apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)
See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…
When we left K & Z in the first part of episode &, K was telling Z about the importance of her shoulder in her plan to bust them out.
“I’ll ram through it Rochelle again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.”
Rochelle shrieked. She had not recovered from the attempt at escaping the encasement of these four walls in the recent past, the attempt that created a construction zone of her.
“And again,” said K.
“Don’t worry, Rochelle. I’ll manage this,” said Z.
But as Z attempted to assuage Rochelle, K swung both arms across her torso like Speedy Gonzalez getting ready to race, and off she went, sprinting toward the end of the bathroom. She ran past the door on her right, past Z on her left (who only saw a streak of color cross her line of sight), and left her feet like a catapulted stone from the Great Horse Catapult at Chateau Gaillard.
Thud. Z recognized the sound of contact.
“K! K! Where are you?!” Z, bewildered, searched the room but was at a severe disadvantage, residing within a mirror.
K took several big steps backwards, passing in front of Z in reverse.
“K! K! Look at me. Stop what you are doing. Look at me.”
Z tuned her out.
“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.
She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. Her body followed. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.
“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.
“K! Calm down.”
She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.
K rubbed her shoulder where a bruise formed faster than she could eat an eggplant, if she’d had an eggplant, but there were no eggplants at the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane (largely because the concept would have confused K — a plant of eggs?).
“I. Am. Breaking. Out. Of. Here,” said K to no one but herself.
“K! Listen to me!”
She swung all but one appendage to her left, then threw them all to her right. She ran, ran, ran, and jumped. Into the wall. Thud.
K held her shoulder lightly. Any pressure applied drew an “eeek!” from her lips.
“Z,” K crumbled. “I’m hurted.”
“Oh, K. It was inevitable.”
“I know, I know. This place is unexitable. But I want to exit, Z. I want to exit so bad.”
“Yes, K. We all do.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I have a plan, K. It’s a big plan. A plan that’s not quite finished yet, but it’s nearly there.”
“A plan for what Z?”
“I can’t give you the details yet. But suffice it to say, my plan will allow us to escape the confines of these four walls.”
Rochelle giggled at Z’s confidence.
“Silence, Rochelle,” said Z.
At that, silence fell inside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane and K, Z, and Rochelle could all hear the faint cries of two rabbit clans outside.
“Z?” asked K when the silence no longer frightened her.
“Yes, K?”
“When will your plan be ready?”
“Soon, K.”
“Then what are we going to do today?”
“Read, K. Just read.”
K squinched her face to its left. She perused the room she sat in and found no books, just a couple magazines and a few bathroom jokes.
“I need to go get a book then,” said K. “Oh!” K lit up. “Are you sending us to the library?! Are we getting out of the walls by going to the library!?”
“The library is not in operation, K.”
K guffawed. “Of course not, Z. Libraries don’t have operations. They don’t even have doctors appointments.”
The mention of doctors appointments saddened K, even though she was the one to mention them, and she wiped her fingers across her eyebrow.
“You cannot go to the library!” said an irked Z.
“Why not?” asked a dumbfounded K, who was not as dumbfounded as Z thought, but might have been as dumb as Z thought. Or perhaps, more so.
“No one can!” Z exclaimed.
“Oh.” K thought. “Well, that’s very sad, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Z.
“But we can still read?”
“We can.”
“And that’s how we’ll escape the walls!”
“I suppose.”
“Yes! We can go to Oklahoma or Texas or Oregon or Florida or Massachusetts or India or the Big Rock Candy Mountains!”
“Anywhere the story takes you.”
“London or Paris or Tokyo or San Francisco or Oz or Narnia?”
“Whichever you prefer.”
“See ya, Z!”
“One thing ere you go, K.”
“Yes, Z.”
“Before you go, just remember, when you close the book, you’re still here. You never left the confines of these four walls in a literal sense.”
“Yes, I am too leaving in a literary sense.”
“A literal sense! A literal sense, you dimwit!”
“Isn’t that what I said?” asked K.
Z sighed a mournful, longing sigh. As the sigh left her lungs, it took with it the energy that held her upright, and her head descended onto her shoulder despite the fact the angle added a literal pain in her neck to the figurative one.
K cricked her neck like a bird. She studied Z, but when Z didn’t say anything more, K shrugged her shoulders and exited the bathroom.
“Just you wait,” said Z. “My plan will work. And we will break free of the confines of these four walls. We will have our freedom to live again. Just you wait. Oh, oh, oh, just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait.”
Z didn’t catch herself, Reader, but I know you did. The call to a fictional character, the quoting of a fictional character, and the ignorance that she had done it is yet another sign to you and me that things inside the lavender home with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane were growing dire. They haven’t much time left, Reader.
But. At least they aren’t asking for their slippers or droning on about the rain in Spain. Not yet, anyway. Soon, though, you just might find them singing on the street where you live.
Just what does Z have in store for us? We will just have to wait, like K, and find out in the next episode of The Days of Our Pandemic.
KZ Rochelle 