The Wonderful Wizard of Reno...Part 2

This would, most certainly, be an ill-advised place to enter this particular story. Pure mental pandemonium will ensue...

Might I suggest beginning the Tale at the Start of the Story? ...This can be accomplished by clicking HERE.

I Hope you Enjoy...

As Dorothy, Scarecrow, and I emerged from the stairwell...we found ourselves within the wreck of a 1930s farm house that looked as if it had been hurled onto that spot by a twister.

We went through the tossed living room and out onto the porch. Just outside, Toto, Cowardly Lion, Tin man, and Applejack were considering the two legs sticking out from under the stairs...the prerequisite ruby slippers were in evidence.

This caught my attention only briefly. I more than half-way expected that from the movie and everything.

What I didn’t expect was the smoking hot, simmering, conflagration of sexual chemistry standing behind them...

She looked familiar...as if from a dream...

She was dressed in a sexy and sultry Santa mini-dress. It was form fitting and off the shoulders. White trim served as the thigh high border to the ecstasy promised by her stocking-clad legs...

Her beautiful, pale, flawless, alabaster face was framed by a tangled explosion of dark flowing locks... Red-lipstick adorned pouty lips, fix me in place, while her devastatingly gorgeous eyes destroy me. I was feeling like a rube standing there staring at her...

“Oh boy...Oh boy...” frets the Cowardly Lion. “We’ve gone and done done it now. We’ve finally killed someone with a flying house. ...and while they are wearing gaudy knee-high socks!! I told you this would happen!! I told you!”

“Actually, you said it would be a flying mobile home.” I say distractedly while continuing my open appraisal of the enchanting enchantress...

“Pull him out! Go through his pockets! Those shoes are mine!! I get rare coins and jewelry...” From Scarecrow...

“I refuse to move until you put me into some flannel.” Dorothy states definitively.

Toto leaves the group to consult with some curious looking little people who had gathered a short distance away.

The Tin man was searching for a suitable song to represent squishing someone with a flying house. He changes his mind when he realizes he is the Tin man...Black Sabbath’s...Iron Man...

Applejack notices my preoccupation and flies over to me. She gives me the low-down on the beautiful girl who is now staring back at me. It should be noted that the girl's stare is being conducted, in a fashion, far more poised than my own...

She walks up to me. Applejacks flies a discreet distance away...I had found my Glinda...the beautiful Good Witch of the North...

“You are incredibly hot.” I blurt in my most (not so much) most suave moment. “I thought Witches are supposed to be ugly?”

“Only bad witches are ugly. Hot witches are hot.” She tells me.

I couldn’t argue the point. The proof was in the pudding and I definitely wanted to taste her pudding...

“So are you the Smoking-Hot, Good Witch of the North?” I ask. I needed to start getting a handle on any new characters for Part Two.

“Oh no...In this story...The witch of the north was good looking...but she was a bad witch.”

“Not as hot as you?!” I ask disbelieving...

“Pfft. Hardly...still...she had her attributes.” She says. “I’m Betty...the Smoking-Hot, Good Witch of your Imagination.” She smiles at me...

Her smile warms every uncovered part of my body and several parts that were covered...it occurs to me...

“She WAS a bad witch? She HAD attributes...?”

Betty, the Smoking-Hot, Good Witch of My Imagination, points to the two legs sticking out from under the house...

“Oooooh...” I make the connection. “Wait...’bad witch’ from the North? You mean...?”

“Yes.” Says Betty. “Your house landed on Sarah Palin.”

“DING-DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD...THE WITCH IS DEAD...!” Cried the little people that had been talking to Toto. They start prancing about and singing their delight. I put a stop to that.

“OH HELL NO!” I shout. They come to a ragged and jagged halt. They begin muttering and casting dirty looks in my direction. I didn’t care. This wasn’t going to turn into a musical on my watch...

I was worried. The Palins can be a mean and vindictive bunch. They frown on anything that doesn’t generate dollars for their greedy souls. We had just killed the fatted cow and now Todd would need to get an actual job.

The fat was in the fire...

I was idly following Scarecrow’s attempts to remove the ruby slippers and pondering how to cram this latest narrative twist into the classic 1939 movie.

I was a little worried that I might have to re-watch it for reasons of accuracy

...a lot of singing and dancing in that one....

Betty nudges me. “Help that girl out, Thomas.”

“Huh?” Thinking I had just received, quite possibly, the best non-nude nudge of my life...

She indicates Dorothy from Kansas. Dorothy from Kansas was not pleased. I could tell...just a look...a feeling...something, something...

Her (rather saucy) 1930s farm girl look was in flux. I hadn’t been paying attention and 1930s farm girl look (saucy or otherwise) isn’t on my typical mental playlist.

As such, her outfit went into the nearest default mode; Apparently...come to find...that default mode is...slutty Catholic-girl stripper.

Something to work out in therapy I’m sure...

“Oh shit!” Betty and I hurry over.

“Hey asshole.” Kelly says. “I didn’t sign up for this shit. In fact...I didn’t even sign...”

I immediately begin apologizing. Betty jumps to my defense...

“He’s a moron, Kelly, but he’s harmless.” I was deeply flattered by the praise but tried not to show it.

The rest of our group moves over to us. Scarecrow notices Kelly’s sexy new garb and goes into tweaker mode. He puffs up...

As he begins making his move, Kelly pulls out a lighter and sets his left arm on fire...

“I’m not in the mood.” She informs him.

He begins screaming for help while trying to put out, the conflagration that has become, his left arm. No one helps.

He’s a tweaker. He has to want to help himself first or there is no point. A sad reality.

It’s like Toto said somewhere in Part One... “To get to the top in Reno...you have to go to the bottom first.” A nasty reality for methamphetamine users as well.

Betty and I exchange surprised looks.

“Nice job. Sweet.” We both chorused our praise to Kelly.

“Kelly,” I state emphatically, as if in the presence of a notary, “My bad. Entirely...my bad. You mentioned flannel?”

With narrow eyes shooting daggers of hatred, she nods.

I apply the flannel.

Flannel shirt, t-shirt, jeans...just normal shit. Betty, who turns out, is a notary, passes over personal wardrobe rights for 'Dorothy' to Kelly for the duration of this story. We all sign on the appropriate lines.

Due to narrative need, I rushed the next scene and she was now wearing the ruby slippers.

“Are those even close to comfortable?” Betty, the Smoking-Hot, Good Witch of my Imagination asks Kelly.

Betty enjoys a good shoe...

“Surprisingly, yes.” Kelly admits. They start talking shoe stuff. Applejack (who I think is a girl??) joins them...

I go into consultation with the Cowardly Lion (Creative Voice) and the Tin man (Internal CD Player). We’ve all been in the trenches of a Palin related donnybrook before. The Palins fight dirty. Fucking mad savages are what they are...

Our voices rise. Not out of anger or stress. We couldn’t hear over Scarecrow’s hollering...his shoulder was now burning...

“Todd’s going to be pissed. With Sarah dead he will need to get a real job!! And who’s going to claim parentage for half of Bristol Palin’s illegitimate offspring?” Asks Internal CD Player in the persona of the Tin Man.

Creative Voice and I were shocked. We had never heard him say anything beyond swirl, swirl...click, click...then music...

Toto comes over and confirms what he’d heard from the Munchkins...

”It’s either Midgets or Dwarves...” He tells us.

“What does that mean? What does that mean?” From Cowardly Lion...

“Have you been noticing that too?” I ask the others. “The capsule titles have no apparent meaning? They just go back and forth between midgets and dwarves?”

“No.” Everyone denies. They look at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“_{What the fuck...?}” I mutter under my breath before loudly declaring...

“Someone’s phoning in the capsule titles!”

A clap of thunder roils the square as a cold wind blows from the West and darkness descends on our gathering...The Wicked Witch of the West...

Riding in on the insanity (of the political right in Nevada politics)...on a broomstick of deceit, deception, and...um...uh...dim-wittedness...the Nevada Tea Party favorite...three time congressional loser...Sharon Angle descends from a stormy cloud.

Cackling like the mad banshee she is...

The fat was in the fire...

Tin man and the Cowardly Lion form a phalanx in front of Dorothy...protecting her. Toto, the plump Russian Dwarf hamster, watches from a rock...

Scarecrow, whose smoldering stump had stopped burning, ponders whether a shift in allegiance will yield a quicker sack of tweak in his well used tweak pipe...

I bravely, and manfully, place myself in front of Betty so as nothing could possibly ever harm her. I somehow miss the bemused expression that fleetingly crosses her face as I gird for battle...

Sharon Angle settles in amidst a pile of voodoo science, half-baked ideas, sinister viewpoints, and a penchant for dodging any questions that might imply that she was responsible, in any way, to the electorate she seeks to represent...

“What do we have here, my little pretties?” She cackles. Insanity ripples like electricity through the cornea of her depravity as she considers us.

She casts about worriedly, seeking to reassure herself that there are no representatives of the local or national media about. That was her Achilles heel...

“Oh shit, Sharon.” I call out. “Are you seriously attempting to maintain the allusion that you have any credibility as a politician? You are, after all, the poster child of ideology run amok.”

Angle looks at me balefully and sinks to the lowest common denominator in right-wing politics...she evokes her L. Ron Hubbard, God given right, to kill me...

“I see I will need to exercise some Second Amendment remedies, here.” She intones ominously...

Betty worriedly places her hands on my shoulders...

I am very aware of Betty's fingers digging into my skin. They are like eight points of light shooting into my soul...and two thumbs. The thumbs feel real good too. They give me strength. And...OH...the beginnings of something else...

Time to get rid of Sharon Angle...

I pull out my, expired, Temporary Press Pass that I'd used for an assignment to Russia. I place my thumb over the invalid date and hold it up.

Clever, that...

“Ms. Angle!! I get her attention before continuing.

“Roving correspondent for the International (cough, cough) Herald...You are on record as stating the Canadian border is the most porous border we have. I have it on, good authority, that this is untrue.”

“AHHH!?! THE MEDIA...?!” She shrieks before backing up in fear. She begins repeating the code phrase used at her campaign headquarters whenever the media was in the building...

“It’s time to water the plants. It’s time to water the plants...It’s time to water...”

She jumps on her broom and beats feet out of there...

The Munchkins let loose with a ragged cheer...

"Yaay..."

“Very impressive.” Betty says as I turn around and put my arms around her waist while pulling her towards me. I was on a rush...I didn't think the whole out-of-date-press-pass move would work.

Betty cups her hands around my neck before standing on her tiptoes and kissing me quickly on the lips.

Her lips were like the gentle touch of gossamer wings of pleasure. Her perfume danced with my olfactory glands while her eyes sparkled with mischief and promise...

“OK.” She announces. “I have to get back to work.”

“Aww...do we have to go to work?” I whined. “Couldn’t we just while away the afternoon chatting?”

She pouts her pretty lips as she rereads what I have been doing to ‘while away’ my time...

“Um, I don’t know where you get this WE (have to get to work) shit...but yeah...I...have to get back to work. But this should hold you until I see you again...”

She smiles at me as she presses something into my hand...

That bubble thing (from the movie) engulfs her and takes her off to mysterious far-away places. I watch her until the last possible moment...until she disappears.

Only then do I think to look in my hand...

A, single-serve, snack-pack of pudding. Butterscotch...

I smiled. I like Betty, the Smoking-Hot, Good Witch of my Imagination...

(End of Part 2)

(Part 1)(Part 3)(Part 4)(Part 5)(Part 6)(Part 7)(Part 8)(Part 9)(Part 10)