Chapter Three of Three in
The Wreck of the S.S. Neglected

Marci heard smooth jazz. She tried to sit up and discovered she was
already standing. Her head was in a fog. She could see shapes nearby
but nothing distinct.

Finally the fog cleared a little and she could see her brother. "Can
I play on your team, Big Brother?" she asked. Marci patted her fluffy
blond hair and smoothed her dress with her baseball glove.

"Sally, you've been using my baseball bat to hit rocks again, haven't
you?" Brett said. He held up the wooden bat with lots of little dents
in it. "And what did you do to my hair? Look at this!" He was almost
completely hairless except for one curly strand off the front of his
forehead. "Good grief. I bet that stupid dog had something to do with
it." He hung his head down over his yellow shirt with the brown
zigzag stripe.

A yellow bird flew upside down and bumped into Brett. The bird kept
up a steady stream of chirping and squawking.. It flew up to Marci
and bumped at her a few times, then went off-kilter to a tree, tried
to catch its breath, and flew away.

Marci could swear that part of the chirping sounded like words. The
bird was trying to say, "It's me. Melinda! Get me out of here! How
can I ever type emails with these tiny wings? I can't see what I'm
doing if I use this big beak to type. My cats will eat me if they
find me like this!"

Marci fell over laughing. The fog cleared a little more and she could
see a little boy playing a piano and a little girl leaning her arm on
the front of it. It was Pam and Matt, but not exactly where you'd
expect them. Pam had bright yellow hair and a striped shirt. She was
playing the piano, making that smooth jazz that Marci had heard
earlier. On top of the piano was a small sculpture of the head and
shoulders of Charlie.

Matt leaned his arm on the front of the piano, trying to get Pam to
admire his shiny black hair and tasteful blue dress. "But if I was
the last girl on Earth, then would you marry me?" Matt asked.

"No!" Pam said, and she slammed the piano. After she had cooled down,
she started playing a powerful fugue.

Behind her, Marci heard someone say, "I don't feel so good."

Rob ran down the sidewalk with a cloud of dust trailing him. He
stopped, but the dust cloud wouldn't settle. It kept billowing all
around him, even if he tried to stand still for two minutes. His
beard was gone and his hair was short, a scraggly bird nest mess on
top of his head. He wore a brown t-shirt under brown overalls, but
you couldn't really tell if they started off brown or if it was just
the dirt and mud covering every inch of him, even his arms and
face. "This is NOT cool. I am really not this grubby."

Trying to escape from the dust cloud, Rob ran away past a boy holding
a green security blanket. The blanket had a big, white, block S on
it. "Spartans in the hizzOUUUUUUUUUUUSE!" said the boy.

"I really don't feel so good," Rob said. His stomach churned. He
opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. He remembered a lasso and
a hypodermic needle. He couldn't remember taking Dramamine any time
recently, so the motion of the ship was making him sick, not to
mention whatever the Scarred Man had injected him with. He closed his
eyes and hoped the seasickness would go away.

In a swamp somewhere, there were these five friends sneaking down a
trail. They came close to the gangplank leading up to a wrecked
paddlewheel steamboat beached against the shore.

Pam said, "Zoinks! I don't like the looks of this."

Herb stood very straight and adjusted the blue neckerchief around the
collar of his white sweater. "Don't worry, Shag. It looks like a
haunted boat, but I'm sure the monsters cleared out when they heard
us coming."

Pam said, "No, I don't mean the boat. I mean this!" She pointed down
at her baggy green t-shirt and brown bellbottom jeans. Then she
discovered the hairs on her chin. "Can I get a razor up in here?"

Marci always knew how to put people's minds at ease. "Relax, y'all. I
got some Scooby snacks for everybody who calms down. What what? I
mean, Jinkies." Marci wore glasses with thick, black frames, plus a
frumpy orange sweater and a short skirt.

"Hey, I think I can live with this," Melinda said. She had long,
silky brown hair. She wore a purple dress with lavender trim and an
orange scarf. She looked herself up and down and
announced, "Supermeowdel!"

Those four friends heard a rattling sound. They jumped close to each
other and looked around to see what was making the spooky noise. It
came from behind them. Their fifth friend was making the noise, his
teeth chattering loudly.

Charlie was looking down at the brown fur on his arms, his sides, his
whole body, the black spots on his back, and the little dog tag with
SD on it. He looked at Pam and whimpered, "Ruh-roh, Raggy."

While our heroes were tripping, rolling around in a cabin and
drooling all over themselves, picturing each other as Deputy Dawg and
Smurfs and Transformers, the Scarred Man in His Late Thirties yelled
at them. "Where is the formula? Tell me where you've hidden it! You
cannot keep it a secret. My truth serum is too powerful to resist."

He had tossed Pam and Marci on a bed, and left Rob and Matt on the
floor beside the bed.

How did Matt get there?? Remember those two drowning cooks that Matt
had rescued? They were actually henchmen working for the Scarred Man.
They persuaded Matt to take them back to the ship, where the Scarred
Man was able to inject him with his uniquely horrible truth serum and
drag him into a cabin with the others.

Meanwhile the three neglected strangers had gotten themselves out of
the frying pan, into the fire. Charlie, Herb and Melinda refused to
row away from the ship while their loved ones were stuck on the
sinking boat. Mainly Charlie and Herb, but Melinda only thought about
it for a few seconds before jumping in the water with them and
swimming back to the ship. They weren't very good at rescuing,
though, so they had been captured by all the Scarred Man's henchmen
before they could help out much.

Now they were waiting in the crew's mess with ten weird little guys
in gray ski masks. The Scarred Man had ordered them to guard the
prisoners and wait until he came back for them. It had been about
fifteen minutes and they were getting bored and antsy. One of them
said he was getting hungry. He looked around the kitchen, but all he
found were fresh vegetables in a refrigerator and frozen shrimp and
lobsters and steaks. The henchman was pretty good at cooking with a
microwave, but he didn't know how to work a gas stovetop.

"Um, I can help with that," Charlie said.

Herb glared at him.

Melinda said, "Are there any burgers or fries back there?"

Twenty minutes later, Charlie burst through the door of the cabin and
tackled the Scarred Man. Herb and Melinda followed a few seconds
afterwards, grabbing the Scarred Man's arms and tying him up.

They found a bottle of truth serum antidote and injected it into Pam,
Marci, Rob and Matt.

"Yeah buddy! Thanks for rescuing us," Matt said. "No we can find out
who's really behind this." He reached up to the Scarred Man in His
Late Thirties and pulled off a rubber mask. Underneath was …

… some guy they had never seen before, in his early forties.

"Hmmm," said Marci. "It's usually more dramatic on the show. Couldn't
you have worked as an innkeeper or auto mechanic or something earlier
in our story? It would have made things more interesting now when we
revealed your face."

The man in his early forties stuck his tongue out at her. Then he
looked at the three neglected spouses and yelled, "How did you get
away from my guards??"

Melinda said, "It was really cool, and it was non-violent! The
henchmen that were guarding us said they were hungry, so Charlie-"

"I know!" said Pam. "Charlie made chili!"

"Yep," said Herb. "He warned us to have only one bowl. But the
henchmen liked it so much, they had seconds and thirds. Some of them
that could still move had fourths and fifths. After that, they were
either falling asleep or just too full to chase after us."

Pam hugged Charlie. As she pulled away from him, her collar caught on
something. She pulled loose and looked at it. Charlie had a little
dog tag marked SD around his neck.

Everyone looked at the tv camera and shouted, "ZOINKS!"

THE END?