Matthew of the IHOP Restroom part X: Final Part

About ten that morning, Matthew and Mary went into Mass Street music with the extra strawberry syrup from IHOP. They were looking for some place that an inter-dimensional portal would open up but they couldn’t find it. Mary continued to look while Matthew got distracted by the guitar that he had had his eye on for some time. He picked it and started to play it. There wasn’t a real specific song he tried to play; it was just the one he had been writing. The guy who was working came over to ask what he was doing. But at the moment he hit the seventh bar to the song, the room started to swirl around him. “Okay, what did I do?” Matthew asked.
The guy who came over to investigate wasn’t sure what to make of it. He was going to tell Matthew to put the guitar down but he was awestruck. “It looks like you’ve just opened a portal to another world! I’m getting out of here!” he said and ran out.
“Wait a minute,” Mary said, “you really are the chosen one!”
“Yeah, I know, we’ve been through this already. I’m Matthew of the IHOP Restroom. You would remind me of that all the time…well, you used to anyway.”
“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “The legend of the 18th dimension tells us of a true chosen one who would bring peace between the Planet of Stroganoff and the Shipgoes. They say the chosen one would open a portal to our dimension with his bars.”
“I just played a song on the guitar. That’s all I did,” Matthew said. “It was the opening to some silly little song that I…” he paused. He thought for about two seconds and then said, “that I wrote myself…” All the time he was arguing with the fact that it was fate that brought him to the 18th dimension when all along, it was the opposite.
“And to think that I was given to and owned by the true chosen one,” Mary said. “Oh, if only I knew…” she paused and her thoughts drifted.
“You’re right, Mary Ann, I do own you, and we’ve got business in the 18th dimension, to take care of. And I’ve got some wrongs to right.”
“Oh, yes sir,” Mary said. They walked through the portal where they immediately found themselves back on Captain Bill’s ship about an hour after they had left for the third dimension. In that time, the Shipgoes who had attacked were beaten off and The ENVOY was heading back into port. “Uncle Bill!” Mary called.
Captain Bill turned around surprised to see the both of them back there. “What are you doing back? Iiiiiiiieeeeeee thought you went to find the holy grail.”
“We did,” Matthew said as he and Mary held up the syrup together.
“Oh miiiieeeee gosh, it does exist!” Captain Bill said. “Iiiiieeeee need to get you two to Klapertoes McAmsterdam.” There was no way to get them to Klaper by sea. So the ship remained an air ship as they sailed on the breeze to where Klaper was. As the ship was hovering over his exact location, Captain Bill called out “McAmsterdam!”
Matthew and Mary came down and handed Klaper the canister of Strawberry Syrup from IHOP and said that it was the Shipgoes’ holy grail. When Klaper asked how they got back to the 18th dimension, Mary told him how Matthew played a song that he wrote himself (making that part very clear) on a guitar that opened up the portal. Klaper got excited and told Matthew that he WAS in fact the true chosen one.
Klaper took the canister of syrup and contacted the Shipgoes who were peaceful and gave them the syrup. This fulfilled the prophesy that the chosen one would bring peace between the planet and the Shipgoes. Of course, the fundamentalist Shipgoes started battling with the peaceful Shipgoes because they didn’t see them as following in the “true” footsteps of Pinky. But that’s their own separate story to be told and I’m not quite through with Matthew’s story just yet.
In the land of Nude, there was a parade and a feast in Matthew’s honor. Klaper told him that he could come and go anytime he liked but that he would always be treated like a king. Matthew insisted that he had to go back home but he had one more thing that had to be taken care of. He had to go to the path of desire. So he, Mary, and Klaper went to the path of desire. He made the wish he had to make, but nothing happened.
“What happened?” he asked. “I made my wish but nothing happened.”
“Did you wish with your heart or with your head?” Mary asked. “If the wish you tried to make isn’t from the heart but from your head, you’ll need the Path of Necessity.”
With that, Matthew asked Klaper to take him to the Path of Necessity. When they got to the Path of Necessity, Matthew made his wish and it worked. But Mary started to feel funny. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“I told the path that I needed to free you and let you return to your life as a wind gnome. The Path of Desire wouldn’t let me but you said come here so I did.”
“Wait, you did that just for me?” Mary asked. She began to cry. Or rather she would but she was already back to her wind gnome state. And wind gnomes don’t cry. They’re just sad. And then, Mary floated away. Matthew didn’t know exactly why Mary was sad. Neither of them would have to put up with each other ever again. With that same idea in mind, he didn’t know why a part of him was sad as well.
Matthew eventually found his way to a portal that took him back to his own dimension where he went about with his everyday life. But the next day while he was waiting for class, the unthinkable happened. Katie Waller came up and talked to him.
“Hey Matthew,” she said, “can you help me figure out something?” she asked.
“Mary Ann!?!? What are you doing here?” Matthew exclaimed.
“Mary Ann? No, I’m Katie. Katie Waller. We have this lit course together. I wanted to know if you had some idea what the connection was the teacher wanted us to make between James Joyce and Edgar Allen Poe since you are in class every day.”
“Oh, sorry,” Matthew said. “No, I don’t think I know. I’m sorry.”
As she went in, he found himself thinking almost humorously that he now knew three things about her, she was hot, she had a class with him, and she didn’t know something that he didn’t know either. At least they had two things in common. A moment later, he was once again disturbed by…Katie? “Hello stranger,” said the girl.
“Katie,” Matthew said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know the…” he paused and looked up and realized that it wasn’t Katie at all.
“No, not Katie! It’s Mary Ann! You remember me, don’t you?”
“Uh yeah, of course I do,” Matthew said. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, you know,” Mary said, “the usual. I went to the Path of Desire, asked to be made human again and to be brought here to the 3rd dimension so I could see you again.”
“But,” Matthew said, “I thought you hated me.”
“I thought so too,” Mary said, “but then all of a sudden and before I knew it, I fell head over hills for you. And when you freed me with your mind because your heart couldn’t, I just knew that somewhere along the lines, you felt the same way.”
She paused when she saw Matthew give her a happy, kind of excited but also confused look. So she said, “My uncle gave me an album called MR. BAD EXAMPLE and it has a song on there called “Searching For A Heart” and contained the lyrics, ‘They say love conquers all, you can’t start it like a car, you can’t stop it with a gun.’ I knew then that I would never stop feeling this way and I had to let you know.”
Matthew didn’t need to hear anymore. Katie Waller would never even think to quote Warren Zevon to him. But Mary had. “Mary Ann, you went searching for a heart and you found mine,” he said with a smile that melted Mary’s heart. She saw that he did feel the same way and that he was pleased to have someone feel that way about him. That was enough to satisfy her.
So, this brings us to the end of Matthew’s story. Well, the end of the part that absolutely has to be told. So the song lyric I opened with came full circle at the end after all. But life is full of coincidences. It’s also filled with other things as well. At first they seem wrong. But they can become so right. So remember that everyone makes mistakes. But maybe you’ll find your grail. And maybe everything will work out in the end for the better. Then maybe, just maybe, you will find your own personal happily ever after…
(Whatever happens, hopefully it’s not as clichéd as this ending.)