and stood in a line that was full of migrant farmers holding live chickens that would not stop chirping. All the while a nonsensical tune, one that Knob had heard before, obnoxiously played in the background while grungy long-haired teens kicked and balanced bags-of-beans on their knees and feet.
After Security, Customs, Immigration, Visas, Vaccinations, Permits, Vouchers, Colonoscopies, Fees, Taxes, and a two-hour Pilates session, the pair were finally on the curb hailing a taxi.
“Dèbutante Detention Center,” Knob said to the driver.
“What?” asked the driver, “you can’t just go Waltzing to the Dèbutante Detention Center, it’s the biggest criminal holding facility in this part of the Galaxy, and no one goes there, not even visitors - the only people in there are those who commit crimes!”
“Place to commit crimes, please…” Knob said to the driver.
“So…” the driver, a non-witty Solomon Island native who appeared to be much more droll in person, began, “you would be wanting the Flea Market, Haberdashery Emporium and Aardvark Symposium, then, right?”
The Flea Market seemed their most likely destination since neither of them had any use for aardvarks and Muff already had a hat. After paying the driver with two credits from their new debit card, the pair found themselves in a bustling, busy, all-but-deserted run-down market chock full of booths selling everything from Lincoln log Erector sets to Detention Center Breakout kits. “Well, okay,” Knob started, then she stopped, not knowing where to begin. She realized she had no plan at all, not even a little one. She looked at Muffin for inspiration. “Stop picking your nose!” She said. Muffin was less than inspiring so Knob fell back on her fall back plan, the ‘Thinkers’ pose. No thoughts came to Knob as she sat thinking in the thinker’s pose, so she again turned to Muff. “Stop scratching your butt!” Knob said. “Here I am,” Knob said aloud to no one, “Stuck on this crappy planet, with a impossible job of trying to break someone out of jail, and all I’ve got is a box of carpet tacks and an idiot friend who can’t seem to stop scratching her ass and picking her nose… great!” Knob cried.
“Aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits!” a hawker cried. “Get your aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits here!”
“What about your first idea of committing a crime,” Muffin began, “and then we break out with the Princess?”
“Aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits!” the hawker cried again. “Get your aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits!”
“That plan has a lot of inherent risky risks,” Knob said, I’d rather… we… like…
“Aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits!” the hawker cried. “Get your aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits here!”
“… dang! I wish that stupid hawker would shut up! Anyhoo… I’d rather… like… we meet her… bump into her… at the airport or something… or in a park.”
“Aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits!” the hawker cried. “Get your aardvark leashes, hat boxes, detention center breakout kits here!”
“Let’s move to another area, Muff,” Knob said, “that idiot hawker is driving me batty.” As the pair passed the booth the man waved to them, he held up a hatbox, an aardvark leash and a large package that had “Detention Center Breakout Kit” stenciled across the front of it.
The girls made their way to the food court where they used two more credits on spacedogs, high-fat lactose-tolerant gluten flan and a desert called glazed yeast rings, that in the upper echelons of the culinary community were sometimes referred to as ‘Donuts’. Muffin spilled mustard, relish and lemon zest from her dog down the front of her top. She had the blouse half in her mouth when Knob noticed the girl. “Put your dang top back on, Muff!” Knob said. “Why are you always in some sort of state of undress?” Just then the bungie cord that held Muff’s new plaid skirt on broke. As a result the 300-pound gal was left standing only in her military grade underpants and two half-dollar sized Darth-Vader helmet-shaped pasties which only barely covered her rather oversized areolas.
Then, in a startlingly abrupt fashion, sirens split their eardrums and flashing red lights filled all the food court. The other occupant of the food court, a Whirling Dervish who had been calming himself with a hot-toddy after suffering a dizzy spell, turned to stare at the girls, who were now surrounded by a small cop and a large one-legged dogcatcher.
“Are you purposely undressed in flagrant violation of HagatyeSaks’ various Decency Codes and Laws?” asked the cop, whose badge surprisingly read ‘Keystone 666’.
“This may be the break we’re looking for, Muff,” Knob whispered. “Say yes! And that he’d better get used to it and not take you to the detention center because you don’t have a plan to break someone out.”
“Yes!” Muff said to the cop, “And…” Muff turned to Knob, “…what was the other part?”
“Something about breaking out of the detention center…” the cop said. He was covering his eyes from the specter of the undressed Muff and was also using the one-legged dogcatcher as sort of a shield.
“That’s it! Yeah… so you better not arrest me…” Muff garbled.
Running as fast as she could, Knob tried to keep pace with the HagatyeSaks’ Official-Business-Only Squad Car and Mobile-Soup-Kitchen but was quickly falling behind. Luckily, the Dèbutante Detention Center was actually a leased floor above the Haberdashery Emporium, which sat adjacent to the Flea Mart and just to the left of the Aardvark Symposium. Knob arrived at the police cruiser just as the cop pulled the 300-pound Muff down from being tied to the roof.
“RYE-TAY UEW-TAY SCAPE-ESSAY,” Knob said to the girl, who now had a 10x10-foot blue tarp wrapped around her. Surprisingly Knob thought the change was an improvement and grinned at the fact that now they could keep their firewood dry in the winter if Muff could part with the thing, at least for the rainy season. “RING-BAY INCEST-PAY” added the confused Knob. She felt Muff was with her but also felt a small amount of misgivings when Muff asked, ‘HUT-WAY?’
Led away in cuffs, Muff looked longingly over her shoulder at her friend.
Knob, while picking at a scab on her arm, suddenly felt a pang of remorse. “This is going to leave a scar,” she said of the now-bleeding scab-less hole in her heavily freckled appendage.
The detention center’s interior was a mixture of gray concrete and rusting iron, a blending of depressing cold steel and even colder building materials, a compilation of metal and mortar, and that was just the Haberdashery stairs leading up to the second floor, Muff saw. Passing three sets of security doors and two guess-your-weight machines, the cop and Muff finally stood before a high counter-desk like thingy. Behind the desk were seemingly endless stretches of cellblocks, each of which hung an assortment of various colored arms and hands, presumably, Muff guessed, attached to unseen incarcerated bodies. In every corner of the detention center were stacks, piles and debris mounds consisting of relics from a bygone cheerier past - CRT monitors, Click-Clacks, empty Count Chocula boxes and stacks and stacks of John Tess records. This place, shuddered the rotund gal, was a horror show wrapped up in a nightmare covered in raisins.
“Where are you taking this… whatever it is…” a guard, wearing a bright yellow uniform with the words ‘EVENT STAFF’ crossed out and the word “GUARD’ written below the top words, said.
“I’m not a ‘whatever it is’…” Muffin blurted, groaned and whispered, “I’m a girl…” The incredulous guard froze, and then felt a chill. Reaching for a sweater, she shivered and spoke.
“Will someone turn down the air-conditioning?” She then turned to Muffy. “Prove it!”
“Prove what?”
“That you’re a girl…”
Meanwhile on the steps of the Detention center… Knob saw the door close behind her friend and wondered what to do. Would it take Muff long to rescue the Princess and break out? Would she be bursting through the front door?
Sliding down a rope from the roof… repelling out of a window? Jumping out of a heliofloater on a hoverboard? Climbing a fiery mountain in a dangerous evil kingdom and destroying the one toe-ring that schools them all? Passing GO and collecting two-hundred dollars? Should she have her carpet tacks ready just in case? Should she tie her shoes tighter? Was Galaxy warming a real thing or just a ploy to squeeze more taxes out of the unwary masses? Will Pete Rose ever be allowed back into baseball? Will the Germans EVER tire of David Hasselmof?
The gal quickly assumed the position she assumed when she needed to think. First on the agenda was trying to remember the name of the position that she used when trying to think of thinking stuff, and second, well, she couldn’t remember the second thing right off but that’s what the thinking position was all about after all…
Knob found herself, fist under chin, down on one knee, when the Detention Center door opened. Out came a stunning woman dressed in a faux metal Fabergé bronze leotard jumpsuit. She had stunning black eyes and long blue hair. Her countenance was that of Royalty or at least of that of someone who had their car loan paid off and her teeth capped. She held her chin high in the air and carelessly let her left arm sway in the non-breeze. Knob thought that she could have been of the Kardasium Sister Dynasty lineage except