by Chris McCoy
“So what I need you to do is this,” she had said. “I need you to reach into my chest cavity, in between my rib bones, and attach a plastic bag to the top of my spine so that it will catch the dinner and drinks that I consume.”
“Er,” Bugslush had said. “O-k-kay.”
It seemed like a lot to ask on his first day on the job, but he did what she told him to do. Reaching into the president’s bony chest, he fastened a tall trash bag to the top vertebra of her spine, leaving the mouth of the bag wide open to make sure it caught everything.
“There you go,” Bugslush had said.
“Very good,” President Skeleton had replied. “Now zip me up.”
For the occasion, Persephone had picked out a blue silk dress, which would hide the plastic bag. She knew that Scurvy liked the color blue.
She applied some mascara to the upper edges of her eye sockets. She was going for a dramatic look.
“Oh,” she said. “Do you have a tissue?”
Bugslush looked around for a handkerchief and then remembered that, in a moment of weakness, he had taken some handkerchiefs off a table and chewed them into bits because he was making a new nest in his bedroom. It was a stupid, irrational decision, but what was done was done, and he didn’t see the point of admitting his mistake. Better to blame somebody else.
“I d-don’t,” said Bugslush nervously. “I think … S-s-swamster might have s-stolen them.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” said Persephone. She wiped the excess mascara away with a dinner napkin.
Bugslush walked around the dinner table, spraying down the ham, adjusting the piles of fruit, straightening the stacks of bacon, and lighting the candelabra. He watched Persephone out of the corner of his eye as she applied blush to her cheekbones and perfume behind the holes in her skull that were all she had for ears. Her mind seemed to be somewhere else.
“I’m d-done arranging the t-table, President Skeleton,” said Bugslush.
“That’s nice,” said Persephone, rearranging the straps of her dress.
“Is there anything else you n-need before I bring in Mr. G-goonda?”
“Uh-huh.”
“W-what would you like?”
“What?”
“W-what would you like?”
“Uh-huh.”
Bugslush paused. It seemed he could say anything, and President Skeleton would simply respond with an “Uh-huh” or “What?” This Scurvy fellow seemed to have taken hold of her brain.
“Swamster?” said Persephone.
“It’s B-bugslush, President Skeleton,” said Bugslush. “You sent Swamster into the f-field, remember?”
“Bugslush, can I ask you something?”
“Of c-course.”
“How do I look tonight?” Persephone asked, almost demurely.
Bugslush could tell, as he looked Persephone over, that she was very nervous. She wanted so badly to look pretty for her date.
Persephone had on a blond wig whose nylon bangs fell down over half of her face, making her look like an old-time movie star; mascara was slathered on the rims of her eye sockets, crimson rouge was painted on her cheekbones, lipstick surrounded her scorched beak. A prom dress hung loosely from her gnarled shoulders down to the floor, and her feet were jammed into high heels. An odd musky perfume filled the room. She was a complete disaster in every way.
Bugslush’s heart broke for a moment, because he knew that—before the power and the politics—Persephone had once been good. Not good-looking. But much more normal, and maybe even nice.
“P-president Skeleton,” said Bugslush. “You look b-beautiful.”
Persephone smiled, which just looked like her opening her mouth slightly, because she didn’t have cheek muscles.
“Thank you, Bugslush,” said Persephone.
“Shall I b-bring in our guest?”
“Please do,” said Persephone. “And, Bugslush?”
“Y-yes?”
“If you ever take that long to compliment me again, I will turn your pelt into a vomit bag.”
Bugslush started to shake.
“Yes, President Skeleton.”
“Am I clear?”
“Very clear, President Skeleton,” said Bugslush. “Vomit bag.”
“Excellent,” said Persephone. “Now, please fetch my special guest, if you would be so kind.”
III
ACORN’s tree-tunnel hideout wound on and on, chock-ablock with thousands of ab-coms of all sizes, shapes, colors, lack of colors, textures, feathers, tails, spots, smells, and demeanors. There was a shark stroking its beard while doing tricks with a leather whip. There was a movie-theater attendant spraying an enormous Bermuda spider with melted butter. There was a tired bison eating gravestones. A six-legged coyote was kicking a living soccer ball that was shouting in pain every time a foot whacked into its side. A grumpy orchid kept having its leaves stepped on, a zebra biathlete was adjusting its skis, and a mule was balancing a vase on its head while mumbling about a modeling career. Ted had never seen such a menagerie of misfits.
Joelle-Michelle led Ted and his cohorts through the tunnel. Watching her—ballet slippers, tights, pale skin, and long legs—was liquefying Ted’s brain. Each time she leaped in the air or randomly spun in place, Ted malfunctioned. He couldn’t stop looking.
From this point on, Ted thought, I will be fully devoted to the worship of Joelle-Michelle Athenais-Benedicte de la Valliere, the ballerina. She has left me no other choice.
“Is this all of ACORN?” asked Dwack, floating along as he was led down another tunnel.
Ted noted that the worried look on the vampire’s face matched the look on the faces of Vango and Dr. Narwhal. It was hard to believe that these bizarre creatures had the abilities to fight a war. Could it be that all the intelligent ab-coms had simply obeyed the call to arms and joined President Skeleton’s forces, leaving ACORN to the outcasts and degenerates?
“Yes, this is ACORN,” Joelle-Michelle said to Dwack. “Were you expecting something else?”
“Everybody seems a little freaky,” said Vango.
“Then you will fit in perfectly, won’t you?” said Joelle-Michelle.
“It looksss like a lot of them are having some problemsss,” chuckled Dr. Narwhal, pointing his horn at an Egyptian mummy whose head was wrapped completely in sparkling bandages and who was stumbling around blindly.
Joelle-Michelle strode up to Dr. Narwhal until she was belly to belly with the arctic beast. She took a long moment to stare Dr. Narwhal down, and then suddenly her arms shot forward so quickly that all Ted saw was a flash of very attractive elbow.
The next thing anybody knew, the teenage ballerina figurine had Dr. Narwhal’s spiral horn in her hands and was pulling his massive head down so that she could look at him over the tip of her nose.
“Now you listen to me, you can opener,” said Joelle-Michelle. “I run ACORN, and if you don’t think that my troops are up to your standards, that’s fine with me. You can leave and be hunted down by Persephone’s army and be processed into bars of soap. But if you want to be a part of ACORN and try to create a better Middlemost, then you will not talk poorly about anybody who is putting his or her or its life on the line. AM I CLEAR?”
“I think you wrenched my ssspine,” said Dr. Narwhal.
“Answer. The. Question,” said Joelle-Michelle.
“You are ever so clear, Mademoissselle Joelle-Michelle,” said Dr. Narwhal. Joelle-Michelle let him go.
Then she pointed at Vango.
“I hear you loud and clear too,” said Vango. “As loud as the screaming in my head!”
Joelle-Michelle merely raised an eyebrow at Dwack.
“Not one critical word will cross my fangs,” said Dwack.
“Excellente!” said Joelle-Michelle, who pivoted to look at Ted. “And I can’t imagine that I’ll have any problems with you.”
“None. Vive l’ACORN,” he said (because he’d heard somebody say something like that in a war movie).
Joelle-Michelle smiled.
“You speak French?” she said. Ted had never seen eyes her color before.
“Oh, yes,” lied Ted. “I love to speak French.”
Joelle-Michelle studied Ted and then cocked her head.
“Je sais que vous mentez à moi,” said Joelle-Michelle, which if Ted spoke French, he would have known meant “I know you are lying to me.”
“Oui,” said Ted, which meant “yes” and was the only French he knew aside from vive.
“Bien sûr,” said Joelle-Michelle, and Ted knew that she had pegged him as a fake. When the group started moving again, Ted walked at the back of the pack, behind Dr. Narwhal. He never knew how to act around girls.
“ACORN, as you know, is overwhelmingly outmanned by President Skeleton’s army,” said Joelle-Michelle, waltz-stepping the group deeper into the tunnel. Ted felt pressure on his eardrums—they must be far underground. “But each day ACORN grows. We are the ab-coms who do not think our friends should be punished for relinquishing us. We are the companions who believe Middlemost should be a place of peace, not a place where we are drafted into wars under threat of arrest. We believe that everybody should be treated for the loathsome Greenies, not only those who join Persephone’s army.”
“I haven’t yet seen anybody here who is ill,” said Dwack.
Joelle-Michelle raised a flawlessly arched eyebrow at him.
“It’s a perfectly acceptable observation,” said Dwack.
“Come here,” said Joelle-Michelle. “All of you.”
Joelle-Michelle led the group to a door guarded by a Russian cosmonaut.
“Monsieur cosmonaut, please open the observation window,” said Joelle-Michelle.
The cosmonaut slid the heavy door into the tunnel wall, revealing a transparent door underneath. A mustard-colored light leaked into the hallway, and through the foggy glass Ted could see dark shapes moving slowly around inside the room.
“Now step closer,” said Joelle-Michelle, and Ted, Dwack, Vango, and Dr. Narwhal did what she said.
Pushing their faces against the glass, they could see that the dark shapes were actually abstract companions, all with the same sort of stumbling gait, as if they weren’t quite sure where they were going.
“What’s wrong with them?” said Ted.
“They’re in the latter stages of the Greenies,” Joelle-Michelle explained. “The disease spreads and spreads, eating away at its host until there is nothing left—just a pool of sludge on the ground.”
“Who are these poor beings?” said Dwack.
“These companions are steadfast believers in ACORN who refused to receive help from President Skeleton’s army. We haven’t been able to do anything for them.”
“Somebody’s got to cure them,” said Ted, thinking of Scurvy. Was this what his pirate looked like now?
“That’s where you four come in,” said Joelle-Michelle.
“What do you mean?” said Dwack.
“Well, we have a job that nobody else wants to do,” said Joelle-Michelle. “And you’re the new guys. C’est à vous! Right, Ted?”
“Right,” said Ted, absolutely not recognizing that she had just said, “It’s your turn!”
“Come,” said Joelle-Michelle, “let me show you something.”
She led the group deeper into the tree tunnel, eventually stopping outside a thick oak door.
“Inside this room is perhaps the only chance we have against President Skeleton’s army,” said Joelle-Michelle. “You’ll need to put on those protective coats.”
With her toe, Joelle-Michelle pointed to a row of suits hanging from small branches poking out of the wall. When everybody was fully covered, she nodded and pushed open the oak door.
Ted’s visor was blasted by steam. The air was thick and hot, and ab-coms were rushing around in all directions.
Joelle-Michelle led the group to a steel vat in the center of the room. It was filled with bubbling purple liquid. Workers wearing protective suits were mixing the liquid with long metal poles while a mechanical claw above dropped gray rectangular cartridges and shiny silver discs into the vat.
Video games.
“We call this VIDGA solution,” said Joelle-Michelle, yelling to be heard over the industrial noises. “For almost a year, we had been searching for an anti-imagination serum to use against President Skeleton’s forces in case Persephone came to power.
“And then our scientists had an epiphany. What saps imagination the most? Video games. The first batch that they melted down was worthless—it didn’t do anything. But then one of our particularly gifted scientists pointed out that some video games make you think—puzzle-solving games and graphic-design games and music-composition games and so forth. This scientist suggested we melt down a batch consisting only of shoot-’em-ups and games that focus on the most brain-dead entertainment. Alas, that scientist was splashed with the solution during the melting process, and—POP!—he exploded into a cloud of purple sludge, proving his theory but ending his life. Only games that kill imagination can be used to make VIDGA, but a little bit of that solution is enough to cause any ab-com to explode.”
Ted looked down at the burbling liquid.
“So, what do you do with it?” he said.
“We use it to coat our weapons,” said Joelle-Michelle. “As you’ll find out. You see, there’s a Greenies antidote, and we know where it’s being made. Which reminds me, I have a badminton racket for you.”
“What?”
“You’ll understand soon.”
IV
If Persephone’s chest had still contained a heart, it would have been pumping furiously. But alas, since that wasn’t an option, her foot was nervously banging out a steady rhythm—BaBUMP-BaBUMP-BaBUMP!
“Pretty bird,” chanted Persephone to herself. “Pretty bird. Pretty bird. He will find you pretty. Hello, Scurvy. Hello, Scurvy. Hel-LO, Scur-VY.”
Persephone was sitting at one end of a long table filled with all kinds of food—everything she remembered that Scurvy liked. Tapioca. Crab legs. Shepherd’s pie. Beef tartare. And piles and piles of bacon covering specially ordered golden plates, cooked to every degree of crispiness and floppy-fattiness. Persephone even had bacon made from bulls and frogs and horses and social workers—all in the hopes of making her adorable Scurvy happy. She had heard that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and if Scurvy didn’t love her, well then, she would feed him his own heart.
Persephone listened to the sound of her own bones clattering. She was second-guessing her blue dress. Was it too forward? She really should have gone with something more demure—after all, she didn’t want Scurvy knowing that she had been thinking about him for the past three hundred years. Might seem a touch desperate.
“Oh,” she said, panicking. “I need to change, I need to change.”
But then the doorknob turned.
Persephone almost fainted.
The doorknob turned some more and then returned to its original position.
Persephone felt like she was a teenager.
The doorknob attempted to turn again and then shook back and forth a bit.
“Er, P-p-president Skeleton,” said Bugslush. “I think I might have accidentally l-locked myself out. And I don’t have a k-k-key.”
Persephone sighed. Even though her knees were weak from all this anxiety, she pulled herself to her feet and walked across the floor to the locked door, her high heels clopping all the way. She took a deep breath into her nonexistent lungs and turned the knob.
Bugslush strode confidently inside, masking his mistake, and bowed toward the invited guest.
“President Skelet-ton,” said Bugslush. “May I introduce Mr. Sc-sc-scurvy Gordon?”
“I prefer Goonda these days,” said a voice from the other side of the doorway. And with that, Scurvy walked into the room. His shabby clothes had been pressed, his boots had been shined to a blinding polish, his beard had been trimmed, his eyebrows had been tamed, his fingernails had
been clipped, his skin had been exfoliated, and his tricorne hat had been cleaned and hammered back into its original shape.
Inside, Persephone swooned.
Scurvy had been groomed against his will by Persephone’s personal staff of well-compensated beauticians, but despite the aggressive makeover, he had to admit that on the whole, he enjoyed the spiffing up. He felt particularly handsome tonight.
“Scurvy!” said Persephone, her eye sockets transfixed on her eternal love.
“Good gravy,” said Scurvy, looking at Persephone. “Yer so tall.”
Persephone twisted her jawbone into a sort of smile.
“Power makes everybody seem taller,” said Persephone.
“Strange tah hear ya talkin’,” said Scurvy.
“I’ve worked on my diction since … the boat,” said Persephone.
“Oh,” said Scurvy.
“You still have your hat,” said Persephone, all excited and girlish.
“Three hundred years and counting. Har!” said Scurvy, trying to make his voice sound normal. He couldn’t believe that this was the bird who used to creep him out by staring at him sixteen hours a day, sitting on his shoulder three inches away.
“And your dreadful Greenies have been cured, I see,” said Persephone.
“Yer doctors gave me an antidote,” said Scurvy. A white-coated physician had given him a shot, and within a few minutes, all the bumps had disappeared, and his strength was returning. “Brand-new me.”
“You’re just the same as I remember you,” said Persephone, leaning in closer.
Scurvy realized that he had been paid a compliment, and that Persephone was expecting him to offer one in return.
“And you,” said Scurvy, “are more … colorful than ever. Ya got all dressed up.”
Persephone curtsied modestly.
“It’s a special occasion,” she said. “Come and join me at the table.”
And that’s when Scurvy looked at what they were having for dinner.
Stretching out on the table in front of Scurvy was a fantasy that played out nightly behind his eyelids, when he was in bed and just letting his mind wander. He had never seen so much bacon—it was as though the bounty of the supermarket meat rack had tripled in size and been dumped onto enormous gold platters. The plates of bacon were topped with bacon bits and sugarcoated bacon candies, and there were glasses of pureed bacon to wash down the rest of the bacon. It was a meal sent from heaven.