Have a Smurfy Day!

BOOM!

Jokey's latest prank-box had just gone off. A blue hand appeared, waving away the cloud of smoke from the soot-blackened face of Grouchy.  He threw the remaining scraps of cardboard and ribbon across the room, a stream of ashes stretching from where he stood, across his bed, and against the wall where the box had hit and slid down on the other side of his bed.  A scrap of paper fluttered to the floor.  On it, still semi-legible through the burns, were the words, "From the entire village.  Have a Smurfy day!"

Grouchy growled under his breath and gritted his teeth painfully.  He looked around the smoke-damaged room, carved, like the rest of the village, inside a large mushroom.  Cracks ran along every wall.  This joke-bomb had been more powerful than any previous.  He looked down at the feeling of something running down his upper lip.  Blood.  Smurf-blood.  Dripping from his nose.  He stared at the drops as they stained his floor, mixing with the ashes and crumbs of mushroom that had been shook loose from the ceiling.  He stood there for he knew not how long, at least long enough that the bleeding had stopped.  He then began to pace, eyes still cast downward.  As he passed a table, he would snatch a handful of Smurf-berries from the bowl on it and would munch them, unaware of the bitter taste as he also ate some of the mushroom crumbs.  Before long, he stopped, eyes bulging as he stared around himself, frightened of the images his hallucinating eyes were showing him, terrified of the things his ears were telling him.  Soon, though, a demented smile crept across his face as he considered the whispered words.  "Yesss..." he said in a hiss.  Grabbing a knife from a drawer, he headed to the back door of his house...

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"La-la-lalala-la, la-la-lala-la..." sang Smurfette as she skipped down the path to her favorite spring.  Her dainty blue hand darted out, picking the tiny flowers she passed, gathering them into a bouquet.  She'd give it to Grouchy when she saw him next, an apology for the "present" she knew Jokey was going to leave for him.  She'd even written the note for Jokey.  It had been a few hours since she'd heard the "present" go off, but nobody had seen Grouchy the entire time.

Around the next bend of the path, she could hear the sound of running water and knew that she was close.  Excited, she began to run toward the sound.  She loved this place, not least because of the privacy the surrounding bushes offered.  Once there, she skinned out of the white one-piece skirt she was wearing, tossing it and her hat onto the ground along with the flowers.  With a small splash, she dove into the icy water, letting it run over her nude body as she swam from one shore to the other.  Lithe and strong, she easily overcame the current as she turned upstream and struck out against it, heading a few dozen feet before flipping over and letting the water carry her back to her starting point, relaxing in the mixture of heat from the sun and the cold of the water.

When she got back, she righted her body and began to tread water, blonde head cocked to the side.  Had she heard something rustling nearby?  Was it Brainy, trying to get a peek?  Crossing her arms over her chest, she shouted, "All right, get the Smurf outta here!  I'm a lady Smurf, don't you know?!"  

Nothing replied.

She peered around, straining her eyes to try and see through the cover of the foliage, but was unable to see anything.  Keeping one arm across her breasts, she began to swim as best she could toward the shore near her clothing.  Once she was able to, she stood on the stream-bottom, putting her other hand over her crotch.  Before she could reach her clothes, however, a blue-and-white blur jumped out from behind a thick bunch of leaves.  With a shriek, she jumped back into the water, ducking neck-deep in less than a second.  "Grouchy!" she screamed.  "What the Smurf are you doing?!"

"Hi, Smurfette," Grouchy grumbled, keeping one hand behind his back.  Languidly, he turned his bloodshot eyes toward her, then over to her clothes.  A smirk crossed his otherwise slack features.  "Swimming, huh?"

"Um, yeah," she said sarcastically.  "Get out of here, Grouchy!  You know you're not supposed to be..."  She broke off, looking at him carefully.  Something seemed out of place, and it wasn't just his presence at her favorite swimming spot.  "Are you...okay, Grouchy?" she asked, her tone now more concerned than angry.

"Yeah," he said, then lifted his face to look at her more fully.

Shock ran across Smurfette's features as she saw the dried blood on Grouchy's face.  "Oh my Smurf..." she whispered as she rose a little more fully, ignorant now of her nudity.  "Smurf it, I told Jokey he was making his present too strong," she said.  "We just wanted you to Smurfen up a little.  You need to see Papa Smurf, Grouchy.  He'll fix you up."

"I'll be Smurfy in a little bit," Grouchy huffed.  The smirk was still on his face.  With the dried blood, the haunted look in his eyes, it looked more like a death rictus, a sight that filled Smurfette with dread.

"What are you going to do?" she asked in a small voice.

Grouchy never said a word as he picked up the flowers Smurfette left next to her clothes and looked at them.  "Um," she said, "those were supposed to be an actual present for you, to make up for what Jokey had done.  I picked them because I was the one that actually wrote the note because he knew that you knew what his handwriting looked like."  Grouchy turned his smile toward her, then brought his hand out from behind him, his knife gripped in his blue fingers as he cut the buds from the stems. 

"Grouchy!  What the Smurf...?"  Smurfette's words petered out as she saw that Grouchy was still staring at her with a disturbing gleam in his eyes.  Grouchy then bent over again, picking up her dress and hat, slicing them into ribbons with the sharp knife.  By the time Smurfette fought her way free from the water, there was little to nothing left to be able to cover herself with to get back to the village.  "Why, Grouchy?"

"Because, Smurfette," Grouchy said, turning to direct the knife's point toward her.  "I'm having a Smurfy day..."

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About twenty minutes later, he was pushing the naked Smurfette into the village, heading toward Papa Smurf's house.  Smurfs began gathering around.  A few at first, then more and more as the word went out.  Smurfette was sobbing, tears rolling down her face as she tried to use her hands and arms to protect her modesty, but Grouchy was walking close enough behind her that his own body kept hidden the fact that he kept poking the knife's point into her behind, her jerking and jumping causing her to expose herself to the eyes of the village.  Brainy's eyes, in particular, bulged so much, they appeared to be held into their sockets only by his glasses, which were fogging.  

"What the Smurf is this?!" thundered Papa Smurf as he came out of his house.  "Grouchy, why the Smurf are you making Smurfette do this?"

"Shut up," growled Grouchy, a gasp at his brazen disrespect collectively escaping the dropped jaws of the rest of the Smurfs.  "I'm sick and tired of hearing your voice, old Smurf.  Now, shut up, or so Smurf me...."

"That's enough," said Papa Smurf calmly.  "If you don't want to be kicked out of the village forever, I suggest you go Smurf your way to your house and stay there until we can talk in private.  Smurfette, go get dressed."

Before she, or any other Smurf, could move, Grouchy had grabbed her hair with one hand, pulling her head back.  The other hand flashed around her neck, drawing the edge of the knife he held across her throat, slitting it open so that blood gushed out and across Papa Smurf's face.  Screams erupted.

At that signal, prearranged while Grouchy had been missing from the village, a huge red flash of fur bowled through the gathered Smurfs.  The first to fall to the claws and fangs of Azrael was Brainy, followed by Hefty.  Papa Smurf barely had time to raise his bearded face to the commotion before Grouchy's knife was driving into his left eye.  Crazed now, Grouchy stabbed the knife into Papa's face twice more before he hit the ground, body convulsing as he died.  Laughing, he ran to where Jokey had dove into one of the houses to escape the flying furball of death that was wreaking havoc through the village.  Once there, he wasted no time in pouncing on the one that had triggered all of this.  He dragged Jokey to the window, holding him up with one arm wrapped around the explosive-joke-player's neck.  The knife, hot with Smurf blood, was pressed into Jokey's side.  Tears streaming down his face, Jokey said, "I'm so Smurfing sorry, Grouchy.  Please...please..." 

He watched as Azrael dispatched the last Smurf.  They had all been trapped inside the village by Gargamel's spells.  Grouchy had gone to the dark wizard's castle during the couple of hours no Smurf had seen him after the present exploded.  He forced the originator of his torment outside of the house, past Azrael licking the blood from his fur, and toward the edge of the village.  "Gargamel!" shouted Grouchy.  "Here he is!"

Gargamel came out from the woods, cackling.  He'd finally had exactly what he wanted: the wholesale slaughter of the Smurfs, and one for his own purposes.  To boot, there were plenty of Smurf corpses for him to pop into his kettle back home for stew!  He waved away the spells that prevented the Smurfs from escaping, then grabbed Jokey up in his hand.  "Thank you, Grouchy," he said with a mocking half-bow.  

"You're welcome, Gargamel," Grouchy said, keeping the knife in his hand.  He knew better than to trust Gargamel.  He glanced over his shoulder, the grimace that had disturbed Smurfette still on his face where it had been the entire time.  

"It was a Smurfy day after all."