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

            Betsy had wanted to throw a book at her brother during the meeting at the library. But she’d waited to deal with him privately. “Look at you. You never could look after yourself.” She pulled a twig from his beard. “You thoughtless brute.”
            “Betsy, please,” the professor said.
            Dorothy sprang into the living-room. Her pink nighty jumped up and down. She clutched the teddy bear her uncle had given her years ago. “All this time,” she said, “I kept teddy safe. Mum said you couldn’t still be alive. But I dreamed of you returning.” She hugged her uncle and cried.
            “You should have told us where you were going,” Betsy said. “You put us through a lot of pain.”
            “Would you have believed me?” the professor asked.
            The mayor lay on the floor. He propped his fat, bare legs on the armchair. He cuddled a stuffed toy—a hippopotamus—and crooned.
            Arthur, in his wheelchair, said, “You were selfish, Thomas. We were worried sick. We figured you got lost hiking and fell into a ravine.”
            “Selfish,” Betsy said.
            “You’re a bad uncle,” Dorothy said. “But I’m glad you’re alive.” She hugged him again.
            “Heads,” the mayor said.

            “I know I put you through a lot of pain,” the professor said. “But”—How radiant he looked!—”you must hear about my travels! And I was going to return to the same spot in time that I’d left. It would have seemed to you that I’d never left at all, except that I would have aged nine years, and you wouldn’t have aged a bit. You see, you think I’ve been gone five years, but, actually, I’ve been gone nine.” He clenched his fists. “Oh, Betsy, the things I saw!”
            “Thomas?” Miss Snapdragon said. “I didn’t know your name was Thomas.” She stood close to him. “What a fine name.” She faced Betsy. “Don’t forget, people make mistakes. If they’re sorry, we should forgive them.”
            “You’re an awful person,” Dorothy said, “and an awful teacher. But people have forgiven you because you helped stop the war.”
            “Dorothy!” Betsy said.
            “I heard you and Daddy say so,” Dorothy said.
            “Heads,” the mayor said.
            But the war hadn’t been stopped. At least, not really. Not yet. That was one subject Mooch and the professor had (secretly) discussed in detail.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 99: The king plays hide-and-stop-seek with humans in Porksville, and the time machine arrives.

            The next morning, the king never found anybody while he played hide-and-stop-seek, but others had little trouble finding him. Once Dorothy discovered him huddled in a mucky corner of the hole that Arthur and the butcher had tumbled into.
            The king got so excited about winning at hide-and-stop-seek that he danced in the street, and yelled, “I’m the greatest! I’m the best!”
            After the game had ended, Arthur, in his wheelchair, said, “Yesterday, they stank terrible.” He craned his neck to see Betsy behind him. “Didn’t they?”
            She kept pushing him in the wheelchair along Main Street, towards the “meeting spot” between the bakery and grocery store. “Hm?” she said.
            “Yesterday morning, when the quibils came to town—they stank.”
            She’d been thinking about her brother, Professor—Thomas—Hamburger. “Of course they did.”
            A small group began to cluster in the clearing behind the row of birch trees between the bakery and grocery store.
            “There it is!” the professor soon cried.
            “Oh, my!” Dorothy said. “What a noise!”
            “Heavens to Betsy!” Arthur said.
            “It’s really there!” the cross-eyed Royal Attendant said. “Just as he told us!”
            “Of course it is,” Hooper said. “The professor knows what he’s talking about.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 100: There really are two Professor Hamburgers, and, of course, two Miss Snapdragons.

            “I can’t believe my eyes,” the doctor said. “And listen to the banging.”
            Lights flashed, like beacons. The time machine stopped wavering. It became solid and silent, and there, inside the cockpit, was Professor Hamburger.
            The Hamburger outside hopped aboard, saying, “Don’t push anything! I’m you, er, you’re me!”
            The professor who had just arrived in the time machine looked bewildered. He opened his mouth to speak, but he inhaled a fly. He began to cough like a child with croup.
            “Climb aboard!” the other professor exclaimed. “Hurry!”
            King Quibil carried a sleeping Miss Snapdragon in his arms. His strength impressed many spectators. He stepped onto the metal ledge and into the cockpit.
            That Miss Snapdragon, carried by the king, slept because Dr. Dewknob had sedated her. She’d kept hyperventilating that morning. But at least she’d followed the professor’s orders to wear her white dress with the red roses.
            The king stepped off the time machine after depositing the dangling, sleeping Miss Snapdragon in the arms of the seated, baffled, barking professor.
            Lesley, still wearing her (now crumpled) white dress with the red roses, climbed aboard as the professor—not the one coughing—pulled her up by the hand.
            “Thomas.” She trembled. “I’m afraid.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 101: Mooch, to his horror, realizes that his plan might have a flaw. “QUIBILS WILL BE CHOPPING OFF EVERYBODY’S HEAD!” he cries.

            “Muffin,” the standing professor said to the standing Miss Snapdragon beside him, “we’ll be safe.” He winked at Hooper. He told the coughing professor, “We’re going to blast through the future. I—er, you—left for the past about two minutes from now. If we blast through that point, we’ll become the same person, and, um, we’ll keep shooting ahead to unite both Snapdragons.”
            “Right...,” Mooch said. But then he said: “Noooo!” The time machine began to waver and bang. “Why didn’t I think of this before?” His heart seemed to beat madly in his sinuses. “What if time can’t tell the difference between a Hamburger and a Snapdragon?
            “What are you yapping about?” Hooper said, waving good-bye.
            “They’re liable to end up as two four-legged—no, they might become an eight-legged, eight-armed glob—with four heads!”
            “What?” Hooper said. “What are you blubbering about?”
            “Heavens!” Mooch exclaimed. “If they’re dead, they can’t go back to stop the war. In a few seconds—THE QUIBILS WILL BE CHOPPING OFF EVERYBODY’S HEAD!”
            After a little more wavering and banging, the time machine, with both professors and both Snapdragons, disappeared.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 102: At the last moment, the professor abandons Mooch’s plan, and comes up with one of his own.

            But the professor didn’t blast forward. Not yet. He’d programmed the time machine to go back a day, so he could meet Hooper on his way home from school.
                                                                  ***
            If you remember: Hooper had run out of the school—Miss Snapdragon had been a witch!—and on his way home, he had met Mooch who was playing hide-and-stop-seek with the king. Hooper explained to Mooch, the king, and many other quibils present about his horrible teacher and first day at school.
            The story enraged the king. He jumped onto a stump:
            “Quibils, a friend of ours has been insulted, treated like a common skunk!” He shook his fist. “We’re going to town this moment, to get to the bottom of this!”
            “We’re going to town?” Mooch said. “Don’t you think we should calm down first?”
            “Calm down?” the king said, his hair standing on end, making him look enormous. “What on earth for?”
            Hooper thought Miss Snapdragon and the children needed spankings. “Let’s go!” he said.
            Then the time machine, with its flashing lights, appeared. It wavered and banged, scaring some quibils so much that they screeched like alley cats.
            “What is the meaning of this?” the king exclaimed.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 103: Find out why the professor didn’t blast forward, and Miss Snapdragon says, “Spank me!”

            “Why have we come back here now?” Lesley asked the professor as they stood in the cockpit. “I thought you wanted to fly forward.”
            “I do want to. But what if our trip...kills us instead of joining both of you and both of me? We must stop the war for sure.”
            The professor in the pilot’s seat, holding snoring Miss Snapdragon, tried to speak. But ticklish fly-bits still in his windpipe made him cough.
            The standing professor yelled: “Hooper! You’d be happy if Miss Snapdragon were spanked, wouldn’t you?”
            Speechless Hooper gaped: “Who is this man?” he wondered. “Why are there two of him? Why are there two Miss Snapdragons? Why isn’t she—why aren’t THEY—at school? And how come this hairy-faced stranger knows my name?”
            The professor felt relieved that he’d found the right time and place to drop in.
            “I thought you said we were going to be safe,” Lesley said.
            The professor gulped. “We are.” Then he called out, “Don’t go to town! Instead, tonight, have four quibils kidnap Miss Snapdragon from her home! Take her to the Royal Cave—and spank her!”
            “Yes! Spank me!” Lesley said.
            The king scratched his hairy belly. “Spank the teacher?” He smiled. “SPANK THE TEACHER!”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 104: The kidnapped Miss Snapdragon gets much worse than a spanking.

            The professor, convinced he’d made his point, and ready to try out Mooch’s plan, pushed a green button. The banging returned. The time machine wavered like images above a fire, and then it disappeared before Hooper and the quibils.
                                                                  ***
            Of course, later that day, after dark, Miss Snapdragon WAS kidnapped:
            “Isn’t this fun?” the king exclaimed. “Whack! Whack! Whack! I love it!”
            After her release, however, as she was returning home to Porksville, she met Horace, the bear. Now, she’d endured quibil stink. She’d endured getting kidnapped. She’d endured getting spanked. But the close up sight of huge Horace was too much. She fainted.
            Horace carried her over one shoulder to his den. He tied her up. He visited the Royal Cave to get some salt. After returning home, his mum made Miss Snapdragon into a stew, and then they ate her.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 105: Find out how to lose a professor and a Snapdragon in a traveling time machine. As for the love bud: watch it blossom.

            The four passengers traveled forward in time (and through space). Miss Snapdragon, lying in the coughing professor’s arms, jerked. Up jumped her legs, like loaded springs. Then back down they came with an even greater force, propelling her forward. Past Lesley and the professor, who were standing and hugging, she soared. But the hacking professor held her so tightly that he also flew out of the time machine.
            Lesley and Professor Hamburger, as they stood, hadn’t even noticed the sudden exit of the other two because the swirling rainbow obscured their vision. The time machine landed. The professor thought Mooch’s plan had worked!
            “Yippeeeeee!” he hollered. “We’re alive!” He kissed Lesley. “There’s one of you and one of me!”
            “Thomas!”
            “Let’s get married!” He kissed her again.
            “People are watching,” she said, turning towards the birch trees between the grocery store and bakery.
            But there was no audience. They were alone.
            “I love you, muffin,” he said.
            “Then shut up,” she said, “and kiss me, you brute.”

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 106: Using virtual reality and his computer, the professor re-creates the war. The result is so awful that, once again, the war horrifies him.

            In his dungeon-basement, the professor stood before his workbench, on a dirt floor. The smell of mould tickled his nostrils, and so he rubbed his nose. He sneezed, spraying wires, gadgets, and a computer.
            “There,” he said, once he’d programmed his computer to transmit all the needed information. “The quibil invasion will take place.”
            He picked up a pair of large, silver “glasses,” which he called Virtual Reality Spectacles. They had two square TV screens. He put the glasses on, wondering, “Could I fool people into thinking there is a war taking place?”
            After also putting on a pair of yellow headphones, he nervously pushed the enter button on the computer keyboard.
            He jumped two feet off the ground.
            “It works!” he exclaimed.
            In 3D, he saw quibils chase people along Main Street. They attacked with sparkling swords.
            “Off with their heads!” the king bellowed. The professor heard that through the headphones. He also heard screams and gasps.
            It was so real. Too real! He switched off the computer, and then he sat trembling.

NEXT EPISODE/CHAPTER 107: Hooper and Mooch arrive at the school in Porksville. There is a wild scene when the children inhale Mooch’s stink.

            Lesley told her class to call her Mrs. Hamburger. She said that Professor Hamburger and she had gone on a honeymoon for a whole month.
            “That’s impossible,” Dorothy said, without raising her hand. “You just taught us yesterday. That’s not a month ago.”
            “Yes,” Mrs. Hamburger said. Her eyes shone. “But Professor Hamburger took me away for a month in his time machine. He returned us here at dawn so I had time to teach you today.”
            “Thanks a lot,” Dorothy said.
            “Pardon?” Mrs. Hamburger said sharply.
            “Nothing,” Dorothy said. But she was confused. Miss Snapdragon—er, Mrs. Hamburger—looked kinder than usual. She looked happy. And as for this Professor Hamburger—her uncle? Her long lost uncle?
            Then Hooper and Mooch opened the red door, and entered:
          “Ahhhhhh!”
            “A quibil!”
            “The smell!”
            “Ahhhhhh!”
            “Let’s get out of here!”
            “Come back, you brats!” Mrs. Hamburger yelled. But they didn’t listen. They escaped through the coatroom and back door.
            Mrs. Hamburger faced Mooch and Hooper. Soft curls puffed up her hair. Her eyelashes looked long and black. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked.
            “We want to go to school, and nobody is going to stop us,” Hooper warned.

NEXT EPISODE (THE LAST EPISODE)/CHAPTER 108: Hooper Quirk wants to be a martian.

            “I want to learn to read,” Mooch said. The children had unnerved him, but he refused to be scared off.
            “And so you shall,” she said, sniffing the air. But she smelled only chalk dust. She glanced at Mooch: “You shall be the first quibil to learn to read.”
            Mooch smiled. He ran one hand through his chicken tail, and that made it bristle up like wire.
            “I want to be a martian,” Hooper announced. But he didn’t say he wanted to be green.
            “A martian?” Mrs. Hamburger said.
            “Yes,” he said firmly. He stared at her. Right in the eyes. Just in case she laughed.
            But she didn’t. “Tell me,” Mrs. Hamburger asked, “what is a martian?”
            “A martian works in a circus and makes people laugh,” Hooper said.
            “You mean a clown?” she asked.
            “No,” Hooper said. “Martians are green. A martian isn’t any clown.”
            She actually smiled. “I’m going to enjoy teaching you.” She patted him on the head.
            Hooper didn’t like that. But he liked her puffy hair and long eyelashes.

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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