"The Return of Jack Slater" - Part Two

Part Two

            Benson’s hypercritical gaze never once diverted from Shel’s so-called friend, Jack Slater, from the second he blasted his way into their lives. Even now, he kept close watch over him as he and Shel stood over the console platform, using the TARDIS computer to track down the source of the anomalies.

            “So how did you guys meet each other?” Mordecai asked (and Benson was glad that he did).

            “Oh, it’s a long and complicated story,” Shel nonchalantly replied.

            “We got time,” Benson remarked with a tone that was way harsher than he intended for it to be.

            Shel and Jack looked away from the console and to the Park crew. “Well,” she began, “I was a different woman at the time. I met Jack in his world while visiting there with my old friends Greg, Wirt, and Toby. By that time, he had already known about his reality being completely fiction.”

            “Fiction?” Rigby repeated. “You mean like from a story?”

            “More like a movie,” Slater reiterated.

            “You see, Jack’s from a cinematic world,” Shel explained. “Everything there follows every movie cliché you can think of. They even have a cartoon characters that…” Before she could finish on the details, the TARDIS console beeped, notifying Shel that it had updates on the trace of the anomalies. “It’s picked up on dozens of rifts in at least a hundred worlds, a few of which I’ve been to…including the Pacific Rim! That’d explain why Godzilla ended up there!”

            “What does all of it mean?” Mordecai inquired.

            “It means that what I initially believed about the rifts – that they were a random occurrence – isn’t entirely true,” Shel said. “I mean, they are still technically random, but each of them is being generated by a transdimensional leak inside one of the worlds.”

            “Which one?” Rigby asked.

            “That’s exactly what I’m about to find out,” Shel declared, inputting information through the TARDIS computer. Less than a second thereafter, she received feedback. “Got it! It’s inside a television station in one of the Los Angeleses.”

            With this new lead, she dematerialized her TARDIS out of the dimensional corridor and to the Los Angeles television station. She and her companions stepped out into an area filled with all the necessary filming equipment and some props standing near the wall. One of them caught Shel’s interest right away: a tall black rectangular solid.

            “Wait, isn’t that your TARDIS?” Mordecai noticed the resemblance also. “Or could it be a stage prop?”

            “When you travel between parallel worlds like I do, one thing you can count on is a coincidence,” Shel told Mordecai. “But there’s only one way to be sure.”

            Shel went right to the module and scanned it with her sonic screwdriver.

            In the inaudible atmosphere, the whirr of the Gallifreyan tool was louder than usual. It soon followed with a shushing noise, coming from a man who – by the flashy outfit he wore – could have only been the director.

            They hadn’t realized that they arrived during the filming a local program.

            While Shel kept on with her probing of the lookalike of her Type-Z TARDIS, Mordecai and Rigby’s focus centered on the live show being filmed. The stage for it was modeled after a haunted house with a red Victorian chaise longue right in the middle of it. Resting on the chaise longue was a busty, pale-skinned woman wearing heavy makeup and a gothic, cleavage-enhancing black gown.

            “Dude, it’s Elvira,” Rigby excitedly exclaimed.

            “It can’t be,” Mordecai denied. “The Movie Macabre only airs in our world.”

            “It airs in mine, too,” Jack said.

            Their chattering once again drew the ire of the director, just as Elvira sounded off her broadcast with her signature closing line: “Unpleasant dreams, my darlings.”

            “Cut!” The director screamed, his frustration evident in his tone. He then turned to Shel and her friends, pointing to a blinking red light above the stage door. “When that light is on, you are to be as quiet as a mouse! Is that clear?!”

            “Oh, chill out, D.K.,” said Elvira as she got off the chaise longue. “It ain’t like we’re shootin’ Masterpiece Theatre.” Her remark was the last straw for the stressed-out director of her own show, prompting him to storm off.

            Mordecai and Rigby were awestruck in the presence of the Mistress of the Dark.

            “Would you sign my chest?!” Rigby blurted without thinking.

            “I’ll sign yours, if you sign mine, hon,” Elvira said with a flirtatious wink that sent the raccoon collapsing into Mordecai’s arms. She looked past the two characters and towards Shel, who was less than amused by Elvira’s attention-grabbing, still occupied with scanning the other Type-Z TARDIS in the studio. “Whatcha doin’ over there?”

            Shel tried her best to brush Elvira off as politely as she could. “I’m scanning.”

            “Scanning, eh?” Elvira uttered, waltzing over to Shel and snatching her sonic screwdriver right out of her grips. “What is this thing? Ya know, ya really shouldn’t be wavin’ this thing around. There could be kids here, for cryin’ out loud!”

            “Give that back!” Shel snapped, quickly losing patience with the vampish valley girl. “My friends and I are in the middle of an important investigation that could save countless universes.”

            Elvira scoffed. “That’s what they all say.”

            Suddenly, the other Type-Z TARDIS hummed loud enough for everyone in the studio to hear. It then throbbed, emitting flashes of colors. This activity went on for a minute before it vanished right in front of Shel and the others.

            “That can’t be good,” she gasped.

            The screams of a woman drew their attention to another area of the studio.

            Not a soul moved when they discovered a massive werewolf that had manifested out of nowhere.