21 The Hurtful Memories

The Hurtful Memories Ebenezer had never disliked an item of clothing so much. There was a time in the eighteenth century when he experienced strong feelings of disregard for a certain style of hat that happened to be in fashion, but that was nothing compared to the hatred he felt for the gold-buttoned shirt. The shirt made Ebenezer watch the television that the beast had hooked up to the memory book. Every time he tried to talk over the memories, the shirt would strangle him. Every time he tried to move his head away

from the screen, the shirt would grow tighter around his chest, or turn itchy on his skin. The book had run out of happy memories about the beast, so it was replaying ones it had already shown. The book showed the beast doing its mildly amusing impression of Queen Victoria, and the help that it had given to ensure that Ebenezer was the most fabulously dressed man in the first age of jazz and jazzy trousers. There were clips of the beast vomiting out bombproof shutters to protect the house during wartime, and sparkly boom boxes to make sure that the house wouldn't be le.. out during disco time. The book even showed up to the moment when the beast had vomited out the baby grand piano just a few weeks ago.

When Ebenezer had first seen these same memories just a couple of days ago, he had been secretly thrilled. Now the memories repulsed him. There's nothing like being kidnapped and tortured to make you go off someone. All Ebenezer could think of was getting himself and Bethany as far away from the beast as possible. His only chance of escape seemed to lie in the marks that Claudette's talons had left on the floor. The marks were words, and the words were: THEY'RE YOUR MEMORIES. USE THEM. At first, Ebenezer presumed that the message was just some cruel trick of the beast's, but the longer he looked at them, the more he thought it might have come from

Claudette—or, at least, whatever was still left of her in the beast. Ebenezer tried and tried to think about how he could possibly use his memories to escape, but he couldn't figure it out. He was terribly cross because he knew he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't find a way to save Bethany. There was nothing he had ever wanted more in the world than to see her again. As Ebenezer thought about how much he missed Bethany, the portraits in the memory book began to change, and soon, the TV was filled with clips of her. But because the beast was no longer the subject, the memories were unflattering ones. The book showed Ebenezer picking up Bethany from the orphanage, when she had

insulted his whistling, messed up his house, and demanded to be fed nothing but chocolate cake. Then it showed how Bethany had used this chocolate cake to doodle over all his favorite paintings in the house. There were lots of clips of Bethany calling him charming names like "nincompoop," "nitwit," and "gitface," and the book reminded him of his grumpy feelings whenever Bethany had tried to make him do something that got in the way of his easy life. In spite of the book's efforts, Ebenezer took far more joy from seeing Bethany at her worst than he had from seeing the beast at its loathsome best. It was strange, but the clips of Bethany seemed to have an effect on the shirt and the other items as well. They squirmed and wriggled—deeply uncomfortable at the

sight of Ebenezer and Bethany's friendship. It was like how the memory book and shirt had reacted when Ebenezer had tried doing do-gooding—none of the beastly items seemed to enjoy being in the vicinity of anything good or pure. Ebenezer's eyes welled with tears when he looked at Bethany's face, but then the screen began to change again. He expected a transition to some new series of bad Bethany memories, but the beast appeared instead. The beast was speaking live from a dressing room in the theater, and it was looking straight down the lens of a camera it had vomited out for itself. Ebenezer saw that Claudette's beak was askew and that her body was battered and bruised. Feathers were