Part 24

And off our one and a half men fled (three and a half if you ask Tom Jones) into the black of night with jar and note in tow.
As they journeyed across the vast, craggy New England Sahara, Bo's stomach began to growl.
"Tom, do you see anywhere we could stop to get a bite to eat?" he asked his companion.
"Please," said Tom holding his hand up modestly, "I feel we've grown very close, you and I. Almost like best buddies, except I've never given you a foot massage. I want you to call me by the name that my Welsh grandmother bestowed upon me the first time I beat her at Candyland-- Kangaroo Jim."
"Kangaroo Jim," began Bo again, too ravenous to object, "Do you see anywhere we could eat at? I'm starving."
"What about Igor's House of Beets and Eats?" He suggested, pointing to a kinky looking stone building on the horizon that Bo's glance had somehow passed over.
As they drew nearer, Bo's gut began to growl ever louder, both out of apprehension about entering an establishment that looked like a prison rigged up with torches at the entrance and neon pink barbed wire encircling the rooftop, and with his ever-mounting hunger.
"Yo yo yo!" said Tom Jones cheerily to the shirtless bouncer at the door, "we be hankrin' for some gruuuuub to ruuuub in the tuuuuub, know what I'm sayin' hawk-baby?"
The bouncer turned around and Bo realized with a start that the face Tom Jones had been speaking to was merely a tattoo on the back of the bouncer's bald head. Glancing down at the name tag pinned directly onto his bare chest, Bo noted that the man's name was Zbrtp.
"If you don't mind me asking," said Bo, a bit meekly, "Would you be in possession of any information regarding the name of this fine establishment... particularly the 'beats' part of it?"
"Look bubble boy," said Zbrtp in a gravely high-pitched Jamaican accent, "If you don't think you can handle what we got, you'd better just get. Got it?"
Bo nodded, a hundred nightmarish scenarios rushed through his brain and made his face begin to sweat.
"Think we might fluff our stuff in the ruff dufff tuff?" said Tom Jones.
"I'm not so sure." said the bouncer, staring wickedly at Bo. "He don't look like he's of age to be frolicking in a joint like this here. I don't think he'd last, know what I'm talking about, cowboy? I don't think he's got enough guts."
"Now listen here!" snapped Bo, stomping one rhinestoned suede platform moccasin in disgust, "I'll have you know that I was nearly killed earlier today!"
"YEAH, KILLED!" said Tom Jones, throwing back his head and snapping his fingers in a display of support for his friend.
"And furthermore, I'm on a mission from God that is for your benediction and the benediction of every man, woman, and child in this great country of ours!"
"YEAH, BENEDICTION!" tooted Tom Jones, twirling around and ending with a breathy "cha CHA" and jazz hands.
Zbrtp watched this display with a look of slight contempt before waving them inside.
"But don't say I didn't warn you!" he called after them.

*****

"Woah... look at this cat scat of a joint!" Jones yelled over the techno-polka music blaring through the loud speakers. Mounted high on the walls were paintings of famous leading Hollywood men, each painted in a baby bonnet and a set of fangs. Inside glass niches positioned along the walls were dancers wearing nothing but bear-claw slippers and fancy Victorian hats. And dangling above each table was a different medieval instrument of torture turned mood light.
But worst of all was the catastrophic aroma of cooked beets that assaulted Bo's ever-flared nostrils as he opened the massive, spiked doors.
Tom and Bo sat at a table beneath a giant flail emanating a rosy glow, illuminating a portrait of a grinning, toothy Clark Gable. A waiter appeared dressed in a foam beet costume, studded all over with cheery buttons and flair.
"Good evening dearies, my name is Anna Banana, I am going to be your beet scout tonight. Can I get you something to drink?"

Pt. 23

paralyzed, and more than just a little queasy.  He swallowed, hard, searching his mind for something - anything - appropriate in a situation like this.

Just as he was about to resort to bursting into desperate tears, all at once he heard a loud crack, and the old woman squeak as she jumped back and her gun clattered to the floor.

Bo looked up, stunned, as Tom Jones stood holding his Airsoft gun pointed at the woman, while she gripped her hand painfully.  The crooner leaned down, picked up the revolver and said, "I don't like it when people shoot my friends.  It's not sexy."

The boy scrambled to grab the jar and the note as fast as he could, and said, "Keep an eye on her, I'll check for a First Aid kit - then we're out of here."

"Like Vladimir?" Tom asked.

"We can bring Vladimir along, for all I care." Bo said before he left the room. 

As he tore apart the linen closet looking for the kit, he could hear Tom casually chattering to the old woman, "You can't be a sexy person unless you have something sexy to offer. With me, it's my voice: the way that I sing, the way I express myself when I sing ..."

"Tom, I found it.  Let's go.  We're going to hole up somewhere until we can figure out what this note means."

Part 22

MICKEY

in large purple letters. 

"Well that's unusual." said Bo, puzzled, and a second later found himself sprawled out on the floor ten feet away, his face smarting where Tom Jones's foot had smashed into his jawbone.

Tom, meanwhile, was moving jerkily around the musty room, thrashing his arms about whilst belting, "Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind! HEY MICKEY! HEY MICKEY!" 

"Tom, I will have none of your tomfoolery at this dire moment in our plight! Not only are we holding an old woman hostage and must decode what logically appears to be an acronym, but I am also growing extremely hungry!"

"... what a pity, you don't understand" continued Tom who was now turning cartwheels. 

Suddenly, Bo remembered the other jar he had neglected to retrieve from beneath the floorboards. He reached his great dugong of an arm into the cavity and pulled out his prize, this one bigger than the first. He clamped his octopus of a hand around the lid, but before he had a chance to exert any minor effort to detach the rusty topper, he heard a loud crack behind him and felt a burning sensation in his right earlobe. Gingerly touching his smarting wound, he quickly withdrew his hand when his fingers encountered no earlobe where one should have been.

"HOLY BEARS THAT MAKES ME SICK LIKE ARMAGEDDON ON A STICK!" he howled as he wheeled around to be faced full on by the old woman clutching a smoking revolver.

"You think you've got the right to break into my house," she said in a nasty thin voice, "but I think you've got it wrong." 

And with that, she fired another shot that just whizzed past one of Tom Jones's twirling limbs. 

"M'am," said Bo, clutching his bleeding ear while simultaneously tapping into the reservoir of courtesy he had been saturated with at the monastery, "the monks have sent us on a wild musical journey... a mission from God, you might call it. We must smite the forces of evil in order to collect musicians and assemble a creation with the power to save our musical destiny!"

"Don't give me that crapola," spat the woman, "What, you think I'm the only person in the world who hasn't seen The Blues Brothers? You wanna start some drama? 'Cus you don't want no drama. I see right through you, punk. You're a piggy and a swine, I'll crack your spine and blow your mind!"

Tom continued singing and jumping, contorting his face into grotesque expressions, knocking over furniture and  kicking out windows with his flailing limbs. "Every time you move you let a little more show!" he belted.

The woman advanced fifteen baby steps closer so that her nose was pressed against Bo's forehead. She inhaled deeply and then inserted her tongue into his eyeball. 

Bo felt