by J. S. Volpe
* * *
The figure in the snowman mask stopped in the center of the room, looked around at the frightened onlookers, then squatted down to pick up the gold.
Picking up the gold was, of course, impossible, since the figure was holding a pistol in each hand.
The figure glanced around again, then tucked one of the pistols into the waistband of its pants. It tried to pick up the gold with one hand, but the gold was too large; the figure’s small, slender fingers couldn’t even stretch all the way across the top of the block.
After another look around, the figure tucked the other pistol into its waistband and then tried to pick up the gold with both hands.
The figure grunted and strained. The gold slowly rose off the floor.
As the figure straightened up with a low groan of exertion, there was the sound of fabric tearing and suddenly a pair of large round breasts filled the front of the figure’s shirt.
“Aw, shit,” the figure said in an unmistakably female voice.
“Hey, that’s not the Snowman!” Blunt exclaimed. “That’s a girl!”
The figure turned and looked at him. The snowman head shook back and forth.
“That’s not…” the figure said. “I’m not…”
While the figure had been distracted with Blunt, Lucifer had snuck up behind her, and he now whisked the mask away, revealing the cute blonde barmaid from Moe’s.
“Hey!” she cried. She looked at the faces surrounding her, then shot a furious glare at the door and shouted, “Luornu, you are so fucking dead! You said your damn binding job would hold!”
One of the doors opened a crack and Luornu’s head poked into the room. “What are you—” When she saw the trouble Illyana was in, she gasped, burst into the room, and cried, “Don’t hurt her! She, um…it was all my idea.”
Ignoring her, Blunt advanced toward Illyana. “Gimme that gold.”
“Fuck you,” Illyana said, and dropped the gold. The bang of it hitting the floor echoed like a cannonshot in the large, open room. Before anyone could lunge forward and grab it, Illyana yanked both pistols from her waistband.
“Any of you fuckers move, I’ll blow your fucking heads off!” She had never actually killed anyone before and had a feeling she wouldn’t particularly like it if she did, but if ever there was a time for it, this was it. She glanced over at Luornu, who was still lurking near the door. “Get your skinny ass over here and help me with this gold.”
“Um, okay.” Luornu hurried forward.
Glancing around to make sure no one was watching her, Sister Moshi slid one hand into her pack and felt around in search of the antimatter bomb. She had no intention of using it, but no one else knew that. If blondie-bitch wanted to start bringing out the weapons, well, Sister Moshi would show her how it was done.
But as her hand fell upon the bomb, she saw a young man step through a gap in the crowd watching Illyana and squat down to look at the gold. Sister Moshi realized she had seen him in Moe’s once or twice before. She also realized that no one else in the room could see him. He was so close to Illyana that he could probably count the teeth in the zipper of her slacks, but she didn’t so much as glance at him.
“Hey!” Sister Moshi shouted at him. “Who the fuck are you?”
The man glanced up at her with a casual, unconcerned smile as if he knew she couldn’t possibly be talking to him. When he saw that she was talking to him, he shot to his feet like a child caught in the act of stealing a cookie.
Everyone else was looking around in bafflement.
“Who is she talking about?” Gaspard asked Merizen.
Sister Moshi overheard him. She pointed right at the young man, who had started backing away as if he thought perhaps the bright spotlights trained on the gold were responsible for his dilemma. “That guy!” she said. “Right there!”
Everyone looked. Everyone shook their heads.
“She’s nuts,” Kirby muttered.
“Wait…” Marcy said. “There’s…something…”
Sister Moshi stormed forward and grabbed the arm of the man, who simply stared at her in astonishment.
“This guy!” she said, giving him a good shake.
Everybody blinked at the spot she was grabbing. Then their jaws dropped.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Merizen. “There is someone there…” She frowned again. “Isn’t there?”
“Yeah, it’s a young guy,” Lucifer said. “I think.”
“How…how can you see me?” Zan asked Sister Moshi.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because nobody does. I’m not supposed to be noticed!”
A sad and pained expression flickered on her face so briefly that only Zan saw it—and even then, he couldn’t be entirely sure he hadn’t imagined it. Then she shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m used to seeing things nobody else sees.”
“But that’s—” Zan stopped, at a loss for words. And it wasn’t simply because he had been noticed.
One of the problems with being a master of the art of not being noticed was that in addition to not being noticed by people you didn’t want to notice you, girls didn’t notice you either. There was nothing quite as depressing as seeing a beautiful young woman’s eyes skim right over you as if you were no more than a chair or an ashtray. And to have that happen over and over and over again, night after night after night, was simply soul-crushing.
And so, as was inevitable in a situation like this, where an unnoticed and lonely young man is suddenly noticed by an attractive young woman, Zan fell instantly in love with Sister Moshi without knowing a single blessed thing about her.
Sister Moshi saw the spark in his eyes and opened her mouth to say something, but then there was a loud click from somewhere overhead, and several spotlights came on. An instant later a loud, amplified voice boomed through the room, saying, “Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, robots, and spiries. Welcome to the Starlight Dance Hall!”
Everyone turned. The newly activated spotlight beams were focused on a man standing at the microphone on the stage. He was tall and gaunt, with thin blond hair and a huge smile stretched across his face. His clothes were tattered and dirty and spattered with blood. Most of those present recognized him as Chizzer Wazzo, the leader of Wazzo’s Wastrels. Looking more closely, everyone realized that despite his grotesquely big smile and his hearty, emcee-like tone of voice, his eyes were frightened and despairing and lost, the eyes of a puppet cruelly granted full comprehension of its complete powerlessness.
“What the hell is this?” Lucifer said.
“And what the fuck are spiries?” Kirby said.
Chizzer ignored them. “I’m so glad you all could make it!” he said. “Have we got a fabulous show tonight! It’ll be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Luornu said.
“Yeah,” said Illyana. “Maybe we should we just get the fuck out of here.”
“I know you’re all eager for the show to start, so without further ado, I give you the one…the only…Megalito!” Applauding with a fervor as creepily extreme as his grin, he scurried backward off the left side of the stage.
As he did so, the curtain rose, pulleys creaking.
Everybody froze, even Luornu and Illyana, who were halfway to the door by that point, and they all gaped in incredulity at what was revealed on the stage.
It was a gigantic worm-like creature, about thirty feet long, with a plump, round body. It lay with the tip of its tail at extreme stage right, and it probably would have stretched all the way across to stage left had its head not been curled around to face the audience. The creature had an artificial look, as if it were made of some kind of sleek, shiny metal or plastic, though it moved as easily and supply as regular flesh. Its skin (if it was skin) was covered with irregularly shaped interlocking patches reminiscent of jigsaw-puzzle pieces. Each of these black-outlined pieces was a different color—red, blue, green, yellow, purple, white, and so on—and no two pieces
of the same color adjoined each other. The creature’s long purple head sported two vaguely horn-like projections on top and a single large orange puzzle piece in the center of its forehead, the puzzle piece having a blank on its upper side and a tab on each of its other three sides. Its eyes and mouth were white with black outlines. Though the eyes had no discernible lids, they somehow narrowed and widened and squinted as the creature surveyed the group assembled before it. The mouth, which never moved at all, was shaped like a crescent moon lying on its side, horns up—in other words, like a merry cartoon smile.
“Let’s go,” whined Luornu. “Let’s go now, before—”
“Welcome, friends!” said the worm-thing. With each syllable, its frozen mouth flashed orange. Its voice was high and smooth and jolly. “I am Megalito! And you are in for one heck a show! So without further ado…”
Luornu turned and raised one leg, intending to run toward the swinging doors, but at that moment one of the blue puzzle pieces on Megalito’s hide lit up and a musical note rang out from somewhere on or within its body. It sounded like a high C played on an organ. Luornu’s leg froze in mid-air. Everyone else in the room froze, too.
As the high C faded, another puzzle piece lit up, this one yellow, and an E-sharp sounded, this time as if played by an electric guitar. Against her own volition, Luornu whirled back around to face the stage and planted both feet firmly on the floor.
“What—what’s happening to me?” she cried.
“You want to know what’s happening?” said Megalito. “Well, let me explain…”
All at once a succession of puzzle pieces lit up in a complex pattern, and the accompanying musical notes formed a bouncy, catchy tune that sounded as if it were being played by a host of instruments—trombones, trumpets, clarinets, drums, and so on. Marcy even detected a few notes from a Denebian finger-twink in there, too.
As the music swelled, men and women danced out onto the stage from both left and right, forming two lines with Megalito’s head between them in the center. Among the dancers were Chizzer Wazzo and the surviving members of his gang. Every dancer wore the same ghastly grinning-yet-haunted expression as Chizzer. With his happy smile, Megalito rocked back and forth to the beat of the music.
The men and women linked arms and performed a perfectly synchronized dance that involved lots of high-kicking. And as they danced, they sang:
Megalito!
He’s Megalito!
He’s a wonder of the world.
He’s a song-and-dance machine.
Oh, Megalito!
He’s mega-neato!
He’s the happy smiling master
Of crafty choreography!
It’s bad! So bad! You’re super-mad
At how deftly you got snatched!
But you really shouldn’t feel too sad;
You were dreadfully outmatched!
The Starlight here is your new pad;
No escape plans can be hatched!
He’s the puppeteer without a peer
With a lump of gold he lured you here
So enjoy his theater of good cheer
This is your new careeeeeeeer!
Megalito!
He’s Megalito!
He’s the wormy virtuoso
Who’s got every last note planned.
Megalito!
He’s mega-neato!
He’s the great chromatic maestro!
He’s the leader of the band!
I know it’s sappy sappy sappy
But take this advice from me:
When life is crappy crappy crappy
As it all too often seems
And you want happy happy happy
But it seems beyond your reach
Then sing so loud you’ll crack the sky
And dance so hard your feet’ll fry
And you’ll soon be glad that you’re alive
‘Cause mu-sic ne-ver diiiiieeees!
Oh Megalito!
He’s Megalito!
He’s the vermiform musician
In a particolored shell!
Megalito!
He’s super-sweeto!
He’s like a rootin’ tootin’ ride
On a merry carousel!
He’s the best, the blest, the joy, the way!
He’s a Great Unknown! He’s here to stay!
So make time for music in your day!
Or else he’ll make you paaaaaaaaay!
By the time this routine had ended, everyone in the “audience” was tapping their feet and bobbing their heads in time to the music. Even Marcy was rolling back and forth in gentle arcs.
And every single one of them tried to stop themselves and get the hell out of the room, but there was something about the music, or the flashing lights on Megalito’s hide, or maybe both combined, that made it impossible for them to do so. They were under some bizarre form of musical hypnosis.
After the last note had died away, the performers bowed as if expecting applause. None came, of course, and with those creepy grins still stretched across their faces, they marched offstage.
“And now,” Megalito said, his huge head slowly turning from side to side as he surveyed his audience, “now it’s time for all of you to perform your routines. And don’t tell me you have no song-and-dance routines. Everybody has one, hidden away deep inside like a guilty secret. And I want them. Now.”
Megalito’s gaze settled on Kirby and Blunt. An instant later several spotlights blazed to life, fixing the duo in their beams. The pattern of flashing lights on Megalito’s hide changed, and the music mutated into a plaintive tune dominated by violins, flutes, and gnomish zilligiggos.
“You two,” Megalito said. “Entertain me.”
Kirby opened his mouth to say, “Fuck you, you stupid wormy shit-bag,” but what came out instead was this:
Oh, they say that you can make it if you try.
And they say that every dog will have his day.
I just can’t believe those sayings are all lies.
For every will there has to be a way!
I’ve tried hard.
I’ve paid my dues.
I have to believe that my reward
Will soon be comin’ through!
And here, much to his amazement, Blunt joined in:
Mr. Kirby here’s the smartest guy I’ve ever met,
And he’s worked and worked to get that one big score.
It ain’t his fault he hasn’t made it yet.
It’s just bad luck that always slams that golden door.
He’s tried hard.
He’s paid his dues.
And I feel sure that his reward
Will soon be comin’ through.
And back to Kirby:
I tell ya, if it ain’t one thing it’s always another—
An extra elven sentry patrolling the storehouse yard,
Or the discovery that your victim is a good friend of your mother’s,
Or an irrepressible bean-fart that alerts the treasury guards.
Oh, I always try my best.
I always plan it out.
But my bad luck never rests;
It always hunts me down.
Blunt again:
Mr. Kirby has the brains; I’m the one who has the brawn,
And the two of us together should be the team supreme.
But somehow things always find a way of going wrong,
And our one big score forever stays a dream.
Mr. Kirby tries his best,
And I always help him out.
But despite our dar-ned-est
Bad luck bops us on the snout.
Kirby and Blunt together:
But while chance might push us down,
We won’t give up our dreams.
We’ll stand again, and look around
And hatch another scheme.
Yes, while chance might push us down
We’ll always rise again.
And one day we will win the crown
&nb
sp; And we’ll be wealthy, happy men.
“Oh, how inspirational,” Megalito tittered, his mouth flashing orange. “I love it. Now, let’s see. Who’s next?”