, but all she saw between the open blue curtains were lilac leaves.
            Miss Snapdragon, in the white dress with the red roses, shambled from the window back to the baseball diamond. She had a pale face and slouched back.
            The other Miss Snapdragon, in the beige dress, slammed the front door. Down the stairs she marched, like an enraged general, heading for the town hall.
            “I’m a monster!” Miss Snapdragon said, her dress flapping in a breeze, the red roses like giant tomatoes popping into and out of the folds. “It’s all my fault! I killed them all! I’m a murderer!”
            Then she began to cry. Her chest heaved. Tears splattered her dress.
            The professor’s unkempt beard had parted in the middle, like upside-down horns. He held out one hand and gently took one of her arms.
            Hooper watched. She looked pathetic. She was right, too. It was her fault

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 78: Fed up Hooper storms off, like a hurricane of fire.

            Miss Snapdragon, looking wild, stepped back. She pointed at Hooper and the professor: “Oh no! It’s not my fault that quibils are barbarians! It’s not my fault the baker and butcher chased quibils out of town. It’s not my fault that everybody in this wretched valley is an idiot!”
            Then she looked pale and slouched again.
            Professor Hamburger cuddled her.
            “How cozy,” Hooper thought, his stomach drawing into a knot.
            “It’s not your fault,” the professor said.
            Hooper groaned.
            “I’m a monster!” she said, crying again.
            “I’m going to throw up.” Hooper zipped up his wind breaker. He turned to leave. “I’m going home,” he warned. “You’ll have to stop the war without me.”
            Professor Hamburger patted Miss Snapdragon’s back, as if he were burping a baby. “I think I know how to use the time machine to stop tomorrow’s war.”
            “I’m a murderer,” she said.
            “Oh, no,” the professor said. “That’s just not true.”
            “Fine,” Hooper said. “Fine!” He then stormed off, like a hurricane of fire.
                                                                  ***
            Hooper swung around a willow stump. He stood before 20 rows of carrots, and was about to sigh with relief to be home. But he didn’t sigh. He discovered smoke pouring from the open doorway to the kitchen.
            “Mum! Dad!” Hooper bounded forward, decapitating dozens of carrots. “MUM! DAD!”

            Inside the smoky house, he coughed. Soon his throat felt raw, as if its skin had dissolved. Straining to see, he found a black pot on the stove, belching smoke.
            His lungs ached. He dashed outside to inhale fresh air. How good it felt! In he darted to the stove to grab the smoking pot.
            “Owwwwww!”
            It was hot! While holding his breath, he unzipped his wind breaker, yanked it off, and used it as a pot holder. Through the open doorway he raced, tossing the pot to the dirt.
            “Mum!” he called. The burned lumps in the pot sizzled and smoked. “Dad!”
            Hooper slipped back into his wind breaker, and shivered. The pain in his fingers grew. He watched the smoke in the house clear.
            “Thank goodness the place didn’t burn down,” he thought.
            Then clouds began covering the moon. The orange cottage soon looked brown, like a dead leaf.
            Darkness surrounded him. His fingers hurt. Where were his parents? He stomped a foot, hating Miss Snapdragon. In fact, he imagined taking her over his knee and spanking her so hard that she bawled like the donkeys in Disney’s “Pinocchio.”

            Hooper would have rolled his eyes if he could have seen the professor and Miss Snapdragon holding hands. They strolled from one side of the school’s playground to the other, while clouds poured in from the north end of the valley.
            “Isn’t that smell dreadful?” Miss Snapdragon said, sniffing the air, referring to the smell of the garbage dump. “A great big dumpster in our own backyard.”
            Professor Hamburger, lost in his thoughts, tugged at his beard. They stopped walking, but they didn’t stop holding hands. “It’s very odd...at the war...you know? Tomorrow?” He gazed towards the moon, but clouds covered it. “The quibils,” he continued, “had a dreadful smell. It knocked me over. But Hooper said quibils don’t stink.”
            “You should have been here this morning when those lunatic quibils marched into town,” she said. “I fainted from the smell.”
            “Yes, but tomorrow...at the war—” He squeezed her hand. “Didn’t you smell the quibils?”
            In the dark, the red roses on her dress appeared hazy. “I can’t remember.”
            “I know I smelled them,” he said. He frowned. “Another thing...if we stop the war, and...if you don’t get in the time machine tomorrow...you won’t be here...now.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 81: The professor worries about using the time machine to stop the war from taking place...because a change in time might ruin the Hamburger-Snapdragon romance.

            “How can you like me after knowing what a horrible person I am?” Miss Snapdragon said. “I teach children; I insult them.”
            “Well”—the professor patted one of her shoulders—”I have an idea.”
            She stopped to scratch her dew-wet shins.
            “I don’t want to upset time, or...what has happened...” He bit one knuckle. “I-don’t-want-to-change-the-chemistry-between-us!...So the...other Miss Snapdragon must get in the time machine, tomorrow, with Hooper, or you won’t be...here.”
            “You don’t sound very definite,” she said.
            “I have a plan to use the time machine to stop the war.” He looked around. Then he remembered Hooper had left.
“But you said I’ll disappear,” she reminded him.
            “Oh, yes. I’m going to use the time machine to prevent that.”
            Step by step, he was going to explain the whole plan. But a bolt of lightning lit up the playground. For a moment, black trees stood etched into a white horizon. And the time machine, struck by the lightning, blew up.
            “Oh no!” Miss Snadragon said.
            A whistling fireball shot straight up, exploding high above them, showering the sky with ribbons of neon blue and yellow.
            Professor Hamburger opened his mouth to speak, but he swallowed a mosquito and began coughing.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 82: Hooper finally finds out where his parents are.

            Lonely Hooper, outside, inspecting carrots he’d trampled, worried. Where were his parents? Why had they left food to burn in a pot on the stove?
            He decided to visit the quibils for help. He headed along the dark path that wound between evergreens to Booger Hill. But as he trudged along, he felt even more alone. A creepy feeling rolled through his blood. A hooing owl became a hungry pterodactyl. Swarms of—yes!—vampire bats clouded the moon. Twigs crunching beneath his leather shoes were man-eating beetles. If he fell, they’d chomp through his clothes and flesh, and pick his bones clean.
            Dizzily, he sped off the trail—smack!—into a tree. It was a troll! Back to the trail he ran, but he tripped over the toe of an even bigger troll. Beetles covered his body! Hooper galloped. His burned fingers felt no pain, and by the time he’d reached the Royal Cave, he panted so hard he hissed.
                                                                  ***
            Inside the cave, swords gleamed in leather sheaths. Spears, held in three-fingered fists, pointed up.
            “Looky here!” a toothless guard cried. He escorted Hooper through the torch-lit cave. “Look who I found!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 83: Hooper talks King Quibil into kidnapping and spanking Miss Snapdragon.

            “Your mother and father have been worried sick,” the seated king—his mouth half full of deep-fried bat—said.
            “Where are they?” Hooper asked.
            The king licked his fingers. “In the dungeon.”
            “In the dungeon?” Hooper exclaimed.
            “You’d best settle down,” the king said, “or you’ll go there too.”
            “Are you the same king who played hide-and-stop-seek this morning?”
            The king gazed down at Hooper. “Why? Are you a spy?” His eyes widened. “Perhaps you’d like to tell the Porksvillians about the war.”
            “You should at least warn them first, before you attack,” Hooper said.
            “That’s their problem.” The king swallowed, grabbed another bat from a basket on his lap, and bit off a wing.
            “Would you like to get revenge?” Hooper asked, feeling inspired. “Would you like to give Miss Snapdragon, the witch who caused all the trouble today, a good spanking?”
            The angry mood in the air changed. Quibil warriors grew silent. The king stared at a rock wall, studying shadows. His lips curled. He grinned.
            “I’ll draw you a map to her house,” Hooper said. “Send two guards. No, send four to kidnap her. She’s a wild one, and she kicks bears.”
            “All the better to spank!” the king said. To celebrate, he ate the rest of his bat.

            Inside his musty, long-unused house, the professor said, “Nobody must see you, especially the other Miss Snapdragon. You see, I have to stop the war, but I can’t totally change the future. If I do, and if the other Miss Snapdragon doesn’t get in the time machine with Hooper, you’ll be herstory.”
            “The time machine—achoooooo!—is wrecked,” Miss Snapdragon said.
            “Yes,” he agreed. “But tomorrow morning, when it arrives, it won’t have been destroyed yet. And the other Miss Snapdragon—”
            “Lesley,” she told him. “Call me Lesley.”
            “Oh?” He smiled. But they could barely see each other in the dark. “The other Lesley must board the time machine.”
            “We’ll—achoooooo!—make sure that she does,” she said.
            “It’s not that easy,” he told her. “She must believe the war is taking place. Otherwise you won’t be the person you are now. In fact, the war has had a great effect on us. And if it hadn’t taken place, perhaps our feelings for each other wouldn’t have...blossomed.”
            “Blossomed?”
            “Yes. We have feelings for each other,” he said.
            “Feelings?”
            “Yes.” The professor grabbed her shoulders: “And we will stop the war. But the other Lesley must think there is a war so we can continue to fall in love.”
            “Love?” she said.
            “Yes, Lesley,” he said. “We’re falling in love.”

Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999 by Dan Lukiv. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

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