'It would be my pleasure, Missy.' Little Tommy threw back his head, opened his mouth as widely as widely could be and gave vent to a crackling high note of such appalling awfulness that Jack's hands and Eddie's paws rushed upwards once more towards their respective ears. It was a long high note. A prolonged high note. An elongated high note.
And there's no telling for how protracted a period this particular long, prolonged, elongated high note might have continued for had it not been suddenly cut short.
The cause of its cut-shortedness was not viewed by Jack as a clockwork cameraman was once more obscuring his view. Eddie saw it clearly, though.
Something dropped down from above. From above the controller's control booth. From above the clockwork lighting-pedallers. From the very ceiling of the studio.
Through a hole that had been drilled through this very ceiling.
Whatever this something was, and it was very soon to be apparent exactly what this something was, it dropped through this hole and fell directly down and into Little Tommy Tucker's open mouth and onward further still until it reached the area inside him where rested his breakfast.
'Gulp!' went Little Tommy, suddenly foreshortening his high note. 'What was that?'
'What was what?' Miss Muffett asked.
'Something.' Little Tommy clutched at his throat and then at his diminutive stomach regions. 'Something fell into my mouth.'
'Well, it wouldn't be the first time.' Miss Muffett tittered some more.
'Yes, but I didn't like this. Oooh.'
'Oooh?' questioned Miss Muffett.
'Yes, Oooh, something is going on in my guts.'
'Well, upon that high note, we have to take another commercial break. But we'll be right back after it with a love triangle which turned out to be more of a pentangle. We'll say goodbye. Please put your hands together for my very special guest, Little Tommy, and I know that you'll all be going out to purchase his latest hit. What was the name of that song again, Tommy?'
'Oooh,' went Tommy. 'Aaaargh!'
Jack looked at Eddie.
And Eddie looked at Jack.
'What's happening?’ Jack asked. 'I can't see.'
'Something bad,' said Eddie. 'Something very bad.'
'Oooh!' went Little Tommy once again. And 'Aaaargh' again also. He clutched at himself and leapt from his tuffet.
And then all kinds of terrible things happened.
20
Little Tommy, arisen from his tuffet, was now clutching all over himself and howling in evident anguish.
The audience members, under the mistaken belief that this was just part of the show — albeit a somewhat bizarre part - rocked with laughter and clapped together what hands they possessed.
'What's going on?’ Jack shouted to Eddie.
'Up there,' Eddie shouted back. 'Above the controller's box. Hole in the ceiling. Something dropped through it into Tommy's mouth.'
'It's the serial killer again.’ Jack jumped to his feet. 'Call an ambulance,' he shouted, pushing aside a clockwork cameraman and toppling his clockwork camera.
Little Tommy lurched about the stage. Something horrible was happening inside him. He jerked upwards as if being lifted physically from his feet and then slammed down onto the floor.
Jack rushed to offer what assistance he could, although he knew little of first aid. Rude crew pigs came snorting down the aisles; the audience continued with its laughter and applause, although it was dawning upon its brighter members that something was altogether amiss.
As Jack reached the now-prone supper singer, a most horrible occurrence occurred: as if by the agency of some invisible force, Little Tommy swung upright.
He hung, suspended in the air, his tiny feet dangling twelve inches above the stage. He stared at Jack face-to-face with pleading eyes and open mouth.
'We'll get you help,' said Jack, but he could clearly see that help would be too late. Little Tommy began to vibrate and rattle about. Great tremors ran up and down his slender body. Steam began to issue from his ears.
'Oh no,' croaked Jack, taking several sharp steps'back-aways. 'He's going to blow. Take cover, everyone.'
Whistling sounds came from Tommy, rising and rising in volume and pitch. Buttons popped from his triple-breasted suit, strange lumps bulged from his forehead and his shoulders began to expand. The laughter and applause in the audience died away. Horror and panic refilled the momentary void.
As Jack fell back from the stage the horde of rude crew pigs fell upon Jack. 'We'll teach you some manners,' snorted the one that Jack had recently sent packing.
And oh so quickly, as it always does, chaos reigned supreme.
The audience arose from their uncomfortable seats and made the traditional mad dash for the exits. The controller bawled instructions to the lighting pedallers, but the lighting pedallers were now dismounting and abseiling down ropes, eager to make their escape. Miss Muffett was being rapidly escorted from the stage by burly men in dark suits and mirrored sunglasses who all sported tiny earphones with mouth mic attachments. And as Jack vanished beneath a maelstrom of trotters, Little Tommy Tucker exploded.
On prime time TV.
Before a large viewing audience.
Although reruns of this particular show would top the ratings charts for many months to come, the only direct eyewitness to Little Tommy's spectacular demise was one Eddie Bear, Toy City private eye.
Knowing better than to risk being flattened by the stampeding audience and being incapable of assisting Jack in his travails against the rude crew pigs, Eddie had remained where he was, cowering in his seat. He had to put his paws right over his ears, though, as Tommy's high-pressure whistlings reached an ultrasonic level, which set toy dogs in the street outside howling. But Eddie had a ringside seat to watch the explosion.
It is another fact well known to those who know it well, and those who know it well do so through personal experience, that when you are involved in something truly dreadful and life-threatening, such as a car crash, the truly dreadful and life-threatening something appears to occur in slow motion. Many explanations have been offered for this: a sudden rush of adrenalin, precipitating a rapid muscle response, affording the individual the opportunity (however small) to take evasive action; an alteration in the individual's perception of time, which is something akin to a near-death experience, in which the individual's psyche, id, consciousness, or soul stuff, depending upon the chosen theological viewpoint, momentarily detaches itself from the individual in question, allowing the individual to experience the event in a different timeframe. Or the far more obvious, trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, precipitating a flexi-tangential spatial interflux within the symbiotic parameters of existential functionalism.
But whether or not any of these actually apply to brains comprised entirely of sawdust is somewhat open to debate.
If asked whether he had watched the exploding of Little Tommy Tucker in what seemed to be slow motion, Eddie Bear would, however, answer, 'Yes, and it was not at all nice.'
Eddie watched the ghastly swellings, the vile expansions, the distortions of limbs and facial featurings, and then he saw the rending of flesh and shirt and blue silk Oh Boy! suit. And he saw the fragments of the gas-filled clockwork grenade that roared out of Tommy's shredded body. And whether it was adrenalous rush, or detached id, or pseudo-cosmic existential functionalism, Eddie managed to duck aside as metal shards and Tucker guts flew in his direction.
Not so, however, the wildly trottering rude crew pigs, who caught much shrapnel in their rubber rear ends.
As the crew pigs ran squealing and Jack, who had gone down fighting, came up prepared to do some more, Eddie raised his ducked head and saw something else.