The Shady Adventures of Fabian

Chapter 75

A couple hours later Fabian and Brandon found themselves sitting in King Wangdangdoodle's dungeon. They had been immediately arrested for fraud and thrown into a tiny cell together. Their only other companion was a skeleton that was manacled to the wall.

"Nothing to worry about, Scrote. I've got this situation completely under control. It's all part of the plan."

"What do you think that guy did to deserve that?" Brandon said as he glanced at the skeleton nervously.

"I don't know. Maybe he was a jester who didn't make the king laugh. Jesters are always getting themselves killed for that. It's a very dangerous profession. But really the king was the fool this time for not clasping me in manacles like he did to that guy. Because I'm an absolute expert at picking locks. I'll have us out of this cell before you can blink your eyes."

"How are you going to pick the lock? They confiscated all of our stuff when they arrested us."

"So they did, Scrote. But I don't need any fancy stuff. I'll use the materials at hand. Like that skeleton. Break me off a piece of its bone. Get me the right size splinter and I'll use it to pick the lock."

"You want me to touch that thing?" Brandon asked.

"Well, I'm not going to do it. This is the sort of thing that's in your job description, being my assistant and all that. You touch the dead guy and I pick the lock. It's a completely fair division of labor. Unless, of course, you want to pick the lock."

"I don't know how to do that."

"That's right you don't. Because you're the unskilled labor and I'm the brains of the operation. Now stop being a little bitch and break me off a piece of bone."

"All right," Brandon said. He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he grabbed the leg bone and snapped it in half. Luckily it was fairly brittle with age. "Here will this work?"

"That's way too big, moron. Break off a smaller piece. It's got to fit into the keyhole."

"Okay, let me try again." He grabbed the jagged tip of the broken bone he was holding and managed to break off a much smaller sliver.

"That should do the trick," Fabian said as he snatched the little piece of bone out of Brandon's hand and went to work on the lock.

Half an hour later he was still fiddling with the lock. "Almost got it. Almost got it."

The doorknob suddenly turned and the door swung open.

"Aha! I did it!"

"Uh, I think that guard opened it, sir."

There was a guard right outside the door holding a plate of food for the prisoners.

"Clearly I picked the lock a second before he got here. That's why he has such a confused look on his face. Now don't just stand there like a numbskull. Hit him with the bone."

"Oh, right," Brandon said as he smacked the guard across the face with the leg bone he was holding. The guard dropped to the ground in an unconscious heap. Fabian searched the guard's pockets, but they were empty.

"All right, now we can get out of here," Fabian said. "Although I suppose we shouldn't let this food go to waste. He shovelled it into his mouth and let out a loud belch. "All right. That was pretty gross. But at least I'm not hungry anymore."

"I'm still kind of hungry, sir."

"Well, how the hell is that my problem? You can eat later. Right now we've got a much more important task to attend to. First we need to recover all of our stuff and then we've got to grab that cat and get the hell out of here."