and made my way to the tower; there are some things that are more important than food. The excitement that flowed through my veins provided more than enough energy to follow through with the mission at hand. As far as I could recall I had never done anything daring or something that could be classified as an act of bravery in my entire life and this was going to be my fifteen minutes of fame.
At first I ran up the stairs as quickly as my feet would go only to discover that the faster I ran the farther it seemed that the top would get. Then I remembered the fence that I had encountered earlier in my journey; how that whenever I would reach the top rail another set of three rails would appear. This stairway seemed to set up in the same manner, so I looked around for a red box to place money into and found none. There had to be a way to climb this stairway and rescue the lovely Penelope and perhaps this Prince Val would reward me with great riches or something like that.
I felt along the walls at the base of the stone stairway that led upward to that vision of beauty that had been trapped by those two villains. A loose stone fell to the floor and I peered into the hole that its exit had left behind, there in the rear of the hole was something that looked like a note. It was a note written upon a piece of leather and it revealed three words: use the walls. “That is what I am doing,” I thought to myself. So I continued to search the walls for more clues as to how to solve this mystery and rescue the princess. “Hey there buddy, this is your brain remember me?” “What, not you again, Can’t you see that I have a problem here and I don’t have time to argue with you?””I don’t want you to argue with me just listen to my suggestion; after all, I am here to help you.” “Well then, make it quick, I haven’t much time.” “What do you see on the walls in the stairway?” “Nothing on the walls, but there is a portrait of someone in a crown, and a couple of torches that are burning with a blue flame.” “Exactly and that is your answer to your problem.” I removed the torch from the holder on the wall and placed my foot on the first stone step, then the second and when I stepped on the third one I saw the same results as before; the stairway increased by another three steps. “Brain, your suggestion didn’t work this time either.” There was no reply from my brain and so I was on my own again. This time I felt all around the picture, frame, and all; perhaps I would find a hidden trigger and then I could finish what I had started. This idea also proved to be an invalid one, as I was rewarded nothing for my efforts. In the background I could hear my brain saying something, but I was trying to ignore that object in my skull. However, desperate times call for desperate measures and I reluctantly tried the idea that “the Brain” had been throwing at me while I was trying to solve this dilemma. Grasping the two blue-flamed torches, one in each hand, I held the torch in my left hand under the left corner of the frame and held the torch in my right hand under the right corner of the frame; the results of these actions brought out two blue flames from the eyes in the portrait which shot across the stairwell and rested upon a clear stone in the wall, which in turn did the most amazing thing I had seen on this entire journey.
A second stairway appeared over the first, it was an eerie blue color stairway that seemed to float in the air above the stone stairway. Still holding the torches in my hand I stepped on the first glowing step and then the second, third, fourth, fifth and continued in like manner till I reached the landing at the top. On the right of the landing was a door that led to the tower room where Penelope was being held and I looked into the small window on the heavy wooden door and there she was. The most beautiful young woman that the world has seen was lying there on the cold, stone floor and I called out to her; “I’m here to rescue you Princess, but you must hurry for they are coming soon to take you away to a secret place.” The princess rose up as lightly as a feather floating on an upward draft and ran toward me. Then she began to speak the words that every hero desires to have fallen upon his ears; words that I had never heard before, but now they were coming to me.
“Wake up boss, wake up, said Wilbur. “What, what are you saying?” You fell down an open manhole and wandered down the sewer.” When I sat there for a moment I remembered where I was and where I had been going; there had been a party taking place, but not at an Ice Palace but at a simple little place called 64 Pickles. Hey this is your brain; I wouldn’t say anything about where we have been.” “That may be a good idea and I am going to respond to your ideas as I always do.” “That is what I am afraid of.”
Strange how much you've got to know before you know how little you know. -Anonymous
Friday
There was a dog that lived in Mighty Junction, USA and every day he would walk the trail southward. This time he encountered a strange cat along the way and chased it down, nearly catching it when he heard the cats’ owner call out for the nefarious feline. “Kurt where are you, you wonderful cat?” A sharp meeeooww and the cat vanished away without a trace. While on the other side of town, a bullet intended for Douglas went astray and blasted through a car window, into a man named Frazier and that wasn’t all the excitement for that day.
Those were just some of the headlines from the Mighty Junction Express. The Mighty Junction Express was founded nearly forty years earlier by a man who is only known by the name of Grouse. What did others use as his first name? When he was addressed it was only as Mr. Grouse. The Mighty Junction Express was not a newspaper as other papers of the day were; old man Grouse had the idea that there was too much space in the paper that was taken up by too many details surrounding the headlines that were printed in them and so he decided that all that was necessary was the headline and maybe a sentence or two to describe the story. The rest of the story could be filled in by the reader’s imagination, and that would make for a much more interesting story as well as leaving more room for the headlines that were never mentioned because of a lack of space. The style of publishing brought along some problems as well, but the money it made was more than the headaches that entered every now and then, so the powers that be kept the format the same.
Mondays’ headlines read in this manner:
FOUR HORSES FOUND IN J. HOGANS FIELD; THEY WERE NOT HIS
THE BIG SALE AT JOHNSONS CANCELLED
TWO LOCAL TEENS FOUND
ZEBRAS AT LOCAL ZOO ESCAPE ALONG WITH A LION
TWO MEN TRAPPED WHILE GAS STATION BURNS
My name is Byron Byline and I recently moved here to Mighty Junction from Bees Knees and let me tell you that I found this newspaper to be rather irresponsible and very unprofessional. These headlines could have been used as a story prompt for some creative writing paper and that would have been okay. However, as a headline they worked, but without the complete story to follow they were nothing more than gossip starters. I knew that more than what the people of Mighty Junction wanted, it was the truth that they needed; so I embarked on the mission of discovering the truth in these stories. First I will tell you what the general consensus of the people surrounding the story was and then I will disclose to you the truth of the situation.
FOUR HORSES FOUND IN J. HOGANS FIELD; THEY WERE NOT HIS
Here are some of the comments surrounding this headline, the authors of those comments are not being revealed to protect them from any backlash. “You know he stole them, his whole family is nothing but thieves.” “Well, I don’t know how they got in his field, he does, and he’s not saying.” “They probably wandered in through that hole in the fence.””I don’t think he has enough money to buy horses, yea; he stole ‘em.””He stole a piece of candy from me when we were kids, and he is still up to his ways.” Now, here is what I discovered when I asked a few questions and learned the truth. On Saturday past John Hogan received a phone call from his brother Terry Hogan asking if he could bring his four horses and wagon to his house and they could enter them into the 4th of July celebration being held in Mighty Junction in two weeks. John Hogan said that would be a great idea and he would get the necessary forms filled out Monday afternoon when he went to town.
The horses arrived early Sunday morning while John was at church and he and his brother went to the fishin’ hole that afternoon to relax.
THE BIG SALE AT JOHNSONS CANCELLED
Again there were various ideas and rumors as to why the sale at Johnson’s Store was cancelled. “Johnson ran off with another woman” “There was never going to be a sale, it was just a plot to lure us in and get all of our money.” “Why should there be a sale, when no one buys his stuff anyway?” “Johnson is a tightwad he would never put anything on sale.” You get the idea, just rumors, and no facts. There was a detective show that I would watch when I was younger and one of the detective’s lines was “Just the facts, Ma’am.” That is what I am here for to collect the facts and report them. Johnsons’ Store had advertised a big sale that was fast approaching and there were going to be various items that had never before been available through this local grocer. Some of those things were large items; a full size refrigerator, an electric stove, a washer and dryer that worked by electricity. Then there were the smaller items like fabrics in colors other than denim, black and gray. There were