You've Got Another Thing Coming

Again I found myself wandering around an unknown patch of forest in a strange land, running from some unknown terror into another one.

I was surprised to find myself feeling right at home.

Cherokee was skipping ahead out of reach and staring intently at the ground and – when he could deal with the excitement – a little further ahead on the ground. His shirt was as previously described ragged and torn and did not as much cover his upper body as enhance its form and incite impure thoughts.
Nevertheless I kept my gaze fixed firmly on the centre of his back, because if I let my eyes wander upwards I’d lose myself in dreams and silly poems about his white-blonde hair. The thought of letting my gaze wander downwards was almost suicidal, as the first and only time I had let myself do that since we left the Hood I’d started hyperventilating and very inciting thoughts indeed had ravaged my brain.

Having escaped mortal peril once or twice might get to a person, but by now I found it much easier to just… increase the amount of happy thoughts as much as possible.
This being the case, where neither I nor Cherokee were keeping an eye on what was straight ahead – Cherokee having adopted the famous proverb “it doesn’t matter where you’re running to as long as you’re a long way away from the from” – it wasn’t too surprising that we basically walked right into another booby trap of Dreamland.

All of the sudden I found my intent staring interrupted by a blue, glittery haze. Cherokee had just promenaded right through a Broadway kind of fog, and before I’d have time to order my feet to halt I was engulfed by it, too.

The haze oozed around us, wrapping itself around our forms and Cherokee turned abruptly from his steady study of forest and caught me by the wrist. His eyes popped open with dread, and his mouth popped open in order to shout something – I’m sure – along the lines of “what the hell did you do to us now?”

And a guitar sounded. It was a steady, fast riff and soon the sounds of drums were backing it up. A bass, materializing out of nowhere into Cherokee’s other hand, started playing itself and Cherokee released my hand, pushed me away with a harsh shove that had me sitting on the ground faster than you could say “… a bass?”

And Cherokee hopped up on a convenient fallen tree trunk, took a stance and lifted his arm up high above his head, and he said:
“One, two, three; take my hand and come with me because you look so fine and I really wanna make you mine!”

He let his arm drop and struck the strings so hard they clanged heavily but coolly to the music.

“Excuse me?” I shouted over the sound of the music. “What the hell is going on?”

“I said, you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine!” sang Cherokee and plucked another chord from the bass, letting the verse kick in.

“What are you doing?” I stood up and wobbled over to the fallen tree. “Stop it!”

It wasn’t before I caught his eye and noticed the terror within them that I realised he wasn’t doing this voluntarily.

“Oh, four, five six; c’mon and get your kicks! Now you don’t need that money when you look like that, do ya, honey?”

Again he held his hand way above his head and let it fall dramatically down on the strings. With an enormous will power he managed to get out from whatever magic was possessing him and mouthed the eminent words: HELP ME!

He mouthed some other words as well, but I find it would be irresponsible of me to write them down and notice I’m quite unable to do so anyway without blushing terribly.

Nevertheless, again the magic overtook him and he sang, from the top: “One, two, three; take my hand and come with me because you look so fine and I really wanna make you mine!”

All of the sudden his music stopped and Cherokee breathed out, relaxing his pose and hopped down from the fallen tree trunk with his arms out stretched towards me.

And I reached out, reaching for an offered hand, and some great, horrifying force caused, without my permission or indeed coherent presence, my lungs to inhale deeply and my vocal chords to form the following words to a song:
“Oh yeah, I´ll tell you something I think you'll understand when I say that something; I wanna hold your hand!”

The initial shock of singing when you thought you weren’t was enough to keep me mentally shut up for the next two lines of “I wanna hold your hand”. The music kicked up again, but it was softer, more romantic and sweet. And Cherokee was about to say something when the magic gave him a kick in the teeth and forced him to sing again.
“Oh, please, say to me you’ll let me be your man, and please, say to me you’ll let me hold your hand!”

Horrified, we sang “I wanna hold your hand” together, moving towards each other in slow motion and the scenery around us blurred and focused in on us walking around like two love-sick idiots in any romantic musical.

“And when I touch you I feel happy inside,” I sang and wanted to kill myself for it.

“It’s such a feeling that my love I can’t hide,” added Cherokee and looked as if though he just might pass out any second and was hoping like hell he would.

And, in a duet we expressed the summarization of the song: “Yeah, you got that something. I think you’ll understand when I say that something: I wanna hold your hand! I WANNA HOLD YOUR HA-A-A-A-A-A-AND!”

And the magic forced us together, wrapping our arms around each other as we sang in our faces – which I felt deeply disrespectful about doing – about The Beatles yearning to hold a sweaty palm in theirs.

And, as soon as it had engulfed us, the music stopped. Cherokee’s bass that had been tossed on the ground evaporated in a puff of blue, glittery smoke and the scenery straightened itself out and put a metaphorical tie on. The fog was still around us but thinning out, but before it disappeared completely in morphed – ironically – into a solid hand that waved a rude finger at us.

It was gone.

Cherokee and I, still wrapped up in each other, took one look at it and one look at one another and said in chorus:
“If you ever mention this to anyone you’re dead!”

I looked at Cherokee and felt a smile tug at the corner of my mouth. “You know,” I said, leaning a bit closer. “That would have been quite romantic if it hadn’t been forced.”

He scoffed. “Yes, but then you’d be very disappointed to hear about the turn concerning my sexual preferences.”

I leaned even closer, inhaling his perfect smell, and smiled. “Oh, what a lucky girl I am, then.”

Cherokee cocked one eyebrow and grinned, but said nothing.

So I kicked him in the shins. “Oh come on!” I growled. “Take a bloody hint, why don’t you?”

And then he grinned even wider, showing off his perfect, pearly-white teeth in that seductive arsehole way of his, and then he finally kissed me.

And it was perfect.

After a while we parted – because even in fairy tales people require air – and then plunged down again. After a while we surfaced, and quickly went back to exploring the depths. No pun intended, dearies.

After another while of this we figured it might be time to get a move on, and Cherokee grabbed my hand firmly in his and together we headed off – yet again – into the woods, yet a-bloody-gain, while to ourselves replaying the music scene over and over again in our heads, saying to ourselves and each other: what the hell was that all about?

In the shrubberies behind us the leaves rustled. And from beneath them a bespectacled face stared out and a pointy hat rose from above it. Moments later, Aberton Olav Pears stood at the scene of our musical and giggled softly to himself.

Moments later, Aberton Olav Pears was gone.