Halloween Special of Doom! The Conclusion!

[littleredchucks]

Originally posted by littleredchucks at Halloween Special of Doom! The Conclusion!
The final chapter in this year's Halloween Boosh round robin story.
I hope it meets with everyone's approval. Many thanks for the wonderful chapters that have come before this one, it's been a wild ride!

Rated PG
The happy conclusion:



Howard and Vince tumbled through the mirror in a flash of scene changing light. Howard hit the ground first, providing a soft, if unwilling, place for Vince to land, which he did, letting out an ‘oof!’ that Howard thought was a bit much considering he was the one taking all of Vince’s weight whilst staying stoically silent. He wasn’t able to internally grouse about the injustice of Vince always landing on his feet (or on Howard) for long however, because a moment after they landed  the small, heart-shaped mirror - their mirror - clattered to the ground next to them, cracking from side to side as it did so, sealing the mirror world in, and them, finally, blessedly, out.

Vince scrambled over to pick up the mirror, climbing over Howard and kneeing him in a few rather delicate places but ignoring his protests in the rush to examine the mirror, and his reflection in it.

“Everything back to normal then?” Howard asked, righting himself and stretching tight muscles, feeling like he always had after one of the Zooniverse’s porpoise races, completely wrung out and slightly light-headed.

“Yeah, I think so,” Vince murmured, his eyes still fixed intently on the mirror. “A bit flat but nothing that a good wash and a bit of root boost won’t fix.”

“I meant the mirror, you tit!” Howard griped, swiping Vince across the back of the head but not really feeling any real bad temper. It was good to have the real Vince back, and to be back in the real world. “Why are you so vain? Why can’t you be more like me, you know?”

“What?” Vince asked, looking up with a cheeky expression. “The last in a long line of freaky occultists who had a witch’s curse put on him before he was even born? Oh, Howard,” his voice and face softened as he stood up to press a gentle kiss to Howard’s cheek. “Why didn’t you just tell me, you great lummox?”

He left a moment’s pause, twisting his head to look up at Howard meaningfully through his fringe, knowing they didn’t need to do more than that, didn’t really need to discuss it, that a  look would be enough. And knowing that Howard hated to talk about anything that was really serious or might leave him vulnerable, or admit that he’d made a mistake.

“Anyway,” he went on, turning back to the mirror. “I weren’t being vain. You’d be doing the same thing if only hours ago you’d been sprouting jay cloths where once you’d had hair the likes of which the world had never seen before.”

“Fair dues,” Howard nodded, running his fingers through the dark strands and feeling Vince lean against him like a cat.

Vince could never resist having his hair played with, despite his protestations when anyone other than Howard attempted to touch it, he was putty in Howard’s hands the second he started to play with those dark, silky locks. And now, Howard realised, he would be able to do this sort of thing all the time, without quite so much paranoia. He and Vince were a romantic item now, were they not? A couple, a pair, a unit, a set. Of course, really, he reasoned, they always had been, they even fit together perfectly, with Vince’s head tucking under Howard’s chin just so, but now he didn’t have to worry about Vince, or anyone else, misinterpreting his behaviour. He could be as romantic as he liked because he and Vince were together, even more completely than before, like a box of puzzle pieces, all put together. A strange puzzle perhaps, made up of odd pieces that fit together even if they didn’t make a proper picture, a Canadian landscape with a sky faced bear perhaps, bending the rules and breaking the boundaries, but perfect as far as he was concerned. Yes sir, Howard sighed to himself contentedly. They were safe, free, pleasingly in love and... wait. Howard shifted his chin, backtracking over his train of thought as the realisation hit him, causing yet another wave of relief to ripple down his spine.

“You’re back to your normal height as well, I see,” he said quietly, still not entirely sure that Vince had been aware that he had, at one point in the evening, been shrinking.

“I know!” Vince said happily, spinning so that he could wrap his arms around Howard’s waist and look up at him, his face beaming. “That was a nightmare! I wasn’t sure if you’d noticed so I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want you to freak out more than you already were. But seriously, talk about bringing out our worst fears!”

“Yeah,” Howard frowned, his brow creasing as he looked back at Vince, trying to figure out the answer to his questions before he actually asked them. “What was that about, anyway?”

“Well,” Vince fluffed his hair. “It was always a thing, wasn’t it? I got picked on ‘cos I was short. I always hated it. Hated you having to look after me, you thinking you had to. And even now, like, I’m a normal height but I hate feeling short.”

Howard’s frown increased and he saw Vince begin to react to it, chewing his bottom lip and fidgeting, his hips bumping against Howard’s distractingly.

“But you always seem to go out of your way to appear small compared to me,” he said, the statement coming out as a question, and Vince nodded.

“Well, I do like it when you’re all big and protective. I like looking up to you, making eyes at you from under me fringe, to make you blush.” Howard immediately blushed to prove Vince’s point. “But you’re different. Different set of rules between you and me. But when it’s everyone else, or just me on my own, well... I feel like a goblin when I feel short, like, without me heels on and that. I feel small and ugly and... feeling tall enough, that gives me confidence. Oh, shut up,” he said with a grin when Howard tried to look understanding. “I’m not good with words, you know that. But yeah, feeling small and ugly, that’s my nightmare. But you saved me, didn’t you? You turned me into your princess. I reckon I’ve done alright out of this adventure.”

Howard pulled him into a fierce hug, both because he wanted Vince to know that he could never be small and ugly, and partly because he didn’t want Vince to see him tearing up.

“And I’m the beast then, I suppose?”

“Well,” Vince mumbled against his chest. “It’s what’s inside that counts, right? And the Beast was well handsome really, weren’t he, he just needed the right person to see it.”

Howard felt his heart swell, a momentum building within him as Vince leaned back and tilted his chin upwards, his lips moving toward Howard’s with a wonderful inevitability as, behind them the sun rose and began to shine through the large windows of the expensively furnished room that they had somehow landed in. Howard could feel Vince’s breath against his skin, could feel the tremble that seemed to be running through them both, the electricity that was always there but which seemed to have doubled with the anticipation of what was to come, when-

“Hellooooooooooooooo. Well isn’t this just darling.”

The two men broke apart, Howard moving to stand just in front of Vince, a reflex that he barely even noticed, the ever present need to put himself between danger and the man he adored, Vince’s second defense if his overwhelming optimism should fail. The woman standing before them, leaning against the dark wood of the closed door, was a woman they had once thought of as little more than a strange, but mostly harmless, middle-aged widow out for a good time. Now they knew she was really a the mastermind behind the nightmare that had nearly trapped them for eternity, and which had successfully trapped her own son.

“You,” Howard said, rather redundantly. “What are you doing here? I thought we vanquished you. Or something.”

“Oh, Howard, Howard, Howard. I’m not that easy to get rid of,” Eleanor purred as she walked toward them, removing her sunglasses, headscarf and gloves as she approached. “I simply let your adventure come to successful conclusion so that you could both grow as individuals and complete your narrative arc,” she continued. “If I had wanted to kill you I could have done so many times, but I had other fish to fry. Blue safari suit wearing fish, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean Bob Fossil?” Vince asked cautiously, stepping out from behind Howard and cocking his head to one side, as if trying to look at the strange woman before them.

“Yes, Bobby Bob Bob. My Robert. My little mess of a blue boy. He was my goal, you two were merely a readily accessible magical conduit I’m afraid. I needed you, needed to use you, needed to use the magic that oozes out of your lives to boost my own, and needed to get you out of the way for a while. But I never had any intention of harming you, or trapping you permanently. I knew you would overcome the nightmares I wove for you, you’re both so narratively driven that a happy ending was inevitable, but I made it difficult enough that you stayed out of my way until I was ready to let you go.”

“Oh, right,” Vince said, trying to replay what she’d just told him over again in his head in the hopes that it would make more sense a second time round. “Thanks. I guess.”

She smiled, putting her glasses, gloves and scarf down on a large desk that had, until that moment, gone unnoticed by either Howard or Vince, and then leaned against it, lighting a cigarette and blowing out the smoke like an old world movie heroine, a pouty smile still on her dark, red lips. Vince smiled back. She didn’t look nearly so evil or strange without her accessories on, he decided, just like an older woman version of her son, except she was actually quite attractive, if you were looking for a mature lady who looked vaguely like a mix of Rosey O’Donnell and Kelly Osborne. She was dressed in a well tailored, expensive looking dress, her hair was well styled and her make-up was immaculate and she looked, to Vince, like a respectable business woman, and not like a wicked witch at all. And he told her as much.

“You don’t look like a witch.”

“Ha!” she responded, making Howard twitch at the sudden noise, but doing no more than that. “I am wicked, don’t doubt that. But I’m hardly what one might call evil. I have very little tolerance for evil. I shoot it down when I see it. The only thing I despise more is stupidity. So you can understand why my son has been such a... disappointment.”

“So why did you run as his campaign partner then?” Howard asked, trying to sound less frightened than he was. After all this was not only the woman who had cornered him in a dark alleyway and insisted on kissing every inch of available skin on his body and rubbing his face in her impressive bosom, but also the witch who had laid a prophesy/curse on him when he was no more than a twinkle in his father’s eye.

“I only found out about Bobby’s latest hair brained scheme when I read about it in the papers. I’ve been trying to get him back under my control for years but he’s always managed to slip through my grasp. So I approached him and told him how proud I was that he was finally making something of himself, that I wanted to let the mistakes of his past be put to rest, that I wanted to support his rise to power. He fell for it. And so I lured him into my trap.”

Howard shuffled nervously, trying to edge his way toward the door, pulling Vince with him, without Eleanor noticing, but not doing a terribly good job of it.

“What mistakes?” Vince asked, refusing to take Howard’s hints and actually stepping closer to the woman who had put them through such peril.

“Well, for one thing,” the witch smiled with genuine amusement, blowing cigarette smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Dressing up in one of my most expensive Jaquetti dresses and using up my best time-bending potions just to go back in time and show up at the baptisms of people he didn’t like to lay ‘curses’ on them. Got his dates a bit wrong with you though, Moon. Couldn’t even do that right. Such a fool, don’t you think?”

“He couldn’t be that foolish if he knew to avoid you,” Howard snapped back, not sure why he was defending Bob Fossil but with no way to control his spiraling emotions at this sudden new development.

“You think so? You’ve known him ten years and you really think that?” Eleanor asked, eyebrow raised in an amused and condescending manner. “He’s crafty, I’ll give him that. He knows how to get by in life and manipulate others into doing things for his benefit, even when they are embarrassing and unsavory and distasteful. He’s my boy after all. He certainly knew how to make you dance, Howard Moon, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an  idiot. He’s my son but he’s also thicker than rice pudding in the midday sun. And he’s been using my magic, my potions, not to mention my clothes, to cause chaos , and getting me blamed for it. He needed to be stopped, he needed to be punished. And when he came back here I was finally able to catch up with him.”

“So you’re... punishing him? And you had to keep us out of the way because you thought we’d try and stop you?” Vince asked, trying to get the facts straight in his head whilst from the corner of his eye he could see Howard edging toward the door. He was good at acting as a distraction and, as friendly and sane as she seemed now, he wasn’t about to trust Eleanor entirely. She’d trapped them in a labyrinth of their own nightmares once already and they had no guarantee that she intended to simply let them walk free now. So whilst Howard did what he did best - creeping non-threateningly toward the exit - Vince did what he did best - he pulled focus.

“Bingo, my little love twiglet,” Eleanor nodded, putting out her cigarette on the expensive looking desk. “You can consider him... in time out.”

“Right,” Vince replied slowly, trying not to think about Bob Fossil’s sweaty, terrified face pressed agains the glass in his mirror prison. “And what about the election then?”

“Oh, don’t you worry your little head about that,” Eleanor said, moving around to sit at the desk just as the sun rose high enough to properly illuminate the room with it’s dark wood furniture, flags, red telephones and eagle-crested rug for the first time. “That all went rather well. Bobby was surprisingly popular with the average American. Election day was a breeze. It’s all settled.”

“You?” Howard said suddenly, from the door. “You’re the-”

“That’s right, plum cheeks,” Eleanor pouted proudly. “I mean, really, can you imagine one of the most powerful nations in the world being left in my son’s pudgy, yet disturbingly long fingered hands? I couldn’t let that happen. I’m wicked but I’m not looking to start an Armageddon. So, there you have it. Sorry to have inconvenienced you both, and for what Bobby told your parents and that dreadful ‘prophesy’. But I think you’ll agree that you handled it all admirably, and all in all it wasn’t a totally negative experience now was it?”

“Huh?” Howard frowned but Vince grinned and nodded, a blush spreading across his cheeks at the witch’s knowing smile.

“And now I expect you have to get back to Britain, bum each other silly, whatever it is you do. And I have to get back to work. Even on these important holidays Madam President must be seen to be governing her country, after all.”

“Oh yeah, Halloween!” Vince squealed but the president just gave him a laugh in return.

“I’m afraid you’ve rather missed Halloween, pudding pie,” she cooed. “Time moves a little differently in the mirror world.”

Vince blinked in shock and Howard took the opportunity to grab his hand and drag him toward the now open door.

“Well, thanks, I guess, for letting us go and not leaving us trapped in another dimension and for, you know, helping us to discover the depths of romantic passion that exist between us, but we really should be going so... Bye now.”

“Bye,” Eleanor said shortly, her attention already turning to the new stack of paperwork on her prestigious desk. “Enjoy your flight.”

Once they were out in the hallway Vince and Howard broke out into a run, hands still tightly entwined, only stopping when they passed a balcony and saw a blessedly familiar sight.

“Naboo!” Vince yelled happily as they ran out to the rail and Saboo moved grudgingly to allow them to clamber onto the flying carpet. “You’re a gem! Thanks for helping out back there!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Naboo mumbled, “it was nothing.”

“Nothing?” Saboo spat back. “That’s easy for you to say, you under-grown garden gnome! I’m the one who did all the work!”

“Thank you, Saboo,” Howard said dutifully. “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

Saboo seemed satisfactorily mollified with that, sniffing pompously and turning away to gaze out across the city in way that Howard figured was supposed to look dignified and all-knowing but really made him look liked he’s just stumbled upon a bad smell. He was mostly just grateful to be heading home, with Vince by his side and the greatest fear of his life finally put to rest. Trust Bob Fossil to have found a way to make his life miserable before they’d even met, but it was over now and Fossil was, well, he was probably alright. Probably. And below them the city of Washington was waking up, the wind icy despite the bright morning sun, the taste of winter already heavy in the air. Wait, winter?

“Um, Naboo?” he asked tentatively as Vince snuggled up against him and pressed a daring kiss to his neck, momentarily distracting him from his concern. “What day is it today?”

“It’s November twenty-sixth,” Saboo informed him when Naboo only shrugged his shoulders made a face. “We’ve been searching for you for over a month, since you ask. Would have given up if Naboo’s sorry excuse for a familiar hadn’t burst into tears like an old mother hen and insisted that we keep searching for his ‘precious Vince, and that other one’. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“But,” Vince’s head shot up, his eyes wide and bright as he looked deep into Howard’s tiny peepers. “But that’s Turkey Day! Oh, Howard, can we have turkey for tea tonight? And pumpkin pie? And... what else do they eat over here on their Turkey Day?”

“Um, Thanksgiving, you mean? Yams, I think,” Howard stuttered, caught in the brilliant reflective blueness of Vince’s gaze.

“Erg! Well, not them,” Vince scowled before batting his lashes at Howard and looking adoring once more. “But we can have pie and cream right, Howard? Please?”

“Sure, Little Man,” Howard smiled, pulling Vince more firmly against him, and breathing in his scent, rejoicing in his warmth. “We can have whatever you want.”

And with that the magic carpet sped off toward the morning sun, Howard and Vince together, safe, alive and deeply, nauseatingly in love - and Saboo and Naboo, bickering over whether they were going the quickest route or not, and whether yams and sweet potatoes really were different vegetables or whether they were just “jumped up tubers with delusions of holiday grandeur” like Saboo maintained.

And so we reach the end of our tale. A tale that has taken us from Halloween to Thanksgiving, from fear and doubt to love and security, to self-acceptance, confidence and the knowledge that when something has gone seriously wrong in life there is a good chance that it’s all actually Bob Fossil’s fault.

The End.