Chapter Thirteen: Dr. Venkman…I Guess?

Chapter Thirteen: Dr. Venkman…I Guess?

            The taxi driver came to a complete stop at a restaurant called “Hoots” within Times Square. It served several groups of hungry (and lonely) male citizens, and only a scarce number of females who were either with the males or with other females. A line was formed near the entrance, which was guarded by a tall man wearing a tight black Hoots t-shirt and black jeans to match. He also wore an earpiece to stay in touch with the other security personnel, allowing reserved guests into the club.

The driver turned to his customer, a man in a hardhat and a tattered blue jumpsuit with the name “Nicky” tagged on it. “Here’s yer stop, pal,” he told him. “That’ll be fifty bucks.” The man did not respond; instead, he looked out the window, staring at the busy restaurant. “Yo, buddy. What you do in yer spare time is yer business. But I need ya to pay your fee and get yer butt out, so I can pick up some more paying cust…”

“Silence, fool!” The man glared directly at the driver with glowing red eyes, speaking in a voice that was dark, sinister, and eerie. The driver was suddenly mesmerized, unable to retaliate to the harsh order (or even move). “You will remain here until I return!”

And the taxi driver hypnotically responded, “Y-Yes, Your Majesty.”

The man whose name appeared to be “Nicky” climbed out of the taxicab, walking right up to the Hoots entrance; he unknowingly broke in line as he walked right by one waiting customer and the bouncer, who made certain not to let him get away with it. The bouncer forcibly grabbed him by the arm and said, “Yo, bro. No cuts. You’re gonna have to wait in line like everybody else.”

Nicky turned to the bouncer and looked deeply into his eyes. The bouncer noticed the way they were glowing. At first, he believed it to be the lack of sleep he had been getting, due to his highly demanding job. He began to rub them, slowly and softly at first, but then he rubbed them harder and faster as he suddenly felt a burning sensation in them. The bouncer moaned in pain, letting go of Nicky and dropping to his knees, crying out for help.

Taking advantage of the distraction he had mastered, Nicky walked right inside the restaurant, which was even busier inside than it was out. There was a crowded scene as men engaged in activities that rowdy males often did, such as drinking games, sloppy eating, and flirting with the waitresses. However, Nicky was less than interested in the food, drinks, or waitresses in the restaurant.

As the possessed worker looked for his desired target, he passed a table that was occupied by Genevieve, Christina, Dr. Spengler, Alex, Cody, and the Ajax exterminators, not once looking in their direction. Although Spengler and Christina knew exactly why they were there at Hoots, the others had no clue; but, despite that, the Ajax exterminators were thrilled to be eating such delicious hot wings.

“Okay,” uttered Genevieve, “not that I mind being in a place with lots of hot guys…”

“And girls!” Cody exclaimed as he noticed a waitress pass by.

Genevieve rolled her eyes before continuing. “But why would a former scientist be in this kind of hangout?”

“Because Venkman, as you know, isn’t your ordinary scientist,” Christina observed. “She’s always been obsessed with this place, ever since there was a bust here back in the summer of 2006.”

“What kind of ghost did you guys bust?” Alex inquired.

“You don’t want to know,” replied Spengler, before he went back to tinkering with the inside of his P.K.E. Meter.

Seeing this, Genevieve couldn’t help but to tell him, “I doubt that you’ll really need that here, Dr. Spengler. The only monsters here are the ones near the all-you-can-eat buffet bar.”

“I’m only gearing up for when we encounter Maleficent,” he said. “Those readings I got from the spinning wheel were a little stronger than the last time I scanned anything that had her trace.”

“Is that bad?” Mickey queried, between bites of the wings.

“Of course not,” Spengler responded. “It only means that the meter is a bit outdated and needs a good tune-up.”

“How did you come to make that thing, anyways?” Christina asked him. “And don’t give me that old ‘I got a good deal at RadioShack’ excuse.”

Spengler chuckled. “Trust me, Christina. If I told you, then you might have to ask more questions that’ll lead on to more questions, and so forth.”

She stared at him blankly, obviously puzzled. “A simple ‘I’ll tell you later’ would’ve been nice, Sean.”

Alex looked around, hoping to see Dr. Venkman approaching. “We’ve been sitting here for hours,” she impatiently said. “What if we missed her?”

A waitress then approached their table with a smile that was disrupted by the gum-chewing in her mouth. “How ya peeps doin’ tonight? Enjoyin’ the food?” Donald and Goofy both gave a greasy thumb-up response, their mouths being too full to even utter a word.

“Uh, excuse me, ma’am?” Christina beckoned. “But we’re lookin’ for Natalie Venkman.” The waitress gave her a dumbfounded look. “She’s a short Native American woman…used to be a Ghostbuster.”

It seemed to have been the Ghostbuster part that clued the waitress in. “Oh! Ya mean Big Lady V!”

Christina looked to the others, hoping for some sort of advice; all they did was shrug their shoulders. She turned to the waitress and asked, “Do you know where ‘Big Lady V’ is right now?”

“She should be onstage in a couple of minutes.”

Genevieve’s eyes widened with surprise. “Onstage? You mean she’s a performer here?”

“On Friday nights, she does karaoke for all the customers here,” The waitress notified. “It’s a little somethin’ we let her do after givin’ us so much good service.”

All of the sudden, the lights dimmed and a spotlight shined on the stage close to the table they were sitting. The manager of Hoots, a heavyset, balding Caucasian man in his mid-thirties with a black copyrighted t-shirt and beige-colored pants, walked into the spotlight with a microphone in hand.

With the voice of a sugar-crazed disc jockey, he bellowed into the microphone, “Are all you crazy animals havin’ fun tonight?” All the men in the audience, with the exception of Spengler and Mickey, roared with applause and obscenity; some had done so with mouths full of food and alcohol. “Well, get ready! Because ya ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” There came a song over the speakers (an oldie from the 90s by C+C Music Factory), while multi-colored lights shined all throughout the room. “Back by popular demand…Big Lady V!”

The crowd of rowdy males grew louder in cheers as Natalie Venkman herself walked onstage. She smiled so brightly that her teeth practically sparkled in contrast to the spotlight. For a few minutes, Natalie posed for the boys in the audience, and then she took the microphone out of the manager’s hands and started singing karaoke.

“Give me the music! Give me the music! Everybody dance now!” She waved her hands in the air, urging the audience on in the sing-along. “C’mon, boys! You know the words!”

“Everybody dance now!” They sang.

Natalie bounced around onstage, pointing and winking at a few gentlemen, as she sang the next set of lyrics. “Here is the doe, back with bass. The jam is live in effect and I don’t waste time or the mike if it don’t rhyme. Jump to the rhythm, jump-jump to the rhythm jump! Take a chance, come on and dance! Guys, grab a girl, don’t wait, make a whirl! It’s your world and I’m just a swirl! Trying to get a nut and move your butt to the dance floor, so yo what’s up! Hands in the air, come on and say…”

“YEAH!”

“Everybody over here, everybody over there! The crowd is live and I feel this groove! Party people in the house…move!” On the word “move,” she twerked on stage, which forced Mickey to cover the eyes of Cody and Alex, and Goofy to cover Donald’s, while Donald covered Goofy’s. “Let your mind…move! Put me online! C’mon, fellas! Help me out!”

The crowd of men sang together with Natalie on the chorus: “C’mon, let’s sweat, baby! Let the music take control, let the rhythm move you! Sweat…Sweat! Let the music take control, let the rhythm move you!”

Genevieve shook her head, watching the founder of the Ghostbusters jiggle like a college girl before the rambunctious males. “So this is what a former scientist does after busting ghosts? Shake her groove thang for a bunch of raging hormones?”

“She was always the wild one,” said Christina with a chuckle. “Something like this doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

Trying his best to ignore the crowd, Sean Spengler put the finishing touches on the P.K.E. Meter. Once he placed its cover back on and activated it, its arms instantly raised up and the readouts indicated heavy amounts of activity. They all appeared very familiar to Spengler, who suddenly got extremely nervous. He got up from the table and looked around, catching the attention of his friends.

“Sean, what’s wrong?” Christina asked him.

“She’s here! Maleficent’s here!” Spengler alerted.

The rest of them jumped out of their seats as well from this, looking around along with Spengler; he allowed the P.K.E. meter to guide him to the source. The P.K.E. was aimed towards several customers in the room until it fell upon one that made his way towards the stage, staring oddly at Natalie. The P.K.E. meter madly vibrated in Spengler’s hand as it was aimed at this man wearing a hardhat and jumpsuit with the name “Nicky” tagged on it.

Nicky approached the stage, only to be met by a security guard who blocked his path. “Wait ‘til the girl’s finished, bruh!” But he quickly disposed of this guard, who was way bigger than him, grabbing him by the collar and tossing him across the air. The guard crashed into the buffet bar, but the noise could barely be heard among the wild crowd. The only person to witness the action was Spengler, who gazed upon the P.K.E. readouts once more and deduced that Maleficent was using the mortal’s body for a disguise, and she was going after Natalie.

He quickly let the others know of this. “The guy in the hardhat! It’s her! And she’s going for Venkman!” He pointed in Nicky’s direction; the others turned and looked, just as he went onstage.

“You sure he’s not just another college freshman?” Genevieve questioned.

Nicky stepped onstage to the jeers of the raucous crowd, who went as far as throwing food at him. Both Natalie and the music stopped the moment this man came onstage; she was totally lost on what to do but didn’t seem to lose her cool. “Whoa, there, dude. I’ve got nothin’ but love for all my peeps, but…”

“Silence!” Nicky sneered at her. “You foolish woman! Do you not recognize me?”

Natalie looked up and down at the man, scratching her head with the microphone and making a slight feedback noise in the process. “Uh…I’m totally stumped. This is one of the reasons why I never go on Deal or No Deal.”

“She’s Maleficent, Venkman!” Spengler spoke out from the crowd; hearing his familiar voice, Natalie tried to find him in the crowd; luckily, the spotlight fell on him and the others, directing all customers’ attention to them. Alex, Cody, and the Ajax exterminators waved at the crowd, not expecting to be the center of attention.

“Dang! This night’s just filled with surprises.” Natalie shouted with a grin.

Nicky glared and grinned at Spengler. “Well, well…I find one and gain another one. How…marvelous.”

“What’s your game this time, Maleficent?” Spengler investigated. “Something tells me you’ve found a team player of your own.”

One of the customers, observing the exchange, turned to a friend and asked, “Was tonight ‘NFL Night’? Dang!”

“If you are implying, Dr. Spengler, that I have allied myself with Lord Hades, then you are gravely mistaken,” Nicky/Maleficent claimed. “For I have my own part in this ‘plan’ of his.”

Before Spengler could’ve questioned what that was, an angry customer yelled out from the crowd, “What mess is this? I didn’t come here to see some freak show! I came here to see some freaks!” All of the other customers screamed out in agreement with him.

“Silence, you barbaric imbeciles!” Nicky/Maleficent commanded, but no one seemed to care for his/her order.

“Silence this, moron,” said one customer, who threw a half full glass of beer at the insane character. However, once it got near him/her, it stopped and hovered in midair. Nicky/Maleficent glared on it with glowing red eyes. The object suddenly turned the same color and then shattered into many pieces before the very eyes of everyone in the restaurant.

This bizarre occurrence was enough to scare the wits out of everyone, except for Spengler and his friends (who had seen their share of strangeness over the years or in recent days). Without a second thought, they pulled out of the restaurant, toppling over each other on the way out.

A terrified Natalie Venkman jumped off the stage, getting as far away as she could from Nicky or Maleficent or whoever she or he was. She went directly to Spengler and the others. “Just when I found my groove, you bring Freddy Kruger here!”

“Is there a backdoor out of here, Dr. Venkman?” Genevieve asked.

“Yeah, follow me,” She affirmed; and, in the confusion, they started to make their way out of the restaurant through the back entrance.

Passing between the locker room and the kitchen, they made it out into the filthy, smelly alleyway. It was cluttered with trash from the overflowing dumpsters and had heavy rodent activity all around. “Ugh!” Genevieve gagged. “How could such a popular hangout have so much garbage?” Natalie gawked at her with a droll look, and she soon realized the irony of her question. “Oh...uh, never mind.”

Natalie smiled at the girl wearing her old, funky jumpsuit and informed the group, “There’s a Hoots minivan just around the corner. We’ll take that and get outta h—” She immediately stopped as soon as the nearest wall crumbled to pieces, and Nicky/Maleficent walked right out, standing in the way of the group. Natalie couldn’t help but to roll her eyes at this. “Oh, what is it you want, girlfriend?”

“To see the end of humanity…starting with yours!”

With a sneer, Nicky/Maleficent quickly advanced on them; but, as soon as he/she got near Venkman, she instinctively kicked the sinister being’s possessed form right between the legs. Nicky/Maleficent’s eyes bulged, as he/she fell directly to the ground, whimpering in pain. Natalie looked to her friends, who stared at her in disbelief, and shrugged. “Pffh! You’d think she would’ve gone for something in her own gender.”

Still leading the way, she and the others walked over Nicky/Maleficent and disappeared down the alleyway. He/She heard the sound of a car engine starting and knew instantly that his/her prey had gotten away. The moment they vanished, Nicky’s body glowed in a bright greenish hue, giving off an eerie haze of the same color. The haze then manifested into the ghostly form of Maleficent herself, who still winced in the same pain that Nicky felt. “Ohhh! I have forgotten how flawed the male body is! But it seems yours is the most flawed of all!”

Nicky coughed, staring up at the specter. “What in God’s name are youse? What’ve ya done to me?”

“Obviously, nothing that heathen, Natalie Venkman, could have done worse off!” Maleficent thundered. “If I were only at full power right now, I would show you how much I could do to you! Unfortunately, my powers have not fully manifested, since you inadvertently freed me from that underground prison.”

“I’m a Catholic man, lady!” Nicky yelled. “I’ve got God on my side! And I know for a fact that whatever youse do, He won’t let ya get away with it!”

Maleficent chuckled. “Is that so? Well, I certainly cannot let a pure spirit like yours be corrupted by mine. Perhaps I shall find one that is not so pure.” Her ghostly form then materialized into a haze again and floated down the alleyway, leaving Nicky behind on the ground to soon be found by a team of police officers that immediately placed him under arrest. Despite his thousand pleas of being possessed by a ghost, he was whisked away to the nearest police station.

Meanwhile, Maleficent found herself a new host: the taxi driver who brought her and her mortal host to the restaurant. The driver had still been under her control the whole time she was away, much to her advantage. Maleficent needed another human form to possess long enough for her powers to return, and she only hoped this male form was much tougher than the previous one. “Well, Mister…” She gawked at the driver’s license and read the name of her new host, “Nathaniel…interesting name. Let us see how far we can go with your body.” She then drove away from the scene, continuing her task.

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Natalie chuckled, uncovering the box full of ghost-busting equipment in the minivan that was driven by Christina. “I don’t believe it. It’s all here. Every single piece of junk we ever used nearly a year ago.” She shook her head and grinned as she added, “And all because ol’ Hades wants another shot at kicking our butts.”

“Have you figured out what she meant by playing her own part in his plan, Dr. Spengler?” Genevieve asked.

Sean shook his head in reply. “But it’s obvious that she knows about it and how we’re involved. She probably wanted a shot at us before Hades could get one.”

“The nerve of that woman to come up in my grill and tell me to shut up in front of all my peeps,” Natalie ranted, and raised a finger up in declaration. “She gonna pay for that. I don’t care how long you’ve been cooped up somewhere.”

“Relax, ‘Big Lady V’,” Christina teased. “I doubt you lost the respect of all those obsessed boys.”

Natalie scoffed. “And I thought it was my singing they liked.” She reached inside the box of ghost-busting equipment and detached a Proton Gun from one of the packs. She carefully looked at it and got a nostalgic feeling, while continuing to address her friends. “So, uh, you guys weren’t able to get Jay and Jacqueline in on this little reunion?”

“Well, Jay’s too busy playing fairy tales with his new girlfriend,” Christina replied, “and we’re on our way to see…”

“Wait,” interrupted Venkman, “My boy Jay’s got himself a mamasita in his life right now? Why wasn’t I notified of this historic event?”

Spengler rolled his eyes in disgust. “Venkman, could you at least pretend to be interested in what we’re dealing with here. It isn’t just Hades and Maleficent. It’s Jafar as well.”

“Dang! The entire Disney Village People are back?”

“He came at us in Dr. S’s shop with a bunch of live copies of the Necronomicon.” Alex told her. “They were sent by this Jafar guy for some funky reason.”

Natalie stared at her strangely for a minute and then said, “I’m sorry. I just got lost on the fact that we’ve got Mouseketeers working with us here.”

Goofy chuckled as he looked over at Cody and Alex. “Gwarsh! I’ve really got to catch up on current events.” The two children just awkwardly looked at the character, neither of them bothering to remark.

“And you,” said Natalie, gesturing to Genevieve. “I mean, how in the heck did you get into my old uniform?”

Genevieve looked down at it and sheepishly chuckled. “I was just…oh, man…I really can’t explain, Dr. Venkman. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, I’m not mad,” Natalie reassured. “A little perplexed maybe, considering the fact there’s a strange girl in my old clothes…but I think it looks pretty sweet on you.”

A flattered Genevieve smiled. “You really think so?”

“Well, the butt area’s a little baggy—for obvious reasons—but everything else looks…awesome.” She smiled at her; and, even though there wasn’t a spotlight on her at the time, her smile still had that sparkling quality. Something about the way Natalie smiled was like magic. It was exactly the reason why she was the spokeswoman for the Ghostbusters. “Just make sure you wash it after you take it off. Because, girlfriend, you smell like Kobe Bryant’s socks after a Lakers game.”

That was the funny thing about Natalie Venkman to Genevieve: Just when the magic is there for you to admire, out comes the classic “Venkman Wit” to take it away. Despite that, Venkman had a heart of gold. Genevieve couldn’t figure out why Dr. Spengler would seem so skeptical in recruiting Natalie back into the team. She couldn’t even figure out the one thing that had been boggling her mind for almost a year: why did the Ghostbusters ever split up? She figured that time would be the best one to ask, since two of the founding members were there in the flesh.

Unfortunately, Natalie spoke up before Genevieve could have the chance. “So where do we intend on finding ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ anyways?”

“Well, remember Jacqueline always talked about doing something special for the kids when we were doing birthday parties and school events between busts?” Christina asked.

A grin crept across Natalie’s face. “Oh, man! You ain’t sayin’…” It got strangely quiet in the van, until Venkman busted with laughter. “Dude! Put the pedal to the metal, Chris! I have just got to see this!”

            Sean and Christina both began to feel very agitated over Venkman’s enthusiasm in witnessing the new job being occupied by Jacqueline Zeddemore; at that point, they regretted going to Natalie first. Had they chosen otherwise, they would be spared of the anxiety of heading to their next destination: Pizza Planet.