I feel a little crazy, he thought. But it’s worth it to keep Phelps Better and his goons from nabbing me and staging a real brutal death, not just some kind of counterfeit demise. I’ve just got to kill me first.
That afternoon, Dale had smuggled his pseudo body into the casino in a large suitcase. He had been sure to register at the desk for an ostentatious Goodnight Room luxury suite and to stroll past as many security cameras as possible, all to boldly document his stay. Dale had even made a public scene after losing at the Poker Little Puppy tables.
The key to faking your own death, Dale knew, was to leave no recognizable body behind. Fire and explosives were a natural first choice, but Dale was worried that he might hurt someone in the process (namely himself).
Throwing his bogus body into Lake Mead had occurred to him, but Dale didn’t want to wait around gosh knows how long before the body was dredged up. He needed to be freed—immediately … tonight!—from the tyranny of his messed-up life and the anxiety of Phelps Better’s surprisingly well-funded manhunt. Mysterious men with dark suits, sunglasses, and earpieces talking into their cuffs outside of Dale’s old haunts … it was conspicuously weird even by Las Vegas standards.
Wiping his filthy hands, Dale assessed his gruesome alter ego. It was like some hideous meat puppet that not even Hamburger Helper could help. But it was roughly his size, and after the impact, appearances wouldn’t matter, as long as it carried his ID.
Dale dressed the body in his nicest suit, tucked his wallet inside the jacket pocket, cinched a fedora over the body’s exposed cranium, and walked it out into the hall.
A waitress dressed as Aslan from the Craps Tables of Narnia eyed Dale and the body suspiciously.
“Dead drunk,” Dale replied with a wry grin. “He had a few too many in the Charlie and the Cocktail Factory lounge.”
The waitress nodded and—with a halfhearted roar—disappeared down the hall.
Phew … that was close, Dale thought as he boarded the elevator and punched the button for the roof-level amusement park. I feel like I’m in a DVD extra for one of those old Weekend at Bernie’s movies.…
The elevator door opened onto a scene of garish, neon-lit full-sensory assault. Most every sin was represented here on the Wizard of Odds rooftop: Greed, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Dopey, Happy, Grumpy … though some of those might have been dwarves, Dale thought with confusion as he carefully maneuvered the body past a bank of Little Slot Machines That Could, their incessant chugging chant of “I think I can win, I think I can win” nearly pushing him over the top.
Finally, with the Winderella Ball thinning out, Dale could see his destination. Just beyond the Blackjack and the Beanstalk ride was the colossal candle on the casino cake: the 512-foot-tall Wicked Witch Tornado Ride.
The thrill ride had supremely foolish daredevils strapped into a tiny two-person house and whirled so high up into the air, at ninety-nine miles per hour, that apparently (on a clear day, it is said) you could actually see Kansas. The house then came freefalling down, where it flattened a cackling animatronic witch.
Dale conveyed the body across the rooftop arcade, threading it through the throng of oblivious revelers as if he were swishing his partner to and fro in a ballroom dance competition. He arrived at the back of the yellow-brick line. Dale sighed nervously.
Buzzers sounded from across the rooftop gallery. A crowd of people swarmed around a huge, elephant-shaped Horton Hatches the Nest Egg slot machine.
Dale seized the sudden distraction and made his way to the front of the line. A bored teenage girl dressed as a Munchkin unlatched the entrance gate. He sat down in the cramped, house-shaped compartment as the girl buckled him and the dapper meat skeleton into the ride. She arched her fake orange eyebrow at the body.
“Is he, like, okay?” she asked around her chewing gum. “The Lollipop Guild will get on me if he’s sick or something—”
“Is that a monkey with wings?” Dale replied as he pulled a penknife from the inside of his coat.
“Huh?” the girl said as she looked over her shoulder.
Quickly, Dale cut the restraining belt strapping the body to the house. “Oh, nothing,” he said as he pocketed the knife. “Just some hairy kid with a weird backpack. My friend? The famous Dale E. Basye? Or should I say infamous? He’s just tired. Being a fugitive from the law, not to mention a writer … it’s taxing. That’s Dale E. Basye. B-A-S-Y …”
“Right,” the girl said, checking her watch.
“I changed my mind,” Dale said, straining against the restraint. “I guess I don’t have what makes the musk-rat guard his musk.”
“Huh?”
“You know … courage? What the Cowardly Lion wanted in the Wizard of … never mind. Just let me out, please. But my friend, the famous Dale E. Basye here, will stay.…”
The Munchkin girl shrugged and unbuckled Dale’s safety belt.
Dale wove his way through the crowd back toward the elevators as the ride lurched to life. In a matter of seconds, nine house cars shot hundreds of feet into the air above the tawdry, dazzlingly desperate Las Vegas night. The house formerly occupied by Dale was catapulted to the top of the shuddering 512-foot-tall vortex of metal rails and churning soot.
“Ding-dong,” the Munchkin girl announced apathetically as one of the houses plummeted down upon the mechanical witch. “The witch is—”
Suddenly, a body was flung into the night sky from the top of the twister.
“Dead!” the girl screamed.
The girl’s shriek—which, to her credit, had an appropriately shrill, Munchkin-like quality—caused an outbreak of screeches and gasps throughout the rooftop gallery. The body flew up and over the lip of the Wizard of Odds casino, bathed in emerald lights that cast a sickly green halo in the sky, and upon fulfilling its upward arc, plummeted downward. A rush of gawkers pressed against the railing.
“Looks like he’s a-gonna land in the Betting Zoo,” a middle-aged man in a cowboy hat drawled.
The crowd of thirty-something people winced in unison.
“Touchdown,” a large sunburned man said with a grimace.
A little boy peered over the edge. “Hey, all those animals are giving the poor man kisses.”
An elderly woman shook her head in disgust. “Lions, and tigers, and bears … oh my …”
Dale noticed three men in black suits and buzz cuts pierce the edge of the crowd, mumbling into their cuffs.
“Who was that poor man?” a tiny platinum-blond woman at the base of the ride asked, struggling to maintain her balance atop her high heels.
The Munchkin girl shrugged from the guardrail.
“Some guy … a fugitive or writer or something: Daly Bosseye, I think,” she replied nervously.
The mysterious, black-suited men shot knowing looks at one another. Dale backed away toward the elevator.
That worked out even better than I expected, he thought as he rounded the corner by a Winnie-the-Pot machine with its obnoxious bouncing Tigger. The animals will leave nothing behind but my ID and a whole bunch of gruesome vacation photos.…
Dale stepped into the elevator, fighting the flow of gawkers surging to the accident. There was no going back now. He had to get out of Dodge or—more specifically—Las Vegas, Nevada. He needed to find a safe haven in which to install and run Dale E. Basye Version 2.0. He needed to dye his hair, grow a beard, and change his name (he was toying with Dr. Tyberius von Skywalker).
He stole carefully into his room and hastily collected his things in a canvas sack, along with some towels and the remaining contents of the mini-bar. Dale slipped into the service elevator as the sound of sirens swelled, shrill and urgent, in the distance.
Dale emerged from the back of the Wizard of Odds casino into the neon confusion of Las Vegas. A hundred feet away, just beyond a blockade of emergency vehicles, was Phelps Better, scratching at his confounding horn nubs, his horsey face trained suspiciously upon the horrified medics in the frenzied Betting Zoo.
Leavin
g behind nothing … leaving behind everything, Dale reflected sadly as he pulled his cap down low and slunk away, swallowed up by the crowd.
Pretending you’re dead is a lifelong commitment, Dale mused as he typed furiously on his laptop in an abandoned hut in the Oregon wilderness. He had bought the chic wood hut on Craigslist from an animal behaviorist, Dr. Chuck Woods, who, after researching the habits of woodchucks, decided to chuck his woodchuck hut when his Woodchuck book made good.
Dale’s insurance policy money, along with a substantial settlement from the Wizard of Odds casino for criminal negligence, had all gone to his estranged family, so he wouldn’t have to worry about them. They would, thankfully, be taken care of. All of Dale’s Heck-related monies, however, had been wholly absorbed by Virtual Prayground Technologies and Phelps Better, like some huge paper towel soaking up a spill.
Ever since the greatly exaggerated reports of his death, Dale had felt phenomenally free, his life a blank page. As a writer, Dale used to feel a profound sense of dread and anxious obligation at the prospect of a blank page. But now, every blank page was an opportunity, an opportunity he had seized 1,712 times, if the pages piled up on his desk were any indication.
Unlike his usual writing method (a vexing, excruciating process akin to milking a rabid squirrel), the words now flowed effortlessly from his fingertips. Dale felt as if his latest novel was being conjured more than created.
The Great American novel, Dale mused as he filled up another page with perfect prose. The career-defining epic that has always seemed just out of reach. But here I am, writing what is not only my best novel by far, but also perhaps the best novel I have ever read, and I’ve read several!
Dale had no idea where he was going—the tingle of thrill and discovery traveling up and down his spine like electric eels—yet he knew he was nearly through, probably a page away, as he tied together every plot point with the skill of a surgeon.
Suddenly, Dale was seized by a painful twinge in his hand. His fingers grew numb and stiff as they tripped clumsily across the keyboard.
“Oww,” he mumbled as he massaged his cramped, trembling hand. “Maybe I could use a break after a week of almost nonstop typing.…”
However, the throbbing muscle ache only seemed to grow worse, creeping past his wrists, climbing up his arms, and nesting painfully in his hunched shoulders. Beads of sweat formed above his brow as his middle-aged body became almost wholly defined by the riot of searing twinges.
Dale rocked back and forth, restless and uncomfortable all over. His breath grew shaky and his teeth ground together with a wince-inducing squeak.
“Oh my,” he mumbled, his voice cracking as it became almost impossible for him to swallow. “I fear this may be …”
With his quivering index finger, Dale managed to peck out two final words on his manuscript.
THE END
And with that, Dale E. Basye became the first person ever to die from writer’s cramp.
15 · THEM’S
FIGHTING WORDS!
“I WON’T FIGHT you!” Milton screamed. He was trembling so hard it felt like he was being shaken. “I won’t—” Milton yelped, waking himself up.
Mr. Wilde loomed above him, his hands on Milton’s shoulders. “Fight you?” Milton said, his voice slurry with sleep as he propped himself up onto his elbows.
“You were having a dream,” the teacher whispered. “Quite a corker from the sound of it.”
Milton rubbed his eyes and reached for his broken glasses. “Marlo—my sister—and I were tied together, at the wrist,” Milton said. “And she was trying to cut me with a knife, but I wouldn’t fight her.”
Mr. Wilde gave a rueful smile. “Trying to cut you down, no doubt … with her words,” the man replied in his upper-crust British accent. “As she will in your upcoming tourney.”
Milton looked around the darkened Boys’ Totally Bunks, where all of the boys were sleeping on shelves, arranged according to the Dewey decimal system—the system of classification that libraries use. Some of the boys, though, were missing.
“Why are you here?” Milton asked.
Mr. Wilde sighed. “When Vice Principal Carroll arrived, the teaching staff merely viewed him as a dotty nuisance,” the teacher explained. “But now it’s clear that he is both seriously deranged and serious—at least about this War of the Words business.” Mr. Wilde handed Milton his clothes. “Get dressed. We’re almost late.”
Milton noticed a few of the other boys getting dressed silently while the others slept away.
“Late for what?” Milton said as he slipped on his shirt, which was currently scrolling “My Momma Dresses Me Funny.”
Mr. Wilde, quietly imposing at over six feet tall, strutted for the door. “For your first meeting of Spite Club—a criminally extracurricular club dedicated to giving you unenviable contenders a fighting chance in the War of the Words.”
Twelve children—a blend of boys and girls known collectively as Team One—circled Milton in the Grimnaseum: a fittingly named room liberally decorated with hanging chains and hooks and flooded with black light that made everyone’s teeth creepily white. The grumbling children sat on a stack of mats in the corner. Mr. Wilde silenced them with the booming sound of his boot striking the unvarnished floor.
“THIS ISN’T A GAME!” Mr. Wilde shouted. “This is real … the stakes are real. And if you want to survive the War of the Words—and perhaps even somehow win it—you will zip it. Understand?”
Moses opened his mouth, but thinking better of it, merely nodded.
Mr. Wilde loosened his red cravat with a hooked finger. “Team Two will receive similar yet unique training from Miss Parker shortly after our meeting tonight. This way, they, too, will have the necessary skills to wage verbal warfare, yet not identical skills, as that would raise suspicion and would not serve you well on the battlefield.”
Milton raised his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Fauster? Or should I say Team Captain?”
Moses Babcock glared at Milton in the ultraviolet pseudo darkness.
Milton swallowed. “I … well … this will sound dumb …”
Several of the children did a wretched job of stifling their snickering.
“But what is Spite Club? Is it to help us cheat at the War of the Words?”
“Not cheating, per se,” Mr. Wilde replied as he paced in front of what looked like a deflated bouncy house. “At least that wasn’t its initial intent. We formed Spite Club shortly after Vice Principal Carroll’s arrival. He made sweeping, ridiculous changes to our curriculum, as if he didn’t want any of you to actually learn. But now the stakes are even higher, so we have to step things up a bit. You have been inadequately prepared for a debate of this caliber—”
“Debate?” blurted a jowly Hispanic girl before grudgingly raising her hand. “Um … sorry,” she added with great difficulty.
“Yes, the War of the Words is a debate, Miss Lambarst … Ursula,” Mr. Wilde said while languidly tugging off his bright white gloves. “The debate to end all debates. And Vice Principal Carroll doesn’t seem interested in providing ammunition for this battle of wits, for reasons clear only to him, though I suspect that most everything is rather dodgy when viewed through his skewed looking glass. Now back to Spite Club. Before we begin tonight’s session, let us review the rules. Mr. Fauster, our newest member, can you speculate as to what the first rule of Spite Club might be?”
Milton bit his lower lip and shrugged. “To have fun and try your best?”
Mr. Wilde scowled as he tucked his gloves inside of his immaculate velvet waistcoat while the children snickered. “That it definitely not the first rule … or any of the rules.” The Irish playwright and novelist handed Milton a laminated card. “Don’t despair, Mr. Fauster … our little covert club only has a few clandestine meetings under its belt.”
Milton studied the card in the confounding ultraviolet light.
THE RULES OF SPITE CLUB
1st rule: Talk about Spite Club.
2nd rule: Really, I mean RUB IT IN THEIR FACES!
3rd rule: If someone gets tongue-tied or their argument goes limp, they’re tapped out and the debate is over.
4th rule: One debate at a time.
5th rule: Shirts and shoes. And preferably pants. But no slacks.
6th rule: Arguments will go on as long as they have to, if not longer.
7th rule: If this is your first debate at Spite Club, you HAVE to argue. No arguments!
Mr. Wilde inflated the sagging, collapsed structure behind him with an electric pump. The bouncy building slowly filled with air, becoming a large, white twenty-two-foot by twenty-two-foot plastic dome.
“This is the Disputation Dome,” Mr. Wilde explained as the structure grew firmer behind him. “In it, you will work out your differences in the most direct way possible. It is, as you may rightly assume, very bouncy. The added ‘lift’ of helium makes the interior extra springy. You will first go inside as teams—as either Rubbers or Glues—before sparring one-on-one. Inside, you will be wearing these.…”
Mr. Wilde held up a small mask, like a surgical mask to cover the mouth, only made of metal with a nozzle at the center and a small cartridge sticking out the side.
“This is your Paint-Brawl mask. It translates your arguments into paint. The more forceful your point or barbed your barb, the more devastating your verbal assault will be. In this way, you will physically experience the raw power of each other’s words—which arguments stick and which rebuffs merely rebound.”
The Disputation Dome was fully inflated. It resembled a massive, puffy igloo, with one small door and several see-through plastic windows along the sides.
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