Obsessed with the Smurfs!

For the first few days after the 'bus' incident, Gargamel stayed in his hideout in the castle. He had sustained a nasty ankle injury and could not walk far, it had been hard work just getting back in one piece as he almost got run over a second time. By an old man on a mobility scooter who decided that the pavement was his own personal racetrack. But this time Gargamel fought back and cast a spell that ran the battery down in seconds. It felt good to be in control again.

Although he did not have the Dragon wand anymore he still had the small stick that he took from the woman at the fashion show. To be honest any stick would do the job as he still had lots of magic essence left. In the heat of the battle the machine had been left to run and had completed its job. It was enough to fill a small glass phial and Gargamel kept it on him always. He also decided to use a satchel to carry what he found when foraging in the park. He knew that the Smurfs had managed to escape back to his world, unfortunately for him he would have to wait in this hell for at least three weeks until the next full moon, when he would be able to use the Smurf essence to make another blue moon.

He liked the park, it was an oasis of calm compared to the madness and chaos of the streets. Although he and Azrael were always hungry, they managed to find what they needed from the bins. Well there was more food in this world than in their own and he did not have to go hunting for it. He was now bored of foraging and wanted to explore more of this place people called New York. Now that his ankle was better this was a good time as any.

He still wore his old robes but without the cloak, it had annoyed him. As this was a big city no-one batted an eye at what he was wearing, to them he either looked like a homeless weirdo or some kind of monk doing penance. This suited Gargamel quite well. He despised talking to anyone else unless he had to and wearing his strange clothes made people get out of the way so he could walk along the pavements unhindered by social niceties. He also found out that putting the cowl over his head made people give him an even wider berth. This amused him greatly.

He was much more careful now about crossing roads and was one of the rare people to wait for the green man instead of just taking their chance and running across. He unconsciously started to bend down to rub his hurt ankle, the memory of being hit by that bus was going to haunt him for years to come.

After walking for about two hours they came to an area of the city full of arcade halls and gaming machines. Gargamel and Azrael were quite mesmerised by the flashing lights and noises and spent sometime just watching others using the machines. The evil wizard was also glad to have a bit of a rest, his ankle was playing up again and it was good to sit down for a few minutes whilst watching the world go by.

Gargamel noted that everyone in the arcade had to feed the machines with money and that some of them went to other machines that spewed out lots of coins.

He cursed his luck that he did not have any money with him. He got up to have a closer look and today was his lucky day. He happened to walk past some of the one-arm bandits just as a punter hit the jackpot. Money came out so quickly that a couple of coins fell at Gargamel's feet. He quickly stood on them and then pretended to adjust his footwear. The jackpot winner did not notice his deviousness and Gargamel went to one of the other one arm bandits and put a coin into the slot.

"Right, so if I've got this right, I pull down this metal arm and the machine will give me money, isn't that right Azrael?" His cat just shook his head "Bah! What do you know? You're only a cat!" Gargamel gave the arm a tug and watched the numbers and symbols spinning in front of him, eventually they settled down and stopped. Gargamel was waiting expectantly for the money to come out. "Why is this thing not working? Give me my money!" He gave the machine a thump and this set off the motion alarm.

Before he knew it two hulking security guards grabbed him and Gargamel found himself unceremoniously thrown out onto the street where he landed hard on his backside.

"How dare you manhandle the great and powerful wizard Gargamel! I'll turn you both into toads!" The security guards just looked at him and laughed "Take your meds chum!" replied one of them. Gargamel was seething inside and was just starting to open up his poison ring and reaching for his wand, when Azrael meowed at him very loudly and started to scratch at his leggings "Ow! What are you doing fool cat?" He looked down and Azrael was looking very worried. Then it dawned on Gargamel that he better back down pretty quick or they might attack him with their own magic like last time. He did not like that feeling and the thought of being locked up again with all those behemoths was enough to make Gargamel hold up his hands and slowly back away from the security guards "Ok I'm going but don't think you've won!" he said over his shoulder as he quickly walked away. He then promptly fell over Azrael and landed in a large puddle of water

The security guards just stood on the pavement almost wetting themselves with laughter at the antics of this strange man.

"Curses, curses on them all," muttered Gargamel under his breath. He was already getting fed up of his adventure, but he was determined to get hold of some more money. His magic did not seem to affect the machines in walls where people fed plastic cards into them and all other sources of money were well guarded. He was not going to stoop so low as to rob someone. "Azrael, there must be another way to get money around here?" Azrael walked a little further forward and sat down by a metal box on a pole at the side of the pavement. "What, do you think I can get money from this?" asked Gargamel whilst he examined the machine. "Meoow,merrow!" answered his faithful cat.

"Ok, I'll give it a try," Gargamel took out his wand, flicked open the poison ring and dabbed a small drop of Smurf essence onto the end of the wand and chanted "Aurum tuum et argentum, modo nummos solvo," As soon as he had finished the incantation the parking meter started to release it's coins. Gargamel caught them in his robes and transferred them to his satchel. "Ha,ha! Now we have plenty of money, what shall we do with it? I know, lets have some proper food, look there's a cafe over there" Before the cat could even say anything, Gargamel was off marching down the road, his mind set on getting some fresh food.

Once in the cafe he sat down and Azrael hid himself under the table. It was a nicer than normal cafe and in reality it was the smell of the coffee that drew him to this place. A waitress came up to him and said "May I take your order sir?" she said with that 'I'm so bored with this job' type of voice. "Yes you may wench. I desire one all day breakfast with a side order of mushrooms on toast and a large latte coffee," he told her with an air of haughtiness. The waitress had already decided that this person was going to be trouble before he even spoke and now her suspicions were proved beyond doubt. So she answered in a barely disguised sarcastic tone "How would..Sir be wanting his eggs?" Gargamel looked at her as if she was mad, "Cooked of course, there's not that many ways to do eggs is there?" this was the cue the waitress was waiting for and she took a deep breath and said "Do you want your eggs, sunny side up, scrambled, poached, basted, shirred, over hard, over medium, over easy, hard boiled, soft boiled or as an omelette?" She stood waiting for the weird man to answer. In truth Gargamel was not really listening as whilst she had been talking he noticed a small child walk past the window holding a Smurf in her hand, she had walked past quite quickly so he did not get a good view, but it was Smurf blue. The waitress was getting impatient now and started to tap her foot and she then cleared her throat loudly "Hmm,hmm, did you hear what I said?" she asked him. "Eh? Oh whatever you said first," the distracted wizard replied. "Ok, so that will be sunny side up," and then she walked off down to the counter to place the order. "Azrael, did you see that? A Smurf! That old tramp was right, they are everywhere! I'll need to find out where they are coming from. As soon as we've eaten we'll have a look around."

The rest of his visit at the cafe passed without incident and the waitress just satisfied herself with knowing that an extra ingredient had been added to Gargamel's coffee. No one got away with calling her a 'Wench'. But Gargamel still had one more annoyance for her when he could only pay for the meal in dimes. She was glad to see the back of him and only then did she notice the cat sneaking out behind him.

"Glad he's gone, he was giving me the creeps," she remarked to her colleague.

Gargamel and Azrael were now on the hunt for Smurfs. He had not thought about them for almost a week now and just seeing that flash of blue was enough to awaken his Smurf hunting urges, even though they would be of no use to him in this world as he could not make a potion, he still wanted to catch one, even just holding one made him feel good. He was addicted to catching Smurfs whatever the cost to himself.

But what he did not realise, was that in our world all the Smurfs were just toys or cartoons, there were no real Smurfs anywhere.

They walked past another arcade and went inside. The one-arm bandits were in the corner, the video arcade games in another and various ride-on motorcycle games and photo boots were dotted in the centre of the room. They were about to leave when Gargamel spotted the Smurf blue again.

In the far corner of the room was a glass fronted machine full of Smurfs! He ran up to it and almost hit the glass in frustration when he realise they were just soft toys, not living, breathing creatures. "I was so sure that it was a real Smurf that I saw!" he said to Azrael, his cat just looked at him with a look of pity that his owner could be so mistaken.

To be continued…