POTATO MOON, Part 43: “That Which Directly Follows Part 42,” by Tayna Laubacher

As the madness unabashedly continued elsewhere in Washington state, two men sat a picnic table on a hill overlooking a quaint American town, that could have been anywhere in the nation. Accept that it was somewhere near the northwestern Pacific coast, which meant persistent clouds, chilled air and the vast majority of the days filled with rain.

Which, interestingly, never seemed to occur unless there needed to be thunder and/or lightning.

The picnic table was situated with several other of its kin near a small restaurant. The smell of overcooked allegedly beef patties on a grill that most likely hadn’t been cleaned since late last century. But the two men weren’t actually eating anything. They sat at the table with a game positioned on the tabletop. A square board was marked with a black and white checkerboard pattern. A dozen game pieces were still in play. Those which had been taken off the board had been tossed into a pile on one side.

One man was reading a book, the same book had been given to Woeisme some chapters ago. His eyes scanned the pages as he ignored his opponent who was rubbing his neck in not entirely teenage angst over what appeared to be a difficult decision. The man was taking the game far too seriously, in his expert opinion.

And his opinion had great merit. He was a doctor, after all.

Then again, his opponent was also a doctor. At least, he claimed to be a doctor. He never seen him doctor anyone or anything. He didn’t even look like a doctor. Granted, he had a long coat and a suit. What he needed was something that screamed ‘Behold! I am a doctor!’ Now, his look carried that off rather well. Red laboratory tunic, black rubberized gloves, and a strange set of goggles that looked like it had been swiped from the prop room of some 1960s sci-fi monster movie.

“Ah ha!” his opponent exclaimed and finally moved his game piece. He beamed with the proud countenance of a five-year old holding up a drawing of random crayon scribbles and exclaiming ‘Look what I did!’.

Dr. Terrible barely looked up from his reading, immediately countered with a single move that removed another of his opponent’s pieces. As the other doctor’s face fell he settled back into the book. Then he said “King me.”

The other doctor then pouted. It was an adorable pout that would have made many a woman (and some men) twitter-pate with glee.

As Doctor Smith continued to pout in a most annoyingly cute way Dr. Terrible said “It says here that sugar can lead you on a road of daily misery. Do you think-?”

“No,” Doctor Smith quickly said, placing a second checker onto Dr. Terrible’s. “It won’t help you. It’s really a load of gobsmack. You are, quite simply, evil.”

“Ah.” Dr. Terrible nodded, as if the entirety of his intellectual property was wrapped up into that one two-letter word. “I could sing a song about that.”

“Please don’t.”

*****

Somewhere there was a pair of twin penguins wondering why Bela thought that towels were going to help them somehow. The penguins also wondered why the air in Castle Batali smelled like stewing tomatoes, and if there was perhaps a giant potato masher somewhere in the vicinity with which to pulverize some annoying secondary characters that somehow managed to get them all into a rather precarious position.

They also wanted fish.