50. Wax Museum

Chapter 50: Wax Museum

You can tell we're getting closer to Newtopia, because towns are becoming larger and more frequent. Currently, we're in the town of Stony Gulch, which kinda sounds like the sort of town you'd see in a Western, but is actually pretty upscale. Lots of shops (all called "Shop" for some reason; I guess imagination isn't big here) and cafes. A nice little place to take a break, maybe get lunch, do a little shopping… that is, if you're not broke. We're broke.

Not only that, but HP's been making me wear my hood up since we got here. I'd gotten used to just walking around in the open, but out here, nobody's even heard of a human and HP's afraid one look at me was going to send everyone into a panic attack. I guess I could see where he was coming from, but today was exceptionally hot and wearing a heavy bee wool cloak and hood was not doing me any favors. I figured it wouldn't be too bad if I just lowered the hood for a moment.

I was so wrong. Total freak-out. It took a lot of convincing, and some intermediate-level slapstick (thank frog for that two weeks of circus camp) to get them to calm down. I even wound up with a bucket of money since they assumed I was some kind of street performer. Now we actually had enough cash to have some legit fun in this town. We could have gone shopping, or gotten lunch, but I had a different idea. During my little performance, I heard one frog mention that there was some kind of oddities museum in town. Considering what kind of weirdness I'd seen in Amphibia on a daily basis, the idea of what kind of thing would actually qualify as an "oddity" had me legitimately curious.

It wouldn't have been the first time I'd been to a so-called "oddities museum. A few years back, there was this local ad that was going around in various "Cursed Commercial" compilations on ToobToob, a masterpiece of flubbed lines, missed cues, and special effects failures that had to be seen to be believed. It was for this place in Oregon called the "Mystery Shack", and for some reason, the name stuck in my mind. And it probably would've stayed there until the following summer, when we were going up to visit Aunt Apinya in Redmond. Normally, Dad doesn't like to make stops, but we wound up getting a flat in the backwoods of Roadkill County (not the official name of the county, but everyone around there called it that), and we were stuck waiting while Dad got a replacement tire.

So, Mom and I had little to do but wander around town, when lo and behold, there it was. The Mystery Shack.

Now, apparently the original owner "Mr. Mystery", the guy from the commercial, had long since retired and moved on, but the place was still open with a new Mr. Mystery in charge. The attractions were kind of a let-down… mostly weird taxidermy projects like a white gorilla with a clown wig or a hippopotamus in a frat T-shirt (a "hippocampus"; get it?) but it was at least mildly amusing, and we did get a new bobblehead for Mom's collection.

The weirdest thing is that it wasn't, like, a nail or a sharp rock that punctured our tire. It was this tiny red cone thing. It looked almost like those pointy hats that you see on lawn gnomes…

Anyway, the oddities museum!

It was called "The Curiosity Hut" and it was filled with wax sculptures of all sorts of crazy creatures, like a two-headed love-dove (remember those? We almost got eaten by one once!), a bugball-playing mantis (another thing that nearly ate me… boy is Amphibia dangerous) and what looked like little frogs dressed as lawn gnomes (again with the gnomes… well at least none of those have tried to eat me. Yet.)

But the big surprise was yet to come. Sitting there on a pedestal was something I never expected to see I Amphibia. Crazy monsters? See 'em all the time. But this?

[Drawing of portable CD player]

A MacGuffin™ Skipman™. The height of music technology… 35 years ago, but definitely far beyond anything I've seen here. So what was it doing here? There are exactly three humans that I know of that have been to Amphibia, and I'm pretty sure none of them brought a Skipman with them. Could it be that there was another human here at some point in the past? Did they find their way home, or could they have gone native somehow? I have a feeling that I could be looking at a vital clue here.

I asked the curator of this place (a creepy old frog who looks like he could have been the frog twin of that Mr. Mystery Guy; was he some kind of doppelganger? Were there doppelgangers for other humans? Was there one for me? Are there human doppelgangers of frogs back home? My mind is reeling with possibilities.) if I could have the Discman. He offered to sell it to me… for a million coppers. Yeah, not happening. You'd be lucky to get a buck for something that obsolete back home. But I had a feeling it could be the key to everything. So I asked him if there was a deal we could make for it, and he suggested if I could replace it with another mind-bogglingly weird exhibit, he'd part with it. Luckily I have the perfect exhibit: Me! Naturally, he took me up on my offer.

When I told HP about the deal, he forbade me, of course, but he can't stop me from sneaking out after he falls asleep. All I gotta do is vamp it up for a few hours, and the Skipman's good as mine!

Well, it's been a couple of days. I would've finished this earlier, but I've only just now gotten the last of the wax off.

Let me back up.

When I got back to the curiosity hut, the Curator had my stage all set up, complete with a big X to stand on. Which seems like a really big red flag that I probably should have noticed, looing back, but I was too excited by the prospect of the Skipman. And showbiz!

So I took my mark, and this huge glass contraption slams down over me ad slowly starts pumping liquid wax in (you'd think it would be hot, but no. I'm not sure how it even works). So, yeah. All those "fake" exhibits? Real creatures, preserved in wax. And I was about to be the latest one. Which the Curator explained to be, in extremely boring detail. At least he let slip one useful fact; that he'd found the Skipman in Newtopia. So we were on the right track! Not that it was going to matter to me soon.

It was looking pretty bad for me, but I guess the fam noticed that I was missing and guessed where I'd be, because they showed up to rescue me just as the wax had almost engulfed me. They rescued me just as the wax had covered everything except my lips, so I didn't really get to see anything, but from what they told me, Polly accidentally melted the wax off some particularly horrible abomination, and Sprig and HP got the idea to free the rest, who dragged the Curator off into the back room for some well-earned revenge. So, yeah. He's dead. Super-dead. They found the body and everything. He won't be returning next season. Summer. The season after spring.

I mean, he was gonna freeze me in wax for all eternity, but like, he probably had a brother or a niece or nephew somewhere, so I guess it's pretty sad for them…

Anyway, Sprig managed to snag the Skipman, so mission accomplished! I honestly don't know what I'd do without him. And the surprising thing is that it still works! It must have landed in Amphibia recently, before the batteries went bad. Another mystery.

At least we know we're on the right track! HP's maps say that Newtopia's only a couple of days away! I'm a little concerned that we still haven't seen or heard anything about Marcy yet…. But I bet all the hot goss is in Newtopia, so looks like that's our best option.

A.N.: We've seen the Stan Bobblehead in the Boonchuys' garage, so unless Gravity Falls is an in-universe TV show with lots of merch, it had to come from somewhere, right?

RWritingInk: Thanks for all the reviews! Yes, I did write the "I'm a tooth" song. You can tell 'cause it's awful. A songwriter I am not.

Matt: Did I? Seems fine to me.

MarMarFaAnne: Don't sweat it. Sometimes the site just decides not to update the review page for a day or two, but they show up eventually. I still get a notification every time a review comes in, though! And thanks for your thoughts on the timeline, they look like they line up about right.

Jose: Thanks, people seem to like the Sasha scenes a lot.

Fickleness: I'll get back to that (and hopefully Body Issues II) once the writers' block breaks!

Next: Marcy at the Gates