The Most Dangerous Blank, part 4

There were no bells and whistles, or flashes and rumbles, this time. The door lead them all back into the darkened hall at Television City. Gene was the last person out. "I have so many questions," he admitted as he turned to the others,  "I don't know where to begin."

Brett crossed her arms. "Start with 'where have you been' and end with 'how did you end up tied to a sparking microphone in the control room from hell?"

"I wish I could remember." Gene touched a lump on the top of his well-coiffeured head and winced. "I came into the studio and saw a bunch of baboons jumping on Richard. I was going to give those apes a run for their money, but they decided to gang up on me and did a number on my noggin. Next thing I know, someone's plugging in that killer microphone, and I'm lighting up with half the electricity in LA!"

Charles gingerly felt his own tender head. "I can guess who plugged in that microphone. Ira seems to have it in for us. Those same goons made me watch Richard get flattened, then flattened me. I ended up at a lighthouse tied to a tree and surrounded by burned ghosts. Not an experience I care to repeat anytime soon."

"It was terrible." Joyce winced. "We saw it. We're the ones who saved him. Well, us and the lighthouse. It was the scariest thing that ever happened to me!"

"I don't understand any of this!" Gene threw his hands in the air. "What does Ira want? Our ratings are still pretty decent, even if they're not where they were last year. None of us have ever hurt him personally. What's he after?"

That's when Ira emerged from the shadows, oozing out of the blackness like he was a part of them. "You want to know what I'm after, you old goat? Play my game, and you'll find out!"

"Now, wait just a minute!" Gene glared at him. "You're the one sending gorillas to pound us and scare us and who decided to turn me into a human fried egg!"

"And if you want to find your final panelist, you'll listen my clue." Ira's grin was so feral, Brett was sure he was part wolf. "The Kissing Bandit is stealing smooches on the show where everyone is a kissing cousin, and even cousins can have fights. He's in the middle of a blank."

Gene narrowed his eyes. "What does that mean? Ira, you come back here and explain that!" Ira melted into the darkness again before anyone had the chance to grab him.

"How is he doing that?" Bill's jaw dropped open as he ran to the end of the hall. "There's no one here. He's gone. I didn't think he was a magician!"

"I don't know what to think." Gene looked under Fannie's arm and his face lit up like a child at Christmas. "Is that my microphone? Why did you bring it along?"

She shrugged. "The ladies said it might be useful."
Gene eagerly took it from her as she pressed it into his hands. "Come to Papa, baby." He checked it over. "Is it hurt?"

"It might be slightly dented." Brett smirked proudly. "I used it to hold off Ira when he thought he'd have a go at my beautiful body."

Fannie rolled her eyes. "On what planet is your skinny body beautiful?"

"All right, all right." Gene got between the two women before they could get into a catfight. "Enough! That's cute on the show, but this is serious! They've already hurt Richard pretty badly. Who knows what else they might have done to him?"

Bill nodded. "He's right. Poor guy could be bleeding all over the floor somewhere, lost and cold and hungry..."

"Yes," Fannie interjected before Bill could go on all night, "but where? No one seems to know where they've taken him. After what happened with Charles, I'm pretty sure he could be anywhere."

"Not anywhere." Gene tapped his microphone. "There's only one thing that really makes him happy these days, and that's hosting Family Feud."

"You're right." Brett frowned. "It's the one place where he has any control. You know how much he fights with Ira over his answers, whether they're wrong or right."

Charles puffed at his pipe. "Ira tends to be harder on him than he is on the rest of us. He'll buzz answers from Richard that would be perfectly acceptable from anyone else. He doesn't understand why he's so popular with the contestants." His voice dropped into a low, yearning whisper, but Brett clearly heard it. "I do. He's just...it's that charm. He's got a bigger heart than most people give him credit for. He cares about people."

"Charles," Brett began softly, "do you have...feelings...for Richard? Is that why you were so upset that you couldn't rescue him earlier?"

His eyes went down to his pipe, but Brett could see the hurt - and love - in those pale blue orbs. "Maybe."

Gene had been feeling along the bottom of the wall, squinting his eyes in the heavy darkness. "I think I might need this." He managed to plug his microphone into the first socket he could find. "Testing, testing! Is this on? Can everyone hear me?"

Bill rubbed his ear. "Geez Gene, we're not in the studio. You don't need that thing. We can hear you fine. They can hear you fine half-way to San Bernadino."

"Good!" Gene yelled. "I want them to hear me. I want Ira to hear me! I have the answer!"

He just caught the pad and pen as it came flying over to him. "Here!" Joyce chirped. "You'll need this. That seems to be how this works. You hold up the paper, say your answer, and we end up there."

"Could someone hold this?" He handed Charles the microphone as he quickly wrote something on the pad against the wall. When he was finished, he took the microphone, then looked up at the ceiling. "Now Richard, forgive me for stealing your line, but..." He let out a roar into his microphone as he held up the pad. "Survey said, Family Feud!"

By now, Brett was almost starting to anticipate that rumble and flash...but this time, it nearly knocked her off her feet and into Charles. She knew no more after that.

~*~*~*~*~

At least she knew where she was when she opened her eyes. Everyone stood in the very center of the stage, in front of Richard's podium. The giant bright blue wall with the white bulbs and and black monitor and the needlepoint-style yellow ovals on the side walls and desks were familiar to anyone who'd ever seen Family Feud.

"Richard?" Gene still held his microphone, which was now plugged into the side wall. His voice sounded unnaturally booming in the silent room. "Are you here? Rich?"

That was when Joyce let out a screech and nearly leaped into Brett's arms. "Oh, my God!" she shrieked. "The contestants! They look...they're...Brett, look!" She took the taller woman by her arms and turned her around so fast, she nearly left her neck behind.

Her fingers reached behind what was left of her neck. "Joyce, dear, please don't do that. I need my neck." She looked up after her fingers finished massaging her head...and nearly screamed herself at the dangling "humans" behind the yellow needlepoint counters. They were...marionettes. Marionettes with painted dead-white faces and tattered clothing. Heavy long wires descending from the ceiling made them clap or jump or fall or open blocky crimson mouths to scream.

Bill gulped and ducked behind Gene. "They're all being controlled by some demonic force, or something! Don't let them get me! They're gonna make us one of them, and Rich too!"

"Sweet Jesus." Gene's mouth gaped open, and he nearly dropped his microphone. "Someone around here has a really sick sense of humor."

A moan drew their attention to the ceiling, near the top of the monitor. Brett couldn't help noticing that Charles' small face went stark white under the super-thick glasses. "RICHARD!" he shrieked. Fannie gasped and threw a hand over her mouth. Joyce screamed in horror and burried her face in Brett's chest as the older woman put her arms around her.

A small figure with dark salt-and-pepper hair in a crimson-smeared white shirt and tie dangled in front of the "Family Feud" monitor that usually flashed the Big Money answers. Like the marionettes, he was being manipulated by wires from the ceiling. He, too, was slathered with that clownish stark white makeup and cherry-red lips. The wires were moving his arms to embrace a beautiful female doll with shining gold tresses, magenta lips, glassy turquoise-blue eyes, and a frilly white dress.

Bill made a face. "Great. Guy can get lucky with a doll, and I can't even get a contestant to kiss me."

"No!" Charles waved his hand at the helpless host suspended from the wire. "Bill, that's not a girl, or a doll! Brett, do you remember, back at the lighthouse, how I could see the ghosts when you gave me my glasses? I can see that one, and she's some kind of...demon, I think. He's terrified! Can't you see it?"

When no one responded, Charles turned on his heel and started climbing the monitor. "We have to get him down from there! She's going to hurt him!" He may have been a fine actor and dancer on Broadway, but even that dexterity wasn't going to get him up a solid orange and blue wall. Every time he grabbed a light bulb, it either zapped him, or broke off in his hands, and he'd skid back to the ground.

"Charles, stop that." Brett turned Joyce over to Fannie and yanked him back. "It's not helping."

Then how are we going to get him down?" Gene was trying to pry Bill off his arm. "We can't get up there, unless we can figure out a way to make a ladder appear."

Joyce squealed as one of the contestant-dolls grabbed her hand to bite it. "Oooh, someone do something!" She pushed it away, only for her arm to get tangled in the wires. "They're getting fresh!"

"Brett, don't you still have that gun from the lighthouse?" Fannie nudged her. "Are there any bullets left?"

"I think so." She checked the rounds. "Two. That should be enough. I hope."

Charles gulped behind her. "Whatever you do, Brett, please don't hit him! Keep your eye on the wires!"

"Everyone stand back." They did so, huddling close as the marionette contestants lurched at them, their arms outstretched. She tried to get the wire over Richard in her sights, but he kept swaying. Whatever was controlling him and the doll was propelling them together, despite what she suspected was genuine fear in Richard's deep blue eyes. As soon as she got the top wire holding his torso in sight, she pulled the trigger.

The resulting blast was enough to send the girl marionette briefly reeling back into the monitor. The wire broke, leaving him swinging by his arms and legs. Another ear-rattling shot took out the one bound to his left leg. The unseen hands dropped the rest, allowing him to fall away just as the doll puckered for a kiss.

Richard flopped gracelessly into Charles' outstretched arms. The force of the drugged Englishman's weight nearly made his knees buckle, but he managed to stay upright. "I've got him!"
"Yeah, you've got him." Fannie was trying to push back a male marionette contestant who was attempting to give her a big smooch. "But who has us?"

Bill whimpered, caught in the wires of a female contestant who grabbed at his sweater and opened her mouth to suck at him. "Please tell me we can just walk out of here, like we did with Gene!"

Gene had climbed onto the left contestants' desks and was hitting dolls away with his microphone. "I don't know this set! I'm not the host here! The only one of us who knows this set is Richard!"

"Great." Brett was trying to shake the smaller British man's shoulders while Charles stared at him lovingly. Richard managed a dazed smile before the blue orbs lolled back and he sagged in Charles' arms. "Oh, this is just wonderful. He's out cold."

Charles pulled Richard closer to him as his gaze went to the ceiling. "We have to get out now!" he wailed. "She's coming!"

Indeed, the girl doll was lowering herself little by little, her eyes hungrily aimed at Richard. "I want him," a feral, decidedly not-feminine voice snarled. "Give him to me! Let me take him!" Charles reeled back, clutching Richard to his chest like a precious stone.

"Don't you touch them! I've had enough of all this!" Brett finally lashed out at the doll the second it hit the floor. Her fist knocked it back, but it also got her tangled in its wires. The doll wrapped its icy wooden arms around her in a crushing imitation of a devoted lover. "Oh no, you don't! You're not turning me into some puppet!"

Gene tapped at his microphone again, producing static. "Thank heavens it still works." He jumped off the desks and thrust his microphone into the girl puppet's deadened face. "And welcome to Family Feud! I'm the...er, the acting host at the moment, Gene Rayburn! And you are?"

He jumped back when she hissed at him. "Now miss," he admonished, shaking his finger at her, "none of that violence. We're here to play a game, not hurt each other. Which reminds me, could you let my panelist go, please?" The microphone slipped under the splintering oaken arm, separating it from Brett. She gladly darted away, sliding next to Gene.

Gene stepped behind the podium, with Brett quickly following. "Ok, everyone, it's time to play the Feud!" The marionettes let their quarries go and slunk over to their respective desks. Bill and Joyce gratefully hurried over to the podium the moment the puppets released their arms. Fannie was flirting with a female doll and took a little longer to saunter over.

"Fannie," Brett hissed, "that puppet is probably a demon! She might suck out your soul!"

The southern belle smirked. "I thought she was rather pleasant, for a demonic puppet. Kinda cute, too."

"And before we begin our game," Gene went on as Charles puffed over with the still-unconscious Richard, "we're going to do a little business with America." He darted to the wall and yanked out the microphone's plug, then threw the cord over his shoulder. "In other words, let's find the exit and get out of here, while they're distracted!"

Joyce pointed off-stage to her left. "I think that's it."

"Everyone follow me." Gene started first, rushing past the outstretched arms of the puppets. "Single file, please. And stay together. We don't know where we're going to end up after we get out of here."

Brett was the last person out the door, just as the dolls started moaning. Charles was in front of her...and she couldn't help noticing the tender expression on his face as he clutched his wounded friend. It was the last thing she saw before the flash surrounded them.