Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  Denise shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, I reckon.”

  Over the course of the next hour, Randy and Denise made several attempts to make Wister and Denise look like one person, but Wister, being unconscious, wasn’t very cooperative, and his robes were barely long enough to cover Denise’s face. His feet and Denise’s arms were all clearly visible.

  Eventually, Randy conceded to disrobing Wister entirely, which did little but satisfy Denise’s morbid desire to check out his junk. After sitting the naked Wister atop Denise’s shoulders, Randy attempted to wrap the robes around high enough to cover Denise’s head and Wister’s bottom, and low enough to cover Denise’s arms and Wister’s legs. Since Wister was more slender than Denise, Randy had to tie knots in the robe to keep it shut. Having done the best he was going to do, he stepped back to observe his handiwork.

  “How do we look?” asked Denise, her voice muffled by the robes.

  “Stop talking,” said Randy. “I can see your lips moving under the fabric. It’s breaking the illusion. Just give me a minute to take it in.”

  If he squinted and stretched his imagination to the point of tearing, he could almost convince himself that he was looking at a giant red squash which, for some reason, had short thick legs and the torso of a sleeping child. But to an observer who wasn’t forcefully trying to delude himself, there would be no mistaking this for exactly what it was.

  “Come on, man,” said Denise. “It’s hot in here. Is this disguise gonna work or not?”

  “It ain’t gonna work at all. Go on, get on outta there.”

  Denise’s struggle to free herself made it look like the giant squash/child hybrid was about to give birth to a xenomorph. Randy couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Man, fuck you, Randy. This ain’t funny. I can’t hardly– Oh shit.”

  Wister slumped forward just beyond Denise’s ability to stay balanced. They fell like a tall tree. Slowly at first, but picking up enough momentum on the way down to plant both of their faces hard into the ground. That should have been even funnier, but it really looked painful.

  “Denise!” cried Randy. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not fuckin’okay!” Denise’s shout was muffled this time by both the fabric and the ground, and it was funny again.

  Randy kept his laughter to himself as he walked toward them. “You want some help?”

  “Yes, goddammit! Get me the fuck out of – Oh no.”

  “What is it?”

  “Oh please, no.” Denise’s voice sounded desperate. “Please, no. Stop!”

  “Denise!” cried Randy, trying frantically to unwind the cloth from around Denise and Wister. “What’s wrong?”

  “Randy! Where the fuck are you?” Denise was flopping wildly and helplessly, like a fish on a dock.“Get me out of here! He’s pissing in my goddamn hair!”

  “Stop squirming around and let me help you.”Her squirming and flailing was making it difficult to undo the knots in the cloth.

  “It’s everywhere.” Denise’s voice cracked, like she was about to cry. “It’s all I can taste or breathe.”

  “Hang on. I just about... There you go.”

  The robes loosened up and Denise wiggled out of them as fast as she could. Once out, she greedily sucked in lungfuls of relatively urine-free air. Her hair was all wet and disheveled. She looked like she had just stepped out of the shower, even if she didn’t smell like it.

  “You all right?” asked Randy.

  Denise sniffed. “That was humiliating.”

  “Hmph,” said Randy. “You wanna talk about humiliating, try having your car keyed with the words FAG MOBILE on the hood in the school parking lot.”

  Denise grinned. “I remember that.”

  “Well I’m so happy that I could finally bring a smile to your face.”

  “Come on, man. I ain’t had nothing to do with keying your car. It was Johnny Ross done that.”

  Randy nodded. “I had my suspicions. Still, you don’t have to be so happy about it. You don’t know what that was like. I couldn’t afford to get it painted. I had to go and scratch up the whole hood with a screwdriver to make the words incomprehensible.”

  “I ain’t smiling about that,” said Denise, still clearly smiling.

  “What then?”

  “You remember when Johnny came back to school the following Monday, all banged up and missing a tooth?”

  “Yeah,” said Randy. “He looked like shit. They said he got hit by a car.”

  “Oh he got hit all right, but it weren’t no car that hit him.”

  Randy looked quizzically at Denise. “Are you saying... You did that?”

  “Let me ask you something, Randy. Did Johnny Ross ever so much as give you a dirty look after that?”

  Randy shook his head.

  “That may have had something to do with him wanting to hang on to the rest of his teeth.”

  Randy stared deep into Denise’s eyes. “You did that... for me?”

  “Pssh,” Denise scoffed. “Fuck no. I just wanted to beat the shit out of somebody, and I figured I might as well do a public service as well.”

  “Is that why you became a cop?”

  Denise shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “You know something, Dennis? You got something like a heart in you.”

  Denise grinned again, still caught up in her memory of beating the shit out of Johnny Ross. “You should have seen him, blubbering like a little bitch.”

  Randy felt he should be sharing Denise’s glee, but he just wasn’t feeling it. “Come on. We need to get him back to the others.”

  Denise wiped some wet hair out of her face. “What we really need to get him is a fucking diaper.”

  An idea struck Randy.

  “If we was to swaddle him up in his robes, do you reckon we could pass him off as a baby?”

  “He ain’t that small.”

  Randy squinted down at Wister. “What if you don’t count his legs below the knees?”

  Denise clutched the handle of her axe, her eyes open wide like an excited puppy. “You want I should chop his legs off?”

  “What? No!I meant we could bend his legs, disguising his size in the swaddling.”

  Denise shrugged. “It ain’t as foolproof as actually changing his size, but it might work.”

  It was completely light out by the time Randy was as satisfied as he was going to be with the sleeping baby disguise. They probably would have been better off half-assing it and using the dark to their advantage. Wister’s height was easy enough to disguise by letting his legs hang freely behind a curtain of robes, though it made carrying him awkward. And that still didn’t fix the problem of the seemingly enormous baby head, which was only fixable by obscuring most of it.

  “What do you think?” Randy asked Denise.

  “If we was just gonna wrap him up completely, why’d we spend so long at it?”

  Randy was too tired for stupid questions. “Can he pass for a baby or not?”

  “Sure,” said Denise. “Or a fish, or a log, or any number of things you might wrap up in cloth and carry around.”

  As they trudged back toward the city, the halfling seemed to grow heavier in Randy’s fatigued arms. Finally, they left the forest and had the city walls in sight. There were a few people, carts, and wagons coming and going through the North Gate, and the guards didn’t seem to be asking too many questions or looking anyone over very carefully. But what if they were spotted coming out of the woods? What business did anyone have walking out of the woods with a baby so early in the morning? This was wrong. It was all wrong.

  Randy stood up straight, shifting Wister’s weight more comfortably in his arms.

  “What are you doing, Randy?” asked Denise. “His feet is sticking out of the side.”

  “I can’t go through with it,” said Randy. “I just can’t bring myself to deceive those men or break the law.”

  “Have you lost your goddamn mind? You bought enough weed from me to stuff a king-size mattress
. And that’s all while you was already on parole. Now ain’t the time to get all uptight about the law.”

  “I’m sorry, Denise. I don’t expect you to understand. This is just something I have to do.” Randy uncovered Wister’s face and walked briskly toward the North Gate.

  Denise struggled to keep up with Randy. “What about all them folks back at the Whore’s Head who’s wanting to go back home to their families?”

  “The law is the law. It must be upheld.” Randy quickened his pace even further to escape Denise’s perfectly reasonable arguments. A part of him knew that Denise was right, and that he was acting like a pompous windbag. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he felt so compelled to risk what might be everyone’s only chance to go back to their normal lives for ideals that he’d never given a shit about up to now.

  “Come on, Randy,” Denise called out after him. Think this through. Don’t be –”

  “Hello? Sir? Excuse me!” Randy spoke loudly, both to drown out Denise’s voice, and to deny himself the means to reconsider. Panting, he stopped in front of the guard. The muscles in his upper arms burned.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the guard on the left side of the gate. “What troubles you?”

  The gate was wide open. Randy could just charge right through and lose this guy in the city’s labyrinth of side streets. He shook the thought out of his mind and spoke before any further temptation had the chance to enter.

  “I found this halfling in the woods!”

  The guard glanced at his partner on the right side of the gate, then looked back at Randy. “Congratulations?”

  “I suspect he ain’t who he claims to be.”

  The guard squinted at him, his apparent confusion deepening. “Who does he claim to be?”

  “Well he says his name is Wister, but –”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Denise had caught up faster than Randy had expected. “He’s crazier than a rabid badger.”

  “I ain’t crazy, Denise. And that’s not nice.”

  Denise ignored him, instead addressing the guard who looked like he wished he was anywhere else. “Is he telling you wild stories about our friend Wister here?”

  Randy had been doing a poor job explaining himself. The guard seemed relieved to hear something that made sense. “You are acquainted with the halfling?”

  “No,” said Randy. “Like I said, we found –”

  “You bet your sweet ass we are,” said Denise. “My buddy Randy here gets confused sometimes, on account of his mama dropping him on his head all the time when he was a baby.”

  “That’s just not true! I am –”

  “Has he told you how Wister’s not really a halfling, but a human trapped in a halfling’s body?”

  “No,” said the guard, looking quizzically at Randy.

  Randy lowered his head. “It ain’t like what it sounds.”

  “But that ain’t all,” said Denise. “He thinks I’m a human, too. And not only that, but a man!”

  “It’s the truth!” cried Randy. “You know it as well as I do. You’re just trying to make me sound like a crazy person.”

  Denise shoved her breasts together and heaved them toward the guard. “Do these look like man-titties to you, boy?”

  “No, ma’am,” said the guard, holding his spear upright between himself and Denise. His partner on the other side of the gate stifled a laugh.

  “You like these big titties, boy? I bet you’d like to put that spear of yours between them.”

  “I, uh...” The guard suddenly looked back to Randy. “I don’t understand what you want me to do. I can’t arrest this sleeping halfling for lying to you about his name.”

  “I don’t want you to arrest him,” said Randy.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I just want to pass through the gate.”

  The guard’s fist trembled with frustration. “Then why are we having this conversation? Do you need directions?” He tilted his spear toward the open gate. “Walk six feet in that direction. You can’t miss it.”

  Randy was all too aware of how ridiculous he was being, but couldn’t account for a reason behind it. He mustered up what little dignity he had left, bowed his head slightly, and said, “Thank you.”

  He hefted Wister over his left shoulder to give his arms a rest, then he and Denise passed through the gate.

  “What was that all about?”the left guard asked the right guard, nearly shouting to be heard from the other side of the gate.

  “Beats me,”the right guard shouted back. After a moment, he added, “Say, Ridley. Would you ever fuck a dwarf?”

  Denise stopped walking. She had that ass-kickin’ look in her eyes.

  “Ha!” said Ridley. “Certainly not that one. She smelled like piss.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I could smell her from here.”

  Denise started to turn around, but Randy was ready. He stopped her with a hand on the shoulder.

  “You gotta ignore them, Denise.”

  “I ain’t gotta do shit.”

  “Come on, man. They is officers of the law. You of all people got to see what they’re doing. Don’t even tell me you never baited nobody into throwing the first punch just so you could legally beat the shit out of them.”

  Denise’s face was like a volcano of rage and frustration, threatening to erupt at any moment, but for a tiny plug of reason and self-preservation instinct. She needed another little nudge in the right direction.

  “You tell me honest, Denise. Did it ever work out well for the other guy? Ever?”

  Denise shrugged Randy’s hand off her shoulder and stomped further into the city. “Cock-suckin’ rent-a-cop motherfuckers.”

  “They ought to try the South Gate next time,” said the right guard. “You know who would fuck a piss-soaked dwarf? Jennings.”

  “Oh, you didn’t hear?” said Ridley.

  “Hear what?”

  “Jennings and Mosley got caught harassing some half-elf woman last night. They got caught by the commander himself.”

  The other guard whistled long and low. “I think I’d rather piss off Timmon Bloodsoul.”

  Chapter 20

  Julian focused his concentration on a mental image of Ravenus, as if he might somehow pick up their empathic link like a radio signal if he tried hard enough. He knew that wasn’t how it worked, and that he wasn’t going to feel his familiar’s presence until they were within a mile of each other, but they’d been walking for a while, and conversation had started to run dry.

  “There’s a crossroads up ahead,” said Stacy.

  “That’s all we need,” said Dave. “More uncertainty. Can you guys slow down? My legs are sore from trying to keep up with you.”

  As weary as Julian was of the sound of Dave’s whining, he had to agree with his assessment of the crossroads situation. “How will we know which road to take?”

  Tony the Elf picked up his pace. “I’ll go ahead and see if I can’t find any fresh wagon tracks turning left or right.” He whistled. “Come on, Dave!”

  Dave looked up, panting and sweating. “What?”

  Tony the Elf’s sheepdog, also called Dave, barked and discontinued urinating on a tree to run after his master.

  It only took a few minutes to catch up to them, but apparently that was enough time for Tony the Elf to fail his Tracking skill. He shook his head as the rest of the party approached.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” he said. “I got nothing. The north/south road is more traveled, but there's a bit of traffic on the roads heading east and west. I can't tell how fresh any of the tracks are though.”

  Julian looked at the road heading west. It was large enough to accommodate a wagon, but only just. The trees loomed closer to the sides of the smaller roads than they did on the more heavily traveled main road.

  “If Mordred was worried about being followed,” Julian hypothesized aloud, “he might have ducked down one of these smaller roads.”

  “Hmph,” sai
d Dave. “Mordred’s not worried about being followed. I think he only grabbed Ravenus to bait you into following him in the first place.”

  Julian nodded. He suspected Dave’s reasoning had more to do with cowardice than it had to do with reason, but what he said wasn’t untrue.

  Tony the Elf had already come up empty, but he was still the only tracker in the group. Julian asked him, “What do you think?”

  Tony the Elf shrugged. “I think it’s a good thing I talked you into saving your Mount spells. We might have spent their entire duration deliberating about which way to go.”

  “We have no idea where any of these roads lead, right?” asked Stacy.

  “Yeah,” said Julian.

  “And we have no idea where Mordred is headed?”

  Tony the Elf nodded. “That is our current predicament, yes.”

  Stacy grinned. “Not a predicament. That’s the solution.”

  “Go on,” said Julian, hopeful that Stacy had put her high Intelligence score to work connecting seemingly random pieces of data together to form some larger picture that the rest of them were incapable of seeing.

  “With nothing else to go on, the bigger, more traveled road makes the most sense. There’s bound to be more stuff that way. Whatever Mordred wants, it will more likely be in that direction.”

  “More stuff,” said Julian, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

  “Hey, it’s the best I can do with nothing to work with.”

  “What if he’s trying to level up?” asked Dave, massaging his right leg just above the knee. “He’d be more likely to encounter more monsters on a less-traveled road.”

  Julian narrowed his eyes at Dave. He could see what was going on here. “You’re just gainsaying our conclusions so that you have more time to rest your fat little legs.”

  “What?” said Dave, overplaying his offended outrage. “How could you even... I would never... Where do you get off accusing me of –”

  Tony the Elf dropped to one knee and placed his palm flat on the road. “You two idiots shut up for a second.” He squinted and cupped his right hand next to his ear, focusing it along the road leading eastward. “Somebody’s coming.”

  Julian looked in that direction, but the road veered to the right and was soon obscured by the trees. They wouldn’t get a good look at whoever was approaching until they were nearly right on top of them. Now that everyone was quiet, Julian could also hear the distant rumble of hooves and wheels on the road.