George George and Mimi Face Professor Fluke (Chapter 5)

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Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Professor Fluke was no longer in the form of that mustachioed, bespectacled Christmas caroler in the sweater vest. Instead, he was back to his usual human form—a towering man with coke-bottle glasses, butter-yellow teeth with a gap, a stiff zig-zag mustache, and white hair that glowed blue.

He stood in Mimi’s grandmother’s cramped living room glowering at George George and Mimi so menacingly that his eyes looked as though they were spiraling. Barbara, Mimi's friend in the glittery seahorse pajamas, was cowering behind the couch.

“So, R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r, we meet again!” he cried. 

But then Fluke started to cough uncontrollably. It turned out that trying to say Jawean words while in human bodies could be quite grating on the voice box.

“Ack!” Fluke continued to wheeze. He then bent over and supported his upper body by leaning on his knee as he regained his breath.

Fluke looked up at George George and asked him, “By the way, what do you call yourself on this planet?”

The tall, lanky extraterrestrial answered.

“George… George?” Fluke repeated incredulously as he cocked his head. “Shouldn’t you be trying to fit in with the rest of these… people?” He waved his gloved hands all around him limp-wristedly.

Mimi stood with her arms crossed and glared daggers. “He fits in this world a lot better than you do, you crazy looking wizard!” she snapped. She then ran up to him and stomped on his rubber boot with all her might.

“Nya-nyah!” the professor cursed as he grabbed his injured foot with both hands and jumped up and down. 

As he continued to jump in pain, he managed to say conversationally, “So you must be Marianita’s granddaughter, Mimi…”

Mimi’s eyes bulged.

“Grandma? What did you do with my grandma!” she screamed as she went for the professor’s other boot. However, Fluke managed to fend her off by grabbing her shoulder with one hand.

“Leggo of me!” she yelled, flailing her arms at him.

“Hold onto your horses, little human, nya-nyah!” the professor said, exasperated. “I am going to getto that in due time! Just let me finish giving my spiel to my esteemed colleague here first.” 

“Mimi," George George said to her, rather impressively. "I didn’t know you had horses..."

Fluke narrowed his eyes tiredly, continuing to hold off Mimi with one hand. “Come on, man. Hold your horses. It’s a figure of speech.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand incessantly. “I picked up this stuff on my first hour on this planet. Get with it."

Mimi managed to wrestle free from Fluke’s grip and went for his neck. But he turned her around and wrapped his arm around her torso.

“Figure of…,” George George began, but trailed off as he put a finger to his lips.

“Tell me where my grandma is now,” Mimi demanded, then kicking her captor with her heels.

Fluke then looked at George George with the same deflated expression that a mother of ten would give to her husband after an especially unruly day. 

“Will you deal with this please?” he said.

“Mimi,” George George said, putting his hand on her shoulder, which calmed her. “Let’s hear what G-g-g-g-g—hic!—“

“...Professor Fluke...,” interjected the professor.

“Thank you,” George George said, clearing his throat. “…what Professor Fluke has to say.”

“Hmph!” the now calm Mimi replied. When she realized Fluke wasn’t releasing her right away, she looked up and screamed, “You can let go, now, you stick insect!”

Fluke complied. But before she marched back to rejoin George George she gave Fluke’s other rubber boot that stomp that she owed it.

“Ow, you little…” the professor said angrily. He gave her a sour sneer and dusted himself off. 

“Now… as I was saying…”

He then resumed glowering menacingly at George George and Mimi exactly as he had done before he had that coughing fit.

“So, George George, we meet again!” he cried.

“Hi,” George George replied, holding up a palm.

“Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Fluke continued. “The easy way would be for you to surrender the egg, and this precious girl’s grandmother will be…”

Without even hesitating, George George reached into the front pocket of his khaki pants and pulled out the small, mint-green egg. He let it rest into a flat palm and handed it to Professor Fluke.

“Ohhhh…,” the white-haired villain said, surprised.  He picked up that egg with his thumb and index finger and examined it for a bit. He then let out a giant butter-yellow, gap-toothed smile, which took up the majority of his narrow face, and said “Nya-Nyah!”

Then he vanished with a poof—leaving only tiny, cracking lightning bolts and the smell of ozone in his wake.

Mimi shrieked.

She glared angrily at George George and then pushed him at his torso with all her might, which only made him stumble slightly. 

“How could you just give it up like that?” she exclaimed.

George George shrugged loosely and said, “Well he said it was going to be the easy way or the hard way, and the easy way seemed like, well … the easiest.”

Mimi threw up her hands in the air and said, “But you didn’t even put up a fight?” 

Barbara stumbled out from behind the couch, wide-eyed and a bit panicked. 

“What was that?” asked the slightly catatonic ten-year-old.

Mimi flashed Barbara a quick look and said: “I’ll tell you later, Barbs. Let me deal with this first.”

The girl nodded blankly.

Mimi turned back to George George and continued, “And now, you’ve given him the power of time travel?”

“Yes,” he replied, plainly.

“Time travel?” Barbara peeped up.

“I said I’ll fill you in later, Barbara!” Mimi insisted, clenching her teeth.

 “You were so worried about that earlier, right?” Mimi said to George George. “Like, you were laying on the floor all depressed and everything because he tracked you down.”

George George shrugged again, replying matter-of-factly, “Yes. I was.”

“And you said you’d spent centuries running away from the guy...”

“Yes,” George George responded, now getting confused why Mimi kept recapping things as though he’d forgotten them.

Mimi closed her eyes and clenched her fists. 

“And on top of that, he still has my grandma!” she exclaimed.

“Well,” George George said, rather defensively. “He did say he would give her back…”

Mimi glared at him. “And you trusted him?”

“Um,” George George said, shifting his eyes. “Yes.”

“George George! Don’t you know?” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air with an exasperated huff. “You never trust a villain! Haven’t you seen a movie?”

The extraterrestrial furrowed his brow and said to her frankly, “No.”

Mimi growled.

“What if he kills her?” she asked, then starting to tear up.

“Kill?” George George said. He flicked his eyes between Mimi and Barbara tentatively. “Do people do that to other people on this planet?”

Mimi slapped a palm to her forehead and exclaimed, “Yes!”

George George took two cautious steps back. “…You’re not thinking you’ll ever kill me, are you?” he said, gulping.

Mimi flashed George George a dirty look.

But then Barbara, no longer seeming shell-shocked but rather deeply in thought, interjected. “Now hold on. If George George and Professor Fluke come from the same planet, then he ought to know Professor Fluke’s behavior better than any of us.”

Mimi narrowed her eyes at Barbara and said,“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you see?” Barbara continued. “It didn’t even occur to George George that Professor Fluke would ever break his word.”

Barbara then turned to George George. “Isn’t that right?” she asked.

He shifted his eyes back to her blankly.

But then Mimi’s eyes widened, and a giant grin manifested on her face. She snapped her fingers.

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “George George couldn’t tell a lie if his life depended on it.”

Mimi smiled at Barbara and said, “You’ve seemed to come up to speed pretty quick. Maybe you should be Sleuthy Sassafras!”

“Nah, that’s alright,” the little girl replied, straightening out her thick glasses. “It’s important that one of us remains committed to seahorses.”

“Interesting…” the extra-terrestrial mused, pondering over Barbara’s earlier suggestion about Jaweans and their supposed honesty. While the observant little girl had hit the nail on the head the most part, the Jawean psyche was not immune to half-truths and white lies.

George George reached into a front pocket of his khaki pants and fished out a mint-colored, Jordan-almond sized egg—identical to the one he had just given to the professor.

Mimi raised her eyebrows. “You gave him a fake?”

“Not a fake, exactly,” George George replied, “an early prototype.”

“Huh?”

“The device I gave him only works once.”

Mimi knitted her eyebrows together. “Once?”

George George tilted his head, puzzled by Mimi’s repetition, “Yes, once.”

“So, he’ll be stuck wherever he goes?”

George George nodded.

“Huh…” Mimi murmured, her mind racing.

But before she could contemplate the ramifications of that, there was a rap at the front door.

“Grandma?” Mimi said. She didn’t know why her grandmother would be knocking at her own front door, but that wasn’t important. She rushed to open it.

But the spark in her eyes extinguished when she saw that it was only one of the Christmas carolers. This was an elderly gentleman by the name of Fred Cleavis. He had a green scarf wrapped around his neck and wore cargo shorts. Mimi had forgotten completely that the carolers were still out on the front lawn.

“Say, where did that fella in the sweater go?” he asked with a hollow voice.

“When do we get to sing Deck the Halls?” the cantankerous man with the gravelly voice piped up, standing several feet behind him.

Mimi was about to shrug when she saw something frightening walk down the sidewalk. It then turned up the driveway and was headed right at her.

Mimi whipped her head back in the house and yelled,” Barbara, your mom’s coming!”

“Holy mackerel!” Barbara cried.

“She’ll know we’ve been in this house totally unsupervised!” Mimi panicked.

Barbara twisted her lips and pointed at George George.

“What about him?” Barbara suggested. “He’s a grown-up.”

Mimi quickly sized up her awkward friend in the Panama and said, “I’m gonna need a Plan B!”

Mimi turned back to the opened door and gasped. There was Barbara’s mother, Mrs. Bowerman, looking down at her. She had elbowed her way past Fred, the caroler, who stood watching this scene with some astonishment. Mrs. Bowerman was garbed in a teal blue nightgown with a pink flamingo pattern, and she had a silk bonnet tied over her hair. She also had a distressed look in her eyes.

“Mimi,” she said. “Is Barbara here?”

Barbara, aware that she was in deep trouble, decided to forgo keeping her mother waiting.

“I’m here, mom!” Barbara said, racing up behind Mimi. “I can explain, I promise!”

Mrs. Bowerman sighed with relief, bringing her fingertips to her sternum. “Oh, thank goodness!”

She paused to give her daughter a warning glance, but she had more pressing issues to consider—namely, the group of people gathered on Mimi's lawn.

"Who are these people?" Mrs. Bowerman inquired.

"Christmas carolers," Mimi replied.

Mrs. Bowerman looked at her watch and said, “At 10:25 at night?”

Mimi shrugged.

Fred, the caroler who Mrs. Bowerman had elbowed past, spike up. “Ask the man in the sweater why we are out here.”

Mrs. Bowerman squinted. "What?"

“It was his idea,” he said. He then paused to scan the area. "Have you seen him, by the way?"

"Who?" Mrs. Bowerman asked.

"The man in the sweater," Fred repeated.

Mrs. Bowerman stared at him blankly.

"Eh, forget it," Fred replied, waving his hand dismissively. He then turned around and addressed his fellow carolers, "Nobody seems to know where the man in the sweater wandered off to."

There was a chorus of disapproval.

"How are we going to get home?" an elderly woman asked.

"Can we sing Deck the Halls now?" the cantankerous man with the gravelly voice demanded.

"You want Deck the Halls?" Fred said. "Why not?"

As the carolers arranged themselves to sing that beloved seasonal classic, Mrs. Bowerman turned to Mimi and asked, "Where is your grandmother? I need to talk to her."

Mimi's eyebrows shot up and then she looked down at her feet. "Well..." she started.

But just as her mind started to race, inventing excuses for why her grandmother wasn't home, she felt the presence of someone step up beside her. Mimi looked up and saw, to her great delight...

"Grandma!"

Mimi rushed to embrace her grandmother, but she quickly discovered that something was not quite right about her. She seemed stiff. Then Mimi looked up and saw that she seemed rather expressionless, like...

"George George?" Mimi whispered.

George George, who had shape-shifted into the guise of Mimi's grandmother, pressed a finger to his lips. Mimi put her face into her palm and shook her head. While his quick thinking might have gotten them out of trouble in the short term, it could open the door for even more.

"Oh, Marianita," Mrs. Bowerman said, shaking her head, “what on earth is going on here?"

"Very good question," George George mused, gazing up at the sky, "I'd say the Earth was rotating around the Sun at roughly 67,000 miles per--ouch!"

George George winced and looked down at Mimi, who had just kicked him in the shin.

"What my grandma is trying to say," Mimi interjected, "is that her friends at the senior center had come over for a little after-Bingo get-together, and well..." 

Mimi leaned in close and cupped her hand to whisper into Mrs. Bowerman's ear.

"...let's just say that more of than a few of them decided to liven up the eggnog without anyone else knowing about it, if you catch my drift."

Mrs. Bowerman nodded and straightened up, giving the precocious girl a sly glance.

"And well," Mimi continued, "they were getting a little rowdy and were refusing to go home, so I asked Barbara to--"

Mrs. Bowerman cut her off with a raised hand. Mimi bit her lip.

She was going to say something, but the choir on the front lawn then erupted into a clumsily chorus of Deck the Halls.

Mrs. Bowerman glanced at them and asked, "Are they alright?"

Mimi beamed and replied, "Oh yes, Mrs. Bowerman, they're just waiting for the bus driver from the senior center to come pick them up. Apparently, there was a whole search party looking for them because they forgot to tell them where they went."

Mrs. Bowerman gave Mimi a sidelong glance and then motioned for Barbara to come with her.

"Next time, call me if you need help, OK?" Mrs. Bowerman said.

Then she put a hand on George George disguised as Marianita, suppressing a chuckle, "I hope I can be like you when I get older, living it up like this. Get some rest, darling."

As Mimi and George George watched Barbara and Mrs. Bowerman make their way down the driveway and up the sidewalk, Mimi turned to George George and said, "You can switch back into yourself, now. You're kind of creeping me out as my grandma."

"Sorry," George George replied. He ducked back into the house and poofed back into that tall, lanky oddball in the Panama hat.

As the pair stood in the doorway, watching the carolers belt out that beloved seasonal melody, Mimi started to worry about her grandmother. She still had no idea when she would see her again--even if there was some comfort, at least, in George George's assurance that her captor, Professor Fluke, could be trusted.

When she was about to turn to George George and ask him when they could go searching for her, he suddenly clutched his belly and erupted into laughter.

Mimi squinted at him, asking, "What's so funny?"

George George snorted. "This is some kind of crazy cosmic coincidence, but when they sing Fa la la la la la la la la, it can be roughly translated into Jawean as the act of audaciously lifting up one's leg and ripping out one long, thunderous fart in a crowded public space." 

Mimi's mouth hung agape. "George George!" she cried.

But George George continued to clutch his belly and laugh. Soon enough, Mimi joined in as well.