Three Men in a Boat. To Say Nothing of the T-Killer

The boat is returning from the repair shop. — Chaos at the resting place. — New guitar strings and other trouble. — Victims of humidity. — An unexpected hotel stay. — The ability to correctly hang up a picture and the ability to scram in time. Our adventurers successfully retrieved their boat from the repair shop. It looked almost like a new one. The T-Killer, who was still very ill-humored after his encounter with NK, sat down to row and rowed with such force that he almost broke the new oars and unscrewed the oarlocks to all the basophils. The bench under him was bending and creaking, making the boat sound like it was moaning. However, after such severe trials, it became clear that their freshly repaired vehicle would be able to withstand the continuation of their trip without a doubt. After having stopped near their resting place to gather their belongings, they noticed that a big part of them was missing, such as Dendritic Cell's tent that had served to build the shelter earlier. On top of that, the kettle, cups and other dishes had mysteriously disappeared as well and also part of their outdoors equipment, a few baskets with provisions and three pairs of spare shoes that Dendritic Cell and the B cells had brought with them. But luckily, the B Lymphocyte's beloved guitar that he had put in a waterproof case and hidden on top of a tree as a precaution, was still there. Their question about who had dared to rob them, got answered by itself when they picked up their remaining stuff: It was completely soaked and some things were lying directly near the water. As it turned out, the rising tide had come in during their absence and taken with it their baggage that had been too close to the river. The Dendrocyte looked close and spotted even now how some plates were splashing on the river waves in the distance. "Oh, well," he said. "At least, we'll have a lot less to carry from now on." * * * The continuation of their adventure started not only with a lot less baggage, but also somehow in a not very good mood. The T-Killer was still pouting from the encounter with that annoying NK. And to top it off, the B Lymphocyte, who wanted to cheer himself up after the Mast Cell's huge fit of hysteria, had already managed to equip his guitar with the new strings and tune it. Now he decided to treat the others to a new round of comic songs. Not a good idea... As a reaction to his performance, the T-Killer got so furious that the guitar almost lost its strings once again and the recently repaired boat, despite all the trials, just barely survived his rampage. Dendritic Cell, who heard a suspicious crackling sound coming from the bottom of the boat, tried to calm him down and almost got in trouble himself. At that moment, Memory Cell remembered knowing a lot of hilarious anecdotes and quickly started telling a story about a rod cell and a cone cell playing strip poker. This managed to calm down the others a bit and even amuse them, making them laugh precisely because of its artlessness and complete lack of humor. This time, our four guys didn't bother putting in any effort and just sailed with the current, along the same vein they had arrived there, heading, at the huge request of the main organizer of that trip, in other words Dendritic Cell, towards the temple in the Heart. And the rest will be mere improvisation. But as it seemed, luck wasn't with them that day: the weather started getting worse, and it worsened considerably and irrevocably. It got colder and colder on the river, a cutting wind was blowing and there was the danger of a heavy rain starting any minute. And additionally to that, the boat somehow started acting odd: it was either swinging strongly to the side, or tilting over with its nose, not to mention the unpleasant crackling sounds it produced. Also, the adventurers noticed a suspicious humidity under their feet and Dendritic Cell, who was at the tail-mounted rudder again, squeaks and a weird clicking. And they also remarked another unpleasant detail: the hoops for the canvas didn't fit that well into the new sockets after the repair, and in some places they didn't fit at all. So decently stretching out the canvas over them was impossible. Which turned out to be especially uncomfortable when it started raining. Our adventurers got quickly soaked to the skin and felt, let's say, not that well in the boat that was filling up with water. And as the evening was approaching, it got completely unbearable. The four guys were suffering from the cold and humidity to such an extent that they had the impression of being eaten alive by both of them. Memory Cell was just groaning and moaning, saying that today he would catch a deathly cold for sure. The B Lymphocyte, in the meantime, was watching with sorrow his shoes getting soaked directly on his feet, the angry T-Killer was nagging at everyone and Dendritic Cell frantically thinking about where they should spend the night, as it was definitely impossible to sleep in a wet boat under a canvas that wasn't properly fastened. But a bit later, they became lucky. Perhaps that was their last time to have luck on their way to the temple in the Heart, but they did have it! And how they did! When the poor guys, who were chilled to the bone, had moored the completely wet boat and were trying to make a fire, they met a decent-looking cell wearing a raincoat and hat. That nice cellular gentleman wanted to know what they were doing and after having learned about the situation they were in, offered them a room in a nearby hotel. Completely free of charge, by the way. Instead, he just asked them for a small favor: to help the landlord hang up a picture. A free overnight stay, basically for nothing. Not suspicious at all, right? However, it absolutely wasn't as easy as it seemed, since the landlord of that hotel was an old, grumpy and extremely pedantic and thorough myocyte, who couldn't just take a picture and hang it on the wall. No! He turned a simple activity like that into a whole event, literally forcing all his staff to run off as far as they could, preferably before it started. And the four new unsuspecting victims would come in very handy. But neither the nice cellular gentleman, who was the local gardener, nor the landlord himself didn't know yet whom they were dealing with. "Who are these ragged fellows?" grumbled the landlord, when our freezing four appeared at his doorstep together with the gardener. "Our guests, Sir," explained the employee, delicately shoving them forward. "Guests?" questioned the landlord, examining them from under his thick eyebrows. "They certainly don't look like that." "The got into bad weather on the river," continued the gardener, putting on his most compassionate expression. "And I had the presumption to offer them a stay at our hotel, so they can dry off and warm themselves. Apart from that, these gentlemen assured me that they were real masters at hanging up pictures. "Pictures?" the landlord perked up. The guests effusively nodded. "I do have a painting here," said the old man, forgetting his strictness. "With a battle scene. A big one I bought, to fit over the whole wall." He extended his arms to show them the size. Then grunted and went off to get it. The painting was really impressive, and not only because of its size, but also because of the battle scene between immune cells and antigens it was showing. Dendritic Cell and his companions were so baffled, their jaws dropped. Especially the T-Killer's. "I've never seen anything like that," he admitted honestly, looking at the painted T cells, who were wearing very strange armor, swinging samurai swords and riding horses. And in front of them were not any less weird clothed B Lymphocytes, sprinkling the way with antibodies, to keep it clean for the noble sirs. "What is this nonsense?" exclaimed the B cells with indignation, but the gardener pulled at their sleeves, looking at them imploringly. "Wow, look at that..." muttered Dendritic Cell, noticing a scribe on the painting, who was wearing a hat decorated with green vines and accompanying the sirs in the background. Then he directed his gaze at the portrayed enemy: the germs with their sparkling oil-painted eyes looked completely savage and unrealistic to him. He even wanted to know who the artist was, but the latter's curvy signature, showing a monogram of the first letter, was unfortunately hidden under the frame. The landlord himself didn't care who had painted the picture, but for its size. And also for the possibility of covering up a huge hole in the wallpaper with it. "I want to hang it here." The landlord made a few steps along the most unoccupied wall and stopped exactly in front of the hole. "And first of all, I need a ladder. Hey," he shouted to the employees. "Bring me a ladder! Hurry!" While they were bringing him a stepladder, the gardener was directing another imploring look at the guest, begging them to take the initiative. Luckily, they understood everything and just as the landlord was demanding a ruler, a pencil, and a cup of tea, they sent him off to drink his tea and got down to business themselves. Well, more precisely, the B cells, and Dendritic Cell decided to help them wherever he could: holding the ladder, checking if the spot for the nail was marked correctly and so on. But the T-Killer, whose hands were already itching from his desire for activity, shoved them aside and started working, telling them to not worry about anything, since he would do everything himself. The others replied that this was exactly what they were worrying about. Without listening to any protests, the T-Killer doodled a crooked cross where he considered to be the best place to beat in the nail. Then he held it there and hammered on it with so much force that he made a hole into the wall. "No problem," he said. "I just beat it in next to it, then we hang up the picture and no one notices!" And he hammered on it again, next to the hole. Producing another one, even bigger than the first. "No problem," repeated the T-Killer, sounding a bit less sure now. "I beat it in above it and no one sees them." And a third hole appeared above the first two. Fortunately, the landlord was meanwhile sitting in the kitchen and drinking tea, missing out on all the fun that had just begun. "No problem," said the T-Killer again, producing a new hole. And another one... and another one... accompanying it again and again with his "No problem", while the amount of holes kept growing. Soon, the T-Killer's companions realized that if they didn't stop him right now and cover up the traces of his crime, then the least they could expect was to be chased out into the wet and cold night. And in addiction to that, the landlord could make them work off the value of the wall or completely pay for the repair out of their own pockets that were almost empty by now. However, it wasn't an easy task at all to stop the T-Killer who was ardently at work, a task doomed to failure right from the beginning. So the other three had no other choice than to reluctantly watch his bold experiment with the hammer, the nails, the wall, and the painting. The T-Killer was actively working, bent nails kept falling into all directions, the wall was getting more and more perforated and he himself dropped the hammer and the picture several times, on his foot, by the way. When everything was done and the wall, that was riddles with holes, covered up, the employees of the cellular hotel thanked their saviors for freeing them of several days of complete hell with endless series of scoldings that would have awaited them if the landlord had tried to hang up the picture himself. And as a special thank-you gift, they gave their guests a rare delicacy: a hand-made cheese, painstakingly created by lactic acid bacteria and brought to their hotel by someone after distant wanderings through the digestive tract. The fragrance of that cheese turned out to be so intense that it made even the T-Killer roll his eyes and utter: "I prefer smelling the T-Helper's socks for the rest of my life!" While the others just paled, feeling their entire cytoplasm getting agitated due to the strong smell. The B Lymphocyte made the careful assumption that this present was nothing but revenge for the perforated wall. And no matter how much they tried to refuse, explaining that they didn't have any room for that cheese in their boat, they still didn't manage to get rid of that unpleasant gift. In the end, the generous givers promised to send it to them by post, and successfully pried out the address of their guests. The remaining evening, after a good dinner, was spent with telling stories the four of them invented about fishing, the mastery of rowing and traveling in a boat using sails. The B Lymphocyte got carried away a bit and narrated how they had caught a huge monster after having a nice ride on their boat being towed by it. Then how they had dragged it out on the coast, knocked it out with their oars and prepared fish sticks for an entire week. While listening to that story, the T-Killer had to put on all of his effort to not burst out laughing through the whole hotel, and Dendritic Cell and Memory Cell exchanged somehow meaningful gazes, thoughtfully nodded, pronounced one by one or sometimes together a long "Yeaaaahhh...", looking at each other and nodding again. The room they had gotten was absolutely normal and didn't stand out at all. Until they turned off the light. As soon as they did that, tiny holes appeared in the wall facing the hallway, glowing like fireflies due to the light coming through. The B Lymphocyte turned on the lamp and examined them: it turned out that the wall was full of small holes, from nails, as it seemed. Above them, he spotted a painting, showing a rural landscape. Around it was the biggest amount of holes. The B Lymphocyte couldn't resist and moved it to the side, seeing the result of a work that wasn't any better than the T-Killer's. So that was the way the landlord was hanging up paintings himself. He chuckled, returned the picture to its spot and went to bed. So it seemed that the landlord wouldn't get angry if he found out how the wall in the living room looked like under that battle scene painting. But they still shouldn't take a risk. That's why they took some snacks to go with them after having eaten breakfast the next morning and quickly left, since even the big painting wasn't enough to cover up the T-Killer's masterwork on the wall from the sunlight. Taking advantage of the fact that the landlord loved to sleep in, they successfully made a run for it without saying goodbye. The wet boat managed to get dry overnight and was ready to continue the trip, though it creaked more than before. The weather was obviously getting better from the morning, and so was also our adventurers' mood. A lot better! They quickly got into the boat and just as quickly started sailing with the waves, not paying attention to the fact that the boat was still tilting over with its nose and swinging from side to side stronger than before... after all, their vacation continued and freedom, fresh air and new adventures were waiting for them. They were overjoyed like kids and swore that there weren't any problems and dangers that could stop them anymore.