ADVERB KILLER part 3

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

ADVERB KILLER

Part 3

By R. Peterson

White Out exploded from the bottle when Stupid, Solid and Snaps overturned it onto the crowded lines below. Dozens of words were completely destroyed others would be crippled forever. Several gerunds Including, Gaping, Scuttling and Thrusting screamed as Suddenly and Frantically, without any regard for Overbalance, flung themselves into the path of the splash and diverted most of the lethal correction fluid beyond the outside margin. Even so, Beseechingly, Anxiety and Flapping were all liquidated. The surviving words led by Frightened, unfurled toward the gutter and what remained of A Ripple in Time page 174 looked like alphabet soup boiling in milk. The up and down sounds of grammar police backup could be heard. “Do you still think all Adverbs are bad?” Verb whispered to Noun as they were approached by Horrified.

                “That’s the most heroic thing I’ve ever witnessed,” Noun sobbed.

                “We’re all going to Die,” Anxious bawled.

                “Yes, everyone come with me,” Die said as he untied Noun and Verb and then led them toward Corridors. He couldn’t help  Grinning.“I know a way out of here.”

                “Take me with you,” Horrified begged.

Bumped, Vaguely, Swimming and Happily accepted his invitation to join him.

“This ain’t over yet!” Titanic yelled as the words fled toward Impossible. He helped himself to Wren’s cologne and then left with Trousers for page 207.

Crombie was the first to arrive on the disaster scene. He was angry at having been pulled away from page six just when his daughter was getting married. Wren’s smile lifted his face. “Plonker!” he thundered. “Get someone to clean up this mess!”

-------2-------

Noun and Verb hid with the others on page 110 while every dirty adverb under Titanic’s command searched for them. The Jefferson Starship song White Rabbit was blasting somewhere in the empty library along with the sounds of a floor polisher

“Relax!” Stonehenge acted as a resting station for spirits and was drowning in adoring adjectives. He put his arm around Naked and then tried to pass Noun and Verb a font after Grapevine brought him a tray filled with illegal literary devices. “Try it you’ll like it!” he promised. Get a little slant on … and you’ll feel Marvelous!”  Silvery and Concentrated giggled.

“I’ve already felt her … she’s mine!” Paradoxical glared at the newcomers then drew Marvelous close to him.

“We’re not here to rub anyone … or to have a good time,” Verb explained. “That’s why I brought Noun along.”

Noun shot her a questioning look … but it missed and struck a word on the line above. What, followed by should have happened, looked down and scowled.

Certainly, Suddenly, Slightly, Frantically and Beseechingly burst in from the two previous pages. “Titanic is on his way!” Certainly shouted. “And this time he’s got a huge ink eraser!”

                “An ink eraser!” Naked gasped. “I thought capital punishment was made illegal.”

                “It is,” Stonehenge said. “But most lawyers still use them on contracts,”

“We’re grammar police,” Verb announced to the page quickly filling up with terrified words. “And if we don’t stop Titanic he will change the ending of this entire book!”

“It’s just one book,” Romans sneered as he greedily reached for another forbidden font. “According to quantum physics there must be hundreds of others in print. So what if this one copy is a little different?”

“Thousands,” Verb corrected him. “But this is the one we live in.”

“What the hell?” Romans giggled. “I feel goofy!”

Stonehenge ignored Romans and the other party words and looked at Verb thoughtfully. “Any literary world is what you make of it,” he said. “I’ve been here longer than you or any other word in this book. If Titanic has an ink eraser … then we need to take drastic action.

                “What can we do?” Noun moaned as the page began to fill with adverbs. He glanced around … there was no escape from what was coming.

                “There is an unwritten law in literature that says Deus Ex Machina, or a miraculous solution to a plot problem, must be used in only the direst circumstances,” Stonehenge said. “But let us listen to those long ago sounds … and let us pray for one now!”

Noun, Verb and Stonehenge hid behind Don’t be scared and began to hum along with the faint melody coming from outside their world.

Titanic burst into the page brandishing a huge ink eraser. All the words ran behind Scared. Some were pushed … others fell. Titanic’s wicked laugh sounded like sheets of paper going through a shredder.

                “I really don’t need to erase everyone,” Titanic looked larger than ever. “Just Rhyllann to keep him from putting his hand over Carina’s mouth when she warns the crew … but I love having this awesome editorial power … so the rest of this book is finished!”

                “Have mercy,” Horrified begged just before he and many others were rubbed from the page. Dreams gasped as she floated up from the paper. She looked stricken for an instant then smiled as she became Ghost … and fell hopelessly in love with Haunted. 

Titanic and an army of vulgar adverbs chased Rhyllann to the end of his line … there was no escape. “Rub him out! Rub him out!” Ruthlessly, Cruelly and Sadistically began to chant as they passed out erasers.

Noun, Verb and Stonehenge continued to hum as all around them the literary world of A Ripple in Time began to vanish. “No wonder good writers hate machines as plot devices,” Verb told Nervously. “They are slow, unpredictable … and always unbelievable.”

                “We were left with no ending by a bad writer,” Noun shook his vowels with Despair. “Good God! How I hate him. He must be a damned, unschooled, hillbilly-scribbler hording dreams of literacy!”

------- (The Machine) -------

The elderly woman cleaning the fiction part of the British Library shut off her floor polisher and trudged into the reading section. She shut off her MP3 player and scowled. The novel A Ripple in Time lay open on page 177. “Someone from circulation must have forgotten to putter this one back onto the shelf,” she muttered. “And a fine read too.”

Alice Liddell almost fainted when she lifted the book and hundreds of words, mostly adverbs, spilled from the margin onto the table. “Please tell me,” said Alice, a little timidly, “why you don’t stay in the book?' She wiped away the word Titanic and a bunch of others with a spray bottle and her cleaning rag. “This whole world’s gone soggy crackers!” she gasped. “They make these independent novels so cheaply now … the ink won’t even stick to the paper!”

After brushing off the table, Alice held the paperback over a garbage can and shook the pages briskly. A dust cloud of vowels and consonants slowly settled into the bottom of the container. “You seem fine now,” she said as she carefully examined … then wiped the book’s cover and insides.

Two minutes later, she adjusted the headphones she was wearing. The sounds of Jefferson Starship singing White Rabbit could be heard faintly along with the echo of her footsteps as she walked from a section of the enormous library labeled Fantasy/Fiction. “I’ll bet it was an American that messed up poor Julia’s marvelous book,” she mumbled minutes later as she resumed her work. “Those foreign writers have no respect for fine literature.

 The floor polisher started … and the world once again began to spin.

THE END?