“Alright people keep it moving keep it moving folks alright alright nothing to see here nothing to see here,” the tall, puckered member of the Loyal Gourd gestured onward as the procession of passengers shuffled down the long, steep emergency loading ramp. He waved robotically while making eye contact with each person.

Pamela felt her gut churn as she beheld this spectacle, and when it was finally her turn to be waved at it felt like a hot dagger stabbing through her prefrontal cortex. That was her future, that was her new job. She shivered.

At least the sky was mesmerizingly beautiful, and the lower on the ramp she shuffled the easier it got to breathe. Pamels couldn’t help but to turn her head back every few moments and stare at the two entwined skytrains, floating perfectly in the air together like burning iron clouds. Nothing to see here, indeed. Would Pamela too have to convince people not to stare at things that begged to be stared at once she took up her position at the Loyal Gourd?

Pamela squinted quizically at the Loyal Gourd, whose wrist seemed to be weakening with every turn. Something looked off about him, and she sensed that it wasn’t due to the humiliation of his position. And then Pamela noticed that his uniform was not paper-plated. It was cardboard.

“Hey! That’s not a real Loyal Gourd uniform!” she ejaculated fiercely.

“Keep it moving!” growled an ornery lady behind Pamela, “I’m getting nauseous on this ramp.”

“But that uniform is a forgery! Something’s not right!”

“Stop shouting, you’re going to give my ears arthiritis!”

Pamela found the timbre of this complaint familiar. “Oh my Gourd, were you one of my neighbors last night?”

“Stop standing still, you’re holding up the line!”

Everyone was starting to get irritated with Pamela. a couple of people grumbled about pushing her off the ramp. She had to act fast.

“Does anybody have a kerchief?”

“A who now?”

“Does anybody have a kerchief?”

“Why should I give you a kerchief?” grumbled a man with a kerchief in his hand.

“Because…erm…because I’m so overcome with my feminine emotions that this whole thing has me crying! Waaah! Boo hoo!”

“Fair enough,” snorted the man, waggling his kerchief into Pamela’s

nighttime neighbor’s hands, “Pass this to that poor emotional wretch.”

“Pfft. Wretch. More like wench,” tut tutted the lady.

“Can I please have the kerchief?”

“Will you start moving forward if I do?”

“Yes, I promise.”

She handed Pamela the kerchief. Pamela quickly whipped out a pen and began to sketch the Loyal Gourd imposter. She contoured his noticeable paunch. She contoured his curling mustache. She contoured his deflated glutes. On and on did she contour.

“Excrete me, but what on Gurth are you doing with my kerchief? I thought you were crying, misirrah!”

“Drawing, erm,” Pamela frantically contoured the shape of the man’s groin, “Drawing helps me deal with my emotions in ways tears never could.”

“Stop leaning over me! I’m worried I’m going to fall off the ramp!”

“If you’d just get out of my way,” Pamela goded her head a little to try and catch the right angle to sketch the man’s prominent earlobe and the skin tags it featured, “I wouldn’t need to lean over you.”

“My cock, you’re incorrigible!”

“If you were as tired as me you’d be irritable too!” Pamela finished off with a spackling of five o’ clock shadow on the man’s triple chin, stuffed the kerchief in her pocket and resumed shuffling down the ramp, the walkway before her which was now completely clear.

“Hey!” the kerchief lending man ejaculated, “Give me back my kerchief!”

Pamela morphed her shuffling into scurrying and her scurrying into scrambling as the man pushed the neighbor aside and chased her down the ramp ravenously, only to give up half of the way down due to stomache cramps.

“Whew! That was close!” Pamela said to herself as she hopped off the ramp and into a large pile of manure, which splattered over her faded tunic. “Shit.”

Indeed, that’s what she had just landed in. Pamela found herself wishing she was wearing her Royal Gourd uniform, which had been enchanted with a never-soiled spell, and not some of her older sister’s hand-me-downs. Then, she remembered that hers was now a Loyal Gourd uniform. She wondered if they were enchanted with never-soiled spell. Probably not, enchantments often had trouble sticking to paper.

“Shit!” Pamela ejaculated as she turned around and bolted up the ramp with the fervor of a fizzing can of soda.

“Oh I see, running back to give me my kerchief out of shame, are we?” chuckled the man as Pamela darted past him in a flurry, soon shoveling herself through the bustling line of irritated skytrain patrons higher and higher toward the burning wreckage.

“Misirrah,” wheezed the false Loyal Gourd member with a weak wave, “What in the cluck are you trying to do?”

“I left my luggage in there!” she panted, looking up to the bursts of smoke billowing from the torn side of the skytrain she had earlier fled through. Explosions rumbled from within, sometimes shooting spurts of gears and oil through the air like a bubbling hot spring.

“Misirrah, I do hope you understand that we understand that this is not ideal,” garbled the imposter as burning bits of train insulation battered him in the face, sticking to his mustache like flies on a rotting apple, “But I would be doing you a disservice by allowing you to go back up inside that skytrain. ’Tis horrifically dangerous.” He sneezed for emphasis.

“We? Who is we?”

“Why, the Loyal Gourd, of course!” he waved emphatically.

“I’m in the Loyal Gourd!”

“You are? Then where’s your uniform?” he waved quizically.

“In the skytrain!”

“Well, tough luck.”

Pamela groaned. Then, with a brush of inspiration, whipped out the kerchief and squinted at the man.

“What did you say your name was again, sirrah?”

“I never said my name,” he said with an irritated wave, “But if you must know, I am Ronaldo Skripper. I am, unfortunately enough, a little busy tending ramp here to engage in any sort of cordial introduction. I hope you can understand.”

“Sure, sure. Rudolph Skinner. That’s a fun name.”

“Say, misirrah, is that your kerchief?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I seem to remember seeing a man blowing his nose rather violently into it only about five hundred hand waves ago is all, and now you appear to be scribbling on it like a waitress.”

“Must’ve been a different kerchief. These embroidered ones are very, erm, very en vogue at the moment.”

“Are they? I just, well, there seems to be a large mucus stain on the other side. Which is what I’d expect had it been the same kerchief that man used to empty the wells of his sinuses onto.”

Pamela held back from retching and stuffed the kerchief back in her pocket. “Don’t worry about it, Adolfo. I’ll be on my way now.”

Pamela quickly marched up the ramp in the direction of the constantly engorging flames, which were now turning a fierce bluish-white.

“Oh no no no you don’t, lady,” Ronaldo waved his hand forcefully over to the scruff of Pamela’s neck, grabbed it, and yanked her back and around. “Nobody goes back on that skytrain.”

Pamela huffed and mimicked Ronaldo’s voice in a higher pitch as she trudged down the ramp. By the time she’d sulked down, it looked like the rest of the crowd had all but cleared out, and the pile of manure she’d stepped in earlier had gotten so trampled over that it might as well have become a solid part of the forest floor. It was then that Pamela surveyed her surroundings, wondering just what in the fresh hen she was in for.