by Tony Ungawa
By now the tree’s vines were dangling Denny upside-down, his resistance impotent and the loose change falling from his pockets. He was looking as attractive as a worm on a fishing pole’s hook. Other vines came at Uschi, at least a dozen, and closing in fast, wiggling like snakes in copulation frenzy.
“Come on, you rascals,” Uschi said to the vines. “I’m anxious to create some mega damage on y’all.”
And damage the zombie titty woman did make. Gator protecting her from a frontal attack, she put his mandible to work on the vines, hacking whichever ones came around him and got in reach of her. Jim Bowie and his famous namesake blade couldn’t have cut any better.
The vines promptly recoiled, not wanting a thing to do with being pruned. Where they were slashed and severed the wounds secreted a milky white and sticky sap that had an odor like raw beef and a fresh mown lawn. At this point in its development the devil vegetation had a low threshold for pain. Give it another month or so of eating right and healthy growth and it could laugh off a tank attack, but right now an injury of any noteworthy caliber would not be tolerated.
The second attack was a touch more thought out. The man-eating plant’s objective was to remove the human shield she protected herself behind. Whipping and snapping vines came for Gator and wrapped around whatever purchase on him was available. As Gator shook his head no and tried to plead with his eyes to his vegetable best buddy to leave him be, they entwined heavily around his arms and legs like kudzu, pulled hard, and left nothing behind but a bloody and ragged writhing torso. More of them went after his head and face, invading the sockets and uprooting his eyes, finding the tongue and performing what Uschi couldn’t—yanking it away. The ensnared skull was squeezed until it shattered, and mashed brain matter squirted loose like Spam out of a can run over by a speeding pickup truck. Still more vines became like knives and stabbed into the chest and abdomen, going deep and showing no signs of stopping. The ribcage was split apart and lungs were punctured and the plant life thrashed about wildly and destructively around inside them like rats eager to make their escape from a twin set of brown paper grocery bags. Multiple ruinous lacerations on the heart and other organs were performed, shredding the stomach and ripping entrails to muddy slush. Gator was whittled away to chunky grue in a matter of seconds, exposing the decaying corpse super female for attack.
Uschi was by this time in reach of a suspended Denny and was able to cut the vines that held him. He dropped to the rubble-strewn convenience store’s floor and untangled the mass of herbage around his neck. He resumed breathing, sat there on his ass and helplessly watched as a new crop of vines were able to overpower an unshielded Uschi and pick her up.
Gator had not been telling any stories concerning the killer tree’s telepathic gifts. It now broadcasted its thoughts inside both of Uschi and Denny’s minds.
(I will eat you to death, female of the species. But first there shall be some humiliating mistreatment for you. Have at it.)
The devil vegetation maliciously hammered her bountifully bosomed rotting dead person into the aisle shelves. She smashed all she came in contact with. Impact with the canned goods section was especially rough; they didn’t show much give at all give when she was meeting them.
(What Gator told you is only a half-truth. I am on your planet to overtake, correct, but I have no intentions of ruling you miserable beasts. All I care to do is eat you. You are indeed tasty apes, this I can not deny. I told Gator what he wanted to hear so that he would act as my willing slave and care for me during my more vulnerable development period. Another week or two of his aid, and then I would have been large enough to betray his trust and consume his bodily fluids. I hope that didn’t come off sounding too heartless. Because I am not a heartless thing. I can love. I can sympathize with others. Don’t judge me too fast. As apes go, Gator was an enjoyable pet. He was good to me and fine company. His services were appreciated, and I must admit I will miss him. Now I must move on and find another weak-willed ape and con him into taking care of me until I am ready to go out on my own and destroy your world’s armies and feast on all the living matter your planet has. I would offer the task to you, male of the species, but I sense you possess more intestinal fortitude than I am willing to put up with. I will simply have to satisfy myself in eating you and your mate. Once your world is stripped barren of nourishment and I am satiated, I will do as I have done countless times before and launch a seedpod containing my intellect into outer space and move on in search for the next populated planet to appease my unending appetite. I know it may not be the most glamorous existence, but it is what I do. I am happy enough with my lot in life.)
Uschi was stirring. While the dust cloud caused by her collision with what was likely the majority of the Get It Quick’s inventory began to settle around her, her head came off the cracked and leaking bottle of Windex it was resting upon like a pillow. Gator’s jawbone was still with her, clutched in her hand. She went back to work with it. She cut any vine that encroached on her and ran at the tree. Not wanting it to try escaping from her, she stomped a cha-cha shoe wearing foot down on a particularly fat root, pinning the plant to this one spot. Uschi next began to swing the jawbone as if it were a hatchet, chopping away at the tree.
(Damnit, that hurts.)
At that same moment the devil vegetation was coming again for Denny, one vine behaving like a tentacle and slithering around his leg all the way up to the hip. Denny found in the wreckage close beside him a shard of glass that once belonged to a Hellmann’s jar of mayonnaise. It reminded Denny of what he imagined a dragon’s tooth must look like: serrated, number of inches in length, and curved a scimitar’s blade crescent shape. Could be he could perform a miracle or two with this nasty bit of trash.
He slashed at the vine and was amazed when he found he won his freedom. The mayonnaise-slimed glass went through the vegetable matter like a machete on cardboard, hardly any resistance. Then he looked over at Uschi and saw the wood chips flying where she was hitting the trunk. Sure, a sharp-edged tool would’ve performed better, but don’t sell Gator’s back molars short, they were getting the job done on the tree’s fibrous, moist material. Uschi never showed signs of tiring, never deviated in the amount of unholy supernatural power she devoted to the chore. Her arm was a blur as it went down and came up, down and up relentlessly against the trunk.
(You dare to assault a devourer of worlds in such a classless manner. For this your suffering shall be the stuff of legend.)
Vines were reaching out of the branches and closing in on her, anxious to put a stop to her malicious lumberjack mischief.
She needs me.
With no concern for his own well-being or any hesitation, Denny sprang to his feet and raced to join his homemade zombie girlfriend under the man-eating tree.
“I got your back, sugar cube,” Denny told her.
“I know you do, best thing,” Uschi told him.
He and the broken Hellmann’s jar prevented any nonsense out of the devil vegetation from interfering in Uschi’s wood cutting chore. A hack and slash sending all vines back in sliced and sap-bleeding retreat whenever they got too close to her.
(I will deplete you both of every last particle of digestible material. I so swear that I will.)
When about halfway through the plant, Uschi ceased chopping. She lowered her unbothered arm, not a drop of sweat anywhere on her, you’d need to start with a heartbeat for it to be racing, and no breath for her to be huffing and puffing to try and recover. She told Denny to back up a ways and heisted one of her legs and executed an amateur karate fighter style sidekick directly above where she had been cutting.
Whole fucking lot of oomph behind that kick—getting backed over by a truck might’ve gone more gently. Perhaps yelling “Timbre!” may have been appropriate, but neither Uschi nor Denny thought to do that. Uprooted as it was the devil vegetation’s center of gravity was all top half; there was no hope of it remaining upright. It toppled over, the trunk splintering and snappin
g in two with a great cracking report. The felled world-eating thing from another solar system came crashing down on the sales counter, smashing it to bits. The electric cash register managed a final ring before it was bashed into a shorted-out mess. Little TV set turned off for the final time. The CASHIER DOES NOT KNOW THE COMBINATION TO THE STORE SAFE sign broke into three separate pieces. The ever-popular adult reading material newsstand behind the counter was torn asunder, dirty picture magazines cruelly decimated.
Uschi dropped Gator’s jawbone, and Denny tossed aside the fragment of mayonnaise jar glass. They watched together as the plant’s leaves blackened and withered like a vegetable garden victimized by an unexpected late spring freeze. The eyeballs suddenly spoiled and rotted and dropped from the branches. Those troublesome vines now lay lifeless and motionless.
But the slaying of the thing was still not finished. Like any plant, it was not dead until you killed the roots. The less than a foot high stump scuttled along the floor on its root ends, and was leaving an obvious trail through the convenience store debris easy for Uschi to follow. As she tracked it down and got hold of it with both hands, it put these words into their heads:
(I will yet have your world!)
An empty boast. For as it telepathically spoke, Uschi was approaching the nearest available wall space and mercilessly set to work battering the stump of the devil vegetation against it three to four dozen times. She pounded the plant into a weak and pulpy mess. After that she returned to the frozen foods case and dropped it inside with the ice cream and microwave enchiladas and chicken pot pies.
“Now you go right ahead,” she told it, “and make your sorry self comfortable in there. Make some new friends. I bet you and that bag of frozen peas beside you have got a lot in common.”
Uschi slammed the lid on the case shut.
“Honey,” said Denny. “There’s something you need to know.”
“What is that, best thing?”
“You got a kinda something going on.”
It was difficult for him to put the problem in words, so he just pointed at her general upper body half and tried to convey with his facial expression what that something was.
She misunderstood the direction he was pointing in and assumed he was referring to something below the neckline. She looked down at herself and did find a wardrobe malfunction currently in progress. Whoops, nipple slip. Her great big right titty had sometime during the rumble tumble popped out of her latex nurse’s costume and was seeking adventure. That big areola in the center was as black as a thrill killer’s intention’s.
“I guess it’s got a mind of its own.” And Uschi grabbed hold of her anti-freeze and peanut butter fattened hooter and returned it home back inside the dress. She gave it a couple of jiggling palm pats to be certain it was secure. “How is it Vampirella never has this trouble?”
“That’s not actually what I’m talking about. Up. What you got is happening higher up.”
“Huh?” She put her hands on her cadaver bliss face and started to feel around the cheeks and chin.
“Still higher, sugar cube.”
Felt around her eyes.
“You’re getting real close. More along the left temple. No, my left. There you go.”
Uschi’s fingers found a hockey puck shaped object attached to the side of her brow. She tapped a fingernail against it and there was a recognizable metal tink, tink sound.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked.
It was a can of tunafish. A 5 OZ. can of StarKist, to be specific. She must’ve acquired it when the devil vegetation walloped her into the shelves. It was mounted on Uschi’s head not too terribly far above her left eye, protruding like the stub of a sawn off horn. She tried to pry it off, but it was embedded in her quite firmly. Downright uncooperative thing, the can was. Fucker had its own agenda: stay where it was. It would not relinquish its new home. Uschi used both hands and a lot of body english to tug and yank, but no hope. It was as if it was somehow fused to her skull.
“Aw man, come on,” she complained and continued struggling with the can’s removal. “Come on. Work with me. Work with me.”
The StarKist’s paper label did manage to tear off. She supposed that was a puny victory of a sort.
She found a bottle of Quaker State motor oil on the floor, opened it and poured a liberal amount over the can, hoping this would make things slippery enough for taking it off. But it only complicated matters for the worse. Now Uschi couldn’t master a firm grip, her hands sliding and flying off.
“Let’s find the bathroom,” suggested Denny. “Maybe we can figure this out in there.”
In the washroom—a tiny one sink and one toilet closet of a room—the faucet was turned on and a bunch of paper towels wetted. Uschi and Denny together industriously worked cleaning the oil and whatever else was on the can off.
In the mirror bolted to the wall above the sink, in a lower corner, there was a decal applied to the glass. It was old, speckled with water stains, and showing a topless hippie chick holding an oversized sunflower in her hand and a peace symbol painted over each of her saggy nature girl titties. Beneath that were the words LET IT ALL HANG OUT, BABY.
Uschi eyeballed that sticker and was not at all in the mood to let it all hang out. She wanted the tunafish off her head and everything else returned to her idea of normal. Uschi wanted that now. She was getting pissed.
Okay, ready to give it another try. Standing there in the cramped, smelly shithouse, her back arched and head leaning back, the only sounds were of the trickling of the faucet water continuing to run and the fleshy squish of fingernails digging in deep for the best possible hold. Uschi pulled with all she had.
And all she had came up short. Failed again. Hands came away missing four nails and the StarKist unbudged.
Denny got out his pocketknife. “Here, give this a go.”
“It’s nut cutting time.” Uschi forced the blade through her skin and wedged a good majority of it between skull bone and can metal. The objective was to work it like a spatula on a pancake stuck to the griddle—just pop that motherfucker clean off. She started to pry the knife’s blade away from her head.
Barely into the operation when: Glink.
Glink was the sound of a Dunlap pocketknife’s blade breaking apart.
“You got to be shitting me?”
“No,” informed an increasingly frustrated Denny. “No shitting. It broke.”
Uschi could feel the short nub of blade where the break occurred, saw it in the mirror’s reflection peeking out beneath the can. She looked at the impotent knife’s handle in her hand. The sad luster of coming to terms with defeat washed over her dead girl’s eyes; she calmly said, “Well, color me disappointed.”
“Sorry.”
“What have you got be sorry for, best thing? It’s not your fault.” She gave the knife handle back to Denny, and he tossed it right away into the trash. She turned off the faucet and leaned herself against the sink, hands on the sides of it and head lowered. Uschi stayed that way for a spell. Quiet, settled, contemplative.
Denny stepped back and watched her. He didn’t know what to do. In his life there had never been anyone to step up and comfort him when he was in a bad way, and his lack of experience kept him frozen in place and unable to find words to say to her that might be of some help. All he could do was leave her alone. Let her work it out herself.
Uschi decided to go apeshit.
She suddenly belted out a Fay Wray in the hollow of Kong’s hand scream and ripped the sink from the wall. Severed pipes gushed and immediately flooded the floor. She turned away from the mirror and her classy cha-cha shoes slipped in the water and legs went out from under her and she fell on her ass. A pipe sprayed Uschi in the face like a clown’s seltzer bottle and stopped her screaming. She awkwardly kept the sink in her hands as she made her way to a standing position.
More senseless vandalism was called for. She raised the sink over her head, hitting the ceiling light fixture and busting
two out of the three fluorescent tubes, and quite forcefully she spiked the sink into the commode’s bowl. There followed a whale of a crash and the biggest splash this bathroom would ever have. Toilet and sink both shattered to crumbs and more water gushed. She kicked the tank in to complete the destruction.
“I do not deserve this!” Uschi raged. “I swear I don’t!”
She punctuated her remarks by smashing the mirror and hunting down that stupid little hippie sticker. She took particular mean joy in tearing it to itty-bitty bits. Then she punched a series of holes in the cinderblock walls and stomped the bathroom door off its hinges.
Surly, miserable, filthy and wetter than a half drowned dog, she turned toward Denny and said to him in a sad, pouting voice, “I need you to be honest with me, best thing. Can you love a zombie with tunafish stuck to her head?”
And just like that Denny Gleeth all of a sudden knew exactly how he should comfort his watermelon-chested walking dead delight. It didn’t have to be anything special or grand. He only had to be himself and show her in his own way he cared and was there for her.
Denny stepped forward and embraced her in his arms and kissed her long and passionately. This was the first time in their relationship he had initiated such intimacy between them. Up until now Uschi was the one to always be the aggressor in such matters. When that was done, he then raised his mouth and kissed the tunafish can.
“I don’t know if I could love just any zombie with tunafish on her head,” he said while holding her face up by the chin and staring unflinchingly into her eyes. “But I sure as hell know I love this one. There is nothing that can change that. I’m more than likely to always be the first to admit there ain’t that much to me, but what there is—every last little grain of it—is here for you and won’t stop loving you no matter what.”