Fan Fic - Visions, but only illusions...

[theprawncracker]

Great Beau, poor Gonzo... Oh well keep it coming!

 

[Beauregard]

Ahhh, the happy sadness of company...

__

The cell was six foot by nine foot. There were two cots, with harsh woollen blankets. A concrete wall at the back held a tiny window, crisscrossed with iron bars. The other cell sides were lines of close fitting bars. The door slammed. Nicky Holiday sneered at Gonzo before stalking away, his footsteps echoing off the cold hard floor.

Gonzo stood for a long time, gripping the bars in his hands, and staring with unseeing eyes at rows of cells, all filled for Christmas.

“Hey, you aren’t going to hurt me are you?” a voice said. Gonzo turned, composing himself. He hadn’t realised he had a roommate. It was an orange bear, huddled at the back of the prison, peeking from under the blanket. The bear wore a black cap, and a black scarf.

Gonzo looked him over, then stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Gonzo,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

The bear looked down. “I’m Fozzie,” he said. He looked up again at the unwavering hand Gonzo was offering him. He took it in his paw. They shook.

“Good,” Gonzo said. “Now we’re friends.”

\/ /\ \/ /\ \/ /\​

“Why are you here?” Gonzo asked. It was much later. He sat with his knees tucked under his chin, and the blanket spread around him. It was late, but the lights had not been shut off in the main holding area. Gonzo heard complaints from the inmates of the cell opposite. They were weird, and large, purple monsters. Gonzo tried to ignore their whining.

“I…” Fozzie said. Then stopped. He wrung his hands together. “I was, I am a pickpocket.” He shrugged.

“Why?” Gonzo asked after a moment.

“Why? Why do any of us? Why did the chicken cross the road?” He laughed dryly, and started coughing. “To get to the other side,” he said. “Just to get to the other side.”

Gonzo nodded. Some people couldn’t accept bus terminals, and the park bench life. They turned to crime for crusts of bread. There was nothing better for them to do. Gonzo wouldn’t…but, the temptation was always there.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Fozzie said. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be home, in the farmhouse, with my Ma, and she’d bake Christmas cookies, and we’d sing carols, but…”

“Yeah,” Gonzo said. “Yeah.”

“Why are you here?” Fozzie asked.

“Because there was nowhere else to go,” Gonzo said. He explained about the park, and the cop. He’d been cuffed, dragged to jail. Accused of assaulting a police officer. They’d taken him without his bag, or his guitar. Gonzo wondered if they were still in the park. Probably stolen by now.

Fozzie was appalled. “But, Gonzo, that isn’t fair. It’s not right that ‘dey should do that.”

Gonzo sighed. “Is anything right these days?”

“You got that right, little blue dude,” said a man’s voice. The guy in the next cell, hippy like with red side-burns, and thick eyebrows. “We and us is dropped into this place and for why? We were, is, are just playing our music for the soul.”

“Our mellow Celtic tunes,” harped another man, this one shorter with a prominent gold tooth, and green hat.

“RIVER DANCE!” a red-furred creature shouted. “RIVER DANCE!” He wore a close cut t-shirt with the word, ‘No’ printed on it. A green cap was set tight on his head.

Gonzo stood, introduced himself.

“They even took my gal and out her in another place,” Floyd went on. “There’s no justice in the world, and all.”

“Hey, don’t we get our phone call?” Zoot asked, coming out of a doze.

/\ \/ /\ \/ /\ \/​

Fozzie dozed off a little before midnight. Gonzo stepped off his cot, and walked to the window. Where were the stars? He couldn’t see them from this angle.

Kermit. He remembered him again. Where was he this Christmas? Was he with friends? “He believed in me,” Gonzo thought. What would he think now?

“I’m leaving,” Gonzo said.

“What?” It was Zoot. The other band members were asleep. Zoot was the only one awake.

“I’m leaving,” Gonzo said again. “I don’t deserve this. I never did anything to get in here. I’m getting out.”

“Whoah man,” Zoot said. “How do you plan?”

“I plan…” Gonzo thought, then declared, “I plan to do it before Christmas.”

“It already is, dude,” Zoot said from a deep ingrained power to keep time.

Gonzo frowned.

“Wha’t 'bout before Christmas daytime?” Zoot suggested.

“Yeah,” Gonzo said. “Yeah, that would do nicely.”

/\ \/ /\ \/ /\ \/​

“Fozzie, wake up,” Gonzo said, shaking him out of the cobwebs of dreams.

“I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!” Fozzie shouted.

“Shh!” Gonzo hissed. “It’s just me.”

“Kermit?” Fozzie said.

Gonzo stopped with his hands on Fozzie’s shoulders. He stepped back slowly. “What?” he asked. “Who?”

Fozzie rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, Gonzo,” he said. “I just…”

Gonzo put his finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said. “We’re gunna get out.”

“How?”

“Well, that’s the biggie,” Gonzo said. He sat on the edge of the cot. “But I know one way we could do it.”

“You gota plan?” Zoot asked. Fozzie’s face lit up.

“Yeah, but we’d need two chickens, a rubber tire, and a ping-pong-ball…”

“Oh,” Zoot said. Fozzie’s face fell.

“But!” Gonzo added.

“What, what?” Zoot asked.

“Ah, nothing.”

“Gonzo,” Fozzie said.

Gonzo looked up at him with sad eyes. “Yeah, Fozzie?”

“Leave it to me.”

To be continued...

If you are interested in a lockpick, a melting snowman, and a custiodian who is a janitor..you must wait for the next episode of Visions, but only Illusions...

 

[TogetherAgain]

........

You know what stabbed me? When Fozzie woke up and said, "Kermit?" OH, Right in the heart! Blam. That hurt. Man, that just gripped me it... that was good, Beau. That was reeeemarkable.

Great to see the Electric Mayhem. I mean not great to see them in jail, but... well, you know what I mean.

Two chickens, a rubber tire, and a ping-pong ball? I'm not even going to ask...

 

[redBoobergurl]

I'm really enjoying it Beau, even if it isn't Christmas! I'm glad Gonzo and Fozzie are together and can't wait to see what happens next. Love the appearance by Nicky Holiday!

 

[The Count]

Uh, Lisa... You just did.
The best part was the talk between Fozzie and Gonzo and Zoot at the end. Yeah, nice to see Zoot get some linesss (plural).
Good job Bo.

 

[zootlove]

Hey, Zoot's talking!!! That is wonderful!! It is great to have him say some kind of lines instead of "yeah" and "uh-huh". The story is wonderful by the way. Keep up the good work.

 

[Xerus]

This next fic of yours is really great so far, Beau. It's good to find another Gonzo story. And your stories have lots of true emotion in them. I can feel what the characters are feeling whenever I read them.

 

[Beauregard]

And here we have part too. Many of you will recall the sad snowman narrator who was not in the film...well, he was, but they said he wasn't...sadly bad things happen to narrators who tell stories in two dimentions...

__


Fozzie walked to the jail cell door. He turned. “Are you sure you want to do this thing?” he asked. “Escaping prison is a crime, you know.”

“Yeah, well,” Gonzo said. “If escaping it is a crime, I sure think putting me in here was a crime too. If I can’t…if I can’t even live on the streets, where can I live?”

“You’re right,” Fozzie said decisively. He looked left and right. Zoot was awake and watching. The purple monsters had quit howling and fallen asleep. Their neighbour on the other side was also in the land of nod. “Alright. Why did the chicken cross the jail?”

“To get to the other side?” Gonzo ventured.

“Yes, sir. The other side of the door.” Fozzie turned back with a lock pick in his hand.

Gonzo came up behind him. “Where did that come from?”

Fozzie glanced over his shoulder. “Gonzo, when you pick pockets, you gotta pick locks too, you know.”

Gonzo tipped his head. Yeah, he knew. “When did you start?” Gonzo asked.

Fozzie slipped his hand through the bars, and twisted his arm towards the lock. “El Sleezo Café,” he said. “Long time ago.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Why not?” Fozzie started manipulating the lock with the pick. He kept his eyes on his work, as he spoke. “I was there, and there was this riot. The crowd was ugly, but not…” He laughed a half, pithless laugh. “Not as ugly as the dancing girls. I’d been hired to replace their act. I was on the stage. Hardly a joke in, and…” He stopped working on the lock, and gazed ahead. “I just got it. I mean, I was telling jokes one moment, the next I was being hauled off the stage by sailors. They swung me like a rubber chicken, and tossed me at the barkeep.” He shook his head, and started back to work. The lock clicked.

“Then what?” Gonzo asked.

“Then, when I got up,” Fozzie said. “There was this fat sailor, he grabbed my wrist and hissed in my ear. ‘You’ll make a bad guy yet.’” Fozzie pulled his arm back. The door swung slowly open.

“Fozzie,” Gonzo said. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”

Fozzie stared at the floor. “What doe s it matter anyway, now,” he said unhappily. “Let’s go, huh.” He started out, but Gonzo caught his arm.

Fozzie looked up into Gonzo’s eyes, and he might have seen there what Gonzo had saw in Kermit.

Gonzo spoke. “Everyone,” he said. “Matters.”

\/ /\ \/ /\ \/ ​

Snores filled the jail from all sides. Gentle snores like cats purring, loud snores like pigs eating, and huge snores like small earthquakes. It was two am, Christmas morning. Fozzie stopped at the next cell, and set to work with his lock pick. Zoot stood on the other side of the bars. “Whoah man,” he said. “You really gunna do this for us too?”

Fozzie stopped. “I will I you want me to.”

Dr Teeth opened one eye. “This is certainly a circumstantial and providential expectation for us,” he said. “Zoot, if you agree, I’d say we take this road of opportunity and face it like the musicians, which we are.”

Floyd sat up on one elbow, and rubbed gritty sleep from his dark eyes. “We, can’t -“ he said. “If I do…Janice. They won’t let me see her.”

Animal’s eyes snapped open. He saw Fozzie’s hand on the cell door. His eyes locked on Gonzo, outside the cell, and he decided there was only one word for the people who had locked him in there, assuming, of course, they had done so. “BAD MAN! BAD MAN!” he shouted, leaping forward, and yanking his chain out of Floyd’s hands.

“No!” Zoot cried. HE grabbed at Animal’s lead, but missed, his fingers closing on thin air.

Animal’s head clanged with the bars. Fozzie leapt back. The lock pick fell from his hand, and skipped across the floor out of sight. Fozzie gulped.

Across the way, two purple monsters’ eyes opened.

“Go,” Zoot said. “You should hurry.”

Gonzo looked from Zoot to Fozzie to the purple monsters. He could see from the gleam in their huge pale eyes, they were wanted to give them away. Fozzie got up. Zoot stepped away from the bars, away from freedom. “Go,” he said again.

Gonzo didn’t need to be told more than twice. He nodded goodbye to the band, took hold of Fozzie’s hand, set off, fast. He heard Floyd speaking, saying something. And then the high voice of the Purple monsters rose above it, screaming, “Jail break!”

Gonzo skidded around a corner, and entered a new labyrinth of back-to-back cells. Humans, monsters, and creatures inside them were waking now, and banging on the bars, yelling at Fozzie and Gonzo as they ran. Some hurled insults, others called for help, others still cheered them.

In one cell, one creature lay almost completely still. Gonzo stopped fast, and Fozzie ran into the back of him. The creature groaned, and turned. It was a snowman, part-melted. It’s eyes barely open. This wasn’t right. No human could lock up a snowman on Christmas Eve.

“What happened?” Gonzo asked, moving closer to the cell.

The Snowman gazed up at him through half-closed lids. “They said I was an obstruction to the peace,” he moaned. “I was only narrating my story. My tale of the year Kermit almost missed…” He started coughing a watery cough. “…almost missed Christmas.”

Fozzie’s eyes widened. “Who did you say?” He asked quickly.

The other inmates had gone silent, watching these two strange escapees caring for a solitary snowman. Maybe it called to their humanity, maybe it took them by surprise that any man in this world could care for a man of snow.

“Fozzie, the lock,” Gonzo snapped. “Let’s get him out.”

Fozzie hesitated, then moved his hand, the lock pick appearing once more from some hidden place on his person. A twist, a poke, a turn. The lock clicked undone. The door was open.

Then the inmates shouted once more. Demanded they be set free too. Take us with you!

Gonzo dived into the cell, and started helping the snowman up, linking the stick arm over his shoulder. “Help me,” Gonzo shouted to Fozzie.

Fozzie hung the other arm over his shoulder to lend support. Together they got out the cell. The Snowman was dangerously slushy, and barely holding himself together. “Must hurry…” he said. “Please…”

They walked at a slow run, past the cells, around a bend, along a corridor, and to an exit leading from the holding area into the main station. The door opened as they reached it. A custodian in a dark police uniform stood illuminated against the doorway.

The custodian blinked. “Can I help you?”

To be continued...

If you are interested in the definition of a Custodian, if you care about the cheif of police, if you wish to meet familiar faces in new guises...tune in to the next episode of Visions, but Only Illusions...

 

[theprawncracker]

Wow Beau, just wow. This is totally awesome! But the poor EM. And a custodian huh? Well that should be interesting.

 

[zootlove]

That is sad. Fozzie couldn't get EM out of jail. I hope they get out soon and meet up with Fozzie and Gonzo again.