And, for the purposes of this next chapter, I couldn’t remember what character we were going to kill off, so I randomly decided to kill off ‘John the Nihilist.’

Perry couldn’t have done this! The children decided it was time to take action.

"We’ve got to do something!" cried MRAT.

Richie took out a chunk of meat he had been saving in his pocket for quite awhile, and began snacking away at it.

"You nimbawit!" shouted MRAT, the smarter of the two, "We need to go help out Perry! Our friend from afar!"

"ahA!" cried Richie, and the two were off to the jail.

The two went up to the stately jail-house, which was positioned on a hill in just a way as to look as if part of it was falling off the edge. As a matter of fact, it was. The floor gave out months ago, and so anyone on the left side of the house would no doubt fall out of the house, and into a large stream-lake that streamed out 5 miles from the jail, all the way to a candy factory.

Richie and M-Rat walked up to the creeky door and rang the doorbell seven and a half times before finally being greeted by the door-greeter-man.

"Hey, what’s happening?" said the door-greeter-man in an upbeat but scratchy voice, as he puffed his cigar violently.

"Uh, is this the…antique house?" asked M-Rat in a scared tone.

"Nope. It’s the jail-house." Said the happy door-greeter-man.

"Oh. Good! That’s what we’re looking for!" cried the two children in unison.

"Awesome! Come on in!" shouted the door-greeter-man as he lead them into a ballroom with balloons covering up all the walls, loud music playing, and at least 30 people dancing.

"What’s going on?" asked M-Rat, who had only heard about jails from books.

"What does it look like, dude?" insisted the door-greeter-man, "It’s a paaarrrttyyy!" he shouted at the top of his smoke-filled lungs.

"Oh!" said Richie. "I don’t understand!"

"It’s ok, my inferior companion, I’ve read about them in books…just play along." She said as she started shaking and quivering compulsively.

"Oh. Yeah I know." She Richie, playing along as he started to jump awkwardly and gyrate gracelessly to the music being played.

"I think we’re part of the social scene here!" said M-Rat as she stumbled her way to the wall, pulling Richie along with her."

"What are you doing?" asked Richie to his more intelligent counterpart.

"Isn’t it blatantly obvious, you dumbleheaded lumox?" she grouched at him, "I’m trying to find the prisoners! That way we can find Perry!"

The boy nodded as the slowly felt the wall through the balloons, hoping to find a door. Failing, the two realized they hadn’t really tried yet, and that their sense of motivation needed some definite improvement. So they started up again.

The whole thing caught the attention of the door-greeter-man, who couldn’t help but notice the children were poking around on him, as, they thought he was a door.

"Hey, what’s up?" he asked in a scruffy, happy tone.

"Oh, we’re looking for the prisoners." Said Richie.

The door-greeter-man’s jaw dropped. He straightened up and threw his cigar on the floor. The music stopped and everyone turned around to stare at the two stupid children.

"Why would you want to go into the prison?" he asked.

"Because we’re looking for our friend, Perry Jr!" exclaimed Richie in an annoyingly squeely tone.

The party-goers in the background gasped. The door-greeter-man coughed. A small squirrel peaked it’s head out of Richie’s pocket.

"Perry Jr! That terrible person! He’s a murdererer."

"Who’d he murder?" screamed a voice from the background.

The door-greeter-man turned around to respond, "John the Nihilist."

"Oh," said the voice, "that’s a shame."

"I guess…" said the door-greeter-man.

"Yeah, well, he didn’t really do it!" said M-Rat. In fact, he’s so innocent, that he could start a fire with his heart!"

The people all looked impressed. Scratch that. The simple people all looked impressed.

"Well," started the smoke-clouded voice of the door-greeter-man, "I’m afraid I can’t help you. Rules are rules. You kids can’t go into the prison free."

The two children protested once more, then left sadly.

"Oh, Richie. How are we going to rescue are companion?" moaned M-Rat as the two walked slowly down the hill the prison was on.

"Commit a crime."

"But Richie I-…Hey, that’s not a bad idea, friend!" the girl said.

"But where to start. Where to start…" thought Richie, "Hey, I got it!" he exclaimed. "We could go razz the high-hat blind kid. Push him over or something. You know, show him what we’re made of."

"On the up and up, Richie. Don't take any wooden nickels." Said M-Rat, implying the stupidity of the hate-crime.

"Good point," Said Richie, "but we gotta get pinched by a pig somehow, right?" he said, implying the necessity to be arrested.

"Waddaya say we go over to the statue on Main Street, spray paint it, and then get caught." Said M-Rat, not asking.

"Let’s go!" responded Richie as the two ran to the hardware store as fast as their stupid little legs would carry them.

The two eventually obtained a can of paint. (They misunderstood the concept of spray paint. They thought the point was to get a big bucket of paint, sip as much as they could into their mouths, and then spit it onto a flat surface, creating ART.

"You go first." Said M-Rat, obviously taking a leadership role. "Excuse me, was that an insult?" asked M-Rat, the more idiotic member of the group. "Hey! I’m not the dumber of the two. As a matter of fact, I’d say I’m the smarter of the two!" said M-Rat in her stupidest voice ever. "Hey! I didn’t say that in a stupid voice! I think the narrator is getting grouchy."

"Yeah! Grouchy!" said Richie, quick to agree with anyone so he doesn’t look indecisive. "Hey! Watch it!" shouted Richie, in a voice that demonstrated the boy’s obvious cowardice.

M-Rat looked around. "Let’s just ignore him." The girl said stupidly.

"Yeah. Let’s just spray paint. I’ll go first." Said the boy. The ugly boy.

The boy got down on his knees, picked up the large yellow bucket of blue, green, red and yellow paint that the two had just purchased and mixed together. He slurped up a bunch of the paint, swallowed some of it, and spit the rest out onto the face of the great Meatville statue. A dirty, blood-ugly mix of throat-juice lay on the surface of the large metal edifice. Boy was it stupid.

"Hey, that’s enough!" shouted M-Rat in an ugly voice. "Ugly? How was it ugly?!?!" she pleaded in an unanswerable manner. "Unanswerable? What? I-…You know what, fine! I don’t care. I’m going to ignore you. Come on Richie, let’s get away from this narrator. He’s kind of a jerk and he smells bad." Said Richie. Sniff.

The two ran away from the scene of the crime just as a police car drove up.

"Hey what’s going on here?!" said the evil pig as he eyed the bucket of paint and the suspicious narrator. "Hey, who you calling evil?!" said the cop in a voice that implied brutality. "What?! You’re under arrest! Get in the car!" said the cop as he stuffed the innocent narrator into the cop car in a mean and blatantly corrupt way.

Three less-than-average meals and a poor night sleep later, two children joined narrator in his decrepit little cell with barely a window.

"Yeah," said M-Rat, as she struggled to find a seat in the cramped little room, "we became terrorists."

"Phone terrorists!" shouted Richie.

"We threw buckets of water onto the telephone wires. And then we cut them down. With terrorism." Said M-Rat.

But why throw water on them as well?

"I don’t know. Shut up. If you’re so smart, why are you still in prison?" asked M-Rat. Touché…

But before too long, the group of youngsters were aloud to walk around outside in the courtyard. It was their where they met their friend, Perry.

"PERRY JR!" shouted M-Rat and Richie.

"Richie and M-Rat!" shouted Perry Jr. in a raspy, allergic voice.

"How is it going?" asked M-Rat.

PERRY JR!" shouted Richie again, forgetting that the conversation had since progressed from name-shouting.

"It’s ok. I’ve been working on a way to get outta here." He said in a strained, tired voice.

"Oh?" asked Richie and M-Rat.

"Indeed," Said the ‘Man with Spectacles,’ "I have deduced that the other half of the jail has no floor. Seeing as this prison is placed on the edge of a mountain, if we could somehow get to the other side of the prison we could get out. But below us is an ocean. So we’d have to swim. Or perhaps we could find a hidden tunnel below the prison that could deliver us safely to safety." Explained Perry Jr.

"Hmm…Well, I don’t mind swimming." Said M-Rat.

"I do. But I’ll do it." Stated Richie, uneventfully.

"So how do we get to other side of the prison."

"We walk." Said Perry Jr.

"Why didn’t you do it yourself before we got here to bust you out?"

"Eh, it was kind of a long ways away."

"How far away?" asked Richie.

"Like a couple blocks or so. Past the Sub-Hut."

"There’s a Sub-Hut?" shrieked the two kids excitedly.

"Yeah, next to the Shoe-Zoo. Prisoners aren’t the most eager group of people to buy shoes on a daily basis, so I think they’re going to close that place down soon… But yeah, let’s get out of here."

hip to the jive

milquetoast