“It is a relief to see most honored Mister Plush has come out intact.”
“Everything but my sanity. Somehow, I’ve become convinced that I survived being swallowed and now I’m inside a cake meeting with a bunch of Furries and some of my dead compatriots.”
“Ah, thenor, Plush! It ith a miracle! We have thurvived because a man of Vanzetti’s size takes decades to digest anything!”
“Some miracle. We get to die slow instead of quick?”
A hooker in a crayfish suit laughed.
“Francois told me you were a bit prickly. At least you’re not as bad as the rumors around Nero City said you were. You’re not going to die in here because Francois and the rest of us have been working on a ladder that leads up to Vanzetti’s right eye. All you need to do is go up there, roll it out of the socket and you’ll find freedom.”
“Sounds disgusting, but I guess that’s life.”
“Trust me,” said the crayfish girl, “it’s the only one of the escape routes you’d want to go near.”
Francois nodded.
“All of ze rest you could get lost in forever.”
“Well, since you put it that way, the eyeball doesn’t seem so bad anymore.”
A girl in a monitor lizard suit whose bare breasts stuck out through two strategically placed holes entered the cityhall cake, huffing and puffing.
“It’s….done.”
She collapsed and died on the spot. The hookers gathered around her, recited the Lord’s Prayer, then pounced on her, tore off her suit and started to devour her flesh. Had it not been for my time in the police station, I would’ve been disgusted by the sight of a cake full of prostitutes eating an old friend, but it was in context now. It felt like an act of love. They ate ecstatically, joyfully and tenderly and it seemed as if, in this place, any girl would give herself to feed her friends and colleagues. I was surprised when Francois joined them, until I saw the look in his eyes. He’d fallen in love. With all of these girls. Just like a Frenchman.
Maybe if I were a more softhearted guy like Francois was, I wouldn’t be so angry. With a town full of prostitutes that wouldn’t be digested for several years head over heels in love with him, who could really blame him for deciding to stay instead of risking death at the hands of the real Jimmy Plush?
The ladder led to a cavern occupied by a white, spongy mass of fat that could only be Vanzetti’s eyeball. I shot the thing five times, jumpkicked it, knifehanded it, punched it, kneaded it, elbowed it and shot it five more until it came loose. With another series of kicks, punches and shoves, it rolled out of the socket, letting me once more see the light of day. Chang, Don Pedro and I leapt from the socket down to Vanzetti’s enormous shoulders. Before he could shake us off, we zoomed down his arms and hit the ground running pursued by the jackal-headed bastards.
Since it wasn’t the first time we’d run from a barrage of spears, we outdistanced the primitive scum and were off the turtle and swimming for our lives in a shallow pool of hallucinogenic zaratan piss in no time. When Plush was dead and I was safe at home, I would have to slow down my life somewhat. When you reach the point where a swim through a pool of turtle piss as spears are being thrown at you is a relief, it’s probably time to reevaluate everything. Perhaps I should move out to the country and settle down, do some fishing, sit on my porch whittling tiny wooden canoes. Or larger wooden canoes for if I have to swim for my life in hallucinogenic turtle piss again. Well, we live, we learn, we get wetter, we get wiser. We leave friends behind to live their lives in a mobster full of whores. Boy, back when I was Hatbox all I’d wanted was to tell some stories about cowboys and purple-skinned alien nymphomaniacs.
When we’d outdistanced the oasis and the spears, we came to the legendary Valley of Severed Heads, a place where hills of grinning, stinking decayed skulls leered at travelers, laughed at them and warned them to stay away forever. Having just emerged from a giant eyesocket, being stared at was the last thing I wanted. Their chants of “You or Him”, which was not so much painful as painfully obvious didn’t make things any more enjoyable. When I’d set out on this quest, I knew it would be either me or him. Any idiot would know that. Didn’t see why a bunch of ancient heads should bother to taunt me with it. Too many of the goddamn things to waste ammunition splitting all their skulls, too. I got some consolation from knowing that it couldn’t be that long before war was declared and Egypt and our boys would bomb the jackal-headed monsters, zaratans and eerie laughing skulls off the map.
At the edge of The Valley of Severed Heads, we were met by a small, pink mechanical man with a head that was pretty similar to a toaster.
“What the hell do you want?” I snapped at the little automaton. It being pink and a foot shorter than I was, I felt pretty tough.
“I have come to greet you.”
The three of us waited, heaving large sighs in unison.
“Well? I don’t have all day, robot.”
“Greetings, earthfolk. You approach the Tomb of the Martian Pharaohs! But beware…”
I shot the tiny robot in the head. For more or less no reason. Well, scratch that. I shot him because something completely unrelated to him annoyed me. Which is a reason. A good enough one for either the real Jimmy Plush or myself to shoot someone for. Besides, it was obvious that we were approaching the Tomb of the Martian Pharoahs. A few feet in the distance was a pyramid made of glowing green space metal with flashing diodes all over it. It sure as hell wasn’t Graumann’s Chinese Theater. Also couldn’t be the Arc de Triomphe. It was a little hot for Paris.
The majestic alien workmanship, the colors, the lights and the scale would have been impressive to somebody who hadn’t seen the things I’d seen in my travels and exploits, but it was a bit under whelming. Having just escaped from a giant mobster on the back of a giant turtle I expected a little more than a big green pyramid. The turtle was big and green, Vanzetti was big, so the martians would have to do better than this and some stupid little robot to get me “ooing” and “ahhing” like the tourist I was. The small figure standing at the entrance waiting for us was a start.
The small figure was supposed to be a dead man. Of course, things are always supposed to be other things, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Don Pedro was. The guy was his exact duplicate; seven years old, swarthy, inexplicably mustachioed and inexplicably alive.
“Ramon!” he shouted, “Ramon!”
Don Pedro’s twin rushed to him with open arms and embraced him. At least with one arm. The other was reaching for a knife at his side. A knife that he plunged into his brother’s back. Don Pedro’s face filled with the sting of the blade and the betrayal all at once.
“Ramon! Why?”
“Plush promised me the secrets of the alchemist Alejandro Montoya, the secrets our family has searched for all these centuries. You are a small price to pay for cosmic awareness!”
Don Pedro was tough. He pulled the knife out of his back, backed up and drew his sword, wounded though he had been.
“Thenor Plush, Thenor Chang, the time hath come to take my leave of you! Go, into the pyramid, I will take care of my treacherous brother! En garde, perro!”
Ramon smiled a bloodthirsty smile and drew his blade and a duel that would no doubt be the end of both of them began. A duel that provided me the opportunity to slip into the pyramid. I could have stopped to shoot Ramon in the back but it was the sort of thing that makes Spaniards real sore, so I didn’t. I walked through the temple’s large, open entry way (which it turns out, had no magic seal to be opened with Don Pedro’s tattoo) into a chamber illuminated only by green torches. I didn’t like what I saw in there.
There were about fifty of the things. White birds with grilled cheese sandwiches for heads, sandwiches that opened and closed as they squawked out cries of doom, all the while dripping out hot cheese. They were mad, too. When the Professor had told me Martian folklore spoke of grilled cheese sandwich birds, I laughed at him. But nobody was laughing now.
“Go!”
Chang screamed at me.
“I can’t do that!” I shouted back. “We’ve already lost too many!”
The birds swooped down at Chang and their cheese burned his face—the flesh starting to sizzle. The grilled cheese sandwich birds were too many for him to take. I took aim, hoping a bullet square in the middle of the flock would scare ‘em off.
“No!” I don’t know how Chang saw through the globs of yellow heat, but he didn’t want me to shoot, “you save your bullets! You save your bullets for that bastard, Jimmy Plush!”
“Don’t be a fool, Chang!”
“You don’t be a fool!” He cut two in half with one chop, “Don Pedro dies for nothing if you don’t go on without me. Francois dies for nothing if you don’t go on. Most honored Mr. Plush, this is the honorable way.”
He was right. Five of the Spectacular Seven were dead now, giving their lives so the archvillain in Charles Hatbox’s…in my…body could finally be stopped. Painful as their deaths were, any of them would have done it ten times over if they knew that it would mean the end of that bastard. Also, Chang’s face was virtually immune to burning at this point. I felt a great admiration for the Chinaman when I figured out that he had been letting me scald him with hot coffee so his skin would become less heat sensitive in case we got into a situation like this one. More kooky advice from Confucius, most likely, but it worked this time.
I continued deeper into the tomb, following the light of the green torches and the funny scribbles on the wall. They were mostly scribbles that is, except for one. I was taken aback when I saw it. Not the kind of thing you’d expect in a martian tomb. I led the kind of life where there were things to expect from a martian tomb. None of those things were a raised carving of a teddy bear face identical to my own. I felt an inexplicable urge to touch the thing. If you have no good reason to touch a mysterious carving in a martian tomb, it’s usually a good idea not to. I should have known this. I did know this. I should have found it strange that I forgot it. But, when one is in a state that would cause them to forget such a rudimentary rule of alien crypt exploration, their will is usually not their own. So, I forgive myself for touching the carving.
There was a flash of light that smelled of strange, exotic space flowers. Though I had never been to space, I knew the name of every component of the sweet smell in the air, from the Saturn meatrose to the hotfudge flytrap of Mercury’s fire jungles. The room faded around me, leaving me floating in a starry sky, a sky that offered my mind the name of every one of its millions of stars, a sky that told me that if I survived, I was going to be alright. I asked it what it was that I needed to survive. It replied by grabbing me with a gigantic hand made of stars. The hand reached up and up and up and up and up…
Until it burst through the floor of a sandstone temple not unlike the tomb I had just come from. I was in another long corridor with teddy bear faces carved into the walls with all manner of expressions on them, some laughing, some weeping, some sticking out their tongues, some scowling angrily, some eyeless, some bearing a single eye in the center of their foreheads. As I moved further down the great corridor, my eyes began to play tricks on me. The faces were changing their expressions, smiles becoming frowns and frowns becoming smiles right before my eyes. After all I’d been through, this shouldn’t have made me doubt my sanity, but it did. Moreso when I started to hear the sound of laughter.
At the end of the corridor, there was a twenty foot high golden door with a fifteen foot high teddy bear face on it. The face was dead serious until I got closer, and then it smiled widely, after which time it opened, leading me into what must have been an entirely different tomb. This one was bigger inside, taller and full of hundreds of sarcophagi. When I set foot inside they opened, revealing what one would expect from sarcophagi; mummies.
But these were not what I would expect from mummies. Most of the time one suspects mummies to be inanimate, which these mummies were not. Most of the time one does not expect mummies to have neongreen skin and teddy bear heads. Which these mummies did. Also, one does not expect mummies to charge at them en masse, which these mummies did. Apparently, I knew very little about mummies, or else martian mummies were just that different from conventional mummies. I assumed the Chinese fighting arts headstanding pogosnake stance and hoped for the best.
They shuffled at me. From headstanding pogosnake stance, one can execute the upside down whirlwind decaptitating batkick, which I did by spinning my legs like helicopter blades and bouncing on my soft, cottony head. My helicopter blade legs took the heads off of three mummies and when I landed and went into a rolling spikeshark roll, I knocked three more of them off balance. And as you probably know, when a foe is on the ground, you can do the on-the-ground implosion chop, which is particularly effective on bodies whose organs have turned to dust. And boy, did those mummies implode easily. There were onions and sawdust everywhere and I was barely getting started.
A few of the mummies revealed that they were capable of shooting blue lasers from their eyes. I was lucky that these mummies were slow and I had been trained in performing acrobatic martial arts maneuvers. I dodged, flipped, decapitation kicked mummies while the laser eyed ones melted their brethren. A year ago, laser eyed mummies would have terrified me, but now? Another kick, another jump. Watch the sawdust and onions fly and then I hardly see myself killing anymore. I see only survival in front of me, only my lack of options. I barely notice when the last of the mummies have either killed each other or been killed by me and I’m alone.
I continued into the tomb and the floor faded away, turning into a river of blue satin. I swam through it, knowing that I could still sink to the bottom and I could still drown, even though it was only fabric. I could still feel and I could still die and I could still love, even though I was only fabric. Those thoughts were not my own. Something on the other end of the river was sending them out to me. But who? Why? I struggled against the fabric current, maneuvered around angry tricycles that tried to nip at my feet, drowned out the calls of mama, mama, mama from baby dolls that swam toward me and then sank to the bottom. There were bigger things ahead.
Literally.
When I emerged from the river, dripping with satin, I found myself in a giant chamber with walls made of tin cowboys shooting capguns back and forth at one another. In the center of the room was a smiling teddy bear face glowing green like many of the other smiling teddy bear faces and this one was every bit as seductive, every bit as off kilter. In a language of humming martian vibrations that I shouldn’t have been able to understand, it told me to go to it and kneel there for three days. When a green glowing sigil on the floor tells you to kneel for three days, you do it.
So, I went to the sigil and I knelt down. The cowboys on the walls turned their capguns away from each other and pointed them at me, continuously pelting me with hot, smelly smoky capgun fire. I should have been distracted by taking bullets from thousands of tiny, belligerent tin cowboys, but I wasn’t. I should have been distracted by thoughts of the real Jimmy Plush grabbing the lingam and making this world his, but I wasn’t. I thought only of kneeling and glowing.
This place was having a strange effect on me.
After the third day, a fifty foot high naked green woman appeared. I felt the stirring of a phantom erection, a Charles Hatbox erection. She was a real hot fifty foot tomato, legs, hips, waist, bosom made as well as they’d ever been. It didn’t bother me that the hair around her pussy was made up of smiling teddy bear faces, it didn’t bother me that instead of nipples she had two teddy bear heads. It didn’t bother me that her head was that of a green, mouthless teddy bear. I felt a stirring in me, I felt like a man again in her presence.
Her left teddy bear nipple opened its mouth. It spoke in a commanding womanly voice, a voice like a gossamer hatchet.
“Welcome, Charles Hatbox.”
“Thank you,” I replied, bowing down and kissing her left foot. Like most of my actions of late, I did not know at all why I did so.
The
right nipple spoke up next. Its voice was a softer, breathier version of the same voice.
“Welcome Hieronymous James Plush.”
“Thank you.” I bowed down and kissed her right foot. Hot and cold feelings fought for dominion over my body. I liked these new stirrings of pleasure and the slight feeling of divine serenity, but I was not happy about being driven to actions I didn’t understand. If I was going to lose control of myself, I at least wanted to be able to blame it on too much gin.
“You are hungry,” said the left nipple.
“He is desperately lacking in nourishment,” the right continued.
“If he wishes to live he must feed,” said the left.
“I concur.”
She lowered one of her great big mitts and I climbed on and was brought from mitt to tit, brought up to her left breast.
“Open wide, Charles Hatbox and be fed.”
I opened my mouth and the nipple opened its mouth. It spat green martian milk into my opened mouth. Delicious green martian milk. I floated in the air, my soul bathed in starlight, my mind opened as far as a French girl’s legs and I saw Charles Hatbox born, Charles Hatbox suckled, Charles Hatbox riding a tricycle, Charles Hatbox dressed as a cowboy firing a capgun, Charles Hatbox opening a Christmas gift. A small, familiar Christmas gift. A Christmas gift that looked at me from the mirror every damned, accursed day since…he…I…he named the bear Jimmy Plush. His mother sewed a tiny fedora. Hatbox brought it everywhere, they pretended to solve mysteries in the livingroom and in his backyard. It was only the size of a regular teddy bear, but it was sure as hell Jimmy Plush. What could this have meant? Hatbox throwing the bear out. Hatbox in school, hiding, slinking, unknown and mediocre. Hatbox writing the novel nobody wanted. Hatbox trying to make some money playing cards, winning a couple poker games. Hatbox losing poker games. Hatbox getting rejected. Hatbox being shot down by girl after girl after girl and magazine after magazine. Hatbox getting into hot water with Halperin, Hatbox meeting Jimmy Plush, feeling a faint glimmer of recognition and thinking he was worth trusting. Hatbox making the last mistake I would make as Hatbox. Hatbox slipping away.
Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective Page 9