The Misses Foo & Cockerill

The Weevil Triumphs

Miss Foo couldn't see anything. Everything around her was green and noxious. Muffled screeches and honks filtered through the cloud and flashes lit parts of it like distant thunderstorms.

She was alone.

Then she felt a digging in the sides of her face, like something wanted to get out. She felt her toes rip through the soles of her boots.

She looked down and grinned Foo-ishly.

Wonderful.

Every cell in her body felt alive, active, growing. Miss Foo stretched her back. Ah, yes, that felt good, and straightened to her full height.

Everything was just so perfectly wonderful.

That's when Eli smashed into her chest. He bounced off, fell to the floor of the terrace, and lay there squirming in agony.

Could it really get any more wonderful? Miss Foo asked herself.

It couldn't be! She was gone!

Terror pumped through Eli's veins. His hat had goggles and fallen off; he felt naked, alone, and cornered with the Chaos closing in behind him and Miss Foo standing in front of him, looming like doom.

He scrambled around the floor of the terrace, grasping blindly for his hat and goggles. Finally he saw them just as a wisp of Chaos licked at them. There was a honk and they disappeared.

"No!" Eli yelled. "No!"

Miss Foo grinned down at him and Eli spasmed in terror. The Chaos had made her more Foo-ish and horrible than ever. A hundred times more horrible, a thousand times! Eli cowered on the floor of the terrace, not daring to stand. Miss Foo had grown, yes, she had doubled in size, towering over Eli as she reared her evil head back and laughed. Her nose had flattened and widened, becoming piggish. Great tusks had sprouted from the corners of her mouth and a wiry, dark hair covered her body. Only her eyes remained, those terrible eyes: one wide and disconcerting, the other squinting and scrutinizing.

"WEEVIL!" she bellowed as she stepped towards him out of the Chaos cloud. "YOU CANNOT STOP ME! NO ONE CAN NOW! I'M BLOOFER!" She lifted her hands to the sky. "LET THERE BE CHAOS!"

She raised a foot over Eli. It was covered in the dark hair and where her toenails should have been viciously sharp, yellowed talons hooked out of her toes.

Eli wished he could have pulled his hat down over his eyes to hide from what was about to happen. But just as he thought that, something tugged at his finger.

The potted plant in Eli's hand quivered. As the shadow of Miss Foo's taloned foot descended over his head, Eli looked at the plant. A little vine wrapped around his finger. Others squirmed over each other in the air, searching for a hold on something. Tiny pods dangled from each vine, tiny pods like little jewels.

Eli smiled; it was a tiny Stranglervine. A Nepenthes giuliana, barely a seedling, weak and struggling for life. And Eli was reminded of Julie and Phil-osopher and Miss Cockerill: he couldn't let anything bad happen to them. He watched the tiny vine wrap around his finger. "I'm sorry," he said and then hurled the seedling Stranglervine at Miss Foo's face.

The plant slammed into her piggish nose. Each little vine grasped onto the first thing it touched; some wound around her tusks, others snaked up into her snout. Still others weaved themselves into the hair that covered her face. And each of the tiny jewel-like venom pods dumped out over Miss Foo's face, burning her in a hundred different places.

Eli scrambled to his feet; he reached to his forehead to lower his goggles before he realized they were gone.

Gone.