by D. M. Guay
“Relax,” Kevin said. “That emo douche won't see anything. You can't see anything without a name tag.”
“But he saw Morty.” Duh.
“Totally different species,” Kevin said. “Morty and the chicks are designed to be seen. Bubby's ancient, an old one. Made of primordial goo or something. Why do you think he's so flubby? As long as he stays inside the store, he's invisible. Unless you've got a name tag. That's part of the magic.”
“But what if Bubby bumps a shelf or something,” I said. “Will Tristan see it move?”
“Shit,” Kevin said. “Hadn't thought of that. No one's ever stuck around this long after midnight. Okay. New plan: Get Loverboy outta here.”
DeeDee was holding the door open for Bubby, who was hunched way down squeezing through. She had a DVD in her hand. “It's finally here! World Wrestling Federation, New Orleans, March 1999. Sold-out crowd. Undertaker versus Big Bossman. And headlining? Your favorites and mine, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mankind versus the Rock and Kane in a Texas Tornado match! Best Friday night, ever!”
She high-fived one of Bubby's spike arms, walked over to the TV and popped the DVD into the player.
“Come on, kid,” Kevin said. “Let's get Loverboy out of here.”
I turned around, ready to usher the sniveling indie rock god out of the store. He was still standing behind the counter, but he had a page from the big, old creepy book in his hand.
“That's not good,” Kevin said.
“DeeDee. I love you! This poem says everything I feel about you. Listen. Please!” Tristan began to read off the page. “I offer myself to you with an open heart. For you, I sacrifice my body and my soul. I will burn forever for you, with an open heart. My love will sever the barrier between worlds.”
“Shut him up! Shut him up! Shut him up!” Kevin screamed and poked me in the neck.
“I don't want to know what he's doing, do I?” Nope. I don't. Because he's reading the fancy words in the scrolly gold and red ink off that page with the giant hell spider on it. Gulp. Why did it have to be the spider page?
Bubby began to howl, like a wolf at the moon.
“That ain't a love poem.” Kevin yelped. “He's summoning Lagopex the Devourer. He's offering himself up as a willing sacrifice. He's professing his love for the old gods. God, I hate hipsters!”
Well, that wasn't good.
“Don't let him finish it, or we're screwed! Go! Go! Go!” Kevin grabbed tight to my shirt. My adrenaline surged, and I ran, full speed, or as full speed as a chubby guy who spent most of his sedentary life playing Xbox could go, right at Tristan.
“I will disrupt the stars and part the heavens so that I may look upon your face forever—”
I jumped over the counter. Okay yeah. I tried to jump over the counter, but instead rammed myself right in the gut and then fumbled forward, half-landing on Tristan. And holy hell did that hurt. But mission accomplished. I snatched that paper right out of his hand. Aha! Victory! “I got it!”
“Too late.” Kevin sighed and rubbed his brow. “He finished it. We're screwed. What a waste of a whiskey buzz. Well, kid, if we make it through this, we'll be getting some fat hazard pay. I've got my eye on a giant flat-screen TV. Eyes on the prize, right?”
“Kevin! Forget the TV!” I screamed. “Look!”
Bubby howled and writhed. He was stuck in the beer cave door. Not stuck, more like webbed. Strings of something white and thick and goopy crisscrossed his belly, holding him in place. He pulled and struggled against the goop, but the stuff wasn't budging. DeeDee was tugging on it, too, trying to free him with one hand, while desperately flipping the emergency switch up and down with the other. “Guys. The manual override isn't working. He's stuck in the door!”
Tristan, completely unaware of the true horror unfolding before him, turned to me and said, “Do you think she liked my poem?”
“Way to go, Loverboy,” Kevin said. “I always knew hipsters would destroy the world.”
“What's happening?” I said to Kevin.
“Well, Loverboy here just kick-started the end of the world. The monsters on that page are on their way up here right now,” Kevin said. “Jesus. That's why dudes aren't supposed to talk about feelings. They always mess it up. Always!”
“What do we do?”
“All right, kid. Listen up,” Kevin said.
“Do you think she'll take me back now?” Tristan blubbered.
“Shut up!” I snapped at him, then, I held my breath and focused intently, like I've never focused before, so I could absorb every word of wisdom Kevin was about to give me. Because, a category five turd hurricane was hurtling toward the proverbial fan, for sure, and I was not going to get eaten by giant insects from hell.
“Whatever happens. Nothing gets out the front door. Got it? Nothing. No matter what,” Kevin said. “Oh, and don't let the fish guy eat Loverboy, or the store blows up, the gate flies open, the deal is sealed and the world ends.”
Kevin crossed his two front legs over his head and swan dived off my shoulder. He landed ever so gently on the counter. He stood up stick straight, steeling himself, then looked back at me and said, “It's time to rock.”
Chapter 16
“Ah! A roach!” Tristan screamed and swatted at Kevin, who flipped him the bird as he scuttled to safety under the doughnut case.
That's it. Over him. “Okay, time to go.” I grabbed Tristan's arm and started yanking him out from behind the counter.
He dug in his heels. “I am not leaving until DeeDee takes me back.”
“We don't have time for that, bub.” I sounded like a ten-foot-tall three-hundred-pound bouncer, even though I was terrified goo on the inside. My overall anger at Mister Tragically Hip had trumped my anxiety about what was coming. “Sorry. You're leaving.”
“Don't touch me, fatty.” He yanked his arm out of my hand and recoiled from me like I was some kind of contagious freak.
Oh. Hell. No. He wasn't gonna treat me like that, especially after he insulted DeeDee. She might not want me, but that doesn't mean I would stand by and let some other guy treat her like crap.
“Store's closed. Get out,” I said.
“You're open twenty-four hours. You never close,” he snipped.
“Who works here? Oh yeah, I do. And I say we're closed. Now get out!”
I grabbed him by the collar and pulled on him as hard as I could. He held on to the counter and wouldn't budge. Honestly, I didn't care if the hungry fish ate this guy. Good riddance. Slut-shaming DeeDee? Nope. And, hello, end of the world pending? Two strikes, you're out. “We're closed. Emergency maintenance. Some dumb ass let loose a bunch of bugs and the exterminator's coming.”
Too bad Tristan did not know how epically true that statement was.
He pulled away from me, and when I tried to grab hold of him again, he swatted my hands away. That's when the floor started shaking under our feet. Oh. Shit. Tristan grabbed onto me and squealed. The floor rumbled, and the racks shook. Slow at first, a gentle rocking, then faster and faster until one of the end caps rattled loose and fell over, sending boner pills and smartphone chargers sliding across the linoleum. Okay, then. We were having an earthquake in Ohio. Sure, that was totally normal. Not.
Morty strolled out of the candy aisle with a torn-open bag of Twizzlers. One hung partway out of his mouth, flapping up and down as he chewed it. “Show's about to start,” Morty said. “This is gonna be good.”
Bubby was still trapped—webbed?—in the beer cave door, but here's the kicker: The door was no longer a steel and glass rectangle with “Beer Cave” written in melty monster ice font. It was a halo of bright blue light as if that part of the wall had disintegrated and had been taken over by the swirling blue vortex. The gate, it seemed, was stuck open, and it had gotten bigger.
Suddenly, Tristan went slack in my hands and slid to the floor. He was crying again, only with a decidedly more panicked look on his face. He was rocking back and forth trying to protect his hair from the fine dust of plaster that was sh
aking loose from the ceiling as the store quaked. “Oh, God. It's an earthquake. It's an earthquake. Help me! Help me!” He whimpered.
Gah. Jerk! “You!” I gave him the sharp point of my index finger, just so he knew I was serious. “Stay here. Stay down.” And don't get eaten by a giant fish monster from hell, even though you deserve it. “Got it?”
“Hurrrr hurrr hahurrrp,” he cried. “Please, God, please. I don't want to die. Waaaaaaa!”
This guy was seriously killing my soul, but I had bigger fish to fry. Maybe literally. Thankfully, I still had the page Tristan had torn out of the book in my hand. I smoothed it out. Maybe there was a poem to close the gate? Let's see. Red letters. Yada yada. And nope. Nothing. Only the summoning spell. Crap! Crap! Crap! That's it? Where's the book? There must be something else, a reset button, something to cancel it all out.
It took me a while to find the book. Tristan had knocked over the stand, and just about everything else, when Morty threw him over the counter. But there it was, upside down, pages loose and scattered in with the mess of cigarette packs and display racks piled up on the floor.
The room was still shaking, Tristan was curled up in a ball crying, and I was gathering up pages when DeeDee screamed. “Lloyd, Help!”
Uh oh. I popped up, but I didn't see her. Where was she? She wasn't at the switch. I did my closest approximation of a ninja-jump over the counter. And yeah, that move takes abs I do not have, and I didn't make it all the way over, so it was more like a roll. And it hurt quite a bit thank you very much. As I ran toward Bubby, I checked the aisles for any signs of DeeDee amidst the rattling racks and falling shelves. I didn't see her. Shit. Shit. Shit. Fear fueled me. My heart was pounding like that night I drank six Red Bulls on an all-night game binge and nearly went to the ER. “DeeDee?” I called out. “Where are you?”
Bubby howled and pulled, unable to free himself from that weird goo. The air all around him was arctic-level freezing. Even the beer was freezing, expanding in the glass bottles, exploding in their racks, littering the floor with broken glass. The wall of reach-in cooler doors cracked and lurched as the vortex inched its way farther out, a growing, swirling blue hell circle spreading out from Bubby.
When I got to him, Bubby bent down and put his forehead against mine and made a whimpering noise that sounded either like crying or a desperate, honest plea for help. Sadness tingled inside me. Poor guy. He might be a gigantic freezing jelly centipede with a mouth of whirring razors, but he did seem like a nice dude otherwise. And he was suffering. I pulled at the goo holding him in place, but I couldn't get it to budge. It was super sticky, and tight around his belly, cutting into his abdomen. What was this crap? Bubby nudged me away, and when I looked up at him, he tilted his head.
“Lloyd. Over here.” A whisper. It was DeeDee. She was kneeling on the floor, holding on tight to the weapons safe. Holding on tight because once Bubby wasn't in front of me, it was windy in here. The air pulled on us, not like a vacuum, more like a drain swirling us down into the center of the vortex. It took some very steady, deliberate steps to make it to DeeDee. She was holding tight against the suction, while also loading up with weapons. She stuck the taser in her boot, along with a golden knife.
“Here. Take this.” She handed me the sometimes, but not currently, flaming sword. “Bubby's stuck in the gate. It'll keep getting bigger as long as he's in it, until...well, worst case, it could swallow the entire store. Bigger, meaner bugs are on their way, so the plan is to get Bubby out and close it before they get here. Got it?”
I stared at her. Bigger? Meaner? Blink. Blink. Um, holy shit? The shot of fortitude my Tristan anger had given me had worn off, revealing the quivering fear jelly inside of me. I held the sword in both hands, but I was damn near sure I wasn't rocking it like DeeDee. I was pretty sure I looked like a super sad, super geeky LARPer playing dress-up at the park. Gulp.
DeeDee grabbed a fistful of my shirt, pulled me close, and looked me square in the eyes. “Lloyd.” Her face was hard. “It's time to kick some serious ass. Are you ready?”
Chapter 17
So there I was, trying not to get sucked into the hell gate, holding a heavy but not-flaming sword, staring down a suffering giant blue centipede. I was so terrified, my bones felt like cooked spaghetti. There was nary a spine nor a rigid surface inside me. I wanted to turn tail and run, but dude. No one wants to be that guy, right? The one who ran away and didn't even try to stop the world from ending?
The coward in every movie who has multiple chances to do the right thing and never does? Who sides with the bad guy then dies a horrible death? Nope. No way. If it was all over, I might as well be brave. Fake it 'til you make it, Lloyd. Fake it hard. At least then, there was a chance we wouldn't die. Right?
DeeDee was on the other side of Bubby, using that golden knife to saw away at the stringy goo holding him in place. Bubby howled like a wounded animal.
Okay. Okay. Focus. Step one: Get Bubby out of the gate. I took a whack at one of the goo strings with the sword, but it didn't even make a dent. I shook the sword. “How do I get this thing to light?”
“Press the button!” DeeDee said.
“What button?”
“You ever have a toy lightsaber?”
I nodded. Duh. Who hadn't?
“Just like that. Press the button!”
I looked at the hilt. Sure enough, there was a tiny round black button just like a toy lightsaber. I pressed it, and flames tickled up and around the blade. Fucking A! Now this was awesome. I touched the tip to one of the strings tethering Bubby. It cut loose, whipping back like a rubber band that had been stretched to the max. Oh yeah. That felt good!
Bubby was scared of the sword. Terrified, all four eyes wide and staring at it, pulling away from me, quivering. Oh, right. This thing had made the one-eyed halo of tentacle dude explode and rain down goop all over the store. Chances are, it could do that to Bubby. “I'll try to be careful.”
But the strings were so tight around him, it was hard to find a place to cut that wouldn't hurt him, so it was slow going. But, once we'd cut away a few more strings, Bubby was able to move a couple of his claw arms, and was trying on his own to free himself, but he was still good and stuck.
Click. Slurp. Click. Slurp. Slurp. Click. Slurp.
“Uh. What's that noise?”
“Cut faster, Lloyd,” DeeDee said.
Click. Slurp. Click. Slurp. Slurp. Click. Slurp.
I cut another string. It fwapped. DeeDee ducked. It hit an end cap near aisle three, knocking the rack over and sending canned chili and bottled nacho cheese sauce splattering to the floor. Man. Whatever this goo was, it was strong.
Click. Slurp. Click. Slurp. Slurp. Click. Slurp.
The sound was getting louder now. Closer. I looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. Morty was sitting on the hot dog island, legs crossed, chomping on Twizzlers and dill pickle potato chips like he was at the movies. “Can you give us a hand here?” I yelled. “We could use a little help.”
“Sorry man,” he said. “This is priceless.”
Gah! Jerk! Why did I have to pay for Kevin's snark?
DeeDee and I kept working. Another string broke. And another. We had to duck every single time, because each one was an elastic band fwapping and flicking around, knocking things over, hitting fast and hard. Bubby wriggled, trying to break the half dozen remaining tethers on his own. They pulled and stretched, but didn't break.
“Keep going, Lloyd. Don't stop!” DeeDee said. “We need to close the gate. NOW!”
Click. Slurp. Click. Slurp. Slurp. Click. Slurp.
It was loud now. Right on us. “What is that?”
DeeDee screamed. “Lloyd, run!”
Too late. Something hit my arm, hard, knocking the flaming sword clean out of my hand. The flames fizzled out as it flew through the air, cracked to the floor and slid away, out of sight, into one of the aisles. Before I could even think about what to do next, something smacked me square in the gut
really really hard, and sent me flying through the air. I slammed right into the hot dog stand, shoulder first. Eeow! Stabbing pain. It hurt so bad, saliva pooled in my mouth, and I was sure I was going to barf.
Morty looked down at me from his perch by the hot dog/ bun warmer combo. “When this is over, I'd like to file a complaint. The hot dogs are cold. Pretty sure that's a health code violation.” He took a bite out of a footlong smothered in relish. I noticed his teeth were pointy and ragged like fangs and his skin had turned a little red. Gulp. Was that what he really looked like?
“Get going and fight already.” He kicked me in the shoulder.
OW!
“Wrap it up,” he said. “My desperate housewives aren't gonna wait forever.”
Click. Slurp. Click. Slurp. Slurp. Click. Slurp.
Oh, no. The noise.
Suddenly, my shirt felt like it was on fire. There was a hot burning pinprick on my chest, followed by the smell of burning plastic. Sssssssss. My name tag was sizzling! Smoke rolled off of it. Just like Carl's name tag, the night...Gulp. Now I knew what the noise was. Not what, who.
Bubby howled. A half dozen green tentacles snaked out of the gate, wrapping around Bubby, using him for leverage. Green tentacles with barbed spikes at the end. A single yellow eye emerged from the swirling blue cloud. Great. This asshole again.
Bizowhatshisname. Bizosoth? Bizoshoggoth? Whatever. The one-eyed dickhead halo of tentacles, herald of hungry fish dude, was back for more. He looked me straight in the eyes, and the spot where his one eyebrow should be was raised and cocky. As if to say “Yeah. That's right. Me again. Ha!”
It was clear one-eye dude recognized me and wasn't too happy about our last meeting. He thwapped the floor with his tentacles, punching holes in the linoleum. Crack. Crack. Crack. Then, slurp slurp as he pulled his body out of the gate, across the floor, leaving a trail of oozing green slug-slime on the tile.
I'd like to say that at this point, I had the Schwarzenegger swagger, and I was brimming with a “bring it, asshole, I got this” vibe, but no. I would have screamed like a toddler and run away, except that I was too scared to do either. I tried. No sound came out. No muscles moved. My heart was about to palpitate out of my chest. And my palms were so sweaty I kept slipping on the floor when I tried to get up and run away.