by Justin Coke
Chapter Forty
They piled into Kid Twist’s 2002 Nissan Maxima[136] and drove to the con. Tick Tock, eyes a little bloodshot but otherwise okay, gave Kid Twist the “I’m sorry but I don’t want to acknowledge anything” eyes, and Kid Twist nodded, and that was that.[137]Parking was a pain in the ass; Hayes nearly choked when it cost $10 for a day in the parking garage. Nobody had to pay for parking in West Memphis.
Slinging on his proton pack, Hayes felt very out of place as they walked to the hotel. Where he was from, dressing like this was liable to get your ass kicked on any day but Halloween. Or at least some hostile looks. In Denver, nobody really gave a damn, and they were soon in line.
Kid Twist was getting some looks, but not that many, for his costume. The rest of them, Hayes realized, were as run of the mill as it got.
“Oh my god,” someone said as they rushed over hallway inside the convention. “Emily Goodinson? Is that you?”
Tick Tock turned, blushing bright.
“It is!” A girl, dressed as Sailor Moon said. “I like your costume. Who is it?”
“Misa Amane,” Tick Tock murmured.
“I thought that might be it, but Suicide Squad kinda blurred the lines enough I had to ask.”
“Who is this?” Mad Hatter said.
“It’s Kathy Moustakas—she was a year ahead of me in high school.”
“Yeah, I popped up here for a year to establish residency. Start at the University of Colorado in a few months.”
“That’s awesome,” Tick Tock said.
“How’s senior year?”
“I graduated early.”
“Awesome. Coming to Denver?”
“No, I’ve got a full ride to Marquette so I’m going there.”
“That’s awesome. You with the Klingon?”
“Yeah, that’s Jason.”
Katherine gave Kid Twist a long glance.
“You’re, uh, barking up the wrong tree,” Tick Tock said.
Disappointed, Katherine pulled out her phone. “Well, let’s at least take a picture for Facebook,” Kathy said, and leaned across the rope to take a quick selfie with Tick Tock.
“Nice seeing you,” Kathy said. “We’re Facebook friends, right?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Tick Tock said.[138] “Wait,” Kathy said.
“What?”
“Aren’t you missing?” Kathy said.
“I know where I am,” Tick Tock said in a clipped voice.
“No, but there was some story about you running away that I saw,” Kathy said.
“You met my parents,” Tick Tock said by way of explanation.
“Yeah, I remember when you did the Thanksgiving pep rally,”[139] Kathy said, grimacing. “Yeah, ok, that makes sense.”
“Yeah. Have fun in the con.”
“You going to do the Masquerade?”
“No,” Tick Tock said, “seems like I’m about one of ten thousand girls with pigtails and a skirt.”
“The Klingon should do it,” Kathy said. “That’s an amazing makeup job.”
“He might,” Tick Tock said. “Talk to you later.”
Kathy glanced up at Hayes, Mad Hatter, Kid Twist, and Tick Tock, all with the look of people whose patience was being tested.
“All right,” Kathy said, “nice seeing you.” She turned and disappeared back into the con.
“Who was that?”
“A cheerleader who wouldn’t have pissed on me if I was on fire last year,” Tick Tock said.[140]“Small world,” Hayes said.
“Yeah,” Tick Tock said and forgot about it.[141]Once inside, they just sort of wandered around, staring at the costumed people and browsing tables of every nerd good they could imagine.
“I’m kind of surprised,” Hayes said, “that they let you keep the sword. Everybody else has foam crap.”
“If you’re a serious cosplayer you can get your props cleared if you put down a peace bond,” Kid Twist said.
“Peace bond?”
“They froze five grand on my credit card. If I get kicked out for any creepy shit, they charge it and ban me,” Kid Twist said.
“Ah hah.”
“Yeah, so if you get in a fight, I will not be backing you up.”
“Fair enough. I’m not the punchy type anyway.”
“You’d be surprised,” Kid Twist said. “Some of the people here are total assholes. You go every year, you will run into someone you want to punch sooner or later.”
“Like what?”
“There’s about a 100% chance that someone is going to creep on Tick Tock, for instance. Perhaps you’ll get in a heated argument over lady ghostbusters. I say fine, but you have to put Kaitlin Olsen in that ensemble. I mean, huge missed opportunity there.”
“They already had a blonde,” Hayes said.
Kid Twist gave him a disappointed glance. “Nerds get shitfaced and get in stupid fights like everybody else. They may lack the coordination to do a lot of damage, but it can happen. Which I will not be helping with.”
“So, like, what do we do? This feels like Eureka Springs to me.”
“I don’t know that reference.”
“I mean it feels like a shitty tourist trap. Let’s do something.”
“Sounds good. How do you feel about anime?”
“I, uh, it’s okay I guess.”
“You sound like you don’t mean that.”
Hayes groaned. This was going to be weird. “I sort of independently discovered tentacle rape when I was nine. Rented an anime movie, I thought it was just a cartoon, my mom had no idea, nobody in America did,” Hayes said, curling his lips. “I was disgusted. That is not sexy, okay, it’s just not. It’s fucking gross. And then I had to explain to my mom that I didn’t know what it was, which actually I think she believed because I was crying so hard, and then going to Blockbuster and having my mom explain tentacle rape to the manager, he couldn’t understand it until she made him go in back and watch it. He came out looking like he was going to puke.[142] Oh man. The newspaper went off for weeks about it. So I never really got into anime.”
“It’s not entirely fair to ignore a whole genre because of the creeps,” Kid Twist said.
“I’m not saying I won’t go to an anime movie, I’m just saying no to tentacle rape.”
“Look, Princess Mononoke in half an hour,” Kid Twist said, point to a schedule taped on the wall. “No tentacles. That I remember. No rape, anyway.”
“If you say so,” Hayes said.
“Think of it as a palate cleanser.”
“I get nervous when I even see the anime style. My orifices tighten to protect me from wanton tentacles.”
“We’ll get you through it.”
Hayes sighed.
Chapter Forty-One
The movie made Hayes think he had been a bit unfair towards anime, but at the same time he wasn’t, like, oh my god, I need more anime in my life.
They cruised the con and did con things for the rest of the first day,[143] until they met up in the impromptu outdoor food court across from the convention hall. Food trucks lined park. “Let’s see,” Hayes said, looking over the trucks that ran the gamut from a soup truck to a BBQ place to the more traditional taco truck. “Currinium Falcon, Harambe Died For This Wrap—that’s kind of in bad taste—Souper Crackers, is that a reference to something? Slaw & Order—eh, who likes cole slaw that much? Grillzilla ... is that BBQ, or stirfry?”
“Just go to Pablo’s Tacos,” Kid Twist said.
“I’m not really in a taco mood.”
“You will be once you try Pablo’s Tacos.”
“That good?”
“I eat them,” Kid Twist said. “You don’t walk around with 9% body fat[144] by eating bad. When I do eat bad, it’s the best bad food. The best. No midnight Three Musketeers bars for me. It’s midnight Teuscher champagne truffles. Pablo’s Tacos is the champagne truffle of tacos. Enough said.”
“Hmmm,” Hayes said, thinking champagne truffles sounded kind of gross.
&
nbsp; “Try one,” Kid Twist said with the confidence of a man telling someone they’d probably find cocaine enjoyable. “If you don’t like it I’ll finish it off.”
“Fair enough. You want some?”
“Six, three straight beef, two fish, extra habanero sauce, one chicken, and two chorizo with cilantro and lime. All hard shell.”
“That’s seven,” Hayes said.
“Seven then. Repeat it back.”
Hayes tried to repeat the order, Kid Twist just stood up and leaned his bat’leth against the picnic table.
“Let me come with you,” Kid Twist said. “If you fuck up my Pablo order I will hold a grudge.”
“Jeez,” Hayes said.
“They’re the best tacos on the planet, and I only get to have them twice a year, if I’m lucky. I’m not in Denver that often, and he’s wretched about updating his location,” Kid Twist said. “People think I don’t like food because I eat fish and rice all the time. No, I love food. That’s why I have to eat fish and rice all the time. But when it’s time to party, I party like it’s 1999.”[145] They got the tacos. They were the best tacos Hayes had ever had, and in fact were better than Hayes had thought tacos could possibly be; they exceeded his concept of taco-ness, somehow, and they were soon dispatched and he was soon getting ready to get seconds.
“Should I get the other stuff on the menu?”
“Not until you’ve sated your taco lust,” Kid Twist said, lying down on the park bench holding his belly. “Get me a pork taco, I think I can force it down.”
“Roger,” Hayes said.
They hibernated a little bit, not talking, not really doing much but swabbing the last of the fiery taco juice from every crevice in their mouths with their tongues.
“Goddamn,” Hayes moaned. “They don’t have tacos like that in West Memphis.”
“I know, right,” Kid Twist said. “This made my day.”
“What are Daniel and Emily up to?” Hayes said.
“No idea,” Kid Twist said[146] as his phone dinged. Mad Hatter clearly did not find the tacos as heavenly as the rest of them,[147] though Tick Tock was transported.After the food coma had kind of worn off, they debated what to do with the rest of the day.
Tick Tock was sent to purchase a supply of dice, a monster manual, and some character sheets, all easily and quickly acquired, and the rest of the day was spent in the Forgotten Realms.
Chapter Forty-Two
The next morning, they ate —croquet madams sitting around the marble kitchen island, wonderfully tasty but perhaps a little heavy since most of them were still recovering from taco intoxication. Kid Twist was already in his makeup, or maybe he’d slept in it. The rest of them were barely in underwear.
“I can’t believe you play a Paladin like that,” Tick Tock said.
“Fourthth edition rules. Paladins aren’t just cardboard cutout good guys, I have a specific god that I worship, and my behavior is judged by that god, not you.”
“Yes, but why in the fuck did you pick Ayn Rand to be your god?”
“Because, darling,” Mad Hatter said with a smirk, “watching you all get pissed at me was hilarious.”
“You tried to charge the peasants to get rid of the monster.”
“Why should I risk my life for them?”
“Because you’re a fucking paladin!”
“A paladin of reason. Paladins of reason get paid for their efforts or they fuck off to find someone who values their labor enough to pay for it. Hey, they came up with the money, they were just pretending to be poor to sucker us into working for free. Fucking commies.”
Tick Tock sipped her coffee and glared at him over the steam.
“I thought it was funny,” Hayes said, and paused. “At first.”
“It did get a little old,” Kid Twist said. “And they were actually that poor. I just invented the money to get you to shut up.”
“I admit, I didn’t think I was coming up with such a goldmine, but it just kept coming up. I never really thought about Objectivism in the context of Dungeons and Dragons, but it really conflicts with the whole concept of dopey MacGyver heroism inherent in D&D.”[148]“And where are you going with this?” Kid Twist said.
“Nowhere good,” Mad Hatter said. “But I’m having fun.”
“We’ll deal with it if we go back to it,” Kid Twist said.
“I don’t want to go back to it until we deal with it,” Tick Tock said. “I don’t want to spend four hours listening to him act like a prick and make jokes that I assume only make sense if you read her books because they sure as shit didn’t make sense to me. Why is asking everyone we meet if they’ve seen John Galt funny?”
“You haven’t read Atlas Shrugged?” Mad Hatter said. “It’s a classic.”
“I tried, once,” Hayes said. “It read like the Thing trying to write a novel.”
“I liked it,” Mad Hatter said, defensive.
“Well, whatever, I’m not playing D&D so you can turn everything into some weird philosophy standup routine,” Tick Tock said, almost yelling.
“Okau, I’m sorry,” Mad Hatter said, genuinely abashed. “I thought everyone was having fun.”
Tick Tock glanced at the floor. “It was kind of funny,” she said. “But no more, you know? One-time gag.”
“Okay, I assume I can switch gods?”
“Not really in the rules, but if I was following the rules I probably wouldn’t have let you pick Ayn Rand as a deity anyway, so sure.”
“It’s settled then. I’m converting to Asmodeanism.”[149]Kid Twist took a big, angry bite of his croque madam and exhaled out of his nose.
“What does that mean?” Hayes said.
“He went from Objectivism to Satanism,” Kid Twist said.
“Dungeons and Dragons has Satanism?” Hayes said. “My mom told me that but I thought she was lying.”
“Not ... no, not actual Satanism. You see, Daniel? You see the can of worms you’ve opened?[150] He’s not. It’s not Satan. He’s picking another pain-in-the-ass god who is, yes, kind of a demon from the Bible. But no, no Satanism.”
“C’mon, man,” Hayes said to Mad Hatter. Kid Twist’s defense of D&D had not been terribly persuasive, and Hayes didn’t need to be playing with some demon-worshipping paladin.
“Okay, okay. Lord Ao, then. So boring,” Mad Hatter said. “I want to be King Joffrey, not Lancelot, but fine.”
“That’s better,” Kid Twist said. “And I’ll be riding you for a session or two until you get with the program. Or you could switch over to a class where being a bit of a dick isn’t such a speed bump to play. Like a rogue. Or a bard.”
“So what are we going to do at the con today?” Mad Hatter said, done with the topic.
“They’re having a Magic: The Gathering tournament.”
“I barely remember how to play,” Hayes said. “And I have no deck.”
Kid Twist smiled a smile with just a hint of malice behind it.[151] “I have plenty of decks for you,” Kid Twist said. “Plenty of mean, nasty decks.”
“Ohhhh shit, you have a black lotus?” Mad Hatter said, remembering that Kid Twist was loaded.
“Three,” Kid Twist said.
Mad Hatter had to grip the island, suddenly weak in the knees. “Can I see one?”
“If you’re good and don’t mention Ayn Rand again, I might be able to do that.”[152]
Chapter Forty-Three
Hayes stared at the asshole across from him, the smell of unwashed taint in his nose, and he knew, of a sudden, why nerds got wedgied.
This was supposed to be the newbie tournament; the first place prize was an $8 deck of Magic cards. If this guy was a newbie, Hayes was an astronaut. Asshole had done ... something, Hayes couldn’t say exactly what except that when he read the cards Asshole was throwing, it sounded like it was right,[153] and now he had five gnarly green monsters that had wiped out Hayes’s defenses last turn and were about to end the game. “Newbie?” Hayes said, snarl almost (not really) hidden.
“I admit, I’ve played the iPad game,” Asshole said.[154] “But I don’t play the card game. Too expensive.[155] Therefore I am a technically a newb, as defined in the rules of the tournament.”
“Seems like that’s a fine hair to split.”
“Well, I’m alive,” Asshole said as he finished the attack that killed Hayes, “and you’re not. Good game.”
Hayes packed up his cards and left, trying real hard not to fixate on revenge. It was a bit too similar to Teabagz and it was letting him know that he in fact still really pissed off about it. He threw his deck in the trash[156] and stalked off the find Tick Tock. Maybe he could jump into her game.Rather than wade through the shoppers who were grazing their way through the booths between him and the elevator, neither spending cash because they were just so psyched to be here, like yesterday, nor determined to blow through the rest of their cash, like they would on the last day of the con, but rather in the contemplative, rational consumer mood that retailers hated more than anything else in the whole universe, even shoplifters, he slipped into a stairwell that would let him move up a floor, where the tabletop RPGs were being held.
Once the door closed, cutting off the babble of the convention that Hayes suddenly realized was deafening, he heard a noise. It was an odd noise, dry and wet, unnatural and natural at the same time.
It sounded, Hayes thought as he looked down the stairwell to the floors below, like someone whispering “sqoosh.”
He saw a flabby piece of green foam pushing rhythmically against the guardrails three floors below.
His mouth dropped as his brain could have closed the circuit and admitted to itself what was happening, but it refused to for the same reason that people in Lovecraft stories went mad rather than deal with the horrors they had seen.
It wasn’t until a moan, as run through the Squalid voice scrambler, filled the stairwell that he admitted what he was seeing. He was seeing Sqooshing.
Having seen and heard things that no mortal was meant to see, he fled up the stairs, not even trying to be quiet.
If the Sqooshers noticed they’d been caught, it didn’t knock them out of rhythm in the slightest.