BY ZEBULON CORK
For much of his life, Zebulon Mazozozi considered his sister one of the oddest, strangest and most mysterious people he’d ever known in his life. For one thing, his sister had this strange habit of eating every book she’d ever read. She claimed it helped her “absorb the information more deeply.” Naturally, this had gotten her into hot water with the school library on several occasions, but even the evillest librarian’s glare couldn’t stop her strange habit.
Another weird thing Zebulon’s sister did was climb up onto the roof with a hang glider, dressed in an owl costume, then swoop down to the ground and try to catch mice, rats, voles and other assorted rodents. She claimed that acting like a bird of prey would prepare her for the cruel, harsh, dog-eat-dog world that existed beyond their pampered little existence, but Zebulon was skeptical.
And then there was a third strange habit that she had. This habit was perhaps the strangest of all, and it creeped Zebulon out whenever she did it. You see, Zebulon’s sister had the uncomfortably odd habit of eating rice with a spoon, instead of with chopsticks, as any true rice connoisseur knows you must. Every time Zebulon saw his sister do this, he felt the overwhelming urge to slap her across the face with a manatee’s tail fin. It was just so…so…unnatural! Perverted! Evil!
For many years, the source of his sister’s oddity was a mystery to Zebulon. Perhaps it was genetics. Perhaps it was the fact that they’d been raised by a deranged lunatic who was convinced he was the real-life Willy Wonka and another deranged lunatic who was convinced she was the Queen of the Solar System. Or perhaps it was the beavers in the backyard, broadcasting their mischievous thoughts into his poor sister’s brain.
But no. As it turned out, it wasn’t any of that.
Zebulon first noticed it when the family was sitting down for supper one day. Supper that night consisted of nothing but piles of everlasting gobstoppers and Moon Pies. As Zebulon shovelled the sugary sweets into his mouth, he looked over at his sister just in time to see her scratching behind her head…
…and he saw a little keyhole, right behind her left ear.
His sister soon stopped scratching, and her shining, jet-black hair once again covered the keyhole. But Zebulon was flabbergasted. Was there a key to his sister’s brain somewhere in this house? If so, he absolutely must find it. It was his new life’s purpose. It was his irrevocable, inescapable quest. It was his destiny.
Zebulon waited exactly three days and three nights to begin his quest. On the fourth day, though, his friend Abner came over to visit…and it was then they began the search for the key.
“Make sure you look everywhere a teenage girl might keep something valuable,” Zebulon told Abner, as they began the great search, “the toilet…the gutters…the fireplace…check everywhere.”
He and Abner checked all those places, and many other places besides, but they couldn’t find the key to Zebulon’s sister’s brain. After 7 hours of painstaking searching, though, Abner got an idea.
“Hold on, Zebulon,” Abner said, “I just had a thought.”
“Do go on, old chum.”
“Do you suppose your sister might have hidden the key to her brain in her bedroom?”
Zebulon frowned. Now, why in the world would a teenage girl keep anything valuable in her bedroom? But, he supposed, they’d looked everywhere else…they might as well take a look in there while they were at it.
As luck would have it, Zebulon’s sister – whose name was Persephone, by the way (perhaps we should have mentioned that little detail earlier in the story) – was watching a movie in the living room with her maniacal parents. The movie in question? Night of the Living Gummy Bears. The movie had been written and directed by their wacko father, who’d filled many of the casting vacancies by going to a dwarf convention in Seattle and kidnapping 12 of them to serve as his Oompa-Loompa slaves. When those slaves weren’t filming movies or working in Zebulon’s father’s “factory,” they were kept chained in the attic. Their groans of agony had become a consistent background voice in their house, to the point where Zebulon didn’t really notice them that much anymore.
Anyway, back to Zebulon’s quest. With Persephone and their parents fixated on the telly, Zebulon and Abner snuck up the stairs, snuck into Persephone’s room and began to sift through her things.
The search took quite a while; Zebulon had found several other pieces of incriminating evidence (including the fact that Persephone apparently had a crush on Walrus Jim, a student in her class who’d had cosmetic surgery to more closely resemble a walrus), but no key. At last, though, they thought that perhaps Persephone would keep the key to her brain underneath her pillow, so that she could have it close to her while she slept.
This hunch, which had again been come up with by Abner, proved to be correct. The glimmering golden key sat there, shimmering and sparkling in the low light, just begging for Zebulon to take it.
And take it he did.
Holding that key in his hand, Zebulon felt a certain electricity crackle through him. He had it. The key to understanding the mystery of his sister’s twisted brain. It was right here, right here in his cold, clammy hands.
And soon he was going to use it.
Zebulon turned to Abner, and thanked him for his help. He then informed Abner that he had to undertake this next part of his mission alone.
“Perfectly understandable, my commendable chum,” Abner said, “I do hope that you succeed in your most epic of quests, my dear boy.”
“Oh, but I will,” Zebulon said, “I will.”
He had no idea how right he was.
*
Zebulon waited in Persephone’s room for hours. Eventually, though, she did come up…and apparently, being forced to watch the filmography of their mentally deranged dad had made her so tired that she forsook changing into her pyjamas, brushing her teeth, singing epic Italian operas, or doing any of her other usual pre-sleep rituals.
No, instead of doing any of that, Persephone just flopped down into her bed…and once she was asleep, Zebulon took his chance.
Clasping the key to his sister’s brain tightly in his hand, Zebulon stepped out of the closet. He shook as he approached his sister, then brushed her hair away from the back of her ear, revealing the keyhole he’d seen.
This was it. The end of the mystery. Finally, he’d get the answers he so desired.
He stuck the key in the keyhole, then turned it…
And then, a hatch on the back of his sister’s head snapped open, and revealed what was inside.
Zebulon gaped. All he could see inside his sister’s head was a dark, black void. But…was that all there really was in there? No! Upon further inspection, Zebulon started to make out more detail: he saw an intricate system of levers and pulleys, piloted by a small, furry mammal, a mammal Zebulon recognized instantly.
It was a squirrel.
Having finally been exposed, the squirrel turned to face Zebulon, then hopped out of its vehicle (for that’s all Persephone really was…a vehicle for the squirrel’s will).
“Well, Zebulon?” the squirrel chattered, “are you surprised? Are you shocked to learn that, at the root of your dear sister’s identity there is nothing but a furry little woodland creature?”
Zebulon pondered for a moment. “Actually,” he said, “I suppose I should have seen that one coming. Persephone was always fond of nuts. And she did have the tendency to store things away for the winter.” Zebulon stared at the little fluffy brown squirrel, who was at the core of everything Persephone was. “I guess I can’t say I’m too surprised.”
The squirrel frowned. “I see,” it said, “well, then, perhaps, if you want a real shock, I should call out…my friend.”
Zebulon tensed up. “Your…your friend?”
“Indeed,” the squirrel said…then it smiled the most devious smile Zebulon could have ever imagined. “Oh, Gloria!” the squirrel called in its little chattery squirrel voice, “Gloria! Come on out! The time has come to reveal ourselves!”
And then, Zebulon felt a strange sensation at the back of his head…almost as if the back of his skull was coming unglued from the rest of his cranium, was opening up like a little garage door…
And then, Zebulon crumpled to the ground as his puppeteer, Gloria the squirrel, stepped out.
The two squirrels sat there for a moment, examining their meat puppets, pondering whether or not they should get back inside.
“The one who calls himself Willy Wonka will be most disappointed to discover that his ‘children’ are nothing but vessels for the squirrels,” Gloria said.
“True,” the other squirrel, whose name was Kit, said, “but if we give up our human lives now, we may never know the secret of how he makes his acorn-flavoured chocolate bars taste so good.”
“That flavour truly is addictive,” Gloria admitted, “alright, we’ll keep living his lie a little longer. But if we don’t get the secret from ‘Wonka’ by noon next Thursday…”
Kit nodded. “We kill him,” he said, “and then devour him. Messily. And suck up his brains with a straw.”
The two squirrels then laughed a supremely evil laugh, a laugh so evil that no human being can even begin to imagine the nefarious, depraved depths of its insanity. And then, the squirrels hopped back in their vessels, ready to continue their own noble quest…to find out just how, exactly, the two kids’ dad, who laboured under the delusion that he was the real-life Willy Wonka, had managed to make his acorn-flavoured chocolate bar taste so tantalizingly, addictively good.
THE END
