Reborn (Frankenstein Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  But after getting into character so well, both players were left in the dust by the farting fat ladies from Pasadena.

  Before drivers and fartsters could get too far away for Soren—playing the part of the voyeur—to appreciate, the roadsters and the fartsters looped back toward him along the opposing lanes of traffic.

  By now the game had changed. Fat Fanny Maes were coming out of the woodwork on roller skates to join the race, turning it into Roller Derby out there. They were elbowing the cars out of the way, with the help of the supernatural powers of the ghosts possessing them.

  “Hey, we’re drag racing here!” one of the possessed riders—both of which had landed in the lake—Faux Hobo Guy, bitched, having his last two words swallowed up by the water streaming into his mouth, as both cars sunk beneath the water line.

  The Fat Fanny Fartsters on roller skates were sizing up the competition. The other team of rollerbladers were made up of bulimics. Swank Town supermodels from the looks of them, on brief sabbatical, until they could quit their coke addictions and other bad habits picked up from too many years of trying absolutely everything to keep the weight off. If they needed to pick up some quick momentum, they vomited over their shoulders instead of farted, but the propellant of stomach acids and semi-solids seemed no less effective.

  The bulimics were better at finding the cracks in the walls of bodies to slip through among the opposing team. They also weren’t bashful about vomiting in their faces to blind the other players. And thanks to the ghosts inside them, the vomitus they had to expectorate, and the force it generated, was always just right for the occasion.

  The Fartsters, for their part, were only too happy to let go one really good one, strong enough to blow the opposing player clear off the track. For the particularly pugnacious practitioners of their sport, they hit their opponents with the flaming farts, sticking the Bic to their backsides. The bulimics—at least the ones quicker on the draw—had to neutralize the flame with their latest vomited boluses.

  And what had happened to the original two gargantuan sidewalk surfers? The two once-demurely dressed ladies riding the skateboards were now the queens of the ball. The opposing roller derby teams each had one to protect. The queens, each with a hive of worker bees and warrior bees about them were demure no more. They were dolling themselves up in their compacts, and taking the prizes their private armies won away from the other team, a hairbrush here, a comb there, a stick of lipstick here, a scarf there, to facilitate their primping. The prizes won from the opposing team were supplied by the ghosts’ ability to manifest them out of thin air.

  “Nope, I don’t think this is the least bit funny,” Soren mumbled. “Quite demeaning actually regarding some of our more challenged minority groups.” He was tearing up all the same, biting on his middle-finger joint to keep from laughing, and turning red in the face.

  More possessed people were pulling up patio chairs along the sidewalks on both sides of the street to take in the roller derby game, as the contestants looped around the island divider in the middle of the road.

  The popcorn buckets—made of solid gold—in the audience’s hands, held shrunken heads instead of popcorn. Soren wandered what those imported native heads went for on the black market.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to shake me and ask your destiny, dickhead! Not pop me down your throat!” Shit, the shrunken heads are nano-enhanced! Soren gasped. He just got the answer to his question; each one went not for a small-fortune, but a really large one.

  The last part of Shrunken Head’s words got swallowed up as he made gagging sounds sliding down the spectator’s esophagus. No time given at all to appreciate his withered, wizened, Yoda-like face.

  The patio-chair-propped-up spectator next to Gagger-on-Shrunken-Head shook his shrunken head as he was supposed to, watched the eyes rattle around a bit, and listened to the sneezed out proclamation, “You’re dead.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I’m dead’?” said the dimple-jawed, defiant, squinty-eyes guy—his screaming yellow suit complementing his Bermuda-tan—glaring at the shrunken head in his hands.

  “Dude, how am I being vague?”

  “Screw you.” He popped the shrunken head down his throat, needed a strong pull on the soda straw to get it down. He was still coughing up the head, when he stepped into traffic, hoping to get some more force going on those coughs. One of the bulimics with eyes bigger than her tits gave him a good Heimlich with an elbow to the stomach. Out popped the head. The spectator winced, “Thanks, Lady,” despite the pain, and despite her being well beyond hearing or caring. The next rollerblader knocked him over, and a slew of them ran right over him, leaving chunks of body on the road.

  “Ah, that’s how they get the cool sparks to come off the wheels of the rollerblades!” Soren exclaimed from the sidelines. Line enough of the skaters up and it’s like one really big chainsaw blade rolling over you. The scientist in him was pleased at deciphering the riddle, even if the human part of him that should have sympathized better with the poor ground-to-pieces guy had been suppressed, courtesy of the ghost inside his head.

  “See, I told ya!” shouted the shrunken head that had been spit up in the middle of the road by Ground To Pieces. “Will someone pick me up, please?” he yelled toward the crowd, “and toss me in someone’s bucket. I’m good luck, I tell ya! Can’t fault me for turning the evil eye once in a while.” When he got no takers, he sighed and mumbled, “These people hold some serious grudges.”

  His eyes went wide and so did his mouth as the next set of roller blades sliced him in two.

  “What do I do with these things?” said one of the spectators, with a long, oval head on a thin neck—a bit like a Pez dispenser—staring at the shrunken head he’d pulled out of his bucket. Pez had this whole retro Polyester-shirt thing going—of course, faked with the finest silks.

  The guy sitting next to him with the shaved head and an ex-boxer’s cauliflowered, jumbo-sized ears, replied, “You shake it, ask for your fortune, and then you swallow it. Don’t forget to chew, though, or you’ll choke on the damn things. You’ve got to crack their skulls to get at the juices inside. They’re like those liquor-filled chocolates. Only wait till you get a load of this acid trip.” The guy had heavyweight champ, retired well, written all over him, down to the gold rings on six of his ten fingers, and the what-might-have-been Mike Tyson surgically-altered smile.

  “Cool,” Pez said, after a moment’s hesitation to process all of that. He shook the head.

  “You’re going to be burnt alive, pissed on, farted on, vomited on, then run over by a Mack truck, all in quick succession,” the shrunken head in his hand prophesized.

  “Hey, these things are pretty funny with handing out the fates.” Pez swallowed the head and chewed as he was told. “God… like chewing almonds… you really have to bite down on these fuckers… but, all in all… not bad.” His words came out a bit choppy since he was talking while he was chewing.

  A big smile crossed Almonds-Analogy’s face as he held out his hand and walked straight into traffic. Traffic being the roller derby players trying to get by him. To that end: they farted on him—the noxious gases peeling his skin; they vomited on him—the vomitus only playing up the earlier skin-debriding effects; one bulimic, with her hair tied behind her in a bun and legs for days, lifted a leg into a dancer’s wide second position and pissed on him without slowing—she could hardly afford to lose ground with a pit stop; and the next Fat Fartster, rubbing her pregnant womb protectively, to make room for her unborn child, gave him a big hip bump onto the sidewalk lining the bay, where he was summarily run over by the Mack truck which was forced to steer around the roller derby game.

  A sly spectator shook his shrunken head and aimed it at the guy in the chair next to him; so the one next to him got the prophecy. “You’re going to melt into a puddle of ooze,” the shrunken head said.

  “Yeah, right,” the old guy said taking the prophecy to the face. He still had worms crawling out of his hair
from the earth he’d dug himself out of earlier. The tux was holding up, though. Wasps were boring holes into his face to bury their young. The ones that had done that were tunneling out and flying off, even as others were tunneling in.

  Feeling quite immune from the curse of the shrunken heads, the sly one—with the big cowboy hat to go with his rich-farmer-next-door face—holding his shrunken head that had dispensed his prophecy on his neighbor, thus sparing him the same ugly fate, swallowed the shriveled head and chewed. “Damn, that’s good.”

  He watched himself starting to melt away. “Okay, I guess we have that mystery sorted,” he said with his Dallas, Texas accent. “It’s the one that shakes the head that’s fucked, not the one the head is talking to.” He finished melting into the sidewalk.

  Soren genuinely hated to leave the roller derby game replete with its loyal fan base at this point. “God, these clowns are great. Please tell me some of them are going to hang around after they help us get through these dark days.”

  But the fact of the matter was, Soren could already sense that the magic wasn’t going to be enough. He was feeling better, sure, and not just from the gallows humor; he could feel the chi coursing through his body better. But he was a long way from being at a hundred percent. He had to assume that what he was beholding in front of Victor’s was playing out across the entire planet right now. The gags would be different, of course, suited to the people the ghosts doing the possessing were trying to get to lighten up. True, he hadn’t exactly given the medicine enough time to work, but Soren wasn’t taking any chances.

  They were down a lot of bodies after the Tillerman’s arrival. Many bodies had been burnt or destroyed beyond any chance of possessing them. Even if the global body count was still pretty high—he couldn’t imagine it was half what it once was—it wasn’t going to be enough. He hated to say it, but with more bodies to possess, these ghosts might well have carried the show single-handedly. But his gut told him they were going to need help.

  Soren ambled toward the power spot where The Masked Man had first incarnated, manifesting his crystal body out of the granite-rich ground. Soren needed to get to the power spot if he was going to do his thing. With the power spot to enhance his chi flows, he could channel his chi energy to everyone on the planet. The stunt would likely kill him, but they were well past last-ditch efforts a couple tries ago. And he wasn’t about to have Chu Lin’s masterful spell come to naught; there were too many lives riding on this.

  Soren used the extra energy he had now to run as fast as he could. The coughing was gone; that was a help. It wouldn’t be robbing him of the air in his lungs he needed to power his sprint. Granted, his sprint, by Tillerman days’ standards, was more of a brisk jog.

  ***

  “This place has a five-star rating. I’ve tried every other five-star restaurant in the city. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype. Nothing has truly satisfied in a while. I suppose that Tillerman character is to blame. If I don’t have a satisfying gourmet meal soon, I might just kill somebody.” She must have been delirious, spouting off to her seven-year-old son, and thinking aloud.

  “Mom, can I get some candy?” her seven-year-old said.

  She backhanded him across his face. “Don’t start your whining now and embarrass me, you hear? Or you’ll spend the next week in the closet with the lights off. Besides, how do you expect me to pay for a decent meal with you sucking me dry?”

  The freak of a maître d’ greeting guests at the door and selecting just the right table and just the right waitress for the customers happily took her hundred dollar bill, definitely showing her the best table in the joint. Right smack in the center of the restaurant, where everyone could drool over her culinary experience.

  If her appetites had done her no kindness, rounding out her features and her figure with fat, thinning her hair, and erasing all signs of personality, save for the labor it took to breathe and to move about, which could just squeeze anger out of her these days and little more… . Well, she had nothing to complain about next to the maître d’.

  He was the oddest sort of Siamese twins. His two faces had fused together along the midline almost into one, except, one side of the face was lower than the other, and the fact that each side housed half a brain was highlighted by how unseemly the domes of their skulls came together, like clumps of broccoli. The side with the green eye seemed dominant over the side with the brown eye. The right side seemed only semi-conscious and was definitely not doing the talking.

  A pity she had to abide by the freaks’ sorry faces and risk vomiting up her entire meal, but these were hard times. She could damn well eat with her eyes closed if she had to. She had it on good authority that this restaurant in the Freaks sector, was the best on the planet.

  She took her seat, noticed the maître d’ winking at the boy, who smiled back at him. “Oh, nothing for him,” she said.

  “Not even a glass of water, Miss?”

  “What, so you could have an excuse to jack up the bill? I’ll take the house special.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  ***

  The maître d’ turned to the boy so the mother couldn’t see him mouthing, “This is going to be fun.” The cherub-cheeked seven-year-old with the dirty blond locks, delighted to share a secret, smiled back.

  ***

  The waitress brought the mother the meal. The one serving the dish was a fright, mom thought, but not worth upchucking a gourmet meal over. The waitress’s face was all mouth and big teeth. The top half of her face, the nose, and the eyes, and the skull, were so petite, they looked like they belonged on a person far younger. “We make sure to check on you, here at Chez Freak, madam,” the waitress said. “The entire staff is at your disposal, not just me.”

  “I should hope so, as much as I’m paying for this meal.” The mother slurped the clam off the dish. She had to admit, so far, the place was living up to the hype, and she was feeling better than ever. She hadn’t enjoyed a meal this much in ages. She ignored the mopey sad face the kid was giving her across the table. Like that manipulative shit is going to work on me.

  She was nearly through with the plate and about to order desert when one of the attentive waitresses came over and leaned in to her. Her face was such a horror she barely had time duck out of the way to escape the food coming right out of her customer’s mouth.

  What was she thinking getting so close with a mug like that? The eyes were coming out either side of the shaved head—big eyes with even more ridiculous eyelashes. And the nose—it was like looking up both lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel at once during rush hour traffic. She couldn’t vacuum the buggers out? It’d take a lawn mower or a weed whacker once the debris was clear to manage those nostril hairs.

  ***

  So his mommy couldn’t see, before departing, the waitress turned to wink at the boy, who laughed so hard he had to put his hand over his mouth.

  ***

  “We’re so sorry about that, mum,” the maître d’ said rushing over to the seven-year-old boy’s mother. “She should have known better than to stick her face smack in front of yours like that. It is such a fright, isn’t it? But good news, we’re featuring a new house special currently. We’ll bring you a fresh plate as soon as we’ve got you all freshened up.”

  Helpful hands were coming from not one, not two, but three people trying to bus her vomit from her dress and her person, from the table, from the floor. Their faces were so horrific the mother heaved again, and again, and again. All it took was looking at one of them.

  And the cast of helpful attendants?

  Well, there was Looker—with the four eyes in a rainbow arching over his plastic nose—which had fallen, along with his glasses, onto the table, exposing the nasal cavity. When he put the glasses back on, the plastic nose was accompanied by a four-lensed set of spectacles—one for each eye.

  “Sorry, miss!” he said. As if “sorry” could do that spectacle justice.

  And then there was Brainer—with his exposed
brain. He spritzed it right in front of her with a nano-mist. “Sorry, miss. I got such big brains, they don’t fit in my head, so I have to pull back the skull cap from time to time to spritz it to get it to go down. You haven’t seen my skull cap anywhere, have you?”

  Before she could yell at him to get away from her, he had the good sense to remove himself. Of course, by then… .

  The third attendant had arrived on the scene.

  Busty had tits for eyes, which she had to peel back to reveal her nose and make enough room to blow her schnoz. Her actual eyes were lodged in her neck!

  But to the attendants’ credit, they got their high-paying customer and the area cleaned up, and spritzed her mouth out with some mint freshener, and brought her another dish that was even more spectacular than the first.

  And then, just as she was nearly through with it, the same ordeal, all over again. Always a fresh freak, always a horror worse than the one she’d beheld before.

  The boy facing her was standing up on his chair clapping and laughing every time one of the attendants got her to heave. Oh, he found it quite the vaudeville act. You just wait until I get you home, you little scamp. You’ll rue the day.

  But she couldn’t leave. They kept changing the house special and bringing her the most divine food in all the world. And now the entire restaurant was in on the act, all the guests at the other tables would stop what they were doing and stare, waiting for the face to drop down in front of her when she was so stuffed, she couldn’t eat another bite. Oh, how she wanted to deny them the pleasure of her discomfort. But the faces of the wait staff… . She just couldn’t do it. How many friggin’ freaks did they have in this place? They had to run out, sometime, right? She’d get to enjoy her meal yet.

  But they didn’t clean her up this time. Instead they brought in a wheelbarrow, threw her in it, and carted her out to the sidewalk and heaved her onto the slab of cement.