I love my Critchlore Flying Monkeys!
—THE WICKED WITCH OF WEST CHAMBOR, IN AN ADVERTISING TESTIMONIAL
After dinner and more reshelving, it had been too late to catch Miss Merrybench and fix my dorm assignment, so I headed to her office first thing in the morning.
Honestly, I'd rather collect bat dookie in the Caves of Doom than visit our school secretary on the first day of school. Miss Merrybench was a thin woman who wore flowery blouses and a scowl that could make an angry ogre jump back in fear. (I'd seen it happen. Twice.) It only took one glance at her desk to know she was as tough as they came. Perched on the corner was the trophy she'd won in the Iron Woman Triathlon. That's the race where contestants swim through shark-infested water, run from hungry devil hounds, and cycle through the Primeval Forest while imps shout rude things about their bike shorts.
I approached her door, bracing myself for a blast of Merrybench anger. I took a deep breath, just like I had during that cave job, and opened it.
She looked up at me, her famous scowl turned to maximum power. I'd heard that, once, long ago, she'd eaten a piece of face-freezing curse candy that tasted like ogre breath. I wasn't sure if that was true, but she always looked annoyed, so who knew?
Plus it helped to think that maybe she was smiling on the inside.
"Mr. Higgins," she said. Then she made a little puffy sound, sort of a cross between a sigh and a grunt. A quick exhale that told me This had better be good. It also told me that she probably wasn't smiling on the inside.
I was about to launch into my plea when a buzz sounded from her desk. She held up a finger for me to wait. "Dr. Critchlore's School for Minions," she said into her headset.
She made shooing motions at me, but I pretended not to notice. I sat down in one of the chairs along the wall, next to an imp named Spanky. The little green guy's hands were bound, which wasn't surprising. Imps had long fingers that itched to steal things.
He nodded at Merrybench's Iron Woman trophy. "Know why the devil hounds don't catch 'em?" I shook my head. " 'Cause they can't stop laughing at them ridiculous bike shorts." He snorted with laughter and I shushed him. I did not want to get on Miss Merrybench's bad side this morning.
"What'cha in for?" he asked.
"They put me in the D-Hum," I whispered. He eyed me up and down, and I knew what he was thinking: I looked like a scrawny human boy. But there was a powerful werewolf inside me. Once, when I was seven, a giant swamp creature broke into our house, screaming and smashing furniture. In that moment of terror, I'd morphed into a werewolf and scared him off. So, yeah, I was fierce.
But it hadn't happened since, and even though my foster mother, Cook, kept telling me I needed to wait until puberty, I knew that if I was with my kind in the Momido, I'd morph again. I just had to wait for Miss Merrybench to finish on the phone so she could move me there.
"I told you before," Miss Merrybench said into her headset. "Dr. Critchlore has no comment. That video is a fake." She disconnected and hit the next button on her console. "Good morning, Dr. Critchlore's office." There were four more blinking buttons. Dog whistles! This is gonna take forever.
I picked up a brochure from the table next to me. Dr. Critchlore's face filled the cover, along with the words: "In a world run by evil overlords, you're either a minion or you're nothing. Train with the best at Dr. Critchlore's School for Minions!"
Inside were pictures of powerful minions and a map of the Porvian Continent, separated into the seven Greater Realms, the thirteen Lesser Realms, the Dismantled Realm, and the Island Realms. There was no mention of the Forgotten Realm. Red dots indicated where Critchlore minions had been placed. "This could be you!" was written next to an arrow pointing to the capital of Lower Worb, realm of the superpowerful Wexmir Smarvy.
I'd never seen a recruitment brochure before. We were always bursting with minions.
"I'm from Bluetorch," Spanky said, pointing to a country south of Stull, where our school was located. "I miss the food, but not the daily calls to admiration."
"The what?"
"Every hour a gong rings and we have to say something nice about our EO, Dark Victor. 'Dark Victor is so handsome,' 'Dark Victor is so smart,' 'Dark Victor makes the best cheese soufflé.' "
I was glad, yet again, that the Neutral Region of Stull was not ruled by an evil overlord. The United Nations of Overlords was located here, and the EOs had an agreement not to attack our country. We lived in an oasis of peace in a warring world.
"… Yes, Your Supremacy," Miss Merrybench said. "He's well aware of your concerns. I assure you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the minions you recruited last spring. That video is a fake. Our minions have been, and always will be, top-notch."
I looked at Dr. Critchlore's open office door, and a thought popped into my brain—he could switch my dorm assignment. Why not? Hadn't he just selected me for the Junior Henchman Training Program, the most exclusive training the school offered? He'd want me in the right dorm.
"Go for it," Spanky said, as if reading my thoughts.
I looked down and saw him unwrapping a piece of my explosive gum. I hadn't even felt him reaching into my pocket. I grabbed it back, then nodded toward Miss Merrybench. She didn't have fangs or claws, but she held a ruler, and I had a feeling she knew how to use it.
Spanky shrugged. "You probably wouldn't want to, anyway. Critchlore scares the fur off my fingers."
Most kids thought he was scary. Most monsters thought he was scary. But Dr. Critchlore was like a father to me. I'd known him as long as I could remember.
"General Nix, you've recruited minions from us before; you know they are first-rate," Miss Merrybench said. "Don't believe that video. Why, if you look at the brochure, the customer testimonials …" She spun around in her chair and opened a file cabinet.
This was my chance. I sped past her desk and slipped into Dr. Critchlore's office, stopping as soon as I was out of her view.
I loved Dr. Critchlore's office, with its dark floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, its fireplace in the alcove, and the rare works kept under glass, like in a museum. A huge desk sat in front of a bay window that looked toward Mount Curiosity. His office had everything an office should have.
Everything except Dr. Critchlore. He was gone.
