Once upon a time, in the land of pleasant living, all the Baltimore mascots lived in harmony. On this particular Sunday morning, nothing exciting seemed to be happening. Mr. Boh was sleeping off a hangover. Poe the Raven and The Oriole Bird were fighting over a worm. Sallie Utz was munching away on her fried breakfast. The rats were happily chewing on some garbage. Everything seemed right, except someone was missing. She didn’t have a name, everyone just called her Hon. In true Hon fashion, she always wore tight leopard print pants, red horn rimmed glasses, and had a beehive hair-do. For those not native to Baltimore, just picture Hairspray.
No one really seemed to notice at first. The neighborhood did seem a bit quieter and less gaudy, but it wasn’t until it was time for Sunday dinner that her absence was really felt. All the mascots gathered together and to their horror, there was no booze. That’s right. No booze. See, it was Hon’s job to bring the booze (It would be Boh’s job, but everyone knows better than to expect him to buy booze for everyone and NOT drink it before the event). If there’s two things everyone in Charm City knows, it’s that it’s damn near impossible to buy booze on a Sunday and that it’s damn near impossible to have a pleasant time with one’s family without booze. And the mascots were, for all intents and purposes, a family; and they were not having a good time.
“What are we going to do?!” asked Mr. Boh who had not had a full sober day since… well, let’s just say he still had both eyes.
“It’s not like Hon to not show up to Sunday dinner.” Sallie Utz chimed in. “She would never miss an opportunity to let us all know the gossip she has learned over the past week. Something must be wrong.”
Mr. Boh and Sallie Utz looked around the table at the assortment of birds, crabs, and rats; It didn’t take long for them to realize that it was up to them to find Hon. After all, Baltimore doesn’t have all that many human mascots.
Mr. Boh and Sallie set out to investigate. First they went to Hon’s row home. They found nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was just as it had always been. It was as if she had just disappeared. They were stumped. Sallie was hungry from the lack of dinner and had no chips on her. Mr. Boh was seeing the world sober for the first time in quite a while. Neither was thinking straight, but Mr. Boh couldn’t help but wonder if Sallie had always been this pretty.
“Well, I’m stumped.” Sallie said, interrupting Mr. Boh from his thoughts.
“Maybe we should check with the internet.” Mr. Boh seemed a bit shocked by his own good idea. Sallie Utz seemed to be taken by surprise as well. It may have been the first time she heard him speak without a slur in years, and that had been a very different time in their lives.
They found Hon’s computer and did a search. It didn’t take long for them to find what they had been looking for. The Evil Witch Delia Blacking had cast an insidious curse with the help of the Mark of Trades to imprison Hon.
“We have to save her.” Sallie said somberly.
“But how? Blacking has the law on her side. We could turn the locals against her, but that’s already happened. People fucking hate her already. We need someone she will listen to.” Mr. Boh could not think of a way to show Blacking the error of her ways. The public already thought she was a shoddy witch who was bad at her job and generally bitchy.
They tried to think about it, but their thoughts kept returning to each other. Obviously they had previously considered the possibilities before, they WERE two of the very few humans in their community. Years ago, they had even tried dating, but that ended disastrously. Sallie always blamed his blatant alcoholism for their problems and Boh had witnessed Sallie crawl into more than one bag of crab chips after they would fight; that didn’t seem too emotionally or nutritionally healthy. Sallie was deep in thought when Boh shouted something.
“I know! How about the Wizard, Jordan Moses? Witches always listen to him.”
Sallie thought it was a brilliant idea, which threw her. She still wasn’t used to good ideas coming from Mr. Boh. But she didn’t let her shock show. They went to work making the necessary arrangements and got in touch with the Wizard. They explained the situation. If Moses offered to help Blacking, he could suggest that in order to win the community back, she would have to set Hon free.
The Wizard Moses was a tough nut to crack. Boh and Utz worked together to convince him. Sallie flirted a little and Boh used logic. They impressed Moses, and each other, and he agreed to help.
The conversations between Denise Whiting and Gordon Ramsay Delia Blacking and Jordan Moses have not been released yet, but no doubt, there was a lot of yelling; well deserved yelling. In the end, the Witch Blacking agreed to set Hon free!
All of Baltimore rejoiced! Well, all of Baltimore rejoiced that Blacking finally came to her senses. Once they saw Hon out and about again, they remembered how annoying she really was and realized they were more mad at the principle than the actual imprisonment of Hon.
As for the heroes of our story, I’d love to say that Boh quit drinking forever, and they got married the next day, but that’s dumb. These things never happen over night, and just because you go on an adventure together doesn’t mean you get married immediately after. This isn’t Hollywood, it’s Baltimore.
Boh went back to drinking, but not quite as much. He tried to limit himself. He even got a job creating small, difficult to read riddles for bottle caps. He and Sallie did start dating. They took it slow though. They had their ups and downs like every couple does. Eventually Boh popped the question.
Sallie said yes.
The End.