It's the Apocalypse, Dave. Try to Have Fun.

by A.R. Wise

  “I’m trying to save your life,” said Tony.

  “What?” Mimi shouted as she cupped a hand to her ear. Bracelets jangled on her arm. Mimi was always decked out in a variety of accessories. She was well known for plundering thrift stores, collecting a mishmash of odds and ends that she filled her apartment with. She wore too much make-up, too much perfume, and was rarely caught without a wig on. Yet, despite how gaudy she should’ve appeared, she somehow managed to make it work.

  Tony turned off the television set and said, “I came to get you out of here.”

  “Why’d you turn that off?” she asked. She hadn’t heard what her grandson said. “Both you and Jerry keep turning off the damn TV. Why do you keep doing that? Jerry even stole my remote. And he opened up my blinds. Now it’s so damn bright in here, I swear to God it’s like the gates of heaven opened up on my face.” She looked in my direction and asked, “Can you close those damn things?”

  Mimi’s window faced west, and the sun wasn’t even shining into the apartment yet, but I agreed to accommodate her. I walked into the apartment, but nearly tripped on a strip of black rubber in front on the floor. When Tony had kicked the door in, the weather stripping had peeled off, and I nearly fell because of it.

  Mimi continued to ask Tony questions. “Haven’t you been watching TV? Didn’t you see what’s going on? It’s a mess.” A lot of people in their family tried to get Mimi to stop watching so much television. She had a bad habit of ordering crap from infomercials.

  “I know, Mimi,” said Tony in as close to a shout as he could without being rude. He unlocked the wheels of her chair and pushed her so that she was facing the door. “Where’s Jerry?”

  “Mary? Oh, Jerry? He’s in his room. He turned off the TV, took my air purifier apart, and then disappeared into his room. Who knows what he’s up to?”

  I saw the carcass of the air purifier that Jerry had disabled. The casing was leaned up against the wall, along with a filter, near the window. I noticed that the casing said it was an air purifier and an ionizer, and that it added more negative ions to the air. Whatever that meant.

  I grabbed the blinds’ strings beside the window and yanked them, expecting the blinds to close. Unfortunately, my over-zealous yank ended up pulling the blinds off their mount and down to the floor.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” asked Mimi. “Why are you breaking everything? Good Lord, you’re all a bunch of damn idiots. That’s what you are.”

  I apologized profusely and tried my best to get the blinds back in place. Unfortunately, I’d broken them off the pegs that kept them fastened to the wall. I stood on the tips of my toes and pushed the pegs back into the drywall, and then gently set the blinds back in place, fully aware that the next time someone tugged even gently on the cord it would send the entire thing tumbling to the ground again. Oh well, that was a problem for someone else. I got the thick blinds closed, blocking any sunlight from getting inside, which was a relief to Mimi that she very nearly thanked me for. She didn’t, don’t get me wrong, but I suspect a ‘Thank you’ very nearly slipped through her lips before they puckered back up again.

  Tony went to his little brother’s door and pounded on it. He knew better than to enter the room without warning. A worldwide apocalypse would seem like the worst time to masturbate, but when it comes to teenage boys you can never be certain.

  Jerry was a good kid, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but he suffered from severe social anxiety and an undiagnosed personality disorder that caused him to shun the outside world. He was happiest alone, tinkering in his room with his inventions and experiments. His family had learned the hard way not to leave expensive electronics alone around him, because he had a habit of stealing them and taking them apart. He rarely ever put the stuff back together again, and his room was littered with odds and ends plucked from purloined gadgets. Mimi and he were a perfect team. She would order a bunch of useless crap, and he’d take it all apart.

  Jerry’s door opened and Tony was met with a metal rod that crackled and popped, as if it were an electrically charged weapon. It looked like a silver police baton with a cord snaking off the backend and down to a belt that Jerry had fashioned with a holster and a large, socketed battery pack. It looked like he’d been caught in the midst of creating a slimmed down version of a Ghostbusters cosplay outfit.

  “What the heck is that?” asked Tony.

  “Negative zapper,” said Jerry as he flipped a switch on his belt and then put the baton in the holster fashioned from what looked like a leather bra. Where he got a leather bra is anyone’s guess, and I couldn’t help but imagine Mimi gallivanting around in a warrior princess outfit that Jerry had dug out of a long forgotten, dusty box.

  “Come on, we’re going to my place so we can figure out what to do,” said Tony as he took his little brother’s hand. He looked in my direction and said, “Dave, can you push Mimi?”

  “Sure,” I said and walked over to her chair.

  I paused when I heard something scratching on a nearby wall.

  “Who are you?” she asked as she squinted up at me.

  “That’s Dave, Mimi,” shouted Tony. “Gabby’s ex-boyfriend. You’ve met him before.”

  “Dave?” asked Mimi as she looked at me quizzically until her expression changed into recognition. “Oh, I remember you.” Her curiosity quickly turned to hatred. “You broke Gabby’s heart. What’re you doing here? Don’t tell me she got back together with you. So help me, Lord, if this boy’s here stringing Gabby along I’ll strike him down for you. Thunder and lightning…”

  “He’s not back with Gabby,” said Tony. “He’s here to help.”

  She pointed up at me and said, “All right, fine. But you stay away from her and that baby.”

  I felt like yelling at her for giving me grief about this instead of focusing on the squid-pocalypse going on all around us, but I just smiled and nodded. You can’t fix crazy, no matter how old, sweet, and innocent the package might look. Besides, I was starting to get a little freaked out by the sound coming from the wall.

  “Jerry, what’s that?” asked Mimi when she saw her grandson’s new device. “Did you take that out of my air purifier?”

  “It’s a negative zapper,” yelled Jerry. “I needed it. We needed it for the…”

  “Hush,” said Tony suddenly, interrupting his little brother by pressing his hand over the teen’s mouth. “Did you hear that?”

  “The scratching?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mimi.

  “Yeah. What is that?” asked Tony as he looked around for the source of the noise.

  “It sounds like its coming from your neighbor’s apartment.”

  Tony looked up and said, “It sounds like it’s up there.”

  I looked up, uncertain what I might see. White dust fell from an emerging crack, and directly into my eye. I cringed, turned away, and blinked, which caused the bits of plaster to scratch my eyeballs and make the pain worse.

  “It’s one of those things,” said Tony from behind me.

  “What things?” I asked, still blinded. “A squid?”

  “Yeah, go, go. Go!” Tony hit my back.

  I pushed Mimi’s chair, hoping that she was facing the door. My vision was blurred by tears, but I thought I saw the shape of the door’s threshold. Unfortunately I didn’t account for the thick weather-stripping that’d broken off the bottom of the door. The front wheels of Mimi’s chair caught the stripping, stopping it dead in its tracks and sending me tumbling forward over the back of the chair as I jettisoned the poor old grandma out onto the stoop.

  “You dumbass,” she screamed at me from the ground as I fell forward over the back of the chair and face-planted into its cushion. I struggled to get up from my awkward position. My cheek was pressed against the plush cushion where Mimi’s butt had been all day, and I didn’t dare take a breath. However, getting a mouthful of cushion-fresh old lady farts was the least of my worries as a tentacle reached dow
n from the ceiling and wrapped around my leg.

  I was pulled upward, but my weight caused the tentacle to break further through the ceiling, exposing the creature that’d wormed its way between the walls. My eyes burned from the plaster scratching its way across my corneas, but I endured the pain and looked up at my attacker. I could see its maw carving its way through the ceiling as more tentacles of various sizes sprouted forth.

  “Watch out,” said Jerry as he tried to come to my rescue, waving his home-crafted magic wand like a steampunk wizard at a LARPing event. “I’ll save him.”

  “Tony, do something,” I pleaded as more vines of slimy flesh stretched down to cling to me. The barbed tips of the thin tentacles hooked into my pant legs as a larger tentacle snaked closer, threatening to slap its fierce suction cups to me and seal my fate.

  “Jerry, move,” said Tony as he pushed his little brother aside.

  “I don’t know why it’s not working,” said Jerry as he smacked his crackling wand against his palm and stared at it, dumbfounded by its failure. “It should work.”

  Tony fired his pellet gun, but either he missed or the creature dragging me into its maw didn’t care, because I was still being pulled up. I held onto the chair and screamed as more tentacles slithered around my ankle to secure its hold. Tony tried to take more careful aim with his next shot, which didn’t do any good at all. His second shot sent a pellet straight into my calf, easily piercing my jeans and lodging in flesh.

  “Ow, what the hell? Aim for its face. Shoot it in the damn face.” To this day I contend this was not advice I should’ve had to give. “Always shoot for the face.”

  “What face?” asked Tony.

  “Where its mouth is,” I said, again marveling at the necessity for such instruction.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Jerry before disappearing back into his bedroom.

  Tony aimed for the ceiling and started firing over and over. Plaster exploded and white dust rained down on us while Mimi screamed insults and curses from the stoop. I wasn’t sure if she was insulting the jellyfish monster or if she was still mad at me for dumping her on the pavement.

  The creature retracted as some of the pellets found their mark in what I assumed was its face. The malleable, gelatinous creature slunk back in its hole, but it didn’t release me like I’d hoped. Instead, it forcefully pulled me up. I kept my grip on the chair, but it didn’t do much good as I dangled upside down now with a wheelchair swinging under me like a pendulum. My foot bashed into the hole above over and over as the creature tried to take me with it, bouncing me like a fishing bobber in a wave pool.

  “What should I do?” asked Tony.

  “How… should I… know?” I asked with the unintended rhythm of being hoisted and then dropped over and over. “Just… get me… down!”

  Jerry returned from his bedroom swinging a katana. I swear to God, that little mentally handicapped monster was coming at me with all the ferocity of Norman Bates in a fright wig. I heard Tony yell at his little brother not to do it, but by that time it was too late. The psycho was going to chop through something squishy, and I just had to close my eyes and hope it was a tentacle instead of my leg.

  My meager luck reservoir had been tapped out already today. Jerry sliced right through the tentacles gripping me, and sent that sword of his through the sole of my boot.

  I fell headfirst to the floor, and a racist thought maligning Jerry’s poor piñata performance crossed my mind, but was cut off by my sudden unconsciousness.