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J. Jonah Jerkson
Fri Oct 29, 2004 at 02:05:42 am EDT
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The Baroness, Part 8. Wash-up
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The Baroness, Part 8
Wash-up

Elizabeth von Zemo was pacing through the small garden behind her rented townhouse this fine October morning, followed by a tall, lanky, redheaded woman in a beige business suit.

“Explain to me again why Mr. Avis is not here, would you?”

“Well, he’s a terribly busy man, and wanted to make sure that you would have good service from us, so he asked me to take over your account. Don’t worry, he’s still very concerned that you’re completely satisfied with Avis Realty Services.”

“And how long have you been in this business?”

“Well, I just was hired last month. You’re my first real client.”

“And before that?”

“I was a third substitute ballerina for the Ballets Maniques de Parodiopolis, and had my own public access cable show, 'Ballet with Brandi for Very Junior Ballerinas' at 6 a.m. every Sunday morning. I also did birthday parties. I was the ‘Bubblegum Ballerina’.”

It figures, thought Elizabeth. Once they get you to sign on the dotted line, the expert vanishes and you get the young, silly associate. “Well, Brandi, I need some things done with this townhouse if I’m going to stay here. First, get rid of all these chrysanthemums. Too Japanese. Plant some edelweiss. Second, get the soot cleaned off of the street side of the house.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You mean, ‘Yes, Your Excellency.’ I am a baroness, after all. Oh, this looks cute. Was it here yesterday?” Elizabeth bent her head down to a flame-colored grouping of dahlias. As she did so, the flowers erupted in balls of flame, enveloping her head and setting her curls on fire.

“Aaaarh! I mean, Ach du lieber Gott!” Her head jerked upward, intensifying the flames that now danced from most of her ringlets, giving her the appearance of a fireworks display in a minstrel show, thanks to the dark soot covering her face and neck and most of her pale blue dress.

Brandi showed unusual quickness of mind by running to the kitchen door and emerging moments later with a fire extinguisher. Sprinting back to her client, she sprayed Elizabeth from top to bottom, extinquishing the fire but converting her client’s curly hair to a dripping, snarled mess of curls, chars and oily foam. Rivulets of soapy foam ran down the Baroness’ face, creating dirty pink lines through soot and dirt. The torn and scorched remains of the blue dress clung to her stocky body. Almost crying, she waved the amazed real estate agent away and stormed into the townhouse. On her way, she heard muffled hoots and cackling from the condo next door. Someone was really getting off on her humiliation.

An hour later, with Brandi gone, the Baroness was stepping out of her shower, gripping a very brown pumice stone. Her face, neck and arms were cherry red, thanks to a half-hour’s work with that pumice stone to abrade the soot and charred skin from them. Sore all over, exasperated and utterly at a loss, Elizabeth waddled over and sat on the bed, reaching for the telephone on the night stand. The dress was a rag. The henchpeople who were answering her electronic ad were hopeless. She had no friends and was stuck in the Big Banana – for her, more like the Baked Banana. It was time to give this all up, take what was left of the gold vault money and get back to U. Mich. while she still could. Lifting the telephone, she dialed the Avis offices, but the voice that answered was hardly customer friendly.

“You are calling to break your lease and give your career up. This is not acceptable.”

“Who? Grandfather?”

“I told you, address me as ‘Grandfather Baron von Zemo’ or not at all. You are calling this company of cheats, cads and chiselers to beg them to let you out of your lease for your plebeian excuse for a lair, and to run back to university before anyone realizes what a quitter you are. Fortunately for you, I am here to remind you of your true destiny.”

“All right, Grandfather Baron von Zemo, what makes you think that you know my true destiny?”

“You took my name. I will not allow you to dishonor it. Besides, do you know who is behind this little plague of fires and tin-pot explosions? That untermädchen, Kerry Shephardson. A mere slip of a girl, who sets fires as randomly as she runs her life. She is not serious. And you are running away from her. Pfui. You have chosen to call yourself a von Zemo, and you will conduct yourself accordingly.”

“Kerry Shephardson?”

“Also known as the ‘Probability Arsonist,’ although her powers keep most humans from making the connection. Now, this is what you will do . . . “

By noontime, Elizabeth von Zemo was cleaned up and was sitting at a desk in a seedy, waterfront warehouse, ready to interview the few henchpersons she had selected from Monstrous.com. The Brown Streak could be useful, she thought, but his individualism is dangerous. I’ll need some more malleable minions. [1] As proof of that, Silicone Sally [2], hired on the spot, was sitting to Elizabeth’s right at a folding table laden with resumes and a laptop computer.

“All right, Sally, I’m ready for The Man Who Wasn’t There.”

“Here’s his resume,” she replied, and headed for the door. She returned almost immediately, bouncing high off the floor with each step (not to mention the vibrations’ effects on other obvious parts of her anatomy). “Here’s The Man Who Wasn’t There, Your Excellency.”

“Where is he?”

“Hmm, he wasn’t there (Sally pointed at the seat by the desk), so he must be . . . there.” She pointed at the only other seating in the room (excluding Elizabeth’s chair and her own), a bench.

“He isn’t there either.”

“Well, his CV [3] said that he was intangible.”

“How do I interview a man I can’t see?”

“Hmm. Maybe you look for where he isn’t?”

“If I don’t know where he is, how can I do that?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened in frustration. “If he’s intangible, how is he going to answer me?”

A copy of the Parodiopolis Times levitated from the floor and began to shred itself in mid-air. A minute later, shards of headlines hung in the air and rearranged themselves facing Elizabeth.

YoUR GreAt-uNCle HAD no TroubLE woRkinG WITh Me.

“I begin to understand why people thought he went mad,” mumbled the Baroness. ”Never mind,” she continued, “as an old family friend, you are certainly welcome to join me.”

The newsprint shreds began floating into a new message. yoUr
GrANDFAtHER aSKeD me tO LenD my HeLP. ThAT IS SuffIcIeNT. I Will be THErE wHeN YOU need Me.

“Thank you. How do I contact you?”

The headline letters fell to the ground. “I think he’s gone,” answered Sally.

Elizabeth shivered. “Yes, I felt that cold draft also. Except it’s a warm day. Erm.”

“’The Late Great Donald Blake’ is next.”

“Let’s see him tomorrow. Two former undead members of the Baron’s Scourge are too many for one day.” The Baroness shivered again.

“Well, the next candidate is at least alive – maybe too alive. She’s PsychoAcidPervGal! Here’s her resume.”

“It’s in multicolored crayon!”

“It doesn’t matter, Excellency. Look at her recent experience: ‘Seducer of the Innocent, except on weekends, where – would you believe it, I found this new connection that is sintastic – I mean, I do something else on the weekends.”

“I get the idea, Sally. Bring Gwendolyn in.”

Silicone Sally bounced into a room, but PAPG! rebounded through it. A cherry-red and violet blur shot in through the door, impacted the far wall a foot away from Elizabeth’s desk, and then ricocheted seven or eight times before coming to a halt in front of the desk. Gwendolyn Leslie somehow stayed in position, but she was fidgeting like a 12-year-old boy waiting for school to end and football practice to start.

“Your resume says that you are in the Purveyors of Peril?”

“Yeah, like for a while, but the Hood doesn’t pay regular enough, I mean, where’s the can, I need to spritz, you know, hurry up.”

“Why are you interested in working for me?”

“Junk, lady, just get me the junk, or the cash, and I’ll take care of it myself – like HYOW!” PAPG! lost the battle to stay put and bounded around the room, screaming, “Where is it, where’s the can, gotta find it, ZOWIE, there!” and disappeared into a mens’ room.

“I wonder what ‘Hood’ she lives in,” Sally remarked.

“Can’t be a very good one,” Elizabeth replied. “Stick your head in there and tell her we’ll be in touch.”

“Eeww.”

“All right, yell through the door.” Before Sally could do so, there was a loud crash. A quick reconnaissance confirmed that PsychoAcidPervGal! had made her own way out of the building.

“I think we’ll use her only for special projects,” Beth informed her assistant. “Who’s next?”

“This one’s pretty conventional. Anvil Man.”

. . . .

Changing into a track suit, the Baroness decided to run back to Dullard’s Corner as part of her daily exercise. Arriving at the townhouse about five minutes to four, she noted that Carl, Roscoe and their fire company were again parked in front of her home. Slightly out of breath, she again approached the lead fire truck.

“Hello, Carl. Hi, Roscoe.”

“Hello, Miss Elizabeth. Any problems with your feet?”

“No, none at all, just soreness from running on pavement. Are you two expecting something today?”

“Hell, we can’t f---ing expect anything around this damned looney-bin, except that some goddamm screwed-up fire will happen anyway,” groused Roscoe.

“You may have a surprise today,” Elizabeth smiled, seeing Visionary’s scorched car pulling up to the curb. She reached into her pocket and grasped a tiny remote control. As Kerry Shephardson left the car and slammed the front right door, Elizabeth thumbed a joystick.

With a roar, the truck’s high pressure pumps started up and the barrel of the water cannon veered directly for Kerry. A moment later, a high pressure stream of water shot from the barrel directly at the young brunette’s chest, knocking her off her feet and onto her butt. With a low growl, the water cannon shifted lower and changed its azimuth, propelling Kerry backwards on her derriere towards the door of Visionary’s condo and then washing her up the steps. The door blew open under the pressure and Kerry was carried into the condo and out of sight. The cannon then shut down.

With only an aghast look toward the fire truck, Visionary rushed from his car into the condo to assist Kerry. Carl sat thunderstruck in the cab. Roscoe looked carefully at the ignition and the controls.

Elizabeth von Zemo, eyes sparkling, strolled away toward her front door, humming “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”

Playing the part of Elizabeth von Zemo:

J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE


Footnotes
[1] See The Intermittent Adventures of De Brown Streak #7 – Now with Added Zemo, posted 10/28/2004.

[2] Mentioned in the preceding part 7 of The Baroness, Silicone Sally (Sally Rezilyant) is yet another graduate student who obtained bizarre powers in a lab accident. While recovering from breast enhancements about two weeks prior to this episode, Ms. Rezilyant was working in the Bautista Laboratories at the Parody Institute of Technology during a thunderstorm. At the moment lightning struck the lab building, she was amping an experimental N-ray generator beyond its tolerances. A concurrent bite from a radioactive spider at that moment caused her to leap backward against some supply shelves laden with flasks of liquid silicone rubber dielectric, and the predictable discharge of Energies Man Was Not Meant to Harness converted her entire body into semi-liquid silicone rubber. Leaving her prior shape behind, she adopted the form of a swimsuit model with attractive but completely uniform tanned rubber skin and transparent, long hair. She is still developing her control over her new state: she bounces a lot, but can change shape and stretch somewhat. She is vulnerable to ultraviolet light and solvents.

[3] CV – curriculum vitae, the elegant or academic term for a resume.


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