Rhubarb

by M. H. Van Keuren

  They had cleared the spur, but were definitely approaching an all-too-solid surface. The speedometer belied the view. Logos blurred by like billboards on the freeway.

  “Martin,” Lee prayed through clenched teeth.

  Martin stomped on the brake pedal and nearly peeled the steering wheel cover off under his sweaty grip. They only flew faster. Martin shivered, and his breath steamed, and he smelled the acrid choke of exhaust. The brakes didn’t work, so Martin’s right foot instinctively went to the gas pedal, as if trying to kill them faster.

  Lee wailed, and Martin tensed as their lane narrowed, crowded by structure. Ahead, a lit logoed aperture split open, as welcoming as a Venus flytrap, but less alien, and revealed a docking bay of some kind—an open void with a solid floor, a solid back wall, but sized for a thousand Screwmobiles. An object inside resembled a linked pair of taxidermied whales. It bore the same logos as the facility and hovered a few meters off the deck. Dwarfed nearby—Martin would recognize it anywhere, especially now that it had one front corner crunched in—waited Jeffrey’s Lincoln Town Car. Martin doubted he’d come here to peddle candy.

  The hangar swallowed them whole.

  Lee screamed Martin’s name as they touched down on a solid surface. Martin stomped the brake pedal with both feet, but too late. The speeding tires had bit, but bounced on the floor. Some force that wasn’t gravity wanted the truck to stick, but its mass in motion clearly had other ideas. The radio box crashed against the windshield and rebounded hard onto Lee. The back wall hurtled toward them as no wall ever should.

  Martin closed his eyes and thought, I knew I would die in this stupid truck.

  Then, as if plunging through the branches of a high canopy jungle, the truck rent through the wall. Shreds smeared cleanly across the windshield. Solid tubes shattered against the bumper and shuddered the frame of the truck. They plunged through chaotic darkness and then unforgiving light, sometimes in the same second. Some unseen obstacle left a spider’s web crack in the windshield in front of Lee, way bigger than a dollar bill.

  They rattled through a long stretch of jostling, pounding, shredding dark, and then they tore through a wall and fell into a dimly lit blur of machinery, pipes, tanks, and conduits. Everything shattered in front of them, but each collision slowed them a little bit more. A wall, or floor, or ceiling, neared, as if time itself was grinding down. And then, with a final renting, the Screwmobile stopped.

  A pasty amber light seeped into the cab. Everything around them diverged at wrong angles. Martin pried a hand off the steering wheel, and turned off the engine.

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Martin removed the key from the ignition.

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Martin turned off the headlights and everything fell quiet.

  Martin felt a laugh rise from his belly. Lee, too, began to laugh, even as he cradled a bloody arm. When their eyes met, they both laughed out loud. Martin whooped and pounded against the ceiling and the steering wheel. Lee grabbed Martin’s shirt with his good arm. “We’re not dead,” he said, shaking Martin. “We’re not dead. We’re not dead.”

  “My boss is going to be so pissed,” Martin laughed.

  “You totaled the crap out of this thing,” Lee declared. “I mean like no one’s ever totaled anything.”

  “Dear Allstate?” Martin said, miming a phone.

  “Triple-A? We need a tow,” said Lee.

  When their laughter subsided, Lee said, “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

  “Quite possibly,” Martin replied with a final chuckle.

  “How are we going to find your friend?” asked Lee.

  “I have a feeling it won’t be hard,” said Martin. “We didn’t exactly sneak in here.”

  “What do you…?”

  Martin made sure he had his staple gun. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before…”

  They heard a crash, distant, but near enough.

  “Oh, crap,” said Lee.

  “Speak of the devil,” said Martin.

  ~ * * * ~

  Stewart may have looked ungainly on a Brixton Inn double bed, but his species clearly thrived in microgravity. The three squids who hauled Martin and Lee through the 3-D maze of corridors and junctions—a king-sized Chuck E. Cheese playground—swam and swung with an enviable grace. When their suckered tentacle pads couldn’t reach, they ejected spurts of air from unseen sacs to hoist themselves across the voids—with sounds that would incapacitate an entire junior high school with paroxysms of laughter. Martin and Lee, held around the waist by unyielding tentacles, felt the full inadequacy of their monkey appendages.

  Jeffrey led the way. Martin had recognized him in an instant, before he had spoken, before he saw the iPad, before he had snatched the staple gun away. Even without his expensive jacket and haircut, he had an air of self-assured competence. Even swimming, he had the swagger.

  “Oh, this is rich,” Jeffrey had said before grabbing the gun. Martin might have fired, but the other two had held similar devices, certainly not FastNCo. brand, but recognizable enough. “Martin, come to play the white knight. And in the Screwmobile no less.” Jeffrey had laughed as he’d held out his iPad in a free tentacle and snapped a picture of the devastated truck. “Honestly, I thought it would be Stewart groveling back here with your unconscious ass in his trunk. But who are you?”

  Jeffrey had eyed Lee closely with one, then the other, of his black, blinking eyes and then laughed. “I know who you are. Clever, Martin. Bring them.” Then he had jetted off with a resounding fart.

  They arrived at a round door that shuttered open for them and entered a not-at-all terrifying place. Part office suite, part control center, it reminded Martin of his visit to the FastNCo. headquarters for his company orientation—but for the presence of two more disconcertingly large cephalopod-ish beings, one svelte, one blubbery. This office’s single decoration, besides the prominent corporate logo, had to be the alien equivalent of a human resources legal notice poster.

  The skinny squid had a bluer hue than the others, and Martin sensed she was female. She was tapping at several devices displaying charts, graphs, and some kind of three-dimensional spreadsheet. She stopped editing to stare at the captured men, and let out a fluttering, high-pitched quibble. The obese specimen waved his stubby tentacles and glared at Martin and Lee with eyes an arm’s length apart. His bulbous head/torso section gave him more of an octopusness compared with the cylindrical squiddiness of the others. He seconded the female’s objections to the newcomers with much guttural glurping and eye bulging.

  Jeffrey bluttered to him for a moment.

  “Where’s Cheryl?” Martin demanded.

  “Shut up,” said Jeffrey, and continued his conversation. Martin tried again to wrench free of the tentacle embrace. Lee hung resigned, cradling his bleeding arm. Little globs of blood dripped off and floated in place.

  The fat one—Chumpdark, Martin supposed—shuddered and blustered. Of course, he might have been the happiest CEO in the ocean for all Martin could understand. At a blurb and a wave of tentacles from Chumpdark, their captors hauled Martin and Lee down a short, round corridor and tossed them into a room, more dodecahedral-shaped office than jail cell, and closed the door.

  “We’re not dead yet,” said Martin.

  “Oh, good,” said Lee.

  The door slipped open and, without a word, an alien tossed in a soft severed-head-sized pack, and closed the door. Martin caught it on the first bounce.

  “I think it’s a first-aid kit,” said Martin, showing Lee the universal graphic on the side of the pack—a pair of healthy tentacles cradling a single one bent at a right angle. Martin found a catch on one side that slipped along a seam, and the pack bloomed inside out with clear rubber pouches. Martin found a roll of tape—slippery and colored somewhere in between the mottled gray of the males and the dappled blue of the female. He picked off the end and found a cottony layer underneath.

  “You’re not putting that on me,” said Lee.
>
  “You want to bleed to death? Come on.”

  “Is there anything else?” asked Lee.

  “Some sacs of putty or something, a plastic speculum thing that I don’t even want to think about, and I think this is an eye patch.”

  Lee took his hand away from his wound. The rough-sawn plywood corner of the radio box had scraped out a chunk of skin and arm meat. Martin wrapped the tape tight under the elbow, then continued wrapping until he’d covered the wound. He searched the kit for scissors but ended up sawing through the tape with the key to the Screwmobile. When the tape separated, Lee shouted and grabbed his arm, fingernails ready to claw the bandage away, but then he relaxed.

  “It tightened, like it was alive, but it’s comfortable now,” said Lee.

  Martin pushed off to the door and tried the latch and the panel beside it, but the door had been secured. Seconds later, the door opened, and Jeffrey oozed in, crowding the room.

  “I want to talk to Cheryl,” said Martin.

  “So persistent,” said Jeffrey. “You’ll see her soon. I’m curious, though. Cheryl screamed for almost a week. But you two aren’t surprised at all. Did the old man finally take off his dermis?”

  “He’s dying,” said Martin.

  “Yes, probably,” said Jeffrey. “A dermis is supposed to be worn temporarily. It can’t filter all the toxins on your filthy little planet fast enough. Living with a smoker for all those years couldn’t have been good for him at all.”

  “If you had any compassion, you’d help him, not mock him,” said Martin.

  “Stewart made his choices,” said Jeffrey. “Although I may have to send him a nice fruit basket, or a pie, to thank him.”

  “To thank him?”

  “For sending you to me, of course,” said Jeffrey. “I’m beginning to think perhaps he did it on purpose. Maybe I’ll have a chat with him after all this is over. Maybe, just maybe, he lied to you to get you to come up here on your own instead of doing something stupid like killing yourself or running off to China.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Martin.

  “I know you know the secret recipe,” said Jeffrey. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. And I read it in your eyes the other night in Lewistown.”

  “I don’t kno…”

  “Oh spare me,” said Jeffrey. “Shut up and listen. I am not going to sit idly by and let you screw up my career. That’s the CEO out there, and he is currently very disappointed. I have told him that you know the secret ingredient…”

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” said Martin.

  “I don’t think so. So here’s the deal. Either you tell me what I want to know, or I will make your life a living hell. There will be a great deal of pain, and you will watch as I torture Cheryl and your new friend here. Neither you nor they will die for a very long time, but I guarantee you will be the last.”

  Martin lunged but Jeffrey rebuffed him with a tentacle and pressed him to a wall. He opened his eyes and found his own staple gun pointed at his face.

  “Oh my god, he means it,” said Lee.

  “Why, Candy Man?” asked Martin. “Why can’t you leave us alone? What would you do in my place?”

  “And what would you do in mine?” asked Jeffrey.

  “I lost my job today because of this,” said Martin.

  “Well, aren’t you the hero? No wonder you and Stewart got along so well,” said Jeffrey. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ve spent too long on this to give up now. And if I fail, my career’s over. Do you know how many promotions I’ve passed up? But this is the big one. If I make it rain profit like no one else…”

  He paused for a moment, and it sounded like he cleared his throat. He studied Martin and Lee. Then he continued, quieter, and deeper. “Do you know what I’ve sacrificed? I haven’t been home. I haven’t seen my brothers and sisters in decades. I have no life, no reef. Every day I squash myself back into that infernal four-limbed dermis and travel to your planet. Every night I take it off, feeling a little more dirtied by your environment, your lifestyle, your trivial human concerns.”

  “You’re marketing a snack pie,” said Martin, “and you’re calling me trivial?”

  “I’ve given up everything,” Jeffrey thundered. He clutched Martin’s collar, drew an eye up a few inches from Martin’s, and whispered. “And I intend to get it all back. Plus interest.”

  He tossed Martin sideways and farted out in a flurry of tentacles. “Five minutes,” he called as the door whisked shut.

  “Oh, this sucks,” said Lee.

  Chapter 27

  “Do you have this secret recipe?” asked Lee.

  “You don’t want to ask me that,” said Martin.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Lee.

  “Exactly,” said Martin.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? I’m going to try and cut a deal,” said Martin.

  “What? Can you do that?”

  “They’re businessmen.”

  “They’re psychopaths.”

  “What the difference?” asked Martin. “Besides…”

  “Besides what?” asked Lee.

  “Let me think,” said Martin.

  ~ * * * ~

  A few minutes later, the waist-grabbing goons hauled Martin and Lee to the main office, where Jeffrey was holding court with Chumpdark and the accountant.

  “Have you made a decision?” asked Jeffrey.

  “You’ve given me such wonderful choices,” said Martin. “Let’s see. Easy death or hard death?”

  “It doesn’t have to be death for you,” said Jeffrey. “I’m willing to deal. I’ll take care of you, Cheryl, and anyone else you want in exchange. I’ve discussed it with Chumpdark, and he agrees that we could create a home for you somewhere. Maybe even on Earth.”

  “With a few dozen of my closest friends?” said Martin.

  “Something like that,” said Jeffrey.

  “What a gracious offer,” said Martin. “But before we go any further, I want to talk to Cheryl. Alive. Conscious. Right now.”

  “Fair enough,” said Jeffrey.

  ~ * * * ~

  As they traveled along a long tunnel, the sensation of up and down returned. Gravity increased until the squids no longer reached out to the walls, but slithered along what could now be called a floor. The goons prodded Lee and Martin to walk.

  At a human-sized rectangular door, Jeffrey pushed Martin forward. “Honey, I’m home,” Jeffrey said with a sputtering laugh. He blobbered his joke to the others.

  “Hello?” Martin creaked the door open, shocked to find a bogglingly perfect replica of Stewart and Cheryl’s trailer inside. A crash struck the wall near his head, and showered him with shattered glass. He ducked back, but Jeffrey shoved, and Martin tumbled into the mobile home, falling against the legs of the kitchen chairs.

  “Martin?”

  He rolled over to find Cheryl standing over him, armed with another glass tumbler and a wicked kitchen knife.

  “Cheryl.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Coming to get you,” said Martin.

  Cheryl considered him through narrowed eyes, and then she shouted at the door. “Is this another stupid ploy, Asshat? I know you’re out there.” She readied her tumbler for another throw, but the door remained closed.

  “I had nothing to do with any of this,” said Martin.

  “I don’t care. Get up,” said Cheryl.

  “You’re not going to stab me, are you?”

  “I might, if you need stabbing.”

  “I’m surprised they let you have a knife.”

  “I’ve got a whole kitchen of ’em,” said Cheryl.

  “Jeffrey told me they make you bake every day,” said Martin.

  “Jeffrey? Oh, Asshat? Yeah. They’ve got a whole garden of rhubarb, a big warehouse of flour and Crisco, whatever. I jump through their little hoops every day, but apparently my pie isn’t good enough. And it never will be.�
� This last struck the door harder than a tumbler.

  “You look good,” said Martin. “I mean, considering…”

  “Don’t start, Martin. What are you doing here?”

  “I told you. I’m rescuing you. Stewart was going to come, too, but he’s too sick. So I got Lee Danvers to come.”

  “Lee Danvers?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Martin. “He was in Brixton. We came through the portal and crashed my truck onto the ship.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know where you are?”

  “It sure as hell isn’t my kitchen.”

  “Do you want to know?”

  “Will I like it?”

  “No,” said Martin.

  “I kind of figured that,” said Cheryl.

  “You’re about as far from the sun as you can be, but still be part of the solar system.”

  “Oh, that’s just great,” said Cheryl. “So what’s your brilliant rescue plan?”

  “It hasn’t gone quite as I envisioned,” said Martin. “Listen,” he whispered. “They’re threatening to torture us to death unless we give them the secret recipe.”

  “I don’t have it. Do you? ’Cause if you do, let’s give it to them and get the hell out of here,” said Cheryl.

  “It’s not that…oh, god, you don’t know,” said Martin.

  “Know what?”

  “What they plan to do if they get it,” said Martin.

  “What do they plan to do?”

  He told her.

  “You’re joking,” said Cheryl.

  “Ask Stewart,” said Martin. “He’s the one who told me.”

  “How would Stewart know anything?”

  “Oh, god, you don’t know that either,” said Martin.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Cheryl.

  “I’m sorry you have to find out like this, but Stewart is one of these aliens,” said Martin.

  The blade of Cheryl’s knife caught a glint of light. “Liar,” she screamed as she lunged. And then nothing.