by Andrew Post
“You okay?” someone asks near her and for a moment, Galavance’s heart races—not with fear, but with hope. Maybe it could be like the movies and Jolby would come strolling out, unharmed, the shock of the carnage he caused freeing him from his monstrous other self. But it was Zilch, bending down next to her and helping her to her feet.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Sure?”
She nods. No, actually, not really. But he does the guy thing and doesn’t bother to read the signals or body language, just takes her words and lets the gentle clasp he had on her arm go. Not that she would want him to ask any further, because Jolby has just died, and really she doesn’t know, even for herself, how she feels about it. “I’m fine.”
The entire place looks like a dashed arts and crafts project; a punted house of popsicle sticks. Smoke curls from one window, a split portion of walling bleeding pink insulation out into the water. Zilch, limping, takes a step toward it.
“Where are you going?”
“In there,” Zilch says as if it should’ve been obvious. “I have to make sure.” He lost the rifle, Galavance realizes, at some point, and she lost the harpoon gun, too.
“There’s no way he survived that. You did your job.”
He turns to face her, and puts a hand on her shoulders. “I have to make sure. I need proof. Otherwise, I’ll just be sent back.” Maybe he hears how that came out and adds: “I didn’t want it to go like this. But it did.”
“I know.”
“Let me go see,” he says. “I’m not getting anything on the compass, but maybe he’s still … you never know.”
She didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye, she realizes. “Okay.”
Zilch doesn’t know what to say to her or if he should say anything at all. It’s always hard to tell with women. Do you listen when they say they just want to be left alone to think, or is that a hint to pester them until they tell you what’s really wrong? She’s unable to look at the house, her arms curled around herself. He stares at her back, covered in tiny scratches from their escape, mud caked up to her knees, but under all that, her posture is clear: she’s upset all right. Of course she is, dumbass. In one weekend, her life—which already wasn’t great—became completely fucked.
The morning sun is glaring out over the houses across the street. His heart is beating slow. He considers again saying something to Galavance, wonders what could be said to make any of this better, decides the correct answer is “nothing,” and so begins looking for an easy way into the rubble.
The front porch is at least twenty feet above his head. In the side-yard, he splashes through the ankle deep water to a point where the truck can be partially seen amongst the remnants of the kitchen and living room. The cooler bobs by, spilling Budweiser life rafts and a flotsam of Ramen noodle packets. He steps out deeper, stepping on something solid that sinks under his foot. Bubbles froth the water, and Patty, twisted and crushed, surfaces among the debris. The tape over her mouth has come free and her stomach isn’t bulging—or moving—as it was before. Ugh. Fucking fantastic.
Climbing up onto what used to be the roof of the house, a chain reaction of sounds echoes all across the wreck, including several particularly unnerving moans and cracks. Zilch freezes, wide-eyed, hands out to his sides, waiting for the house to resettle again before moving any further.
“It’s goddamn Jenga.” Another few steps and he crests the roof then stops again, not liking what he sees. Or hears. Not the debris settling, but something down there’s moving around, struggling, trapped.
“What’s wrong?” Galavance shouts from below, startling him.
He doesn’t answer. He listens. He can hear the engine clicking as it cools, somewhere deep in the water, so he begins weaving his way toward the low breathing sounds, the wet slapping about—which has now gone quiet, as if it has heard Zilch is on approach. He takes it carefully, testing each place before putting his whole weight down. Even having died many, many times before—it’s never pleasant. That moment when the heart stops and your vision starts to fade, like the way the screen of an antique TV fades, the sound dropping away—the ultimate defeat is never easy to swallow, no matter how times you experience it. This is nearly through, don’t fuck it up now.
Making it to one of the massive backhoe tires, Zilch decides he could use it like a ladder to climb down. Reaching his foot out, he places one heel between the nubs of the enormous tire, and then with a small hop, the other. His blood runs cold when he hears the steady metallic click and genuinely feels the wheel begin to turn under him.
“Shit,” he hisses. His arms pinwheel, trying to keep his balance. Trying to outrun its tire’s spin is impossible; it’s operating like a massive gear and the cogs are all gripping him, pulling him straight down to the underside of the truck—where everything is hot.
Falling into the cave that the truck has buried itself into, Zilch lands in a pile of settled planks of wood and broken cabinetry and raining shards of glass. It’s hot in here, very hot. He can smell smoke. Only some light is leaking though in narrow, unhelpful shafts.
“Jolby?” His voice doesn’t go far; it’s like screaming into a closet full of fur coats. Considering he may’ve decided to retreat to the closest refuge, his vehicle, Zilch decides to begin his search there.
Jolby must’ve looked up schematics for actual monster trucks online or something, because up close, this thing is just like the ones Zilch has seen at car shows, the entire floorboard of the cockpit a single sheet of Plexiglas. He can see very little inside, just tangled bits of seaweed and a steady trickle of dark water. Zilch bends down to his knees and begins trying to work the window open, kneeling with the axle of the front wheels crushing his back and the exhaust line under his knees.
The thing is bolted down good. One kick, then another, does nothing. Above him, all around him, is the deep, guttural moan of things shifting again. A single bolt, one pinched nail—anything could cause this whole thing to collapse.
He dares one more kick and the Plexiglas gives on one side. He tears it open and climbs inside. It’s dark in the belly of Jolby’s creation. Zilch plunges a hand down into the flooded, upside-down vehicle and feels around for Jolby’s body—a hand, foot, anything. Finding nothing, Zilch lays down flat on the hot underside of the inverted truck and stares into the water, swishing debris out of the way.
The water next him boils as there is a sudden rush of something lifting out of the swamp. Zilch remains lying with the gas tank pressed against his chest, hoping that Jolby’s vision is just as bad as his with all the smoke-choked darkness. But when he feels a webbed hand clamp down on his ankle, Zilch closes his eyes and gives a resigned sigh.
Jolby rumbles, “You again.”
“Yep. I’m a two-flusher.”
Zilch rolls over to look up at Jolby. He’s badly cut up, across the chest and stomach. He spots something hanging out of the corner of Jolby’s wide mouth—a small yellow string, or cord. It would be easy to mistake it for more electrical wiring or car parts, if it wasn’t slowly moving, squirming around. Jolby packs it back into his mouth with a finger before saying, “Still trying to fuck my girlfriend?”
“What is it with you and that?” Zilch says. “No, I’m not, and I never was. I’m trying to help her. Do you know what kind of shit she’s been through because of you? I doubt it, seems like you can only fucking think about yourself, you ass-hat.” Even as the words come out, Zilch realizes that the barbs he’s spitting Jolby’s way could’ve easily been aimed at a mirror, just a few years back. That sudden ironic thought actually makes it easier. “Fucker, I’m through with this. Do you want me to help you get this thing out of your guts or not? Because I’ll gladly beat you to death with something we find in here. All the same to me, honestly. I’ll even let you pick the thing I do it with.”
Jolby peers into Zilch’s face, giving him an almost dazed, absent stare.
It’s hard to be convincingly suave and sarcastic when dangling upside down by the
ankle, held by something that can support your weight with one hand with ease, but Zilch tries. “Listen, don’t ask me why, but Galavance wants you to get better. She wants to hear it from you what you did. She doesn’t even seem to care you’re like … this, only that you weren’t faithful to her. She might be willing to forgive you.”
“Like what way?” Jolby says. Each time he speaks, the finger-wide tentacle peeks out of the corner of his mouth again, like overcooked pasta that still hasn’t been swallowed.
“Like this, Jolby,” Zilch says. The blood is staring to run to his head. “You’re not in good shape. The thing is trying to leave—you’re too beat up. You aren’t a hospitable environment for it anymore—”
“I found the other ones,” Jolby says. “Inside that lady. They were crying for me. They’re back with me now. I’ll let them grow until they’re ready to be planted. Maybe if I talk to Galavance, tell her we can be together again—new people with new lives—she might want to join me.”
“You know, I haven’t known Galavance as long as you, so take this with a grain of salt, man, but I kind of doubt she’s going to be down for that.”
With the hand not holding Zilch upside-down by the ankle, Jolby stuffs the searching yellow finger back into his mouth again. He swallows, with difficulty, closing his eyes momentarily to do so, but when he opens his mouth the worm flops right back out again. “I don’t think I’m going to extend the same offer to you.”
“That’s fine. My answer, if you’re wondering, would have been ‘Fuck, no.’”
“Dude, sorry to do this to you, but I’m gonna eat you now, okay?”
“Wait—!”
Jolby pulls Zilch in close, toward his mouth. Zilch can hear the pop of his jaw dislocating, the were-frog’s chin extending low, nearly to his belly. He can feel the heat of his open mouth radiating out and Zilch stares into the pink tunnel leading down into Jolby’s innards.
So this is how this one ends, huh? Son of a bitch.
But at the root of his tongue, just over the cusp down into his gullet, Zilch watches a writhing mass of tentacles surge forward, operating like additional tongues, snapping onto his face with their myriad suckers. Zilch brings up a hand and lets them coil around his wrist and forearm.
He then punches the wrapped arm into Jolby’s throat, burying it to the shoulder, driving his hand as deep as it can go, snatching and grabbing. Jolby shudders in surprise—Zilch is sure he probably wanted to chew him first before swallowing all of the pokey boney parts—and tries to shove Zilch away. Instead, Zilch pulls his other arm around Jolby’s neck into a headlock, and digs deeper. Every time he gets a tickle of the worm between his fingers, the little fucker moves and he has to start all over again. He grabs it and twists his wrist to get it reeled back onto his arm. Then he is pulling and he can hear a voice, drooling profusely and gagging, begging him to stop. Each plea sounds less froggy and monstrous—and more like an overweight stoner that would much rather be sitting around eating some fast food right now.
“Yeah, this isn’t very much fun for me either,” Zilch says through gritted teeth, managing to get another few feet of the worm wrapped around his arm. He keeps pulling, one vicious tug at a time. With each one, Jolby is messing himself, really cutting loose. A surge of orange puke, littered with bugs and squirrels and other waterlogged fauna, comes spraying out on Zilch, gushing against his face and chest, body-hot and acidic.
Yard after yard of the parasites emerge, like tape on an endless spool. They’ve coiled together, braiding their tentacles, and it’s hard to tell where one ends and other begins. Which is fine, Zilch will just take them together or separate—but he’s not giving up until this is through. It gets harder to pull as the tentacles, closer to the bodies of the parasites, become thicker. It almost would’ve easier to go in from the other end, he considers grimly.
Jolby’s stomach gurgles, he heaves, and another spray of vomit erupts. Zilch is pelted with a soggy dead chipmunk, then half a rabbit, then the other half. He glances down at the steaming menagerie accumulating at his feet. In there, also, is a kinky length of a chewed snake, some wires, a gear shifter, and a tree-shaped air freshener.
“Thattaboy. Let it all out.” Zilch turns his head away as the purging continues—they’re making good progress here. And sometimes, progress hurts. The “little darlings” come free, Zilch is happy to see, but only two. The two he gifted Patty with. There’s one more, Jolby’s main man, his steadfast compadre, parasite zero. Zilch waits for it to emerge as Jolby hacks and sputters, freeing more woodland creatures—a blackened coil of a half-digested water moccasin, then an actual moccasin, one you’d wear on your foot—but no final darling.
Jolby’s complexion clears, losing the pickle-like bumpiness and the green cast to skin bleeding away like bruises healing in fast-forward. He’s becoming as pasty and doofy-looking as before. But another sputter, another yack session, and there’s still no third little darling making an appearance among the ankle-deep pile of spew he’s produced.
Zilch groans, pats Jolby on the back. “Looks like we might have to get a little more invasive, bud. Wouldn’t happen to have some Crisco on you, would ya?”
Jolby’s bloodshot eyes angle up at Zilch. “Huh?”
“Crisco. Because, as things are looking, we’re about to become very close friends.”
Still looking up at him, orange drool hanging from his lip, Jolby’s eyes shift—bloodshot and blue one blink, then spotty and dark, frog-like again the next. Apparently for being well entrenched in the guy’s stink-hose, the parasite was still able to eavesdrop.
Galavance can hear a lot of commotion, two voices yelling. It doesn’t sound like it’s going well, but since it’s more than just Zilch yelling in frustration, since it’s actually two voices, she knows that Jolby must have actually still been alive. Her legs are moving her forward, her hands finding holds on the wall of the house, prying her fingers between the broken pieces of vinyl siding to climb. She is cut, but keeps at it, and before long she’s on the top of the heap. She spots the wheels of the truck and with careful steps, moves in that direction, careful to avoid stepping into any open windows or places that look like they may not be able to support her weight.
She reaches the opening where the wheels poke out and looks inside. Zilch is pulling at something, but she cannot tell from where. She leans to one side, trying to get a better vantage. Then she sees Jolby, still fully frogified again, with what looks like a length of pale vein-covered tube of flesh protruding from his mouth. His howls are horrible, shrill and painful both to the ears and to the heart. She begins to climb down.
Zilch notices her and calls up, “Careful, that’s gonna—!” But it’s too late—the slow shift of the wheel has already started, and for an embarrassing moment she’s trying to hold onto it and climb it like a hamster, but it’s no use. She falls into the cavern of wreckage, and groaning at the bottom of the heap, sees that Zilch is wearing what appears to be a full-arm cast made entirely of some worm-thing stretching out from Jolby’s mouth. “What the hell are you doing down here?”
Jolby seizes the moment while Zilch is distracted to reach out with his own hands and grab the worm suspended between them and pull. Zilch is yanked off his feet, crashing through the broken wood and glass, and dragged on his belly toward Jolby as he reels him in one yank at a time. Galavance charges forward just as Jolby seizes Zilch by the throat and uncoils the worm from around his arm, packing the balled mass back into his gaping mouth.
With Zilch kicking and struggling, Jolby takes him over to a split two by four that’s jutting up from the floor, raises him over it, and disregarding his pleas entirely, drops him onto the skewer. The wooden spike erupts out of Zilch’s chest, squarely in the middle, surely piercing his heart and pulping anything else it may’ve just charged through. Within a moment, Zilch’s eyes—one socket empty, the other full and shocked—shift from wide with surprise to empty. A raspy breath trails out of him, punctuated by a tiny cough, then noth
ing.
“Oh my God,” Galavance cries, “you … why … ?”
Jolby’s face, as his faces her, is two-thirds the were-amphibian, and one third … himself. One eye has partly lost its staining and the shining happy sky blue of the Jolby she knows shines out, the skin surrounding it not a brownish green as a rotten leaf, but pink and … human-like.
“Gal,” he says, the living noodle slurring his speech. “What are you doing here? I’m trying to work. If you want me and Chev to sell this place, we need to get back to it.”
Jolby’s expression face softens and he steps forward, hands out, his color now fully shifted to amphibian shades again. “I promise this place will sell,” he says. “I promise everything will be fine just as soon as I sell this and … look at this,” he gestures at the truck proudly. “I’m going to sell this too and take the money from it and put it into the house, make this place amazing, and when someone buys it, we’ll be okay, and everything will be good again, like it was before. I can provide for you, see?”
Galavance scrambles backwards. “That’s not going to happen,” she says softly. “Everything’s not going to be okay. You’re sick.” Even in this dire situation, Galavance is aware of the enormous understatement of those words.
Jolby frowns and drops his chin. He’s gesticulating at her, making wiggling motions with his fingers. It’s horrifying to witness, but immediately recognizable to her: he’s trying to give her the Cuddle Bear move. “Come on, Gal. Don’t be like that, babe.”
“Don’t come near me.” She wants this command to sound fierce, but can’t find the courage. She can barely breathe she’s so afraid, backed up as far as she can go—trapped. She has no choice but to watch as he draws in closer, closer.
She turns her face away and prays that, if nothing else, it’ll be fast. She hears a crunch and peeks back with one eye to see Jolby lowering himself onto his knees.