by A. J. Mayall
I looked at him. “You’re as much a victim as this as I was. I’m happy that you have happy memories. Just understand that I’m not gonna remember what you talk to me about.”
He nodded solemnly. “So, ‘funny ha-ha’ is one thing, but ‘funny uh-oh’ is completely off the table?”
“Yeah.” I walked over and hugged him. “Want to get a bite?”
Scratch nodded and stayed with me as I walked over to Kyle and took his hand. “We are going to have very weird sex tonight.”
He nodded. “The weirdest.”
Twenty minutes later, we were at Burger Circus. Lou was behind the counter. He smiled when he saw the three of us enter.
“You three look like you had a bit of a—”
I said, “It’s been the most special episode during sweeps week I’ve ever had.”
He gulped. “Anything I should know about?”
I shook my head. “No, not really. I gotta ask: are you happy here, Lou?”
The squirrel smiled. “Whaddaya mean? Of course I’m happy.”
I said, “Act like the cameras are off. Are you happy here?”
“Yeah, I’m great. I’ve got a good job, I’ve got friends and regulars…”
“Do you have a family, Lou?”
He looked off in the distance as if he was trying to remember something. “Y’know, I don’t think I was made with one, but every now and then, I kinda get this feeling, you know?”
I nodded. Kyle and I ordered cheeseburgers and Scratch reached behind himself and pulled out a plate of steak and eggs.
I smiled, licking my chops. When I bit into the thick burger, my eyes went wide. It was ungodly bland. It tasted like wet sawdust.
I shivered and looked at Scratch. “You mind if I get a bite of that?”
He looked at me quizzically and nodded. I picked up a fork and Scratch cut me off the piece of cartoon steak. I brought it to my lips and when it hit my tongue, my senses exploded with flavor. It was the juiciest, most delicious steak I’d ever tasted in my life. It was glorious.
Kyle looked at me, then at the burger and the steak. I could see him go a little bit pale. Every time I’d do a gag, I’d lose a part of myself, become slightly more toon.
Luckily, what I’d lost was on the low end of things, but it was still a significant change. I’d never be able to enjoy human food again. The worst part was I’d still need to do another gag to produce toon food.
I looked at Kyle. “Well, I’ll be able to enjoy the meals over at the Badger residence a little bit better now.”
When the check came, I handed over my credit card. Lou ran it and I left him a substantial tip, five figures. With what I could tell from Chance’s emails with the Romanian crime family, it was the amount they’d paid him to bring Ludovic Pascu, now Screwloose Squirrel, back home to be tortured indefinitely.
Lou fainted when he saw the tip. I smiled and slipped a USB drive in his pocket; it had all the information on his origins, his family, and their contact information. What he did with that information was up to him, but at least he’d know what happened.
He had chosen this life, unlike me, and I was giving him another choice. Whether or not he attempted to reconnect with them, maybe somewhere deep inside of that nutty, silly, happy façade was the kid who gave up everything to make sure his family would be safe.
I packed up my stuff and headed home. Scratch stayed over for a bit; we hugged and he kissed my cheek when he left.
I looked at Kyle and followed him to the bedroom.
“What are we going to do with that skunk?” I said. “He’s a part of me, just like you are. He’s going to teach me how to be a toon and you’re going to be my anchor to humanity, but—”
Kyle smiled. “You love him, too, don’t you?”
“I don’t know why, I just—”
He put a finger to my lips. “He’s part of your soul. That copyright is a part of you, and you, if anything, always had difficulty loving yourself. Goodness knows, no one else really did, except for me.”
Kyle smiled, a hint of sorrow in his gaze, “I get it.”
“You get what?”
“You want to be with him,” he said forlornly. “When you two worked together, it looked like you two had been together for years.”
“No, I want to be with you!”
“I’m not saying you don’t want to be with me, I’m just saying—you two have a different relationship than you and me. It’s okay.”
“Are we still—” I started to ask, worried I was about to lose him, only to have him pinch my mouth shut and kiss my nose.
“Yes, we’re still going out. I’d marry you if I could.”
“Well, I mean there’s technically no laws preventing a human and toon from marrying.”
Kyle sighed. “We’ve been through a lot tonight; let’s not have the day where you murdered a shit-ton of people and killed a man in front of me be the same day that you propose.”
I nodded. “We need some time to work this out.”
He agreed.
“Okay,” I said, “so I have two boyfriends now.”
Kyle laughed. “Lucky!”
“Hey, if you want to be considered open so you can have—”
He shrugged. “I’ll consider it. I do miss having normal sex with someone, but,” he grinned at me, “I also like the idea that I now have a challenge and I need to be imaginative.”
We snuggled close and kissed.
I must add…the sex was definitely weird.
CHAPTER 20
I showed up on Snappy’s doorstep the next day while Kyle and Scratch waited in the car. I rang the doorbell and the gator responded promptly, glaring at me.
“I don’t know how you—we had an agreement—that’s not what I—”
I held out the backpack that had belonged to Chance and opened it, revealing stacks of cash. His eyes went wide.
“I’m willing, if you are, to hold you accountable to both aspects of the deal. She’s dead and here’s $500,000. Give me my goddamn copyright.”
He walked in and I was ready to follow, but he stopped me. “Just wait here.”
I looked over at the car. Scratch nodded and gave me a thumbs-up, which I returned with a sly smile.
Snappy came back with a manila folder and held it out to me. “I don’t understand why you’re doing all this. You were a good employee.”
“I’m still willing to do your paperwork, Snappy. I just want to be in control of my own destiny.”
“But why won’t you be like any other toon?”
“I’m not like any other toon, Snappy,” I said, holding the folder. When I saw the copyright within, I grinned wide. “Now, we have a transaction, correct?”
Snappy nodded. “Yeah.”
“And I am no longer beholden to you, correct?”
“Correct.”
“Because Pamela Blake is dead, and that was one of the stipulations for me being freed, correct?”
He gritted his teeth. “Correct.”
“But I’m also paying you $500,000 for a copyright as well, correct?”
He threw his hands up. “Correct! I don’t understand why you’re going through all of the stuff like you’re a lawyer or something.”
I tossed him the money and he caught it. I reached in and pulled out his copyright. “Shortly after Pamela died, I asked Scratch to head back to my place. You had given me your copyright. It was in one of the data packets; I had him slip it into my folder.”
I gripped it in my hand, and if the black-and-white gator could go pale, he would. “Fairfax, no! I—”
“Snappy! Get with the times!”
Snappy screamed and clawed at himself; his form shivered and shook like an old television picture going out of focus, the horizontal and the vertical out of whack.
He screamed, “No, no! Not this! Anything but this!”
He almost seemed to glitch, like the channel was changing, and his design changed subtly and suddenly. Color flooded in; light gree
n scales on the stomach and dark pine everywhere else.
“No! I’m pre-Code! I’m proud of being one of the originals! I would never—”
His design changed further, going from a 40s toon to a more 60s-era thick-lined style. He tried to walk and his animation cycle was simplified. Suddenly, he jerked again; his linework thinned and became almost too detailed, reminiscent of the Japanese-inspired work of the 80s.
He screamed, “NO!”
A pair of sunglasses appeared on his face, his zoot suit becoming a neon monstrosity as he slipped into the 90s. Before I knew it, a modern, simplified big grin was on his face; his once-Pac-Man-like eyeballs were gone, a pair of ocean blues staring at me.
A modern toon, through and through, in a zoot suit and a fedora that didn’t fit him well.
“My…my legacy.”
I held his copyright for one more moment. “Fetch me my copyright; you’ll find it under the briefcase beside your computer.”
He seized up, turned, and marched back inside. He returned with it quickly.
“Give it to me.”
He handed it to me. I held his copyright and said, “With that, I release you from service.”
He collapsed on the ground and I let the old piece of paper fall from my hand.
He sobbed and cried as he forced his body back through his various iterations until he looked like he had before. He was monochrome again, but something about it was off, more like a decent facsimile rather than an authentic old-school toon. Also, his voice had slightly changed. Over a hundred years or so, you’d probably need a new voice actor.
“Now with that said, I’ll have the remainder of the files finished for you by the end of the month. Will you need me for anything after that?”
He glowered and grimaced at me. “No. I think that’s the last job I’ll need you to do.”
I nodded. “That’s a shame; I really liked it. You are probably the best boss I ever had. I just wish you would’ve listened to me.”
“Do you know how much it hurts to do this?” he said, standing and trying to de-master his smoothed-over monochrome appearance. “I was happy as I was, and now it’s just an act I’m putting on. I can’t keep this up forever! What if someone finds out that I’ve modernized?”
“I’m a modern toon and no one seems to give me much hassle over it.”
“Yeah, but you were made like this. I-I am a classic!”
“Frankly, my dear Snappy, I don’t give a damn,” I said. “Anyway, I think I got a new job lined up.”
I was ready to leave, but something occurred to me. “I’m going to need Scratch’s as well, as it’s tied to mine.”
Snappy huffed and hurried back inside, then shoved it at my chest when he returned. “Just get outta here! Finish up your work for me and I never want to see you again!”
I shrugged. “Sorry to hear that. When you get over this, call me. Maybe we’ll have coffee or something?”
“You have fundamentally changed who I am and you’re making jokes about it! Do you know what that’s like?”
I grabbed him by the lapels of the zoot suit. “Yeah, I do. I absolutely do. Making fun of it, making light of it, and pretending it wasn’t an issue is exactly what you did to me all those times. Now you know what it’s like to be stuck in a body you don’t want, to have to be seen in a way you don’t want.”
He went wide-eyed. Maybe it was modern sensibilities in his new form kicking in, or maybe it was just honest-to-goodness empathy.
“Oh, my goodness! I-I…I—”
I let him go, turned, and left.
The passenger door was open, waiting for me. I hopped into the car and put my copyright in the glove compartment after handing Scratch his.
Kyle said, “Where to?”
“I’ve got a couple of places to head off to.”
The first stop was the warehouse. I had used Chance’s contact list to discover who was in charge of the building. With a fake story about Chance’s relocation, my training, and a lot of cash, the building transferred to me but remained under his name, a name I now had the ability to pose as online.
Scratch produced a bottle of soda for me since the real stuff tasted stale. I sipped on it while looking up all the places on the dark web he would scour for jobs.
Kyle and Scratch were trying to figure out what to do with each other. They were both there for me but didn’t know how to handle each other’s presence.
After sorting Chance’s old emails, I found information on the Dellamortes; seems they wanted to hire his services and gather fresh recruits. They had almost figured out how to make the special transforming ink and had a lead on a new rift. They wanted him to come in and handle stuff.
“Chance” requested information on every location they were considering, for recon purposes. They didn’t know a storm was coming their way.
There were a lot of guns at my disposal. I didn’t know how they all worked, or if I could even use them all; I weighed all of 40 pounds, and those things had some serious kickback.
Then my eyes focused on the freshly turned dirt off in the corner where we had buried Chance. I left the computer and stood over his body. There was no marker, and there never would be. He was a man who wanted to walk in shadows and be forgotten. As in life, so in death.
His mantle had become mine, but I would be the monster in the closet that protected kids, not the one that harmed them. After all, I was kinda good at this sort of thing, even if I didn’t want to be.
I shut the system down and looked at Kyle. “Okay, they haven’t figured everything out yet, which is good. They said they’re about six months to a year from getting the formula down, and there aren’t that many publicly available rifts. I’d say we have a year to get ready for handling them.”
Kyle nodded and Scratch popped up behind him. “So, what do we do now?”
I thought back to how this all started. The two pistols I’d first picked up rested on a table. I picked them up and placed them behind the neck loop of my bowtie.
“I’m going to go get paid.”
“But you have like a shit-ton of money,” said Kyle. “We could prepay the rent for the rest of my life with what you’ve got.”
“I know, but it’s the principle of the matter.”
Thirty minutes later, I knocked on the door of a very particular frat house.
When the door opened, the jock who got me kicked out and banned from the campus looked down at me. “Yeah? What the hell do you want, toon?”
I smiled. “I’m here on behalf of Tyler Fairfax, who you owe money to for a moving job from…ooh, four months ago or so?”
He looked at me quizzically and then burst out into laughter. “That fuckin’ loser’s still salty over the fact that we stiffed him for $250?”
I reached behind me, grabbed the gun, cocked the hammer, and shot him through his left knee.
He screamed and fell to the floor. Now, to be fair, I don’t want to make light of campus shootings, but all I know is he was wearing a football uniform, and my guess? A dude of his build was probably here on a sports scholarship.
“Yeah, he’s still salty,” I said, walking in and slamming the door behind me.
A couple of frat boys came running down the stairs.
“Dude, we heard something. What the hell’s going on?”
“It sounded like a gunshot!”
I aimed the pistol up at them. I didn’t recognize them from when I had moved their stuff in.
“This is between us; go back to your room and forget you ever saw this.”
They stared incredulously at what was happening before them.
I leaned forward and kicked the jock in his shot-out knee. He screamed louder.
Soon, another jock that I recognized came barreling toward me. Without moving, I reached behind myself and pulled out the other gun, aiming it at his face.
“He was going to charge you $250. I think I’ll take $5,000: asshole tax.”
The second jock wet himself and
the kneecapped one nodded quickly. “Go get it. I’ve got a huge stash with my weed in the top drawer.”
The guy ran off upstairs and hurried back down with money.
“Count it out.”
He was about $300 short.
I wasn’t going to be that much of a jackass, considering what I was about to do.
I took the money. As I realized both my hands were full, I tossed him the gun that I’d shot his friend with, and he aimed the gun at my face.
“I’m a toon. Do you think that’s gonna hurt me? If anything, at this proximity, it’ll bounce off my face and land in your chest. Not to mention, I don’t have fingerprints. And even if I did, I am always wearing gloves. Not to mention, I used the only bullet in the thing. Someone’s probably already called 911 and they’re on their way.”
Sure enough, sirens were blaring.
I walked into the living room, where I saw a familiar face on the television, tuned to some tech news, and I smiled. I glared at the jocks, turning up the volume.
“The Timber Titans of Toronto have been officially disbanded after what appears to be a violent shooting was broadcast on their official live streaming channel. The management for the team has been fined two million dollars, and the members are facing permanent bans from Legends of War tournaments and potentially every game in the eSports circuit. We take you to Boost D. Beaver, the former mascot who was made to stream the video, in his first public appearance.”
Boost fidgeted with his hands and smiled nervously while his eyes darted around, “I thought it was paintball…”
I smiled. At least he was free to find his own path, and likely wouldn’t be banned like the rest of his team. The jocks scrambled, in terror and confusion.
As the sirens drew closer, I leaned against the screen. “What are you going to do? Tell him a toon shot your friend? Everyone knows toons can’t hurt humans, and your fingerprints are all over the gun that did it.” I held out a hand, and he tossed it back to me.
I laughed as I jumped into the screen. I traveled through the wonderful meadow again, that warm, wonderful meadow. I was happy that the one gag I had pulled off was traveling through screens.