Read The Power Potion for Free Online Page B

(and extremely sappy) pinecones.
    “Ow!” Pablo cried, trying to duck away from the monkey’s deadly aim.
    “Yow!” Angelo yelped as he got pummeled.
    “Play with
me
,” Tito laughed, throwing his apple at the rhesus.
    “Eeeek?” the monkey said, catching the apple and rifling it back, landing a painful bonk on Tito’s head.
    The monkey then scurried off, and after a few minutes of Brotherly fighting (which sounds very much like the fighting of real brothers), Angelo, Pablo, and (even) Tito came to the frightening revelation that they were lost without water or food or (even more urgent) toilet paper in a dark and dense (and obviously
dangerous
) forest.
    The solution to this was, of course, to resume fighting.
    Meanwhile, back at the mansion, DamienBlack was wasting no time in trying out the potion. “Bwaa-ha-ha!” he laughed (for he knew full well what the potion would do). “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
    He entered his great room with a
whoosh-swoosh
of his long black coat and settled into a large throne of a chair that had deep, dusty cushions and great carved gargoyles perched on the backrest. “Ah!” he said with a contented shudder. “Bwaa-ha-ha-haaaaah.”
    Damien then spritzed open a bottle of chilled Armenian pomegranate juice (his favorite thirst-quenching beverage) and placed it at the ready on an ornately carved end table.
    Then, with great flourish, he stuck out his long (and, for the record, unusually pointy) tongue and dripped onto it one…two…(what the heck)
three
drops of the potion.
    Saliva swirled with the potion in his mouth as Damien tried to analyze it with his taste buds.
    It was rather pungent (but with a hint of mint).
    Oddly bubbly.
    Strangely…sticky.
    Yes, he decided with a shiver, it was a bit icky-sticky, but that was to be expected, right?
    This was, after all, a powerful potion, not some swishy champagne!

    And so he swallowed it and chased the now foamy potion down with a satisfying swig of pomegranate juice.
    Then he waited.
    And waited.
    And waited some more.
    Now, although Dave had poured the Moongaze potion out of the amber bottle, he had not rinsed the bottle. And since the real Moongaze potion was quite viscous (or, if you prefer, ooey-gooey), an ample sample had, in fact, clung to the walls of the amber bottle and, over the course of the thumpity-bumpity bike ride up to Raven Ridge, had mixed in with the soap and the Scope (and the generous glub of glue).
    And so, as Damien waited, the watered-down (or, really, soaped-up) potion did work.
    A little.
    Damien lifted the side table, and although it was considerably easier than it would otherwisehave been, it was nothing to bwaa-ha-ha about.
    After a few more impatient minutes of waiting for something big to happen, Damien once again stuck out his pointy tongue and dripped onto it one…two…three…
four
more drops.
    Again, he waited.
    And waited.
    And waited.
    And again, the change in him was disappointing.
    His glinting black eyes grew angry, and this time he
doused
his tongue with the potion.
    He waited again, then did it again.
    And again!
    “That miserable charlatan!” he hissed after the potion still failed to give him superhuman strength. “He gypped me!!”
    Unfortunately for Damien, the substitute potion
was
having an effect on his system. Soap, you see, is a surfactant. It works by lowering theinterfacial tension between liquids. (In other words, it breaks down the forces that attract molecules to each other. Like, say, someone with awful onion breath joining a conversation. Only at the molecular level. And with liquids.)
    Now, the effect of soap on the human intestinal system varies in degree from person to person, but it acts, by and large, as a laxative.
    It loosens your stools.
    Gurgles your guts.
    And (let’s just be frank, shall we?) makes you go poo-
poos
.
    And so it was that Damien Black wound up trading his gargoyled throne in the great room for a porcelain one in the bathroom.
    And while his guts