The Misses Foo & Cockerill

What Was Worse than Miss Foo's Bellybutton

Miss Foo lifted a blowtorch off her workbench. She lit it and held it to a copper pipe. Sparks flew around her grinning, evil face as she touched the torch to the metal.

She blowtorched and hammered, never leaving the basement, until her face was black with soot and grime and when she was done she held up to the light what looked like a metal plunger.

"Oh, just so deliciously delightful."

She paused for a moment to appreciate it. Then she picked up the blowtorch again and set to work on the other half.

After scrapbooking, Miss Cockerill wanted Eli to help her cook. She led him to the kitchen and shackled him to the oven while she banged around looking for ingredients.

Eli picked up a box that said 'Recipes' and began flipping through the cards inside. "Black-beetle Bunt Cake?" he read. "Sumac Saute? Roast Revelry? What kind of food is this?" He lifted another card out. "Earwax jellybeans? Who in their right mind would want jelly beans that taste like earwax?" Eli grimaced. "You want a husband right?"

"Already have one!" Miss Cockerill tittered.

Eli ignored her. "You know, my father says that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach..."

Miss Cockerill stopped rummaging through a cabinet and drew lines on her stomach with her finger trying to figure out how that worked.

"It's a metaphor," Eli said. "A metaphor? Oh, nevermind." Eli pulled another card out of the recipe box. "Glowing Spaghetti?"

"Oh!" Miss Cockerill cried. "Gimme that!" She snatched it out of his hand. "Yes, this will be perfect. I just got a fresh crop of fireflies. And it's psaghetti, Weevil, get it right."

Miss Cockerill reached under the sink, pulled out a box, and opened it. Inside hundreds of fireflies crawled over each other.

"Oh, aren't they just the juiciest fireflies you've ever seen?!" she exclaimed. "They will make such a wonderful Glowing Psaghetti! Just look at them glowing; it will surely be the glowingest psaghetti ever made!"

"It will certainly be the somethingest," muttered Eli under his breath.

"What was that, Weevil?"

"I just said that I can't wait to try it."

Miss Cockerill studied Eli like she was trying to find a lie written on his skin.

Eli quickly said, "I'll just start mixing then...what exactly is in glowing spaghetti?"

"Psaghetti, Weevil. You'll never learn if you can't even say it right. Say it after me, psaghetti."

"Psaghetti," repeated Eli, rolling his eyes.

"Good, now get me a cup of castor oil from the fridge."

Eli found many tasty ingredients inside, much to his surprise, when he opened the fridge.

"I don't understand," he said, holding up a cucumber, "you have all these delicious, healthy foods but you never eat them, why not?"

"Foods?" asked Miss Cockerill. "You can eat cucumbers?"

"Of course, what do you do with them?"

"I just put them over my eyes when I sleep."

Eli just rolled his eyes and the pair set to work. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself, just as long as he remembered not to actually eat anything they cooked, when Miss Foo waddled into the kitchen and snatched his chain. "My turn," she growled and glared at Miss Cockerill. "Is that glowing psaghetti?" she asked.

"Yes, Foo, it'll be ready in an hour."

"It better be," Miss Foo replied and dragged Eli into her sitting room. There she made him pick the lint out of her belly-button (a thoroughly disgusting task in which Eli encountered two Q-tips and a dead centipede), sweep out the chimney and rearrange the Misses' collection of inkstains (alphabetically by what they resembled, starting with bowlegged bandicoot and going straight through to yakking yak).

"No, no, Weevil. What are you doing?" Miss Foo demanded while Eli was working.

"Putting the ball in the B's."

"What makes you think that is a ball? You dolf, that's an armless seastar. Put it under S and don't mess up again."

The sun had long set, the glowing psaghetti had been served (none to Eli of course–though he wouldn't have eaten it anyway) and it was well past Eli's bedtime when Miss Cockerill stretched her long, bony arms and declared she was going to get her beauty rest. Eli's fingers burned, his back ached, and he could hardly hold open his eyelids. It was with terrible relief that he looked forward to collapsing into his cage.

But Miss Foo had one more surprise left for him.

"Good," she said as she listened to Miss Cockerill's footfalls retreating up the stairs. "Now it's just you and me. And no more of this foolishness. I did not bring you here to pick lint from my belly button or help Miss Cockerill with her silly scrapbook."

A shiver of fear ran through Eli, tired as he was. What could be worse than Miss Foo's belly button? he thought.

Miss Foo stood and dragged Eli from the room by the chain. He wished she would just take it off. She knew he was far too exhausted to run anywhere.

She dragged him down the hall past his cage and past the room full of skeletons. "The Hall of Trophies," she muttered. She dragged him past the quivering Stranglervine and again Eli got the sensation that there was something he should be remembering. She dragged him down the evil staircase Eli had seen earlier that day. Each step creaked and seemed darker than the last.

Eli's eyes widened in fear. Shadows grew and leapt out at him in the dark. Miss Foo needed no light; like a bat, she seemed to know where she was going.

There air was heavy and still. All Eli could hear was Miss Foo's labored breathing.

The stair ended and they stepped forward onto flat ground. Eli heard a clink and a bare overhead light blazed into existence, giving birth to a terrible dungeon-like basement. All sorts of strange hooks and machines and devices were piled on shelves and hanging from the ceiling. Eli saw something that looked like a trombone that had been in a car crash, what seemed to be a hat made from peacock feathers, and a hideous mask painted with an incredibly life-like impression of a human face screaming in agony. Eli swallowed hard when he saw that. But he quickly realized that it was none of these things that caused the hard, evil grin that wrapped around Miss Foo's face.

Whatever was causing that was buried under a black sheet in the middle of the room. The sheet undulated in steep peaks and sharp valleys. It stabbed outwards and sucked inwards crazily like a broken accordion. Sharp corners and elbows poked out from beneath the sheet and it looked to Eli like a giant scorpion ready rush out from under its rock and stab him with its poison stinger.

With one sweep of her fat hand, Miss Foo pulled the sheet away.

Eli gasped.

"The real reason you are here," she growled, "is the Snarl."