Mrs. Short (Yellow)

Mrs. Short in "The Martin Crimes"

**Mrs. Short** was the version of Mrs. Short from the Yellow World.

## Biography

In keeping with the hippie ethos of the Yellow World, Mrs. Short was a very mellow, laidback person. She and her husband had raised their son Francis under the name "Freedom." However, he disliked it by the time that he was a teenager and asked them not to call him by it anymore.

Unlike their counterparts, she and her husband spoke with Liverpool accents.

As well as reading tarot cards, Mrs. Short made T-Shirts which she sold for $5 each. The tie-dye ones typically sold better than the screen printed ones with slogans such as "Peace, man," "Make Love, Not War" and "Go with the Flow," which everyone already had.

Having discovered the Parallax, Francis began stealing things from both the Red and Blue Worlds. He had intended to steal some aspirin for his mother, who was suffering from a terrible headache, but Ben gave him some that he had bought. After he had been travelling between worlds for some time, Mrs. Short noticed that Francis had changed. She thought that he had become more restless, as if he always wanted to be somewhere else. When she said that she and his father hoped that he would always run free as the wind to the rainbow's end, Francis told her that he was trying his best.

On one occasion, Mrs. Short and Francis spent an entire morning making tie-dye T-Shirts. He covered them with a tarp with bricks to hold it down so that they would not get wet in the oncoming storm. However, Martin later came along and gleefully removed the bricks, resulting in the T-Shirts being ruined. Mrs. Short believed that the wind had blown the tarp away and attributed it to bad karma but Francis realised that someone had done it deliberately when he noticed footprints in the mud. After following the footprints, he learned from Tiffany that Martin was responsible. This was one of a series of incidents across the Parallax that inspired the gang to exact revenge on the Martins.

Francis was very disturbed when his Silver World counterpart was blandished by Betti as he knew that it was meant for him. He returned to his own world and told his parents that he loved them. His mother thought that his plan to create a defensible position in case of invasion was "aggressively militaristic." Francis compared the situation to the Three Little Pigs, claiming that they lived in a house of sticks when they needed a house of bricks. Missing his point, Mrs. Short commented on how lucky the brick Pig was as the Wolf would have eaten him if he had turned up when the Pig had only one wall up. Mr. Short then suggested a house made of straw in mud bricks, which was more environmentally friendly. Francis was annoyed by his parents' attitude and tried to convert their house into a fort by himself. His efforts mostly consisted of nailing planks of wood over the windows.

## Appearances

* "The Artful Dodger"
* "The Martin Crimes"
* "The Curse of the Incredibly Bad News"

## Behind the Scenes

All versions of Mrs. Short were played by Vivienne Glance.

With 3 appearances, she is tied with her Silver World counterpart for the most appearances of any version of Mrs. Short.