Seifer drove down the road, concentrating intently on the road in front of him and trying to ignore whatever it was the Space Cowboy was doing in the passenger seat. He saw a car waiting at the bottom of a driveway, and slowed to a stop to let it out.
It didn't move.
Space Cowboy played.
Seifer waited several moments for the other car, and when it never moved he eased his car slowly forward. He was passing the driveway when suddenly the car pulled out, crashing into his car…on the passenger side. Space Cowboy never had a chance.
Neither did Seifer's car.
Rosie stared at her computer screen, still having trouble believing that Seifer's first car was gone. Now he had a new one that was…different. She didn't like to think about it. Nor did she like being reminded of the time she'd been arrested because of some crazy Mulder twins. Chased up palm trees in the mall, and then arrested for no good reason. She looked at the newspaper picture on her wall. Of course, there were Rosie and Seifer, and he twins Maggie and Sarah. Another fan club member, Raven Jane, was also in a palm tree. Finally, there was the short one, the reason for the fan club's visit to the Mulders.
Rosie wanted to know this short one... the one they called Dani.
Somewhere deep in the third basement, Seifer Peroxide examined the labels of several flasks, occasionally sniffing at the solutions in them.
"Ah ha!" he exclaimed. "This is just the one I need. Now to add just a little drop..." He slowly tilted the flask towards his beaker, watching the fluid carefully so as to ensure that he didn't add too much.
A sound from the second basement disrupted his concentration. He glanced back, startled, and his hand jerked unconsciously, dumping half the flask into the beaker. Seifer never noticed. He set the flask back down on the lab table and ran towards the entrance to intercept the intruder.
The solution in the beaker hiccoughed.
After hours of searching, Rosie had finally found the entrance to the second basement, and from there it hadn't been too hard to find the third. She approached the intercom system, glaring at the security camera as she pressed the button to talk.
"Seifer, you there?"
"Yeah, what do you want?" came the curiously friendly voice.
"In."
"State your name."
"Rosie"
"Rosie who?"
"That's right." The door slid open. Seifer had not yet removed his lab equipment, and the goggles stood out monstrously from beneath his red beret.
"Hey, RW, what's up?" he asked cordially, playing with the fingers of his gloves.
"I'm on a mission, and as head of the fan club, you're required to come, too."
Seifer nodded thoughtfully, stepping into the second basement to join her and entering his password into the numeric keypad to lock the door. Nodding his head towards the exit, he said, "Let's go." Together they left the second basement for the first, and thence to their quest.
Behind them, deep in the third basment, the solution in the beaker asked around for a box of alkaseltzer.
They were cruising down the road again, Jesus Christ Superstar blasting from the speakers, which occasionally went silent for no good reason. They sang. Rosie sometimes stood up and stuck her head through the sunroof - an obligatory ritual for any fortunate enough to be riding in Seifer's car. It was on just such an occasion when Seifer suddenly stopped the car. Rosie flipped through the sunroof and rolled off the front end of the car.
"Jesus Christ - Seifer! What did you do that for? I nearly lost my schmatta!" Not to mention her vintage skirt. However she soon saw what she believed to be Seifer's reason for stopping.
Raven Jane was standing directly in the middle of the road.
Raven bent down to help Rosie up. "I had a feeling you'd be going on a mission."
Rosie brushed herself off, then spat at the ground by Raven's feet. "German lover!"
Raven shrugged. "I've also been reading along. Seifer, what were you doing in the third basement?"
Seifer smacked the top of his beret, sliding it forward over the goggles he was still wearing. "Guess it's too late now. Come on, on with the mission." The girls exchanged a glance and a shrug, then clambered into the car and turned up JCS before Deputy Dick could catch up to them.
The solution stirred in the third basement.
In a slightly related story, it was a normal day in the Mulder household.
Suddenly, they were there. Seifer parked the car in the middle of the Mulder's front yard. Seifer looked around quickly to make sure no one had seen them yet, then pressed a button to make the car windows darkly tinted, so no one could see them.
"What's our plan, RW?" Seifer asked, his goggles slipping down his nose in a scholarly manner.
Rosie shrugged. "You're the one with a fan club."
Seifer nodded slowly. "OK, we get the gear out of the trunk and scale the wall of the house. Then we climb in through Dani's window, bind her before she can make a sound, and take her home."
Rosie and Raven again exchanged a glance and a shrug, so each had her own back. Then they climbed into the trunk through the back seat and emerged fully equipped. They sneaked through the yard, hiding behind convenient objects until they reached the house. Seifer, his goggles tinged with camouflage paint, scanned the yard once more before launching his rope and grapnel up to the window above them. He began to scale the brick wall, pressing a button on his camouflage suit which made it indeed the colour of brick.
Suddenly there was a loud fizzing sound, which descended in a high-pitched streak of black and crashed into the front yard. The fan club froze in their positions. Shortly, a figure climbed out from the indentation left in the yard and peeled off its ten-gallon cowboy hat to shake it out. Then it unsnapped the rocket pack on its back and stretched. The sunlight shone brilliantly off his vinyl pants.
Seifer took a sudden intake of breath. "I thought he was dead…" His voice trailed off into the darkening sky above the house. Rosie snapped and Seifer exited his trance and started climbing the rope. Rosie followed him up, and Raven stayed behind as a lookout.
The Space Cowboy had no way of knowing just what he had landed in.
Dani was sitting in her bedroom, staring at the lit blue candles all around her. She sat in the centre of a large rectangle, a little blue notebook in her hands.
"Then Maggie and Sarah realized that the crash hadn't come from within the house," she wrote in non-BIC green ink, "and so they went outside to investigate." The front door slammed somewhere on the floor beneath her room. "He heard the slam of the front door, but even when he saw the twins, he had no idea that his doom was imminent…"
Suddenly the strong stick of duct tape sealed her mouth shut, and before she could react, her hands had been tied as well. She panicked - none of this was in her notebook; she hadn't expected this attack. Strong hands twisted her legs around and held her still while someone else taped her ankles together. Then they picked her up and shoved her into a bright white body suit, sealing it shut then duct taping it to something else. Then they started to move.
As Seifer climbed out of Dani's room - with Dani duct taped to his back - he saw Rosie and Raven below, motioning for him to hurry. As he reached the ground, he saw what was wrong: the twins Maggie and Sarah were jumping up and down and quacking like ducks next to a dark pile where Space Cowboy had been. Then Sarah held up a blender, and Maggie broke into wild and riotous shouting of joy. Then each of the twins grabbed an arm of the lifeless corpse and dragged it inside, where they could blend it more easily.
The fan club looked at each other and shrugged, then proceeded to Seifer's car and threw Dani's body bag into the trunk.
"Do you think we should take Dani out?" Rosie asked, always the compassionate one.
"Nah," Raven replied immediately.
"Yes," Seifer replied after a brief deliberation.
"But leave her taped!" Raven called as Rosie opened the trunk and removed Dani. Eventually Dani was able to hop into the backseat, where she smiled with relief at the site of the other Seifer Peroxide fans, and then they were on their way back to the third basement, where the solution was making plans to reproduce and take over the world.
Seifer was in a panic. His tape player had stopped working, the solution was about to overthrow the American government, and there was horrible traffic. Rosie didn't know anything about what had been going on in the third basement, but she trusted from Raven's ominous stares and Seifer's panic that it was something really big. After removing all the tape from Dani, Rosie had tried to ask her, but Dani only smiled mysteriously and ducked behind her blue notebook.
They were in the second basement when he stepped out in front of them, clad in black and a cowboy hat. The whole party gasped in shock, but Raven was able to recover quickly.
"Look you, I don't care what you have to say, but you're impeding our progress. First off, we have to stop Seifer's chemical-mixture-gone-horribly-awry from taking over the world. Secondly, we have to channel the energy in Dani's square glasses so the universe won't explode. And fourthly, you're dead already. So move it or lose it all!" She proceeded to glare at him in the most evil way possible. Before he even had the chance to move, he combusted in a burst of black flame, leaving only a pile of pop rocks behind.
"Ooh," said Dani, "garnish!" She grabbed handfuls and thrust them into a bag. Seifer stopped for a handful but then moved purposely forward with Rosie - who now knew the purpose - following close behind. Seifer kept looking over his shoulder at her while entering his password, professing not to care as she stared intently at the number pad. As soon as Dani and Raven had finished with the pop rocks, they joined Seifer and Rosie at the iron curtain.
"Your password is correct," stated the cool voice of the security system. "Please enter…now." They strode forth into the laboratory that was the third basement as the door slid open. As they entered the room, they saw to their dismay that the solution had somehow come across a chalkboard and a small moustache, and was even then working out his formula. Dani, the chemical expert, stepped forward, grabbed the beaker and some goggles and started smelling and examining.
"Well, Seifer, this would have worked - you've developed a great formula for liquid black holes here - but you added too much of that." She pointed at the half empty flask on the lab table. Seifer nodded thoughtfully, remembering what had happened.
"I guess we ought to trash it, then," Seifer said with a sigh. Dani nodded. "Here, it's always fun to just throw them behind you and see what happens." The others quickly moved out of the way as Dani lobbed the beaker carelessly behind her, which happened to be towards the door, which was opening. Then entered…
"SPACE COWBOY??" the four shrieked in disbelief. Once again, Space Cowboy had no time to shriek because the beaker had broken open, and a large, lazy, and vaguely green hole opened beneath his feet. Those were the first parts to go. Then the weak gravitational pull of the failed black hole tugged at his vinyl black pants, pulling him slowly down into the nothingness. His arms waved about violently as his waist was sucked into the molasses-like goop. The leisurely consumption of the cowboy who wouldn't die was both horrifying and fascinating for those who watched, and they stared entranced for the whole extensive ingestion. Then Space Cowboy was gone, and with a burp, the black hole spit out a cowboy hat and faded into nothingness.
They continued to stare at the spot where the phenomenon had previously been. "A great formula," Dani finally squeaked. The others could only nod in agreement. Somber now, and having forgotten whatever else it was they were supposed to do, they filed out through the second and first basements to the darkened outside world.
"What a strange and bizarre adventure we have had," remarked Rosie. The others nodded. To provide light, Dani turned on her flashing plastic ring and Seifer pulled out his cigarette lighter (though of course he had never smoked).
Then a new - yet somehow old and familiar - voice spoke from the dark world outside the light of Dani's flashing ring and Seifer's lighter. "This has been so weird…" it said.
Rosie's face transformed into a mixture of horror and disbelief. "But…it can't be him again. I've seen him killed three times…" Yet her worst fear was confirmed as none other than Space Cowboy stepped up to their circle. His cowboy hat looked a little crispy around the edges, but he was otherwise intact. A blank stare came over Rosie's face, and she started chanting in a foreign and ritualistic manner and gesturing toward Space Cowboy. Suddenly her eyes widened and her hand shot forward into Space Cowboy's chest, extracting from it his beating heart. Space Cowboy blinked.
She continued to chant and stare at him, but his heart she moved to Seifer's lighter. Knowing exactly her intent, he eagerly held the fire closer to the heart, which was beating ever more rapidly. Space Cowboy groaned and collapsed, twitching in his supernatural pain. Rosie showed no sign of even feeling the heat of the fire or the heart, but since she was in a trance, that's not a hard thing to understand. The others, however, were able to watch in wonderment as Space Cowboy twitched and writhed on the ground and his heart burned to a crispy hull. Finally, his life seemed to be over.
Dani stepped towards Rosie, who shook her head and dropped the heart husk. Placing a hand on her friend's shoulder, Dani said, "I always knew you had some quirks." Then they all had a group hug and skipped away happily into the moonlight.
Back where all the crazy loons go
Back to the beginning of time
