The Time Tribulations

by Travis Borne

  “Carne, I’m going to give you a taste,” Jerry said, looking up at the sixteen-foot-tall giant. “And when this is over, you and every fucking one of these beasts who obey your orders will be begging us for mercy, and then, you will submit and tell us everything we want to know.”

  As if he’d sucked a can of freon, Carne laughed a deep staccato of a laugh, like a motorcycle engine with bad timing and no muffler. “Ha, ha ha ha, ha, ha ha!” His groveling toadies followed up as if his laugh was a nuclear fulmination spreading its flash. And the air went turbulent with a heated cacophony of snorts, as well as stupid, little laughs from the hairy ones, and rubbery boinks from the blobs.

  “Little, little man, you have always been one of my favorites,” Carne said, still chuckling. He raised one arm to silence his army and put the other, ending in a set of six fingers with jade-green claws, on Jerry’s shoulder. “We have something to tell—”

  “Get your fucking hand off my shoulder!” Behind Jerry, like an army of soldiers forged from the matter of neutron stars, his crew of men and women solidified. Jerry pushed Carne back, and surprisingly, one gob of the insignificant cluster of meat, was mightily significant!

  “It does work down here!” Ruth blurted. All noticed like sponges waiting to inhale the fact; and faith received a turbo boost.

  “Crew!” Jerry yelled; his voice was the volcano erupting. The crew pushed out like a starburst and threw down the gauntlet.

  Jerry punched, fast and hard, striking Carne in the side. The beast heaved while flying back like a bowling ball through a garden of rotten vegetables. But, pushing off and up, flattening a few small ones in the process, Carne returned. Lurching and slightly limping, he held up both hands. But Jerry and the men were pushing into them as if cheating Chronos out of entire eras of time.

  Carne had tremendous power. He easily lifted Jerry, compressing him, squeezing like non-lucid dreamers trying to subdue a nightmare, then he raised the redneck into the sky, holding him tight with two fully enwrapped claws. And he reared back.

  But before Carne could toss him, Jerry vaulted, squeezing his body out from one of Carne's claws by detonating his arms. Jerry swung up and around like a pole vaulter who’d stolen the bar after a leap. He descended with the inertia of a spaceship slingshotting around a planet—and the size-sixteen boot came in hard. It nailed the center of Carne’s chest, caving it in!

  And Jerry’s landing was that of a ninja. The large red one, his woolly legs dancing a nervous jig, reeled over as if it was the first time he’d ever felt pain. He hit, hard, remaining on the ground, unable to catch a breath. And before Carne could even suck a molecule—Jerry followed up, fist raised.

  Another beast, it was Baldarn!

  “You fucking rapist!” Jerry roared, catching the ugly one in the corner of his eye.

  Baldarn caught Jerry’s hand and yanked, nearly tearing it from Jerry’s body. But Jerry’s mind was as quick as his new power. He became jelly and let himself fly back, back and across Baldarn who appeared to him, in slow motion. He squinted seeing Baldarn's round, yellow eyes, and he sensed fear, and he remembered that Wednesday when Baldarn was getting his woman from behind, when they were mocking and laughing and making fun of her, while she screamed in agony. He flew past the bald, warty one, locking his grip onto Baldarn's forearm in the process. And Jerry went way back, home-run far, landing in the dust as if sliding for home-base, twisting the world so he could set himself aright. He hit the ground like a ship docking with a space station. CLANG! The dust made an incongruent, metallic, ear-piercing sound. The shock wave sprung forth, punching ears in a tuning-fork’s rhythm, fists with grudges. And with his locked grip on Baldarn, he yanked.

  Jerry’s shirt tore—and he grew larger. His abs were an eight-pack going on ten. Baldarn had the winning side of an arm-wrestling match, though, until Jerry activated. The pull sent the orange one up and over the top, and the massive burnt-toast beast, burping pustules and all, went twenty feet deep into the mob of blobs and hairy, scraggly-like-an-arm-pit trolls who had been coming to assist. Strike, and fifty beasts deep, a crater in the crowd. Blobs, goblins, and myriad warty grovelers were now distancing themselves!

  Carne sprung to life and roared, and his men took quick notice of the order which was louder than Jerry’s docking clang. Carne caught another breath and his chest expanded. He said, “Jerry, finally a worthy opponent, but we have—”

  “Carne, get in the bull. After we regenerate you, then we’ll talk.” Jerry’s crew halted, just as the beasts had stopped in response to Carne’s order.

  Carne said, “Jerry, wait—”

  But Jerry leapt into the air as if he’d ejected from a springboard on the moon, and he crushed Carne into the dust. He unleashed himself as he’d done only a few times in his life. His fists were rockets and for him time not only slowed, it stopped completely. He decimated Carne's face. Blood went into the air as if it was frozen within a world of ice, and only Jerry’s motions could force it and anything else to move. Other beasts were a painting contrived by a madman on PCP; faces were gnarled, twisted, and now, scared.

  Yet some still possessed balls enough to move in, as if trying to get a grip on the blur who was decimating their leader. They attempted to grab Jerry but he’d become as solid as a black hole creeping through a solar system. Jerry’s lucidity was a dive into thirty-degree waters, and he could see the others as if the weird painting was melting his way. He halted his punishment briefly and, by swinging another nearby beast, hurled the gadflies away like paper wads. Then he continued his rampage.

  Carne had long since stopped moving and the 76 others kept up their own havoc, destroying beasts both large and small with ease—inflicting plenty of pain. Then, Jerry stopped. He handed Chronos back his record of time, and Chronos put the entropy of mass chaos back into gear. Jerry resumed with the world at regular speed. He took Carne by the dick and dragged. The now even redder, red one, was on his way to the bull, and Jerry commanded, “Encircle every one of them. Not a single fuck gets away.”

  The others heard Jerry’s stentorian voice and made a boundary. Many already running for the hills did get away, but many were trapped and, very nervous, some jittery, and all were frightened. Last attempt. The beasts charged against the humans who’d locked arms, but none could break the new boundary. Others leapt for it, but Jake and Andy, and a few others maintained the inner perimeter like gods; running at lightning speeds, humans managed those within like sheep, like ersatz sheep, like cottonballs! There were at least 101 beasts trapped within the circle; others, smaller and unable to fit, watched like goons from the outside, no longer willing to interfere, and hands, if they had ’em, were up.

  “In you go, Carne,” Jerry said, heaving. The fucker was big but Jerry managed to fit him in and slammed the door. He locked it by bending the metal rod, sealing the most prominent jerk inside. “Bring him here,” he called to Jake. Jake had Baldarn. “You found it funny to incite a gangster mentality around Carmen over the past few years. A proclamation, if I may. Baldarn, for all the years of raping my woman, you get to watch, and then, you are next. We have plenty of time and we’re going to have a lot of fun here, you and I. Then we’ll regenerate you, and go again, and again.”

  “Jerry,” Baldarn said, “the regenerators, they no longer work.” He bowed, edging toward Jerry as if he’d found a new leader.

  “Bullshit!”

  “That’s what Carne was trying to tell you, before you became—unglued, man!”

  “Light the fucking thing!”

  “Jerry!” Madron blustered from the back. “Don’t, he’s—”

  “Light the fucking thing, now!”

  Andy stumbled forward and although all were raging mad, hopped up on adrenaline and hatred, they bore witness to a side of Jerry they’d never seen nor could imagine. It was all flooding out: centuries of pain, rape, mockery; something even Marti’s deaf ears could hear.

  Jerry was red and much, much taller. Like Jake’s, his legs w
ere slabs of muscle beneath his torn brown slacks. His face was chiseled and his jaw more defined, and he was huffing rabidly. His eyes were bleeding from bloodshot ruptures surrounded by black, death-like insomnia, as if he’d never slept yet no longer needed to. And his hair had regained its utterly magnificent curls, which had once again become glowing yellow filaments.

  Andy and others followed orders. The beasts grunted like cattle, mumbling—defeated. And Andy, who was also enraged, himself also glowing like a thinner container of molten steel, commanded the sniveling goblins who were outside the perimeter. “Go, fetch some wood!” His voice was raw, like he’d swallowed a bucket of fingernails. The goblins, abiding or else, abode obsequiously. They scavenged material from the old buildings that, like a phantasm, always seemed to regenerate. Then, like Moses, Andy waved his arms from the center out. A hole was made and the goblins entered meekly, hunched over, carrying the wood, and took it to the largest bull. They were easy to control and command—a new army, quantity over quality! The slimy, skinny gremlins rubbed chunks of flint and in no time sizzling sparks landed in the wood. As always, the fire erupted right away.

  Carne awoke a minute later, while outside, eyes went round like full moons. The steel quickly began to glow from beneath. Carne grunted, “Ugh, uh, uuugh!” then yelled, a deep howling groan of a cry—extended like a succubus singer enjoying an orgasm from Satan. “Get me out of here, Jerrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee!”

  Baldarn said, “Jerry, please. I apologize, we are not—Jerry, we are human!”

  Jerry had stopped listening. Horns grew out from the top of his head and his breathing became like that of a horse after a sprint through purgatory, and he took in loads and loads of the burning, stinging air. He inhaled the twisting black smoke too, smiling as if it pleasured him, then he erupted into deep, slow, sinister laughter. Other humans joined, breathing it in, loving it now and feeling Carne’s pain as he let out screams that made every human tingle orgasmically, even the entrapped beasts groveled and grinned, and the goblins chuckled while rubbing their thin, slimy hands together. It was a soothing feeling and it assuaged their rage. And Jerry was now, several feet taller—and growing: 10 feet, 12, 14, 16, 18 feet!

  Andy noticed as Jerry’s laughter took on the power of a stone amphitheater focusing a thunderstorm. He looked around, and to Jake. Half of the crew had grown, yet half, were still the same. Jake and Jerry, though, were out of control!

  Jerry’s shoes exploded. Hooves forced their way out. His pants and shirt fell as shreds. He stood tall, nude, magnificent.

  “Jerry! You must listen!” one of the beasts roared. It was a hairy one yet the dude possessed a fantastic maw, somewhere beneath the mound of brown, singed, overgrown pubes. Jerry’s eyes glinted in the fire; red flickers were laser-strobes and his greens had faded to sunrise yellow. His ears didn’t accept the words.

  Carne was roasting alive and the bull roared to life!

  “Whooo! Hooooo!” Jerry bellowed; as well others chanted.

  “Rooaaaar! Arrruurrgh!” Smoke shot out from the bull’s nostrils as fire enwrapped the steel like a sexual-predator’s fingers. “Jerrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee!” And the agony soothed all; oohs and ahhs patted the air like children's feet running through white sand on a beach.

  “Fill all of the them!” he roared. Jerry—was no longer Jerry. He was nearly thirty feet tall! “Pack every one of these motherfuckers! Every, single, fucking one of them! Let’s have us a cook-off, the cook-off of all cook-offs!” Jerry’s voice was deep, low, and loud enough to distort the fabric of the nightmare empowering him. And he kept growing, faster, taller. His curly hair grew into a glistening mane. The hair went down his back, growing beautifully, and a tail sprouted atop his ass; the end grew into a barb and the whole thing was a dragon in itself. It whipped around sending goblins up and over buildings. He looked behind himself and down at it, and laughed, and sent the tail into row upon row of nervous monsters. He wiped them away like dominoes. They stood up. He wiped them away again, then he laughed again, a deep, sinister laugh. Then he roared and waved his arms, controlling and drawing in the smoke.

  The bull that held Carne shook and wobbled but could not break free of its mounts. Carne cried, no longer a deep cry. His voice possessed the cold, spine-grating shrills of a thousand children. Heavenly music to ears. And the smoke was putrid and sweet like cockroach ice cream. “Ahhhh!” Jerry and others around the bull inhaled it with utmost satisfaction. They indulged themselves in Carne’s torment, and grew and grew.

  Jerry was now twice as tall as Carne had been—and kept growing. Except for Jake, who was gargantuan as well, the other humans had grown as high as thirteen feet or so, and stopped, remaining at least partially objective. But all traces of lingering lucidity were fading quickly.

  Ruth and very few others had not transformed. Andy had but only partially, and the humans who had remained human were pleading with Jerry. But Jerry was listening to no one.

  “You have to make him stop,” Ruth blared. She gave Andy the eye. Maybe Jerry would listen to his good friend Andy, a beast himself. He appeared lucid, at least enough to understand the scope of what was going down. Andy acknowledged her and nodded.

  The other beasts were terrified. Those nearest Jerry, and as large as beasts themselves, faithfully obeyed and began cramming the other bulls, stuffing them tight with squirming beasts; goblin sycophants made themselves useful and helped too. Jerry nodded, allowing them. They packed the elephant, squeezing it tight with twelve large ones, and the massive longhorn with sixteen.

  “Baldarn, Madron, and you four,” Jerry said. “You six get to watch. Then you get to go next.” Baldarn was on his knees, pleading. The others, Carne’s right-hand demons, cowered beneath the tower that was Jerry, while low, perfectly even, drawn-out laughs rained down on them from above. Jerry had handpicked the six one by one, the very pricks who had done Carmen the most harm over the years. “I have something very special planned for you.” He continued his laugh as if he’d had centuries to perfect it, and took in a hot-air-balloon’s worth of air and laughed some more.

  He no longer resembled Jerry, nor did half of his crew resemble anything human. They were slimy, deformed, some oozing with warbles as if they’d been hit with buckshot that’d delivered maggots instead of lead. Jake was the second largest after Jerry, black as night with yellow eyes, just about nude and wearing the tattered remnants of a red and yellow superhero suit; he was bald and fugly, fuckin’ ugly, like a hot dog that’d been overcooked in a kiln.

  Although fewer in number, these humans had transformed to become larger and more terrible than any of the locals. And the ground began to rumble, and the sky grew dark, and blobs of brown slime began to drizzle down onto Undertown.

  65. The Evil Within Us All

  Jerry looked up. A glob of brown slime fell into his eyes and he could feel the ground vibrating into his legs. He squeezed his lids, forcing the oil to ooze out, then looked down at his body. To his back. His tail. It whipped around like a red dragon. Andy was down there; his friend, half human. Jerry unsmiled, his throat sore from laughing. He squeezed his eyes shut again, winking, squinting, thrusting his head side to side. Andy was part redneck, like he’d been infused with roids, battery acid, and piss, and immense, but no taller than Jerry’s knee; and he was a mime, his mouth running like an auctioneer’s, but soundless. Jerry could not hear a thing! His thoughts continued whipping up the same madness though, nightmarish sounds, fires crackling, howling haunts, and there was that sweet, delicious smoke coming from the bull. It made him feel good, so damn fucking good. Sweet cockroach ice cream. The idea hit him like Andy’s bat to the back of the head. And he couldn’t stop the smell from fusing with a flashback; a good memory fluttered by: Amy, Jon, the cave, laughing together, quietly after rat stew while enjoying the bug recipe of recipes. His thoughts went fuzzy as if someone was inside his skull shaking his brain; he hard blinked then re-squinted his golden-yellow, sunken eyes. Daze-like, but still enraged, and he was so la
rge his actions seemed slow-motion-like—he was over fifty feet tall, and still growing! He wobbled. The world was going dark and the brown slime was raining down in larger and larger gobs. The smell of crude oil joined with the sharp, pungent odor of Carne’s roasting flesh. Jerry just stood there, huffing, oblivious, trying to see straight. Trying to remember—what? He didn’t even know. Then he thought out loud, “I'm lost!” The words were uninterpretable to all but himself, coming out as a roar. And then he thought of her. Carmen.

  As if she was a 43-foot-tall nude woman standing next to him, she again said, “Jerry, don’t lose yourself.” He remembered just then, when she’d said it. He remembered something, at least! And more was coming back to him like the muddy oil-sludge raining down, harder, more, larger, gallon-sized globs of memories.

  In their tiny but cozy apartment in Midtown. They had just made love; and their goodbyes; and how she jumped onto him like a spider before he went out the door. And love. The love they shared, her voice—and then Amy, Jon, the cave, Valerie and Jodi, Patrick and Jake, Roger, Luke—the outside, the need to escape. And his brother, Jim!

  Half of the men and women had transformed into beasts and he himself was now a—it cannot be! Clear thoughts returned like an ice-bucket challenge. The rush extinguished his smooth, scalded red skin. He looked like—Carne! He turned to see the six beasts he’d captured. They were on their knees beneath him, guarded by men and women who had become beasts themselves. Others were awaiting his command, torches in hands, ready to light the fires just as soon as he gave the word. Sounds returned, real ones from what was really happening! He heard Andy; such a small human, or beast—fuck he’s ugly. And beside him towered Jake, even uglier, huffing or choking, Jerry couldn’t tell which. Jake was mostly nude, wearing the tattered remnants of a red and yellow superhero suit, and he was as black as caviar with horny protrusions of muscles that had turned into bulging, crusty warbles. He looks like a cluster of grapes! Jake’s already unnatural shape had turned him into the weirdest of monsters. Jake clumsily looked up to Jerry, fucked-up-like. All did. Some were pleading, some scared out of their gourd, some waiting for his command, and some, yelling at him.