Perry Squatter and the Pot Full of Royalties

Professor Dimpledork entered the badly lighted classroom with a flourish. The flourish waited by the door while the venerable wizard mounted the dais, which complained at such familiarity, and then students covered their mouths and noses at a muffled, staccato roar from beneath the professor’s robe. The robe billowed at the back and a gray-green cloud flowed from under its hem, and the noxious fumes rose toward the ceiling. Two Devonshire pixies that had built a nest in the rafters plummeted to the floor, dead as doorknobs.

Dimpledork scowled, and then almost quicker than the eye could see he magically whisked an aerosol can from his pocket and spritzed twice. The vile vapor dissipated and students moaned in relief when the somewhat more pleasant aroma of lavender and carbolic soap replaced the caustic stench. Harmonica Stranger, a bit caustic herself and Perry Squatter’s closest female acquaintance, rolled her eyes and leaned toward Perry’s ear to whisper.

“Isn’t it bad enough this place has to be called Dogfart’s Academy without…?”

“Shh,” responded Plod Obvious, Perry’s inept yet unattractive second banana, who sat on the other side of Perry from Harmonica. “The Professor just ate too many magic mushrooms and is having a….”

Perry quickly shushed Plod in return, and gave him a stern look, which closely resembled his frightened look and his puzzled look, and was indistinguishable from his looks of stark terror, grave sadness, and mild amusement. Suddenly and as if by magic, the venerated old spellbinder on the dais favored the three young people with a steely if faintly rusted glance, and they clamped their lips tightly and feigned rapt attention.

“Good afternoon, students. I’m sorry to say that your instructor for Fake Latin, Professor Tohellwithshakespearegivemeapartthatpays Branagh, has been taken ill with a dose of the clap … uh, that is, with a case of Cutesy Poo Flu and is indisposed, so I will carry on in his place. But instead of Latin, I will explain the magic behind selling thirteen million copies of every book you write. Firstly, there’s the Saturation Marketing spell and the Shameless Self Promotion incantations, and of course as to the books themselves, the Punning for Fun and Profit and the We’ll Swallow Anything potions, which you’ll sprinkle on each manuscript page, and then….”

The voluble scholar droned on like bagpipes with bronchitis, and the pupils’ eyes glazed over. After a few minutes, Harmonica shook off the lethargy, which fell in a drowsy heap to the floor, and once more whispered to Perry’s ear.

“Take us for a ride on your joystick.”

Perry gave her his famous look of bemusement, or perhaps it was indignation, Harmonica never could be sure. “You mean my broomstick.”

“Don’t tell me what I mean.” She waved her wand at Perry’s lap. “Indigenous puptentus!”

He gasped and covered them both with his cloak of incredulity.

TO BE CONTINUED AS SOON AS I GET A SEVEN-FIGURE ADVANCE