“Sorry.”
Modacio smiled back at Grubby. “There’s nothing to be ashamed about. Many people have issues like this.”
Grubby was grimacing as he felt his ire rising.
“Like I said,” he said through clenched teeth, “I don’t have any problems. These are for my cat.”
“You brought a cat?” said Kone excitedly.
“No, I didn’t bring a cat!”
“Then why you got diapers for a cat?”
“Because they’re not for a cat,” explained Modacio. “Really, Grubby, you shouldn’t feel bad about this. I’ve read a number of males at your age have problems with this. It’s just nature’s way of telling you that you’re entering into a new era of life.”
Grubby scowled and then threw the bag in the trash bin.
“I don’t have a problem.”
Modacio shrugged and said, “Hey, they’re your clothes.”
“That’s right, they are…wait…seriously, I don’t have any problems with that!”
“Okay,” Modacio replied as she got up and started heading down the street.
Grubby grunted, deciding to leave this part out of his notes. “Where are we going?”
Modacio pointed down the road. In the distance was the limping form of a Zombie turning a corner.
“I was hoping to have taken him sooner, but I didn’t know where you were.”
“Oh.”
“It’s okay,” she added gently. “I didn’t know about your not-a-problem problem.”
“Yeah,” Kone sat, patting Grubby on the head.
Grubby slapped away the Ogre’s hand.
“Can we just get this Zombie and quit talking about this…please?”
COULD YOU GIVE US A HAND?
Bob hadn’t felt this good in years.
There was just something about a lady talking to you and not telling you how bad you smelled or what a disgrace you were that brought out the best in your mood. It wasn’t like he’d gotten her TalkyThingy number or anything. There was only so much a Zombie could hope for, after all. But she’d talked to him. She’d even kept talking to him for a little while outside of the Orcmart before he’d headed back to his apartment.
And now he was taking a nice gingerly pace while attempting to whistle a happy tune. It sounded like the sucking of a chest wound to his ears, but in his head it was a song about daisies and blue skies.
There were only a couple more blocks to go before he turned into the back alley that marked his way of entering his apartment.
He never went this way on weekends because the teenagers hung around the dumpsters and threw stuff at him, assuming they were in a good mood. Bob didn’t even want to think about the things they did to him when they were feeling antsy. During the week, though, he was careful to stick to the back alleys in order to avoid the parents of those teenagers doing the same things to him if he came in the front way. At this hour, it wasn’t likely anyone would bother him, anyway.
Schlop.
Bob heard a schlopping sound and stopped to make sure none of his body parts had fallen off. It happened from time to time. All part of being a Zombie.
Nothing was out of place, so he continued on in his shuffling way, picking up that daisy-blue-sky tune again in his head.
Schlop schlop.
Bob stopped and glanced back.
He saw a towering figure about half a block behind him. At that size it was either an Orc or an Ogre. Not even Trolls got that big, and there weren’t any Giants or Gorgans living in these parts. Whatever it was, it had started milling about as if nothing were going on.
If Bob’d had a useful heart, he assumed that it would have been beating frantically at the moment.
He spun back and picked up his pace a bit. This took a lot of focus since one wrong move would have cost him a foot.
Schlop schlop schlop.
The footsteps were catching up now.
Bob wasn’t about to look back because, in his estimation, looking forward got you where you wanted to be faster. As he turned the corner, he carefully pulled over one of the empty trashcans to hopefully buy himself some more time.
Schlop schlop schlop bang bing bong thud…“Ouch!”
It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
He reached the ladder that led up to his apartment and carefully started to pull himself up. Getting to the third rung, he felt a giant hand grab his ankle.
“Hello there,” said a familiar voice.
Bob looked down and saw Maddy standing to the side. Next to her was a Dark Halfling. Glancing down he saw the Ogre that obviously had been following him. It was holding his leg.
“Maddy?”
“Sure,” she said with a shrug and a fake grin.
“What’s going on?”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms, “we were hoping you could…give us a hand.”
“Or a foot,” pointed out the Dark Halfling.
“True,” Maddy said with a half-nod. “A foot would do fine, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bob, Bob, Bob,” said Maddy as she swirled her boot around in a puddle of water. “Did you honestly think someone that looked like me would truly care about the likes of you?”
“But, you treated me so kindly.”
“She set you up, you dimwit,” said the Dark Halfling. “Now give us a chunk of your flesh willingly or our pal here will just rip off a piece.”
Bob turned back to the Ogre, who said, “Hello” in a sing-song way.
“Why do you want my flesh?”
“We makin’ erech…erect…no, dat’s not it…boner pills!”
“Shut up, you blockhead!”
“Dat not my name, Grubby. My name is Kone and you knows dis already.”
“You’re a horrible person,” Bob said suddenly, turning back to the woman. “I’ll bet your name isn’t even Maddy.”
“You right, mister. Dat not her name. It Modacio.”
“Idiot!”
“No, it Modacio. I known her longer den you, Grubby.”
“You are the idiot,” the one called Grubby said.
“I am not,” said the Ogre, letting go of Bob’s ankle. “I’m just slow. We already talk about dis.”
Bob took the moment to reach up to the next rung and pull with all his might. That turned out to be a mistake because his hand couldn’t handle the pressure. With a crunching pop, it came off at the wrist and dropped to the street below.
It didn’t hurt. When things fell off they never hurt. They were just gone.
“Fanks, mister,” Kone said with a smile as he picked up the hand and put it in a plastic case. “See,” Kone said to the other two, “I told ya all ya gotsta do is ask. And you say I’m da dumb one.”
“Bye bye, Bob,” Maddy or Modacio or whoever the hell she really was said with a little cutesy wave.
“Give me back my hand!” he cried, but they ignored him and kept walking down the street.
How could she? How could anyone be so cruel? And how the hell was he supposed to get up or down the ladder now that he only had one hand and it was his bad hand?
No. No. No! There was no way he was going to let this happen. It was horrible enough to have to go through life in a constant state of advanced decay. Bob wasn’t about to do it with his hand missing, too. Sure, he could find a replacement, but dammit…that was his hand, and he wanted it back.
He tried to slide down a single rung of the ladder. It felt like he was going to make it until his ankle gave out and he dropped straight down onto the street below, snapping his thigh bone in the process.
Again, there was no pain, but Bob well understood that he was not going to be able to walk or get up the ladder, and there was no chance he’d catch up to the thieves…not that he could have done anything to get his hand back from them anyway.
So he just lay there for a while, trying to cry while thinking about what to do. Crying was just as pointless as most anything else that a regular person wo
uld take for granted. Regardless, he sure as hell wasn’t smiling.
Bob only had one friend that he could count on, but he was two long blocks away and he would be sound asleep at this time of the night. He could call Dr. Mozatto, but the psychiatrist would just tell him to go to the emergency room. The ER would just tell him to go jump in a lake. The fish in that lake would tell him to choose some other lake to jump into.
Seeing no other real options, he decided that a friend was a friend whether it was in the morning or in the middle of the night, so he started to drag himself toward the home of Perkder Stonepebble.
MAKESHIFT PORTAL
Modacio, Kone, and Grubby cut through the alleys until they reached the field that lay to the west of Halfly’s Park. It was the only place that was dark and wooded enough to give them a chance to launch the makeshift portal before anyone from Portal Authority could catch them.
“This is illegal, you know,” Grubby said as they pushed through the trees.
“Isn’t most everything we do?” answered Modacio.
“Well, yeah, but I mean this is differently illegal.”
“What difference does it make?”
Grubby felt the thwack of tiny branches barraging his cheeks as Kone’s massive legs pushed through the brush ahead of him.
“Getting caught in the Underworld for theft lands you in the clink for a year, maybe two, and that’s only if you’ve got a record. Taking an underground transport to the Upperworld, though, well, that’ll get you a minimum of twenty years and a full cavity search every time you want to travel the legal portals from that point on!”
“Well, little man,” Modacio retorted as they continued pushing their way through, “this wasn’t the original plan. I was going to drop whatever body part I could snag into a sealed container and go on up to the Upperworld on my own. Being that I’m Human, I wouldn’t have much problem getting through.”
“They don’t let—”
“What, Zombie parts through the scanners? I know all about that. But imagine me all dressed up in a sad dress, with a sad face, explaining that I had the only remaining part of my ever-dying husband in that container. His poor head was crushed in an industrial accident, mind you, thus relegating his ever-dying situation into a more permanent finally-dead one. And I was distraughtly taking it to Flaymtahk Island so that I could burn his final remains into infinity.”
“Diabolical,” said Grubby in amazement.
“I even had an official-looking death certificate drawn up, which cost me a few coins, by the way.”
“So why can’t we just do that, then?”
“Because now I’ve got you and Kone tagging along,” she replied and then grunted as she kicked a branch out of the way. “Besides the obvious fact that you’re a Dark Halfling and he’s an Ogre, neither of which are allowed into the Upperworld without a VISA, it would also make my story a little less believable if I tried to pass you two off as family.”
“Halflings are allowed up.”
“Not the Dark kind, little man.”
“I could just say I was caught out in the sun.”
“And turned an almost transparent shade of blue? I don’t think anyone would buy that. Halflings of the non-Dark variety turn a shade of red when they’ve been out in the sun too long.”
“Makeup, then.”
“That would probably work,” Modacio conceded, “but that wouldn’t do Kone any good, and since your boss made it quite clear that you were to join this exciting adventure to keep tabs on me, I decided it only fair to include Kone so that he can keep tabs on you.”
“Who’s keeping tabs on him?” asked Grubby with a hiss.
“I are tabbing myself!”
“Now,” Modacio said as she paused to catch her breath, “I’ll happily stop this route and go with my original plan if you want to sit around with Kone and wait for my eminent return.”
“Not going to happen,” said Grubby, realizing that the transportable portal that Teggins had provided the coordinates of would signal the union boss once it had fired off. If it didn’t fire off, then Teggins would get suspicious and Grubby had no intention of becoming someone with whom the union decided to examine under a microscope. “I’m just saying that if we get caught it’s going to be a rough future for us all.”
“Then I guess we’d best not get caught,” Modacio stated as she pushed back into the trees.
“Yeah, dat’s a good plan. I not like gettin’ caught. Always troubles when dat happens.”
Grubby leaned forward and put his elbows up to ward off as much of the whipping sticks as he could. Fortunately, he was wearing his thick leather jacket with the long sleeves. His old ma had given it to him before he’d left the nest. Well, not exactly given it to him. It was more that his ma just gave him the stink eye without saying anything as Grubby’d swiped the jacket from his pa’s closet. The fact was that his ma liked Grubby’s pa a fair bit less than she disliked Grubby.
Fifteen minutes later, they entered a small clearing where the moonlight broke neatly through the trees, bathing the grass with its light. The chittering of insects amplified since the sound of Kone plodding through the forest had died down.
One of the good things about being a Dark Halfling, and there were many, was the ability to see clearly in even the darkest of nights. With the moon lifting the darkness slightly, it was almost as clear as day to Grubby.
He checked the area while the other two set to digging up the box that contained the portal and began piecing it together.
“No, Kone,” Modacio was saying, “you don’t put that end in the ground. If you do that we won’t be able to press the buttons.”
“Dat makes sense, I guess.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she continued, “you hold that heavy piece there and I’ll attach the wiring and get us going.”
Something smelled funny about the area. Grubby couldn’t quite make out what it was. Mostly because it was a mixture of smells. Grass, pollen, bark, bushes, Modacio, Kone—a lot of Kone, actually…talk about someone that could use a two-hour dip in a large soapy lake. But there was something else. Oil? Flint maybe? Feathers, definitely. That could just have been birds. There was also the scent of refined woods.
“Wait,” he said, scooting over to Modacio and Kone.
“We’re almost ready,” Modacio said. “Just relax.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“Yeah, you in da way, dat’s what.”
“I’m growing tired of you, you overgrown chump,” Grubby said, pulling himself to his full height and poking a pointed finger at Kone’s knee.
“At least somefin’ about you is growin’.”
“Okay, you two,” Modacio said. “Stop it already. I swear, you’re worse than children!”
“He started it.”
“Nuh-uh! Him did!”
“Grubby,” Modacio said as she finished twisting two wires together, “you said that something was wrong?”
“Oh, right, yeah, I smell something funny.”
“Prolly yer upper lip.”
“That’s it—”
Grubby wrapped himself around Kone’s leg and took to biting him on the quadriceps.
“Ouch! What him bitin’ me for?”
Suddenly, Grubby wondered if this had been such a wise move. He felt Kone’s enormous hands grab him from both sides. Then he felt a whoosh of air as he was launched straight upward toward the moon.
It had happened so fast that Grubby didn’t feel the panic set in until gravity began to take its hold again.
Looking down, the Dark Halfling saw the tops of the trees coming back toward him. He wanted to scream, but he was in shock. Still, as he cannoned down toward Kone, he saw a stream of lights about a half mile away from their position and they were closing fast.
“…catch him or we’ll both be hunted by the damn union,” Modacio was yelling as Grubby saw the ground speedily approaching.
Kone groaned and reached out.
The wind was
knocked completely out of Grubby, but he managed to say, “They’re coming! Must…hurry!”
He heard shouts of “Over there!” and “Get them!” as the world slowly faded away.
HELP FROM A FRIEND
Perkder Stonepebble wobbled down the street toward his house as he drunkenly wondered what he was going to do next.
Working at Halfly’s Park had been one of the grandest things he’d ever done. It gave him the creative outlet to dance around, act silly, dress up in various costumes, and make people happy. Other than the circus, which was full of, well, circus-freaks, there were few options that allowed him to be himself. Yes, he had the CosPlay Posse, and it was a fantastic group, but it wasn’t a job, per se. Though, he thought, with a bit of effort, maybe it could be.
The world was rarely dreary to someone like Perkder. His was a vision that was covered with rose-inlaid glasses. Seeing the world in pastels made it difficult to fall into the gray of life.
A song came to him as he sloshed through the puddles while a steady drizzle pattered upon his wide-brimmed hat.
And a ho-ho-ho
And a way we go
Dressing up in the valley of the Lappy Dappy Doh
Looking like a bunch of fools with our robes flowing low
And a way we go
And a ho-ho-ho!
“Shut up, you idiot,” yelled a gruff voice from one of the buildings to Perkder’s left. “People are trying to sleep up here!”
“Sorry,” Perkder called back with a wave.
“It’s two in the morning, you daft Dwarf!”
“Right,” Perkder said, pointing. “My apologeeez.”
Windows slammed shut, putting an exclamation point on the feelings of those living nearby.
Perkder sang again, but this time much more quietly as he plodded along.
Little dream barrister alone in the night
Bringing up the bunnies and puppies and—Bob?
Perkder stopped for a second, blinking while trying to regain his bearings. There was someone propped up against the railing that led up to Perkder’s townhouse. It sure looked like Bob.
Comedic Fantasy Bundle #1: 4 Hilarious Adventures (Tales from the land of Ononokin) Page 44