Driving Doctor Mayhem

[14] A Trip to Puppet Lane

Our destination, I soon discovered, was Mayor Collodi's mansion on Puppet Lane. It was pretty extravagant, even for Jiminyville, which was made mostly of blue-blooded, white-collar families with members who hadn't worked more than a day in their life on average. (Don't get me wrong; in their position, I wouldn't be working, either.)

Doc and I, as you may have already gathered, were not in that majority, which was why Collodi was not one of our favorite people.

Really, all he did was sit in his stuffy office in his stuffy suits, not changing anything, not fixing anything. I think he may have installed a stop sign once, which spurred a ridiculous public backlash for infringing on the constitutional right of the citizens of Jiminyville to stop their cars when they damn well pleased, regardless of school zones.

When we got to the mansion, Doc leaped out of his side of the car and popped open the trunk, pulling out what some sort of ray-gun-looking-thing. This is not to suggest that it was a cool ray-gun-looking-thing, in fact, it looked more like a reject prop from a bad fifties sci-fi movie.

Nevertheless, a ray gun is a ray gun is a ray gun, and if I didn't want him holding a pool cue, you could imagine my level of discomfort at that moment. Discomfort, which skyrocketed when he pulled out another one and tossed it into my arms.

"We're not disintegrating the mayor, are we?"

Doc laughed out loud--which was a rarity--and replied, "That's so clichéd; I couldn't call myself Doctor Mayhem if I gave into that temptation. No, we're going to do something a little more fun than that. Eggs."

"Huh?"

The grin faded from his face as he rolled his eyes exasperatedly. "The eggs. Larry's eggs. Hand them over." I did as I was told, and watched as he loaded six of the dozen into his gun. He thrusted the box towards me. "Now you."

I copied him.

"We're egging his house." I sighed. It came out as more of a statement than a question. Doc didn't reply--he didn't cater to slow wits, after all--instead racing up the hill to the mansion and leaving me with no choice but to high-tail after him.

Before I caught up, the first shot had been fired.

Bang. Splat.

I wish I could say that I turned up my nose at this, that I'd raced back to the car, disgusted. That's what Cricket would've done. I didn't, though. I cracked up--pun intended--and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Crack!

"I got his window, Doc!"

"Someone, give this girl a medal," he deadpanned, cocking his egg gun.

We collectively fired a few more eggs before Collodi, himself raced out of the front door, still in his pajama set. I was unfazed until I saw that he was holding his own egg carton.

Doc chuckled, hitting him square in the shoulder and causing a big sticky mark on his fancy, name-brand pajama top.

The mayor yelled a long string of expletives, before tossing egg after egg at the two of us. We responded in kind, until our supply depleted and we raced for the cover of the Camry, covered in raw yolk.

"What was the point of that?"

Doc grinned, "As a brilliant super villain, there are days when you want to make a deep, pretentious, political statement, and there are others when you just want to piss idiots off. Most, for me, are the latter, if I'm being honest."