CAPTURED AGAIN!
"Well, Telly, you are a most fascinating person. Would you like to accompany me on my mission? You see, I am a stranger in a strange land, and I'd feel a lot better with someone like yourself who is familiar with the way things work here. Also, I haven't the slightest idea where I am or where I'm going. Not only that, but I escaped from a Wicked Witch and she's probably mad as heck right now and looking for me."
"I'd be delighted to accompany you, my little friend. Although I must tell you, I don't know how much protection I could give you from the Wicked Witch because, if it's the one I think it is, she's bullied me from time to time. Whenever she sees me, she zooms right in and makes me run all the soap operas she's missed. Sometimes I have to sit for hours and hours while she catches up. By the way, what is the mission you mentioned?"
"Oh, my mission is to get home to America," Graham answered quickly. "My parents must be worried sick about me. Have you any ideas how I could get back before that Witch captures me again?"
"Well, let's see! Hmmm, dum de dum de dum, Hmmm, um, let me think…"
There was a long pause. "No!" he finally said. "I can't think of a single way you could get back to America. In fact, I really don't think it's even possible for a human being to get back once he's here. The only person I know of who ever did that was Dorothy Gale of Kansas. And the reason I know that is that I run the movie every year and the end is always the same. Dorothy clicks her heels together three times and says, 'There's no place like home, there's no place like home, et cetera,' and she wakes up in her bed back in Kansas. Now, there's an idea! How about we go and see Dorothy? She'll know how to get you back. Why didn't I think of that first?"
"Wonderful!" the boy exclaimed. "I'm beginning to feel a lot better. What is Dorothy doing now? Is she—" Graham's question was cut short by a big, extremely loud popping sound and a cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, who should be there but the Wicked Witch, grinning from ear to ear and prancing up and down with excitement!
"Well, my little friend. Found you at last, haven't I? Loved your spell! Oh, it was terrific! See how beautiful I look? DO YOU? DO YOU?" she screamed, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. "Look at me. Look, I say!" she yelled as she jerked his face to hers. "Do I look more beautiful to you? Let's see. What was the last line of that spell … Oh, now I remember: Look in the mirror and you shall see, none more beautiful than thee! You little liar. LIAR! Did you hear me?"
"How could I not?" asked Graham. "The way you're carrying on, I assume there are people in Kansas who can hear you." But he cowered behind Telly as he said so.
"Hello, my good woman," said Telly, holding out one of his peculiar triangle-shaped arms. His handshake was not accepted by the wicked woman. "Allow me to say that you are more exquisitely beautiful than any of the television stars I've ever seen or heard of!" said the robotic man. "And believe you me, I have run more Miss America beauty pageants than you can shake a stick at. You are lovelier than any of those girls. You are more innocently ravishing than Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island! You are the epitome of human grace and style! You make all other women pale beside you!"
"Huh?" said the Witch, dropping Graham like a sack of potatoes. He caught his breath and tried to stand up, but the Witch had put one of her big, long feet on his chest to hold him down. "What are you talking about, Tube-face?" the Witch asked of the television-person.
"I am just admiring your gorgeousness!" said Telly in a musical tone of voice. "Are you the next TV heart-throb? The next Susan Lucci? Are you going to take the couch potatoes of the world by storm and make all of them yearn to be you? You could, you know. You surely are already the envy of everyone who has ever laid eyes upon you!"
The Witch looked at her prisoner. "What is this machine up to, boy? And you'd best not lie to me again!"
"Oh, no!" replied Graham. "I have learned my lesson, to be sure. I wouldn't think of telling another lie."
"Then what is this clinking, clanking, clattering collection of caliginous junk babbling about?" she sneered.
"I'm truly relishing your magnificent beauty!" repeated Telly.
"My friend is simply admiring your beauty, like he said," answered Graham, not sure why Telly was acting this way, but deciding it would be best to play along. "I think he is quite smitten with you!"
"Really?" said the Witch. "Tell me more."
"You are truly a vision of loveliness!" charmed Telly in a most dramatic manner. "My heartstrings are all going ZING!"
"They are?" the Witch said, somewhat perplexed. "Maybe the spell worked after all. I guess it was a delayed reaction. Give me a mirror! I want to see how I look!"
"Er… You don't want to do that," said Graham. "You… er… You are so gorgeous that no mirror could possibly capture your true image."
"That's altogether silly and utterly foolish, young man! Now that I am pretty, I want to look upon myself." The Witch took her foot off his chest and let him stand up. "Now fetch me a mirror, or I will turn mean!"
"Such beauty could never do harm to anyone," said Telly. "You are only meant to be worshipped!"
"Thank you," the Witch said. Then, realizing that she had actually said something polite, she added, "You bizarre jumble of soup cans and gigabytes."
She saw that Graham had made no move to obtain a mirror, so she pushed him over again. "Okay, slime-twirp. I'll get my own mirror!" She switched off Telly's picture in order to catch her reflection in the blank screen. Telly, thinking quickly, distracted her for a moment and switched the screen back on while at the same time calling up an image of Eva Gabor from his archives.
[Illustration]
When Graham saw what had happened, he held his teeth tightly together and clenched his fists in anxiety. How would the crone react?
"My … My … My goodness!" she said. "I really am something, aren't
I?" She smiled a hideous grin. "Just looky there! I am beautiful!"
Graham's anxiety quickly subsided. Telly's clever ploy had worked. "You are a vision of loveliness," said the boy.
"I am, aren't I? I'm gorgeous!" She then began to dance and flitted around like a young girl as she broke into a rendering of a song from the musical play West Side Story:
"I feel pretty … Oh so pretty
I feel pretty and witty and gay
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me today
I feel charming
Oh so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real!"
After she finished the song, she closed her eyes in sheer ecstasy and heaved a long, contented sigh. She stood there like that for the longest time. Graham and Telly quickly seized the moment and tiptoed behind a hedgerow and, as soon as they were out of earshot, they ran like the wind as far as they could go. As soon as they felt they were safe, they collapsed in a heap in uncontrollable laughter.