The Misses Foo & Cockerill

The Whipper-Snapper

The basement walls shuddered with another thunk, which rattled the small window that peeked out into the yard.

Like any basement, the basement in Foo Manor was dark and dusty. It smelled like wet rat–for good reason. One bare light bulb hung from a wire in the center of the room and cast the basement in a creepy, tremulous light.

Miss Foo was scheming. And Miss Foo had a very particular way that she liked to scheme.

She hefted a large axe from a rack of a dozen others.

She weighed it.

She hurled it at the opposite wall.

The axe sank into a target with a satisfying thunk.

Miss Foo hefted another axe and hurled that as well.

The axe thunked and Miss Foo sighed in content.

I need a new plan, she thought, a big one this time. Yes, it has been too long. Thunk. It is entirely too peaceful. Thunk. Yes, she thought, too peaceful. What I need is a machine. Miss Foo paused mid-throw. That was brilliant! A machine that would do her work for her. Yes!

She put down the axe and got some pencils and compasses a big piece of blue paper. Across the top she scrawled in thick letters The Machine. Just thinking about the machine delighted her so much that she spent a half an hour snortling maliciously.

Then she set to work.

Miss Cockerill was sitting on the roof of the Manor, thinking about her future husband and contemplating the flowers of the strange plant that sprawled across the tiles. Though they blazed in bright, warning colors, the flowers weren't dangerous. Miss Cockerill despised the rank odor that came from them, but she tolerated it because they were so pretty.

Miss Foo climbed up and joined her. The roof creaked ominously under her immensity, but she paid no attention.

"Ahh," she said, "don't you just love the smell of them flowers?"

"They smell like rot and mushrooms," said Miss Cockerill.

"I know, isn't it fantastic?"

Miss Cockerill did not think it was fantastic, and she said so.

Miss Foo had once managed to bottle the odor and sell it as perfume. The resulting product smelled so terrible that they had sent all the remaining cases to the country of Bazoo where they used it to ward off Fluffy Hedgehogs.

"My husband will fix the smell. Flowers should smell pretty. He will make them smell pretty."

"Cockerill, forget about a husband," Miss Foo said. "You're a spinster now and you always will be. Who would want you, anyway? But listen, I've been thinking."

"I thought you were on the toilet."

"I was. Where do you think I do my best thinking?" Miss Cockerill blinked vacantly but Miss Foo paid no attention. "Anyway, what's missing from our lives?"

It wasn't fair to ask Miss Cockerill such an open-ended question. She really loved getting the answers right, but because she was so dumb, she hardly ever did. Yes or no questions were more her style. She was really good at questions like "Is the sky blue?" or "Do you like baths?" And when she didn't know the answer, she became very sad. But she so wanted to answer Miss Foo's question.

So Miss Cockerill scratched her head and blinked her wide, vacant eyes. "Tiaras?"

"Tiaras? What? No. Think now, Cockerill, think hard."