by Chuck Austen
“You mean this one?” he asked.
“You have another one?”
“No,” he said missing the sarcasm.
“Then, yes. I’ll take that one.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
“I’m thinking of starting a collection.”
“Really?” He missed it again.
“No. Can you toss it to me, please?”
Just then a hand appeared over the edge of the limo and fired a random shot to, presumably, either kill me or threaten me into jumping off the roof. I ducked and called to Morgan more urgently.
“Morgan!”
He started to toss the thing, then stopped and seemed to consider something of great importance.
“I may need this back,” he said, concerned. “It isn’t mine. It belongs to one of those security guards back there. I took it when they were holding…”
“I don’t really need the history of the thing right now. I just need the gun. Will you give me the gun if I ask nicely? Please? Pretty please?”
“You don’t have to be such a grouch.”
Without moving off Sophie, he half-heartedly tossed the thing so that it dropped between our two vehicles and bounced its way, end over end, down the freeway and into a TV movie about someone who finds a loaded gun on the freeway.
I looked at Morgan as if he were a child who’d crossed that final line and now had to be given up for adoption.
“What?” he moaned. “I threw it as hard as I could.”
Then Washburne’s hand was firing at me again, and I realized this wasn’t the time to be petulant about Morgan’s lack of enthusiasm for my plight. I hunkered down on the roof of the limo and skittered about like the superhero I was painted to be, avoiding randomly fired bullets and trying to figure out what the real Spiderman would do if he were in my situation, riding atop a fast-moving limousine on a busy freeway. That is, if there were a real Spiderman.
He’d taunt his villains, I realized.
So I stuck my head down the opposite side from where the gun was for just a second, then withdrew it quickly enough to see the glass I hadn’t been able to see through explode outward in a burst.
That was effective.
And scary.
But I was going to do it again. First, though, I needed to talk to Wisper.
“Funny how you could call me a ‘clothist’ out on the beach earlier!” I yelled, loud enough to be heard through the broken window. “With genuine disdain, I might add. But I call you a nudist in a moment of weakness, and you’re off riding with the Boones!”
I glanced at the advertising truck, and saw River and Waboombas looking at me with serious concern as they paced us, moving in and out of traffic, working hard to stay close. I smiled and gave them the thumbs-up, which didn’t seem to ease their minds at all.
Unaffected by their lack of faith in me, I skittered to the other side of the limo and stuck my head down, reaching for the door handle. I knew it would be locked, but I was trying to give the idea that I was attempting to get in a little more authenticity. I rattled it once, then jerked quickly back up to narrowly avoid another glass-shattering gunshot.
“And a ‘textile’!” I yelled through the newly opened window.
“What’s that? I have to believe it’s somehow derogatory. Like, people who see themselves as what they wear, more than what they are?” Washburne’s gun appeared again and fired—more or less in the direction of my voice—and I rolled aside to avoid it.
How many bullets does that gun hold?
Maybe that wasn’t what I needed to be worrying about right now.
I scampered my way forward to the front of the limo, figuring it was the fastest, most likely way to end this insanity, and slowly stuck my head down in front of the driver.
Through the windshield I saw Mayor Boone, far back in the limo with his arms around a terrified and angry Wisper, restraining her. She was yelling at Washburne and struggling to reach him, as the mayor shouted to his son and egged him on. The younger Boone, meanwhile, scrambled all around inside the spacious vehicle, sweating, frightened, and panicky, looking desperately from window to window and trying to catch where I might turn up next.
“When you come from such different worlds,” I yelled. “There’s bound to be conflict!”
That helped Washburne find me, and I saw the barrel of the gun point right into my face.
Meanwhile, the driver reacted as you might if you saw a yelling, multi-colored man, his hair sticking out in all directions, suddenly in your face on a busy freeway. Kind of like that Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner on the airplane. Lots of screaming and hand waving, and as the driver lurched away, he jerked the wheel to one side and nearly tossed me from the car.
Thankfully, that caused me to tumble out of the way just as the safety glass shattered outward around Washburne’s bullet hole. The shot missed, but a couple of shards homed in on me and rocketed into my leg. I grabbed the torn thigh in pain, and nearly fell from the limo into the path of an oncoming semi.
With my free hand, I grabbed the antenna and nearly sliced my fingers off trying to keep myself from greasing the asphalt under the limo’s wheels. Just as I was about to get myself ‘securely’ back onto the hood of the car, Washburne leaned out one of the now open windows and desperately aimed his smoking gun right in my face. I was a trigger pull away from actually being dead.
Then Wisper cracked Washburne in the back of the head with an ice bucket from somewhere inside the limo, and he dropped the gun onto the freeway below me.
Two made for TV movies.
As Washburne slumped away, I looked up into Wisper’s beautiful face.
“The question is,” I asked her. “What’s better? An easy life alone?” I smiled, already knowing her answer. “Or conflict with someone you love? Totally and completely.”
Her eyes misted and she melted.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
Then she reached out to keep me from falling to a grisly death that likely would have ruined the romance of the moment, then leaned down and kissed me, passionately.
Being a man—and heterosexual I reassure you, again—I kissed her back.
Finally, gradually, gratefully, the limo came to a stop on the side of the road, and I stepped down into grass that was immeasurably soothing against my bare feet. I wanted to get down on the ground and kiss it, but I realized it would be much more fun to open the door and kiss Wisper again instead.
So I did.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away from me.
“So am I.”
Having to part more quickly than we’d have preferred, Wisper and I stepped back from the limo, waiting for whatever might come next.
“I saw you struggling with Boone,” I told her. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “I was trying to stop Washburne from shooting you, and Mayor Boone was just trying to protect me.”
“Protect you?”
“Yes,” Mayor Boone said, shoving his erstwhile son Washburne to the ground as the two men exited their vehicle. I saw the driver step out and hold his hands up as if under arrest.
“He made me do it!” the chauffer fairly cried. “I didn’t want to smash into you!”
“I didn’t know he had a gun,” the visibly angry and distraught mayor told me. “Didn’t know he was threatening you. I thought I was doing Wisper a favor getting her away from you. I was only looking out for her best interests. I’ve known her family for years.” Then to her directly, “Your father was the best man at my wedding!”
“So it was natural for you to assume,” I admitted, “that Wisper would one day be your daughter-in-law.”
“Yes,” he said, and the words slipped out of him like an exasperated sigh. “Yes, but…” and with this he turned to his progeny, moaning in the dirt. “He’s insane!”
“No kidding,” River agreed.
“But would anyone listen to me?” Wisper demanded. “Nooooo. Ma
rry him, you all told me. He’s quirky, but he really, really loves you.”
River shrugged. Water under his bridge apparently.
Mayor Boone looked at Wisper sadly, then turned again with even deeper sadness to his boy, his child, his son, and said, simply, “You’re crazy!”
I couldn’t believe this was that much of a surprise. When someone lives under the same roof long enough with a loon like Washburne, there are certainly signs. Moody behavior. Erratic temper. A tendency to argue, to lose focus—to talk with plants.
Of course, Mayor Boone was, at best, ethically and morally challenged. Perhaps Washburne was simply the next evolutionary step—like monkey into man…only, more in reverse.
Washburne sat up, rubbing his head and looked around as if confused.
“Where are we?” he asked.
Good question. I turned and studied the terrain. I hadn’t realized that, at some point, we had gotten off the freeway. It took a moment to recognize that we were very near the dimensional hole. Not far down the road was the defaced sign that said ‘WELCOME TO GREEN VALLEY, NEKKID BOTTOMS 1 NOTTYNGON 4’. I stepped out into the road and saw the familiar scorch mark indicating the exact spot between my world and Wisper’s.
“So, what now?” I asked everyone.
River and Wendy turned and stared into each other’s eyes, as if asking the other to make the decision.
“I could help you sell your comics,” River said smiling.
“And I kinda liked Nekkid Bottoms,” Wendy said. “It’s worth another visit, after the convention is over.” She gently took River’s member in hand. “A good long visit.”
Morgan and Sophie finally stood up in the truck, apparently finished with whatever needed finishing, and leaned against one another, sweating and breathing heavily. Sophie seemed eminently satisfied, and tucked herself under Morgan’s arm happily.
“I think we’re gonna split the difference,” Morgan said, cheerily.
“And you?” the mayor asked me pointedly, obviously still unimpressed with me as a whole. “How will you survive on any world without your wealth?”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” I said. “I’m not the man you think I am. Not anymore.”
I looked at Wisper, kissed her again, and felt like I was reborn. “And besides,” I said to Mayor Boone. “I haven’t lost all my wealth.”
“True,” he said, and smiled that dark, sinister, ethically challenged smile again, that showed me just how utterly unashamed he was he hadn’t gotten away with it.
He waved me over to the limo, indicating to the chauffer to pop the trunk, which he did. Once open, the mayor reached in and pulled aside one of several fireproof security cases, dialed a combination he hid from my view and opened the latch.
There were several hundred gold coins, as well as a pile of diamonds and rubies the likes of which I’d seen only in movies.
“Wow,” I said. “So that’s how you transfer wealth from our world to yours? Those are still valuable over there then?” Boone shot another glance at Wisper. “Anything of rare and exquisite beauty is always highly prized,” he told me.
I was beginning to wonder who had the bigger thing for Wisper, son or dad.
I smiled and looked at my rare and exquisite beauty, feeling better than I’d felt at any point since two nights ago when she was holding my penis.
“Here,” Boone said, handing me my comics. “I never intended to keep them. I just wanted to get you away from her.”
“As you can see,” I said, “nothing you or anyone else can do ever will.”
Then something occurred to me.
“How were you planning to destroy the gateway between worlds?” I asked.
He stopped smiling and studied me with a ’bugs are doing trapeze-swings from your nose-hairs’ expression and asked, I believed sincerely, “What are you talking about?”
I returned his confused look. “Washburne said…”
Abruptly, Boone turned and stared intently inside the trunk, as if searching for something that frightened him. He found it. It was a small, silver box with a handle and a thick cable running from it to somewhere inside the main body of the black car. He reached in and tried to pull the thing out by the grip, but instead of coming free, it levered, clicked, lights blinked on, something hummed, and an LCD display ignited with red letters that flashed ‘ACTIVATED’ several times, then scrolled aside to be replaced by a numeric countdown.
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…
Boone, Wisper, and I reflexively stepped back, our minds racing through options.
“Where would he get something like that?” Boone asked, mostly to himself. “Where would anyone find something like that?”
I was about to shout that everyone should run for their lives, when Morgan called over to us with what I hoped was a solution to our explosive little problem.
“Hey, look!” he said, and everyone turned his way. “This opens!”
He leaned down and showed how the rear window of the advertising truck could be slid to one side so people painted up as Spiderman could more easily get from cab to bed without dangerous, life-threatening maneuvers, and by the time I turned back to the bomb, Washburne was behind the wheel of the limo and racing off toward the dimensional hole.
“Don’t you feel stupid?” Morgan said to me, snidely.
I had underestimated Washburne, expecting him to be beaten, but I should have realized sooner that crazy people never believe themselves to be beaten, or wrong, or crazy. Unfortunately for him, he also didn’t know his father had apparently activated his explosive device.
Dumbfounded, I pulled Wisper, and we ran behind the truck, warning the others to do as we did, just as clouds began to form, thunder to roll, and lightning to strike. I didn’t see the explosion when it happened due to the sudden darkness, rain, fearful cowering and all, but the explosion must have been tremendous.
The advertising truck rocked up on its side, to the point where we feared it might actually roll over on us. But then it creaked, strained, and fell back onto the street, bouncing a few times on burning, flattening tires. The advertising sign it had been pulling didn’t fare quite so well. It was split in half by a rocketing limousine tire, piece of axel, and a section of the trunk. Ripped neatly into two, the pieces groaned over into a small ditch by the side of the road.
Once the sound of bending, shearing metal had died away, and the shuddering of vehicles and earth had receded, I checked to see that everyone was unhurt, then moved around the burning wreckage of our former chase vehicle to find out how bad things might be.
Beyond the truck, the clouds were quickly rolling back, and the brief rain was already drying away to steam in the heat of the afternoon sun. Near the heart of the fading storm, the asphalt of the road had been ripped away, as if scooped by the hand of God Himself—a massive, gaping hole torn deep into the earth and mineral rights territory beneath. As I approached, its depth surprised me, and I half expected to see Mole Man rising out of the smoke, and dust, and fog at the center, ready to take on—first the Fantastic Four, and then the world.
I was shocked to speechlessness. Where had Washburne gotten such a bomb, and why? Why would he possibly want the doorway between worlds sealed forever? The whole thing hit me— surprisingly—like a heavy shot to the gut. When I could get there easily, I hadn’t given Nekkid Bottoms much thought. But now that it was beyond my reach—beyond all our reach—I could think of no place I wanted more to be.
As I stared into the abyss, Wisper stepped to my side and put an arm around me nervously. I looked into her so-lovely face and could see the horror distorting her beauty. The shock and pain of not being able to return home, of never again seeing her family, of the death that Washburne must have suffered at his own hands. I pulled her to me and held her tightly, knowing it was faint reassurance.
After a moment, we both stopped imagining the obvious and looked at old man Boone. He was clearly in a state of shock. He hadn’t moved from near the truck, as he stood, fr
ozen, staring toward the mess created by his only son.
Wendy looked at River and said, “You can stay at my place.” Which didn’t seem to cheer him any.
“That fucking bastard!” Sophie snarled.
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “So…what does this mean?”
“It means we can’t get home,” Wisper explained. “We’re trapped in this world.”
“Well, that’s not so bad,” Morgan offered cheerily. He flinched when our reactions said otherwise, rather pointedly.
“Not at all?” River asked. “But we can’t be stuck here! I can’t wear pants again! They’re uncomfortable! Confining! Perverse!”
“What pants?” Morgan asked. “You were wearing a washcloth!” “AND IT WAS AWFUL!” River said, and began pacing in tiny circles. He looked terrified, as if just the thought of wearing clothes gave him actual, physical pain.
“Maybe there’s another hole somewhere!” he said. “Or we could make one.”
He looked at me as if somehow I opened dimensional holes twice daily and three times on weekends. Then his gaze moved over my shoulder, out over the steaming rent in the Earth.
“Or maybe the hole is still there,” he said, sounding truly hopeful. “Maybe just the street is gone.”
Instantly, everyone turned and looked at the dissipating mist and flashes of electricity that were the last vestiges of the energy storm. They floated at near eye level, in the center of the place where Washburne had disappeared, exactly where the street would have taken us if there still were a street to take us. As small bursts of energy continued to crackle only a few feet from our faces, I realized River might be right.
I hadn’t considered that maybe the hole, itself, could have survived such an explosion, but then I didn’t even know how it worked, let alone what could make it stop working. And how could Washburne know any more than me?
That’s when we heard it. Just as the last bit of cloud, and boom, and flash disappeared completely, and the last drip of misty rain fell. Washburne. Laughing.
Somewhere on the other side of the hole.