Paint the Toon Red

by A. J. Mayall

  The guy had to be somewhere in his mid-30s, and I’d grabbed his attention. Now, might I add, while I’d kind of gotten used to it a bit with going out in public and being around Chance, being nose to navel with most humans is still a very intimidating experience.

  I smiled up at him. “Well, howdy hey there, man! I need to talk to Miss Blake.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s not taking any visitors right now.”

  “Oh, are you her new doorman?”

  “No, I work for one of her guests.”

  “Oh, well, I am also one of her guests, so can I please see Miss Blake?”

  He looked at me up and down and shook his head. “Get outta here, toon.”

  “But it’s really important! You see, I’m Mr. Gator’s personal assistant,” I said, thumbing behind me toward the main house, “and I really need to tell her about something.”

  He leaned in and growled, “I don’t give two shits who you work for. I don’t give a shit if you live on this property. You have no fucking rights at this doorstep. Now get your ink-and-paint ass outta here before I beat your orange face black and blue.”

  I frowned at that, then did a little dance, trying to play up the act. “Aw, man, you just need to smile more!”

  He looked down at me and cracked his neck and then his knuckles. “See, this is the thing about toons I actually like: you actually never know when you’re about to have your ass handed to you. I can hand your ass to you over and over again. It’s not like you’re gonna fucking do anything.”

  I tried to give him big, sad, puppy-dog eyes. “Aw, but I need to talk to my friend Pamela! It’s important! You see, someone very close to her died recently, and I need to tell her, and—”

  The guy groaned. “Fine. I’ll pass on the message. Who the fuck died?”

  I heard the first shot from the back, followed by a heavy thud.

  “What the fuck was that?” said the bodyguard as he turned around. As he moved, I saw the man on the other side move toward the shot.

  Everything slowed down. The bodyguard had forgotten about me. I reached behind me, pulled the two guns out, cocked the hammers, and clicked off the safeties. I had already lined them up: one his head, one at center mass.

  “You want to know who died that was close to her?” I said in my normal tone of voice. “I’d say the motherfucker standing on her doorstep, who was probably no more than 50 feet away from her, give or take, was pretty fucking close.”

  I pulled the triggers. He jerked back and I watched the left half of his face fly off. His chest exploded.

  The sound was deafening, and I stood there shaking. I just shot a man in cold blood.

  God, what the hell have I done? I trained weeks for this, but…

  I wanted to throw up. Unsure if it might be considered a gag, I fought the urge. I didn’t want to lose a piece of my humanity by showing some.

  He fell against the door and I kicked it open, smearing his brain tissue on the bottom of my shoe. As I predicted, the man on the inside of the door, turned around, gun aimed over my head, and looked down at me, perplexed.

  “The fuck is a toon doing holding a gun?”

  I pulled the triggers again and again and again. I tried to think of every parent missing a child somewhere in the world. Those who had no idea where they had gone, who would never see them again. Every parent who had to worry if their child was dead and for those who held hope they were alive but would never see the bodies. I did the unthinkable acts so they would never have to.

  I walked over his body. Down the hall, I saw the bodyguard positioned on the outside of the staircase to the basement firing around the corner toward Chance. I ducked and rolled, wincing when I felt a meaty pop in my left shoulder again.

  “Fuck!” I hissed, which drew his attention.

  Bullets whizzed over my head and a few landed in thuds, ripping holes around me through the sofa I hid behind.

  Chance was being held at bay by suppressing fire, but he was walking backward toward me. I had to act quickly; I reared back my right hand and threw my pistol over the sofa at him. While I peeked through a hole he had shot, I waited for him to be distracted, attempting to catch the gun.

  I popped up and fired with my bad arm, clipping him in the neck. I heard him gurgle and wheeze; it reminded me of the noises that Brandon Butler had made when his throat was cut…the noises I probably made when mine was cut.

  I felt sick again, getting a flash of everything going on downstairs.

  The thug charged at me and raised his gun in my direction. I was waiting for the pain, my left shoulder already screaming from the recoil of the shot I had just taken. Suddenly, his face exploded and covered me in God knows what. Chance stood there, looking down at my blood-soaked form, shivering at the sight of it.

  There is something unnatural about a toon covered in gore.

  “I’m just letting you know, you’re taking a shower before we leave here.”

  I nodded and picked up my gun, looting the bodies of the bodyguards like I was in some tabletop RPG. “If there’s anything that you want to use, grab it. They’ll be coming up any second now.”

  Chance shook his head. “They’re way down there. We’ve got high ground, but they’ve got all the supplies were going after. God, what I’d give for you to be able to jump through the screen right now.”

  I hissed at him, “Don’t even fucking joke about that shit, Chance!”

  He nodded. “Right, sorry.”

  “Ahh, fucking shoulder!”

  Chance looked over the weapons they had and then hefted up the body of the second man I’d shot. “Fuck, he’s heavy. Can you help?”

  “With what? I got, like, no muscle mass like this.”

  “God, I gotta do everything.”

  “I took out two and a half of them. I think we’re on even standing.”

  “I hate it when you’re right. Oof, this is going to get nasty,” he said, holding the body in front of him.

  “Jesus Christ, you can’t use him as a human shield!”

  “Well, seeing as neither of us is wearing a bulletproof vest…”

  “They don’t make them in my size, but you could’ve worn one.”

  “Guys like this? They know to go for the knees or the head. Center mass is something that rookies do.”

  I glared at him. “I took someone out on center mass.”

  “Oh? Then they’re rookies too.”

  He slung his arm under the back of the man’s shirt, hooked it around the back of his collar, and kicked open the door. A barrage of bullets came in, sending the body into a jerking fit from the repeated impacts. Chance threw, no, pushed the body down the stairs when the firing stopped.

  I ducked between Chance’s legs because their attention would still be high up. With both guns raised, I aimed for two who had hunkered down at the base of the staircase. I got one through the eye but the other bullet went over the target’s head. There was a meaty thud from the one I’d picked off and Chance took down the one I missed.

  He made it down the stairs in double time and I stuck behind him.

  I didn’t want to be back in this place. All that training and now that I was back in this guesthouse, in this basement, where this had happened to me, it was all coming back…it was all fresh.

  Chance took a few more shots, felling another bodyguard. As we passed by a pair of doors, heading toward the far back room where the conversions took place, they burst open. The older man and the two younger ones who Chance identified as the Dellamorte family members booked it up the stairs, covered by one of their bodyguards.

  The older man stopped when he saw Chance. “Ovuskno?”

  “Shit.”

  I called back, “I got the rest of them! You go repent for your sins, man!”

  Chance nodded. “You sure?”

  “I got this. Don’t ask me again, because then I might lose my nerve, but right now, I got this.” I ducked behind a door, and as another thug came out, I clipped him in the groin.
He screamed and I shot him in the neck.

  He clutched his throat, falling to the ground. I kicked his gun away and shot his hands.

  He could crawl away or bleed out, for all I cared.

  There couldn’t be many more and I was two doors down from dealing with Pamela.

  “Miss Blake, we’ve got you covered,” I heard from the conversion room.

  The door flung open; they pulled out semiautomatic rifles and fired in the “spray and pray” method. They took out their friend who was bleeding on the ground in their attempt to hit me.

  I ran, and in their shock at seeing a toon running at them with pistols akimbo, they tried to aim lower, but I was faster, sliding between them, aiming up. In a one-in-a-million shot, my bullets found the bottom of their chins and came out the top of the head.

  There it was…where this whole ordeal had started for me. I breathed a sigh of relief that there was no one strapped to the table, I don’t think I could bear to see what happened to me and Brandon happen to anyone else ever again.

  Then there was Pamela Blake, huddled in a corner, staring at me, covered in blood, righteous fury in my gaze.

  She shook her head, her makeup smeared, in jeans and a T-shirt. Whatever this meeting was, it had obviously taken a toll on her.

  I raised my pistols. “You’re going to pay for what you did, Pamela. You’re going to pay for what you were about to do.”

  She raised her hands and then put them behind her head. “I’m not armed.”

  “I am, and I don’t give a good goddamn. I was unarmed when you strapped me to that table, when you made me deepthroat a fucking chainsaw, when you took my life away from me! You wanted to act like you were so fucking sad about everything when you could’ve just let me go. Like you said, no one will ever believe me. Well, you know what? No one’s ever going to believe what happened here, but they’ll find out what you did.”

  She snarled. We circled each other, and I fired a warning shot when she got near the door. Soon, it was me standing near the rift, and her near the table.

  “Do you have any last words?” I said, giving her the same false dignity she had attempted to give me.

  She shook her head, a tear running down her cheek. She was caught.

  I slowly brought both my guns up side-by-side, aiming at her face—her, admittedly, very pretty face—and pulled both triggers.

  CLICK! CLICK!

  “You have got to be shitting me…”

  She produced a small knife disguised as a decorative hairpiece. I felt it lodge into my right shoulder; I cried out as I looked down, ink flowing from the wound, tinged with hints of light orange.

  I dropped my right pistol, but I brought the left one up. I used my shaking right hand to pull out the spare clip from my left glove, and as I was about to slap it in, I saw Pamela get a wide, wondrous, gleeful smile on her face.

  Behind me, I heard, “Hey, old buddy, old pal!” in a nasal, snide, bubbly voice

  When I turned, I saw a chubby cartoon skunk with a mischievous grin on his face and a purple T-shirt. He reached behind himself to produce a large, cast-iron frying pan and smacked me upside the head with it.

  CHAPTER 13

  I wasn’t knocked out, but I was dazed. I moved toward the open door, re-cocked the gun, and pointed it at the skunk, then at Pamela. I pulled back the hammer and aimed for center mass. When I pulled the trigger, the skunk, in a fit of panic and confusion, threw himself in front of the bullet. It indented in his body and then ricocheted around the room for a few seconds. It came to a stop, striking and going flat on the ceiling, then fell and bounced off his nose.

  “Now, Fairfax,” the skunk said, advancing on me, “is that any way to talk to an old friend?” He was about the same height as me, but he looked stockier.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  He stopped, looked at Pamela, and did what can only be described as an aside to a camera. “With friends like him, who needs enemies? And with enemies like him, who needs friends?” He then looked at me and opened his arms wide, “It’s Scratch! Scratch T. Skunk! I’m your foil.”

  “For fuck’s sake…” I said, at which point, he went wide-eyed.

  “Don’t talk like that! I don’t know what’s going on, but you put those guns down right now! You’ll hurt someone!”

  “That’s the point, Scratch, or whatever the hell your name is.”

  “No, no, no, we don’t play that way. Drop an anvil on someone, fine. Slam someone’s hands in a piano, okay. Run each other over with steamrollers, perfectly acceptable and decent behavior for us. But a gun? A real gun with real bullets, aimed at a real person? Have you lost your golly gosh darn mind?”

  Gunfire went off in the distance. Scratch looked up, then at me, and then at the woman. “Oh my gosh! You’re really involved in this, aren’t you? No, you’re not doing this. I’m not gonna allow it!” he said, standing in front of her like a cartoon shield. “Ma’am, you just get behind me, okay? I won’t let him hurt you.”

  “Get out of the way, skunk. She’s gonna pay for what she did to me!”

  “Oh, really? What did the human do to you?”

  “She’s turned me into this, you idiot. I was human until about a month ago when she put me through this conversion process.”

  He looked at me quizzically, and then with visible unease. “Fairfax, I’m gonna talk real slow and quiet, and I want you to listen to me, okay? We have been rivals since the early days.”

  “What are you talking about? You just popped into existence!”

  “No, no, we go back decades. Yeah, our shows never made it big, and no one really cared for our antics because, you know, other people always kinda did a little bit better, but we always stuck together. I chased you, and you outsmarted me, and then I outsmarted you. Then we did that whole thing with the World War II propaganda. You were hesitant about breaking out of the black-and-white era, and I said I didn’t have to worry about it, but I’d be willing to try a bit of color, so…” he said, tugging at his shirt.

  I looked incredulously at him. “This is the foil, right?” I said, turning to Pamela.

  She nodded.

  Everywhere I tried to aim, he moved between the gun and her. “And he,” I hissed through clenched teeth, “has all of the memories and all of the life built in that the cartoon you tried to turn me into would’ve had.”

  She nodded again.

  “What are you two talking about, Fairfax? Listen, I know times have been tough and I know that sometimes I’m not the easiest toon to work with. Trust me, I’ll take a pie in the face for you any day, but you can’t go around actually hurting people for no good reason!”

  Chance burst into the room and saw me bleeding from the shoulder, the knife still embedded in it. “God! Did she do it again?” he said, pointing to the skunk.

  “No,” I said, looking up at him. “Meet my foil. He thinks he’s my partner.”

  Scratch looked hurt at that. “What? You think that this human is going to be a good partner for you?”

  I nodded. “We’ve been working together for a bit. It’s been pretty damn good.” I faced Chance. “Did you get the guys?”

  He shook his head. “They got away.”

  “Damn it!”

  Scratch shuddered and looked back at me. “Seriously, what is it with you and the swearing? Stop it! You’re G-rated! Stop trying to break your rating! How are you breaking your rating?”

  Chance raised his gun. Scratch stuck his thumb in his mouth and inflated himself until he was practically a wall that took up the majority of the room. “Uh-uh,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re not hurting her.”

  I looked to Chance and then at my bleeding shoulder. “Dude, I’m beginning to feel kinda weak here. What do we do?”

  He looked at the skunk and smacked me upside the back of the head. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a foil?!”

  “It was in the copyright! At some point, he was just supposed to pop into existence, but I didn’t kno
w when. It must’ve happened because I got too close to the rift again.”

  Chance spat on the ground and pulled me under his arm like a football. “Fuck this; we’re getting out of here,” he said, bolting up the stairs.

  “But she’s got the—”

  “If there’s a goddamn toon who’s going to be a human shield, we’re at a damn stalemate unless you can pull a gag to stop him, which you can’t. Eventually, someone will have called the cops over all the gunfire.”

  “She’s right there, and—”

  “And we’ll have to come another time. Damn it…it’s going to be a while before I can let you back in my place.”

  “But we’ve been—”

  “Compromised, Fairfax. We’ve been compromised. You’ve been spotted by her; you think Snappy’s not going to know about this, especially now that your foil has seen what you’ve been doing?”

  If I could’ve gone pale, I would’ve. I fought tooth and nail, but Chance took the guns from me, threw them in the backpack, stuffed me in it afterward, and bodily threw me, knife still embedded in my shoulder, mind you, over the wall. I landed with a thud and I felt the blade going deeper.

  I screamed.

  “Just don’t get the equipment messed up,” he said after I heard him scale it and heft me back up. He sprinted back to the car and peeled out.

  Chance dropped me back at my apartment. “It’s going to be a while before we can re-gather. This entire operation may be a bust, now that she knows were onto her and she knows what we’re willing to do. Not to mention, I think I know what’s coming for you, and you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, man.”

  “Explaining to who? The cops? Toons don’t hurt people.”

  “No, to Snappy.”

  I gulped. All he had to do was order me around and I had to. He could tell me never to see Chance again, and I would instinctively avoid him. That had nothing to do with gags; that was just the power of the copyright.

  I hunched over and he snapped his fingers. “Ah-ah-ah. Clips, too.”

  I nodded solemnly and fished out the two from my shoes and the one I hadn’t used from the back of my right hand.