Twisted Beyond Recognition Box Set Page 6

  I don't want to look like a chump in front of my girl, so I pull myself from the cling of her rocky cleavage and man-up. "I'm not scared. Do I look scared?"

  "A little," says Jack.

  "Just get your steamstalk working already, and I'll be the first one up!"

  Jack lights a match, then crawls under the robomination and sets some enchanted wood ablaze. That stuff burns long and hot, and in no time steam starts leaking from the loose joints of the robomination's pipes. The gears grind, slowly at first, but then build up enough momentum to start the giant spool churning. That's all this machine is doing, though – churning, churning, with the crimpers at the top flopping back and forth like drunken sock puppets.

  I breathe a sigh of relief, feeling like a million bucks. I get to be the supportive best friend and the daring boyfriend, all without stepping an inch off the ground. "Hey, maybe next time," I say to Jack, but then I see it – a long vine crawling up towards the robomination's spool. It gets caught on one of the gear teeth.

  "It's working!" Jack screams.

  Another vine latches on, then another. They grow aggressively, trying to devour the robomination, but Jack's figured out a way to use the forest against itself. In no time, the spool is full, and out the top come the ends of the vines. They go through the crimper and get braided together to form one massive stalk. The robomination works double time to keep from being swallowed up into the forest.

  "We'd better hitch a ride while we can," Jack says.

  I'm pushed from behind. "You first, hero," Kaz says to me. She bats her eyes, blows me a kiss. Oh, what I'll do for that girl.

  I mind my step as I climb up the spooled vines, then make my way up to the steamstalk itself. It's growing a foot a second now, so thick all three of us holding hands couldn't get all the way around it. I clench my jaw and look at Jack and Kaz. They both nod back to me. Then I face my fear. I jump, latch on, and dig my arms and legs in tight.

  I'm thrust up so fast I have to close my eyes. I hear Kaz scream, "Here goes nothing!" then Jack say, "Treasure, here we come!" We ride for twenty minutes before the steamstalk grinds to a halt.

  "We'll have to climb from here," Jack says, his words chilling me worse than the cold breeze.

  The city and Everglen are spread out beneath us – a monstrous gray ring of stone buildings webbed with asphalt roads surrounding a lush island of greenery. Kaz and Jack are making up the distance. I start climbing, holding on to each breath of thin air. As we near the clouds, the temperature drops sharply, and soon we're blinded by whiteness. I struggle to find hand and footholds, grabbing carefully, knowing one false step will send me plummeting.

  At last the clouds part, and I step onto the billowing surface. It's spongy, but I learn to walk like I'm stepping on cotton candy. A little pressure and it stiffens beneath my feet, too much and my foot sinks straight through.

  Squinting through the harshest of sunlight, I see a ginormous fortress before me. Well, maybe not a fortress – more like an old, crusty shack that looks like it's a hard sneeze from crumbling to bits, but hell, it is ginormous, higher than the Bellview Towers and as wide as ten city blocks.

  "Is it everything we imagined?" Jack asks as Kaz yanks him onto the clouds.

  "Not quite," I say. From the looks of things, this giant hasn't got two pennies to rub together, much less any sort of gold. Jack seems undaunted and marches soundlessly right up to the expanse of weathered wood panels. They're buckling and cracking so bad that we're able to see right into the house. It's disorienting. I lose my balance as my eyes take in the view from a rat's perspective. A vast desert of warped wood planks stretches out in all directions with gaps as wide as Kaz's mother's ass ... not that I've been looking. But really, it's just a one room hovel: a cot, a table and a couple beat-up chairs, a wood stove with a frying pan hanging over top, and rumpled clothes tossed about a sitting area.

  "I don't see any riches," I whisper, though there's no giant in sight, and even if there were, I doubt he'd hear us.

  "Oh, there's riches," Jack bellows. "We just have to try harder to find them."

  "There," says Kaz. "Over to the right, underneath the bench."

  Jack pushes us out of the way to get a better look. "It's a goose," he grumbles.

  "You never heard of the goose that lays golden eggs?" Kaz asks. "Sheeze, for a couple of treasure chasers, you certainly don't know much at all about giants." Kaz shakes her head, then steps inside. Jack and me scramble after her. I try not to breathe through my nose. It smells like dirty drawers in here.

  We're small enough to walk right through the wire mesh of the sleeping goose's cage, then we climb our way up to the top of her straw nest, careful not to disturb her. Last thing we need is to become some goose's mid-afternoon snack.

  "I'm going in," says Jack, staring up at twenty feet of feathered goose ass. "If she's sitting on something, I'm going to find it. Kaz, you see if you can break through a few of those links so we can roll the egg straight out of here."

  Kaz nods and starts snapping the cage wire with her bare hands.

  "And what do you want me to do?" I ask, suddenly feeling as useless as tits on a tumbleweed.

  "Watch for the giant." And like that, Jack disappears into a jungle of white and brown feathers.

  It's unnervingly quiet. My head swivels in each direction, my senses on edge. Did I just hear something? Shadows loom like seas. I can't stop shivering, and all my thoughts are about getting my skinny ass out of here, and to hell with Jack and his treasure. Why should I pretend to be brave when I'm not? It's in my blood after all, right? Just another skittish pixie, too afraid to face the world. Just as I'm about to make a run for it, Jack squirms back out covered in liquid gold. My heart flips so hard it skips a beat, but then I notice that it's yolk covering Jack, and lots of it.

  "They're just regular eggs." Jack sulks and wipes yolk from his face. "Through and through. Every single one of them."

  The goose stirs, then lets out a thunderous squawk as it cocks its head in our direction.

  "Let's get out of here," I say, and Kaz is right behind me, nodding in agreement. We're all the way back out in the clouds, nearly to the steamstalk when the wind picks up and snowflakes flutter past us.

  "It's snowing!" Kaz says, a real treat for us since it hardly ever snows in the city. Maybe this trip wasn't such a waste after all. I've impressed Kaz at least, maybe even enough to earn a nice, moist kiss. I pull her close to enjoy a romantic moment, and tilt my head up to catch a large flake on the tip of my tongue. It tastes like salt and doesn't melt in my mouth, just moistens like newspaper left out in the rain. I spit it out.

  "That's not snow," I say, scraping the gunk off my tongue with my teeth.

  Jack catches a piece in his hand and examines it. "Dandruff," he declares. And then the smell hits us. We all turn our heads up and stare straight into the face of an angry giant dressed in tattered rags and worn brown boots with frayed laces. He's got a serious case of bed head, and as far as I can tell, he must be allergic to personal hygiene.

  I expect him to say something profound, something giant-like, but he scowls with eyes as big and fiery as the sun and says, "You wee little shits destroyed my dinner!" We all scramble to the vine, but the giant reaches down, swoops us up into his palm, and brings us level with his face.

  "Three eggs you destroyed. And there's three of you," bellows the giant in his deep, grinding voice. The halitosis plows into me like a head on collision with a train. "I'd call that a fair trade. Curried wee-people is one of my favorites."

  Then his fingers wrap us into a tight fist, and my stomach slips all the way to my feet by the time he's carried us back to the house and stuffs us into a spice jar half-full of curry. He sticks the cork lid on, then gives the jar a shake. We go flying like turds in upturned kitty litter, the three of us, coated all over in golden dust. I cough out the burn in my lungs as I try to find my footing. Outside our glass cage, the giant lights his stove, pulls down his frying pan, and st
icks it on the single burner – every move so tooth-achingly slow that I've got all the time in the world to watch my life flash before my eyes. As the frying pan heats, the giant takes a cookbook from a sparse, built-in shelf and sits down at his table.

  I hear the grating of rocks behind me, and I turn to see Kaz's stone-cold self, boulders rising from her flesh, fists becoming balls of rugged igneous, bits of pebbles dancing across her skin like trained fleas. I gasp. Yeah, I'd seen her stoned-out before, but never like this. I slink out of her way, and watch as she whacks at the glass, hands like sledgehammers, but the glass is at least a foot thick, and Kaz only succeeds in scratching the surface.

  And then she starts crying, tears leaving beautiful blue-black streaks down the gray slate of her cheeks. I put my arm around her. "Jack will figure a way out of this," I say to her. "He always has great ideas."

  Jack's sitting cross-legged on a mound of curry, deep in thought. I sit next to him, eagerly waiting for inspiration to strike him. I look up at the cork stopper looming above, then nudge Jack.

  "Maybe we could build some sort of harpoon," I say, shoving my hands deep into my pockets. There're just my keys, a few coins, and a gum wrapper, but I've seen Jack do more with less. "And we could tie our clothes together to make rope, or–"

  "It's too high," Jack spits. I've never heard him so defeated.

  "Maybe, but we at least have to try!"

  There's an itch between my shoulder blades that makes itself known, an itch I'd nearly forgotten about. I shed my t-shirt and wriggle out of my too-tight undershirt as well. I reach around as best as I can and peel my sweat-drenched wings from my back. They trill as I flutter them dry, such frail, wimpy little things – partly from watered down genes, but mainly because I've kept them hidden all these years. I feel myself flush as Jack stares in awe, and I wonder if he'll still want to be best friends if we do manage to get out of here alive.

  I flap so hard, my winglets buzz, but it's not nearly enough to get me off the pile of curry dust.

  "Care to give me a launch?" I say to Kaz. She's dumbfounded, but agrees and tosses me nearly to the ceiling of the jar. I catch myself midair, slowly sinking back down, but I fight hard for me and Jack and Kaz and soon my arms are pressed up against the cork roof. I push, push hard for all of us. I'll never be as smart or as brave as Jack, or as strong as Kaz, and even though I've got the upper body strength of a pixie, I've got the heart of one, too. Heat rises all the way to my wingtips, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass, skin shimmering from head to toe. The lid begins to budge, then gives a bit, then pops loose, just enough for me to slip out.

  "I'll get you out of here," I say, then look over at the giant, who's still flipping through recipes. Quietly, I flutter down to the ground, and then run across the expanse of floor until I'm right under his chair. With all my might, I tug at the frayed edges of his shoelaces until they slip from their poorly tied knot and are long enough for me to loop together into a knot of my own. When I finish, I make a run for the door, whooping and hollering and beating the floor so he'll see me, but it's not working. I'm just not loud enough for the giant to hear, so I run back to the goose cage and yank on a feather in her sensitive area. She squawks bloody murder, and the giant looks my way, sees me, then lumbers to his feet.

  "Another wee-people?" he says. "Four is better than three!" And then he takes a step to chase after me and his shoelaces catch, and suddenly he's falling like timber right towards me. There's no time to go right or left, and I certainly can't outrun him, so I do the only thing I can and jump down into the crack between the wood flooring and try not to get smashed. My whole body rattles, and my brain nearly scrambles, but I don't have the luxury of worrying about myself. I've got to go back and save Kaz and Jack.

  I follow the walls of the floor planks blindly until I'm out from beneath the giant. Topside, I see the fallen giant among a shower of feathers, and that poor goose's cage smashed to bits. The aged rafters above creak angrily from the crash. I shake my head and find my bearings, then make my way towards the stove. My heart sinks when I see the jar of curry shattered on the ground. "Kaz! Jack!" I run for what seems like a mile before I finally reach the mound of yellow dust. I dig through, searching, feeling, with tears streaming from my eyes. I feel a leg and pull. It's Kaz, groggy, but alive.

  "Troll defenses," she says. "A little fall like that won't hurt rock essence." And she's right. But Jack, Jack's just flesh and blood. Together we search for him, and Kaz pulls him out, his body limp in her massive arms.

  "He's still breathing," Kaz says. "Barely."

  "Oh, Jack, look what you've done this time," I say. We run past the giant, Jack flopping around like a rag doll draped over Kaz's shoulder.

  "Just you wait!" the giant bellows, just now getting up to his knees, but we're out of there, quick fast and in a hurry before he can slip out of his boots. Clouds cling to my feet as I sprint across the surface, but we don't have time to tread carefully. The giant swings his door open, yelling and swearing and cursing at us. He slams the door behind him. The shack trembles, then leans a little further to the side. The giant turns back at the sound of moaning wood. He throws his hands up to his head as the shack begins to collapse into itself.

  We hustle back down the steamstalk and emerge from beneath the cloud just in time to see a thousand pieces of rotten wood raining down. The giant follows, his shrill scream running the entire length of my spine.

  They say his impact caused a city-wide blackout, and all the windows in a three-mile radius shattered. I don't remember any of that. I just remember the ambulance ride with Jack looking real, real bad, and the paramedics going on about broken this and punctured that, and how he was lucky to be breathing at all.

  And I'm by his side when he wakes up, still hooked to a dozen machines with tubes going in and out of him like he's one of his own robominations. "Hey, Gannon," he rasps, and I say to him, I say, "Hey, Jack, wanna see something real special?" and of course he says yeah, because he's been in an induced coma for two days, trapped inside his own mind. So I open my wallet and pull out a bunch of hundred dollar bills and I give him half, because we'd promised to split our riches fifty-fifty, though Kaz had already demanded more than her own fair share.

  "What's this for?" Jack asks.

  I tell him all about how that goose had gotten away in the commotion, and that it had flown right down, nearly landed on Kaz after the ambulance had taken me and him to the hospital. She'd sold that bird to an omletry for a hefty but fair sum plus free omelets for life. Jack tells me the thought of goose eggs makes him a little queasy, and I say, "Yeah, me too," then I tell him to hurry up and feel better so we can go back to the Everglen and pluck wings off of fairies before they decide to turn the forest into condos, and Jack says, "Maybe we shouldn't, because wings come in handy sometimes." Then we both sit quiet for a while, before Jack tells me that he's got an idea for a new robomination, and I listen to his delusions because that's what best friends do.

  ###

  Return to Table of Contents

  YOU HAD ME AT RARRRGG

  BY NICKY DRAYDEN

  First Published by Shimmer Magazine, 2010

  Few folks know that zombies prefer cat brains over human ones, cats being a smidge smarter and all. Problem is cats are just so damned quick. Then again, few folks know anything these days on account of there just being two of us left. And I can't rightly call myself human anymore, now can I?

  Dr. Arbuckle performs last-minute tests on the machine as I watch. She swats me away when I get too close. Not in a mean sort of way, but like Renée used to when I'd lift the lid off the stew pot to sneak a taste. Way back then, before Renée got the side of her head all chewed up. Back then, when I still ate stew.

  "I'm nearly done," Dr. Arbuckle says to me. She stands up from the instrument panel and the light from the fluorescent lamps hanging overhead hits her just right. Strands of sweaty hair cling to her face. She's beautiful and I tell her so.

  "Ra
rrrgg!" I say, but she never understands. She treats me real good, though. We've got a sort of unspoken contract, her and me. She promises to catch me stray cats with those contraptions she's set up about town, and in return, I promise to keep her in good company. And to not eat her.

  "June sixth, 2041," she says adjusting the dial on the machine. "That should give the world enough time to mount proper defenses."

  "Rarrrgg!" I agree. That's two months before the first confirmed case of the Rochester flu, which came out of nowhere and killed over forty-eight thousand in just a few weeks. Six months before the deadly mutation of the virus that now crawls through my veins. Eighteen months before mankind stares into the hungry jowls of extinction.

  Dr. Arbuckle works herself into a straight tizzy, stuffing a small duffle bag with test tubes and pages and pages of her chicken-scratch formulas. I try to shuffle out of her way, but I never move fast enough.

  "Steven!" she yells, giving me a bump with her hip. "A little room, please?"

  That's what she calls me when she's frustrated. Most often, it's just Steve, or sometimes Stevie when she's feeling sweet on me. My real name's Chet, like I've tried to tell her, but yeah...

  It's a good thing we found each other when we did. I'd smelled the sweet scent of her brain--must have been from thirty miles away. That's plenty far when you top out at a quarter mile an hour. I remember it clearly: her scavenging the local grocery for scraps. Me scavenging for her. Probably the last two survivors left on this war-torn planet.

  She shot me six times before her bullets ran out. Blew my left arm straight off, too! But then our eyes met, and my fetid heart fluttered. I led off with one of my old pickup lines. "If I told you you had an amazing body, would you hold it against me?" Of course she only heard the moaning and she screamed to high heaven, but she warmed up eventually.