by A. J. Mayall
“How does that work?” I asked, trying to keep her occupied as I thought of ways to escape. Yup, none.
“It will take time but, eventually, out of this rift or another one, part of you will come through. I don’t know exactly how this all works; I’ve never made a foil with one of my converted before. He may be a normal toon who thinks he’s known you for years, or he might be a darker part of your subconscious that’s given form. It might be how you ideally see your boyfriend. Fucked if I know.”
She picked up the chainsaw and revved it again. “Now, again, this will hurt. Think happy thoughts.”
I gritted my teeth as she brought the chainsaw closer. I winced and struggled against my bonds. I’d seen toons slip out of handcuffs, stretch themselves around the room and tie themselves in a Gordian knot, and here I was, stuck in a rubber hose body, limited like any other human would be.
She brought the chainsaw to my face. I felt it against the skin of my teeth and then sweet agony ripped through every one of my senses. Teeth were shredded, my gums, the inside of my cheeks became hamburger.
I felt her thrust that at the back of my throat. I half-expected to get decapitated from it but instead, she just twisted it and slid it down my gullet. I could feel my neck expanding around it. My body wasn’t actually being damaged. I could feel everything as if it were still flesh and bone, trachea, voice box, turned into ground sausage inside of me.
She swept it back and forth, raising it, and I saw the line of the blade pulling up my chest and abdomen, but never actually breaching through me. There was a small part of me that wanted to shake my head, smile, and tell the camera that everything was okay.
I fought it back because I knew…the moment I shook off the damage and gave in to it, I wouldn’t be me anymore. I squirmed a little bit, pulling on my arms and legs.
She forced me to deep throat the chainsaw. Bits of blood and ink got stuck on the teeth of the blade and flung out under my nose. It must’ve been part of the residue she had talked about.
She gathered some of it and stamped the copyright page with it. I felt an odd falling sensation from deep within my soul, like something been ripped out of me and put elsewhere.
I was a toon. Now, my soul was bonded to a piece of fucking paper. I wanted to give in for just a little bit. I’d be willing to give up some tiny part of my humanity. I knew that once I started down that path, though, I’d never be able to look back. There wouldn’t be a me to look back to, just Fairfax Fawkes.
She swung the blade left and right inside of me before ripping it out of my throat. “You have got the strongest will I have ever encountered.”
I choked on blood, unable to speak through my wrecked neck. My brain, or whatever I had in my head, kept telling me I could talk just fine if I wanted to. All I had to do was just make a gulping motion, do a quick little tornado spin, and pose for the camera.
I had to resist. I had to endure this torture. Eventually, she’d have to tire and give out. Eventually, the chainsaw would run out of gas. Eventually, someone would come.
Pamela put the chainsaw down and grabbed the sledgehammer. I didn’t have knees now, per se, but she grabbed the part of my rubber hose-like legs where my knees would be and smashed them flat. I yowled, the inhuman noise half organic gurgling and half unadulterated pain.
She brought them down again, and I watched my legs buckle. “Fairfax,” she said, bringing the hammer up, “just give up already.”
She slammed the sledgehammer into my groin. Again, I had nothing there, but it still felt like I did, and there is nothing I could’ve expected to hurt as bad as that. Some people have complained about phantom pain; I don’t think anyone’s ever had bilateral phantom testicular rupture before, and each time she hit me there, it felt fresh.
I laid back, my eyes rolling in my head. I wanted to pass out, but I knew if I did, my body would take over, sort of like how you keep breathing once you’re asleep.
The things that toons would do to snap out of damage and pop back to normalcy had been jokingly termed by toons as a “gag reflex” without ever realizing what that meant for humans.
I was not about to go down that path. I tried to yell for help, and I knew that I was at the end of my rope. Soon, I’d give up and shake this stupid humanity off. I’d be someone else, be happy, in a daze…but then I thought of Kyle.
I’d never see him again. I don’t know if he could ever accept me like this. The idea of him wondering why I just disappeared one day? I couldn’t bear the thought of it.
I couldn’t mouth the words and even though I had lost what had been my human middle finger, I still had three fingers and a thumb, which meant I could still flip her off. She grabbed my right middle-ish finger, though, and bent it backward until it snapped, making me yell out again.
That’s when I noticed a shadow under the door. I thought at first it must’ve been Snappy, and I tried calling out to him.
Pamela didn’t pay me any attention, thinking I was starting to finally give in, when the door busted in and I saw the private eye brandishing a gun and pointing it and Pamela.
She went pale, a faint look of recognition on her face, grabbed the chainsaw and held it out in front of her. He fired at her and I saw her get hit in the shoulder. She swung around and the chainsaw landed directly on me.
It burrowed into me and I screamed bloody murder. As it moved up, I felt like I was being dissected, but eventually, it cut the leather straps across my chest and my right arm. I grabbed the chainsaw and threw it on the floor before undoing my bindings. My hand still hurt from the broken finger, and I wasn’t sure how I got up.
My possessions were in a trash bag, having been shoveled in there with my viscera, which had, by this point, turned into a human soup. I grabbed it and pushed past the private detective, moaning deep and low, begging for help.
He looked at me quizzically, obviously not recognizing me.
I limped over to Pamela, somehow moving on shattered knees, and beat her in the wound with my one good hand.
The private eye looked at me incredulously. “How the hell are you actually hurting someone?”
I huffed and dragged myself over to the side of the table, grabbing the chainsaw and lifting it up. Pamela screamed as I was about to drop it on top of her. There was another resounding shot; my body twisted as the bullet struck the flat of the chainsaw fleeing from my hand.
“Jesus Christ, fox! What the fuck’s the matter with you? I need her alive. She has shit to answer for.”
I kicked her one more time and pushed him out the door.
I upended the trash bag; gore-soaked clothes, ink, blood, and God knows what else, spilled by the gallon at his feet. He looked down and recognized the clothing.
“Are these from the worker, the new guy?”
I pointed to the clothes and then to me.
His eyes went wide. “Holy shit.”
I nodded and fell against him, blacking out.
When I came to, I was in the passenger seat of some sports car with him behind the wheel.
“Okay boss, here’s the thing. I’ve been looking into the possibility that someone has been converting humans into toons. I had no idea that they actually managed to make it work, though.”
I groaned.
“Why the hell are you staying like that?” he asked, concerned.
I looked at him, but whatever face I made, he turned away from fast.
“Christ…you act like you can’t just recover. You look like hell.”
He drove and we heard sirens: three squad cars passed us, heading in the direction we were driving from.
“I was afraid of that. While the chainsaw and God knows what else was went on was hidden by the soundproof room, I had that door wide open when I fired twice. Snappy probably called the cops when he heard gunfire.”
I tried to moan and talk to him, but my ruined throat wouldn’t let me.
“I got no idea what you’re trying to say, but I don’t know what else to do except t
ake you to your home. I found your driver’s license in your wallet, so we’re heading there. You live in the toon part of town?”
The next 10 minutes weren’t just long; they were an eternity. Every injury I’d sustained throbbed, raw and angry.
Once out of the car, he opened the door and tried to pull me into his arms. I felt naked. I was naked. Everything felt so unnatural.
I tried to fight it and then I saw the collection of my personal belongings in the bag on his back seat. In it were that bowtie and saddle shoes.
I felt instinctively drawn to it but I had to resist. If this was part of my new body trying to make me accept the changes…
But my new friend saw where my eyes went. “That’s right, you need to get dressed.”
I tried to shake my head. “No, I don’t want you to,” I thought as loudly as I could.
The next thing I knew, my shoes were on my feet, my aching throat was being compressed by the white bow tie, and I felt no different. He lifted me into his arms, grabbed my bag of stuff, and put me at the entrance of the building I lived in.
“I can’t help you any further than this. I got shit to do and I do not have time to be taking in strays and helping out charity cases.” He reached into his wallet and pulled out a blank card. On the flip side, a phone number.
He undid one of my shoes, slid it inside and put it back on me. “I’d put it in your pocket, but you don’t have any. When you’re feeling better, you can help. Call me.”
With that, he left me there, still feeling the wounds of two shattered kneecaps, a chainsawed chest cavity, and having my genitals crushed. I tried calling out for help from human passers-by. They sort of giggled at the spectacle of what, to them, must’ve been a toon drunk or trying to work out some new gag.
I was in a haze and I shakily opened the door to my apartment building. Inside, I stumbled until I fell and crawled with one arm toward the elevator.
CHAPTER 9
After a few minutes, I stumbled out of the elevator on my floor, dragging the bag of my bloody belongings with me. I shuffled along with two broken kneecaps, a broken finger…God, my fucking…I can’t say cock and balls now, but you get the idea.
I got to my door and sifted through the almost gelatinous, crusty pants, reaching in for my keys. I don’t know if I had made too much noise, considering I was huffing and yelling, but as I struggled to get the key in the door, I heard a deadbolt twisting.
I looked over and saw Barry poking his head out. He smiled at me. “Wow, man…let me guess! You did a demolition derby or something? Are you here to see Fairfax? I think he’s out.”
I shuffled over to him, pulling myself by my one good arm, and collapsed at his feet. “Please, help me.” Finally, I managed words. Garbled and barely audible, but words. It’s when I realized that my voice box was under the tie, which seemed to be linked to my injury.
“What do you mean, help? What’s going on?”
“It hurts…everything hurts…”
“Well, shake it off, man! Goodness knows I’ve been in far worse scrapes than that.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean I can’t, Barry.”
He turned his head and looked at me. “Do I know you?”
“Please, I need help. Call an ambulance or something!”
“Okay,” he said, leaning in, looking left and right. “It’s all right, man. Like I said, just shake it off; there are no cameras here. No human’s going to get broken of an illusion, and frankly, it’s not illusion-breaking if it’s for a gag.”
“I can’t shake it off. You don’t understand. I am incapable of shaking it off!”
At that moment, Betty, his wife, who looked fairly similar to him with a slightly lighter build, longer eyelashes, and done up in a 1950s housewife dress, poked her head out.
“Is everything okay out here?”
“Yeah, just some fox guy here to see Tyler. He’s in pretty bad shape. He won’t shake it off.”
“It’s not that I won’t shake it off, I can’t shake it off.”
She leaned in and caressed my cheek. I smiled weakly. “Now, come on, it’s just us here, okay? No humans around. Seriously, what would Mother and Father say?”
“Who? What?”
At that, Barry and Betty took a very cautious step back and looked at each other. “Okay, Mr. Fox, this is not funny. We would never, ever deny Mother and Father.”
“Who are you talking about?”
Betty clutched the pearl necklace around her neck. Barry gripped me by the shoulders and shook me roughly. “That isn’t funny!”
I screamed in pain and he let me fall.
“You’re acting like a human!”
“Barry, it’s me!” I whined.
“Who?”
“It’s Tyler.”
Betty had a chuckle at that. “Of course you’re not Tyler. Tyler’s a good boy who lives next door, and you are definitely not a human.”
I reached for the bag and poured out the belongings. Barry and Betty knew what I normally wore; seeing some of my standard attire caked in dried and drying blood made them scream and step back.
“It’s me, Barry. I don’t know what’s going on, but this was done to me.”
The two looked at each other and pulled me into their apartment. Betty helped me onto the couch while Barry grabbed my belongings and brought them inside. Their apartment was pretty much a reverse of mine in layout; sofas in different places, different bookshelves, and they had all-toon appliances.
He huffed in a way that only a badger could, putting his hands on his hips and looking down at me. “Okay, I want some answers. Where is Tyler? What are you doing with his belongings? And why are you trying to get into his apartment?”
“Barry,” I whimpered, “it’s me. We talked the other day. You invited me over for dinner. You wanted Kyle to come.”
Barry’s eyes went wide. “But you’re a toon! You can’t be a toon! That’s not possible!”
I gulped and shook my head. “It’s possible. I’m proof of it. It’s happening in the guest house at Snappy Gator’s estate.” And then I launched into an explanation of what happened and why I could still feel pain even though I had a toon body.
Betty was the first to speak. “Who would do this?”
“Her name is Pamela Blake. There’s some rift in her basement and she’s figured out a way…” I began to cry. “I just wanted to die and it wouldn’t let me die. Everything hurts…”
Barry began, “Just shake—”
“You don’t understand. The process where your mind gets erased is from giving in to the gags. Every time you do, you lose a little piece of yourself. Phase 1 hurt so much but phase 2 was torturing someone beyond the point where humans would die a hundred times over. Then, their mind just breaks.” I sniffed. “There was some eSports gamer kid, Brandon Butler. His rival team kidnapped him. It was on the news. They brought him to Pamela, and I watched her do it. Now, he’s the rivals’ new fucking mascot and he has no recollection of who he was. He thinks he’s some toon that popped into existence a couple of hours ago.”
Barry eyed the door, and then his wife. He leaned beside me and held my good hand. “Okay, so what you’re saying is—”
“I’m a toon that, if I get injured, I feel it like a human. And I don’t heal.”
He looked at my inverted rubber hose legs, my finger hanging limply, and I coughed up a little bit more of the blood and mucus.
Betty cringed and hurried to my side to wipe my mouth. “Sweet Mother and Father. Barry, it’s Tyler! Just listen to his voice. It’s Tyler!”
“Yeah…my voice is a little higher now. I thought it was because they kicked me in the dick with a fucking sledgehammer.”
That’s when Barry looked me up and down. “G-rated toons like you, especially classic-looking,” he said, noting the bow tie, “would never actually be able to curse. Okay, here’s the thing. We can’t go to the police with this.”
“What? But—”
“Tyler, I care deeply for you. I’ve enjoyed looking out for you for a long time, but this—this is above us. Now, if we can find a way of reversing this, awesome. I’d love to help you. But if the police find out that humans can become toons, every missing person case will start getting blamed on us. We’ve had it bad enough, and the fact of the matter is, there’s nothing we can do. We have a code of our own that we keep to ourselves. You’re going to have to be brought in the fold, piece by piece.”
“What the hell do you mean, Barry?”
“What’s happened to you can’t become public knowledge.” He rubbed his chin. “Let me get this right; you said you can’t give in to the gags.”
“Right, otherwise I lose myself.”
“What if a gag was done to you, one that fixed you up?”
“I dunno. I couldn’t talk before, vocal cords shredded, but then this guy put the bowtie on me. It still hurts but it works. But if you do a gag on me, isn’t that the same thing?”
He grinned and shook his head. “No, no, far from it.”
Barry waggled his eyebrows, stood on one foot and shifted his body to the side, then spun like a tornado. For a few seconds, he was a tornado. When he popped into being again, he was wearing a doctor’s outfit. He held a stethoscope to my chest and listened.
In a mock German accent, he said, “It seems der Patient is suffering from many maladies all at vonce. It is gut you come to see me; ve fix you up fast, ja?”
Betty clapped her hands at the performance, and I was taken aback by the sheer insanity of it all.
He reached behind himself and produced a blood pressure cuff, wrapped it around my arm with the broken finger. He pumped it so many times, my hand inflated like a balloon. It hurt at first, but then I heard a pop. When he took it off, my hand deflated with an audible…well, it sounded like a fart, honestly, and my hand was fine.
“Holy shit, Barry, this is working!”
“Ach, vatch the language; children might be vatching.”
He then went to my legs and pulled out a reflex hammer. I winced; Betty reached behind herself and produced a pie, which she handed to Barry.