Hero´s Manual: Chapter 4

[bending_sickle]

Chapter 4: Carpeting Made Easy

Things were not going well.

The carpets weighed tons. There were many carpets, some in the room, some in the hall, some rolling down the stairs unchecked.

Quasi was tired of chasing them. He was also tired of nailing them down, prying the nails off again and nailing them down right-side up again.

In an open act of rebellion (number 51 since that morning’s Throwing of the Hammer), Quasi stomped off for a calming cup of tea (which Vicky had finally convinced him to prepare), stepping and crawling over the piles of carpet in his way; he refused to move them, at least for the time being.

He also refused to clean up the mess his master’s pet had made. On about seven carpets. In three different attacks. Some of the creature’s fury had ebbed now, though, ever since Quasi had brandished the candlestick, but he nonetheless sported a few nasty bruises to show for the day’s fiasco.

Quasi had been dreading this day for weeks. His Master had finally received one of his handbook’s extras, World Domination: Tools of the Trade, a month previously and, having read only the first chapter (“Fables and Foibles”), had immediately set to ordering every carpet he could find. Boxes of them had been coming in steadily, bearing carpets, rungs, mats and rags, made from a variety of materials, ranging from what Quasi understood to be highly unclean worm by-products, cotton, linen and matted sheep’s wool.

After the exhausting task of wrenching the boxes open, returning the odd live llama or kangaroo, and cataloguing the whole mess, Quasi had a personal grudge against every single floor covering. Except the mummy’s rags; the poor man was wandering around half naked trying to pull himself together. Quasi’d offered him one of Vicky’s old aprons, but the mummy had shrieked and ambled off down the stairs carrying his right arm over his head like a club.

One late night, after a rigorous polish of the kitchen’s silverware, Quasi had snuck a peak at his Master’s book. Apparently, Vicky had read that there was a carpet somewhere in the world which could fly, carrying upon it a passenger. Apparently this was an essential tool for world dominion, although Quasi wondered what one would do if it ever caught on something. Suppose it unraveled? This, then, was the reason why Quasi now found himself setting one carpet after another onto the floor, setting gingerly onto it and then, after a brief respectful pause for the lack of anything happening, nail it to the floor. No point in wasting a good set of carpeting.

The butler shook out another dusty carpet, dragged it over to an exposed corner of the hall, stepped on something best left unmentioned and then tripped over a rebellious carpet. Vicky found him a few hours later at the foot of the stairs, staring at his grape-detail candlestick, and, thinking better of it, scurried away again.