SAN JOSE, CA – After decades of imprisonment, the Peanuts gang has finally been freed. With the recent death of the group’s captor, Charles Schultz, Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and several others may finally return to their families. Nearly 50 years ago, the children were abducted near their school and locked away in a room located in the basement of Schultz California estate. Schultz kept them there and had them “perform” while he sketched them and turned the group’s misery and depression into one of America’s longest running comic strips.

“Well, Chucky (Charles Schultz) never really hurt us and he treated pretty good, I guess. He used to just sit outside our cage and watch us. At first it was kinda creepy but then we just got used to it,” Lucy, 57, said.

The Peanuts gang is consistent in the feelings that Schultz was a good guy at heart despite holding them against their will. But not all of the gang feel the same about the comic strip Schultz drew. Perhaps the best know of the bunch, Charlie Brown, is disgusted by the comic strip that bears his likeness.

“Come on, there is no way that my head was ever that big. And the only reason I was bald was cause the guy made me shave my head. I don’t know why, I guess he had a bald fetish or something,” Brown said. “And another thing. That thing with Peppermint Patty, we were just friends. Besides, even I could tell in the comic that that fence swung both ways, if you know what I mean.”

While most of the “kids” feel a little resentment toward Schultz, they feel that their life wasn’t as bad as the media has made it out to be.

“Hell, it was great,” Linus said. “We ate well, had plenty of exercise, and we didn’t really have a care in the world. There were a few times in the winter when he forgot to throw a blanket over the cage, but hey, he’s only human. Really, the only problems came when began to get older and develop sexually. Chucky never let us be adults, we always had to be these little kids. Well he would let Lucy be a woman but only a couple nights a month when Mrs. Schultz was outta town.”

After extensive psychiatric evaluations, doctors at the Willsboro Clinic have concluded that the damage done by Schultz is irreversible. By not letting the children develop mentally, the entire group has no idea what it means to be adult.

“These children, well actually adults now, are just that, children. While their bodies are fully developed, they have been so sheltered that the adult world is totally foreign to them,” Dr. Abe Pennington said. “They don’t really understand sex, though Lucy apparently does and to my understanding, several of the others have experimented.”

Perhaps the saddest part of this tragedy is the fate of poor Snoopy and Woodstock. The pair, best friends in the comic, died a few decades ago, under the severe strain of the confinement. But their skeletons were used like puppets, performing their macabre little duties.

“The skeletons really got to me at first. What with the skin still hanging off of them and all. But after a few years, they just became part of the gang again,” Lucy said.