Critical Failures VII

by Robert Bevan

  “Stand down, Jennifer,” said Professor Goosewaddle as he slid his leaf blower into a bag that was much too small to hold it.

  Jennifer obediently lowered her broom handle, and Stacy wondered if that was a sign that she was free to go. Goosewaddle answered that question with a flick of his wrist, slamming the door shut.

  “Who are you?” he asked the police officer.

  The officer stood up straight and answered in a formal tone. “My name is Douglas Williams. I'm a patrol officer in the Waveland Police Department.”

  Professor Goosewaddle turned to Stacy. “And you?”

  “I caught her in the kitchen,” said Jennifer. “She claims her name is Sally. She's another one of them.” She nodded down at Dave.

  “How can you tell?” asked Stacy. There was no point in trying to hide it anymore. If she couldn't even fool this ordinary Arby's manager, she didn't want to risk lying to Professor Goosewaddle, who might have magical means of discerning whether or not she was telling the truth.

  “Nobody from this weird-ass world is called Sally. They're all Lancelot or Stormblade or Foozgooble or some shit.”

  That made sense. Stacy made a mental note to get a little more creative next time she had to lie about her identity.

  “She's right. My name isn't Sally. It's Stacy.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “You really went out of your way on that one.”

  “Stacy?” said Professor Goosewaddle, peering hard at her face. “Are you...”

  “Yes. I'm the one you met on Earth. I got sent here by one of those magic dice.”

  “But you look so much more...” Professor Goosewaddle cupped his hands below his imaginary breasts, then thrust them down by his sides as his gaze shifted up to her face. “I like what you've done with your hair.”

  “Thank you,” said Stacy, perhaps a little too curtly.

  “Why did you try to deceive me? What business did you have in my kitchen?”

  “I'm sorry, Professor. I didn't want to lie to you, but I heard we weren't welcome in your restaurant anymore.”

  Professor Goosewaddle surveyed the scene of blood, vomit, broken furniture and lingering smoke. “I can't imagine why.”

  “I had nowhere else to turn,” Stacy explained. “Cooper was bitten by a wererat. I needed to use your equipment to make an antidote.”

  Officer Williams walked over to the window, pressed his hands against the glass and looked up and down the street outside, making Stacy even more anxious to go out and find Cooper before he got himself into trouble. “This is not Waveland. Where the hell are we?”

  “This is Cardinia,” said Professor Goosewaddle. “Welcome.”

  “And where the hell is Cardinia?”

  “We tried to explain to you before,” said Dave. “We're in a fantasy game world.”

  “With an Arby's?” Officer Williams whirled around, his gaze fixed on Professor Goosewaddle. “Wait a minute. I know who you are.”

  “I apologize for not remembering,” said the professor. “Did we meet at one of the temples of the New God?”

  “You're the Arby's Bandit, aren't you?”

  Professor Goosewaddle frowned. “Am I?”

  “The Arby's over in D'Iberville,” said the officer. “All of the equipment, furniture, inventory, the signs, even the toilets. They disappeared overnight without a trace or any sign of forced entry. They've been trying to crack that case for months. Their best lead was the couple who worked there who went missing at the same time, but nobody could fathom how they could have pulled it off or what they intended to do with it.”

  “Couple?” said Jennifer. “Paul and I were never a couple. Are people saying that?”

  Officer Williams's eyes widened as he stared at the name tag on Jennifer's shirt. “Are you... Jennifer Rodriguez?”

  “That's right. Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  “Listen,” said Stacy. “I hate to interrupt, but I really need to get this belladonna sludge out to Cooper so he doesn't turn into a rat monster.”

  Professor Goosewaddle, who had been fascinated by the conversation between Jennifer and Officer Williams, gave Stacy a severe look.

  “Listen here, young lady. No matter how dire your situation may seem, there is no excuse for barging into someone else's restaurant and demanding to use their equipment without permission.”

  “You literally stole this entire place!” said Stacy. “Besides, I feel like you kind of owe me.”

  Dave's face went pale as he shook his head at her.

  Goosewaddle's face turned red. “I'll tell you the same thing I told that nine-fingered imbecile dwarf! I am grateful that you introduced me to your strange world, but I have paid my debt in full!”

  Stacy glared right back at him. “I was referring to when you put a dent in my car, then trashed my boss's office with a giant scorpion.”

  Professor Goosewaddle broke eye contact and shuffled his little feet. “Oh yes. I suppose that warrants the use of some kitchen equipment.” He nodded up at the pot in Stacy's hand. “Come here. Let me see what you've got there.”

  Stacy walked over and held the pot down low enough for Professor Goosewaddle to look inside.

  He gave it a sniff and frowned. “The leaf-to-berry ratio smells off, and it looks a bit runnier than ideal, but not a bad first try.”

  “Will it cure Cooper's lycanthropy?”

  Professor Goosewaddle shrugged. “Only the gods can say. But it certainly won't hurt his chances... even if it does hurt him.”

  That last part cast a shadow of doubt on Stacy's hopefulness. “Could it kill him?”

  Professor Goosewaddle smiled up at her reassuringly. “I certainly hope not.”

  Stacy was less than reassured by that.

  “Go on now,” said the professor. “Rescue your friend, and let us now call my debt to you paid in full. Are we agreed?” Stacy wasn't sure if he was addressing her, because he was looking at Jennifer.

  Jennifer nodded, then backed away from the door and looked at Stacy expectantly. Professor Goosewaddle was now looking at her, too.

  This didn't feel like a very full payment of debt, considering the irreparable damage he'd done to her future career if she ever got back home to pursue it. But Stacy knew as surely as Jennifer and Goosewaddle that they had her over a barrel. She didn't really have any choice.

  She nodded. “Agreed.”

  Jennifer smiled smugly at Professor Goosewaddle as Stacy opened the door and waved goodbye, then scowled down at Paul, still sobbing next to his spilled bucket.

  Searching left and right, Stacy didn't see any sign of Cooper on the street. It wasn't a big street, and it wasn't very crowded right now. He should have been easy to spot even at a casual glance among the stylish and well-to-do patrons of the shops on this street which, with the obvious exception of the new Arby's, almost all dealt in magical wares.

  She hoped he hadn't gotten into any trouble. She had been confident that Nabi would keep him in line. Aside from inciting the occasional mass-murder, she seemed to be a good influence on him overall.

  Then again, maybe there was no Nabi. It wasn't the first time Stacy had entertained the possibility that Cooper might have snapped, inventing this person inside his axe to justify his sudden murderous impulses. But she'd always given him the benefit of the doubt, on account of him not having the mental facilities to spin that kind of lie.

  Then again, if he was insane, then it wasn't a lie. He might believe in Nabi whether she was real or not. None of these speculations were helpful right now, though. Cooper was clearly not on this street, and the only thing Stacy needed to focus on was where the hell he'd gone.

  “Dammit, Paul!” snapped Jennifer from behind her. “Stop crying and clean that shit up! Then get in here and mop up all this blood and vomit before the dinner rush starts.”

  Chapter 35

  Do not let them get you down. I can see who you are on the inside, where it counts. And you are a beautiful person.

  “Thanks
,” said Cooper as he gave the finger to a shopkeeper scowling at him through the window from inside his shop. “So my stomach and lungs and shit, they don't appear to be turning more rat-like?”

  I was referring to your heart.

  “That's all you've checked out so far? I guess that's good news. I'll take what I can get.”

  I sense no evil within you at all. Truly, I believe your friend's fears to be unfounded.

  “But what if they're not? What if I do suddenly turn evil against my will? What happens to us? Will you do like Stacy said and make me use you to chop my own face off?”

  Of course not! Please calm yourself. You are worrying over nothing.

  Window shopping sucked. It had sucked even when he had enough cash on him to buy a shitty slice of Sbarro pizza at the food court to comfort himself after checking out a bunch of shit that he couldn't afford, and when not everybody in the mall stared at him like he was a living pile of vomit.

  Cooper thought back to the summer after high school, when he worked at a mall kiosk selling Electric Muscle Stimulators. Or rather, not selling them, because the few people who might be gullible enough to believe it actually worked were put off by the sales pitch, which not only involved heavily insinuating that the potential customer was a big fat-ass right to his or her face, but then requesting to strap electrodes to said fat asses in the middle of the goddamn mall.

  Pizza delivery may not have been the most ambitious career path he might have taken in life, but holy shit did it ever feel like a step up from that first job.

  Not wanting to think about it anymore, he steered back to the less depressing topic of possibly turning into a rat monster.

  “Don't pretend you aren't worried, too,” he said to Nabi as he passed a shop without even bothering to look in the window. “Why else would you be cruising around in my organs looking for evil?”

  I am not cruising around your – Never mind. Cooper, you are a dear friend to me. You cannot turn evil. I simply will not allow it.

  “But what if it's not up to you? What if the curse is too strong? Just for the sake of argument, what if I do turn evil?”

  In that case, would you not want me to chop your face off?

  Her voice in his head sounded like she felt that should be genuinely comforting.

  “Fuck no! Just abandon me. Make me give you to another paladin or some shit. I don't want you to fucking kill me.”

  But think about what harm you might do to those you now love. A true friend would kill you before allowing that to happen.

  Cooper was disturbed to find that he actually thought she was making some good points. “You've got some fucked up logic, Nabi. Why don't we put a pin in this until we know whether or not this shit Stacy's working on is going to – What the fuck?”

  As Cooper was about to pass by Arby's for the fourth or fifth time, a chubby human guy was wheeling a modern-looking plastic yellow bucket from around the corner of Arby's. It was just like the bucket Cooper used when he worked the closing shift at Papa Joe's. Just as he was approaching the entrance, white smoke started billowing out of the doorway. The mop bucket jerked over sideways like some invisible asshole had just tripped over it. Murky brown water spilled out onto the sidewalk and flowed into the street.

  “Hey!” cried the fat guy as he fell to the ground like he'd just been tackled.

  “Son of a bitch!” said a voice Cooper knew all too well. “Watch where the fuck you're going, shithead!”

  “Tim?” said Cooper before he thought better of it.

  “Shit!” said a seemingly empty space with Tim's voice. Wet halfling footprints fled in the opposite direction.

  Cooper strapped Nabi to his back. “No matter what happens, we're not killing this one.”

  Fine.

  Cooper could almost feel an eye roll in Nabi's tone.

  He chased the footprints, which were already starting to fade. “Come on, man. I just want to help you!”

  Cooper was a lot faster than Tim, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to catch him before the footprints dried up completely.

  The other people on the street gave him a wide berth. He could only imagine how ridiculous he looked to them, a filthy half-orc shouting at nothing as he chased it down the street.

  Use the Decanter of Endless Water.

  “I appreciate your advice, but I don't think a shower is going to make any difference right now.”

  Douse your quarry with water before its footprints vanish completely.

  “Oh,” said Cooper as he pulled the silver decanter out of his bag. “That's a much better idea.” He took aim at the barely-visible footprints ten yards ahead of him. “Geyser!”

  “Oomph!” said an amorphous watery form as it fell forward. “Dammit, Cooper! Fuck off!”

  Cooper slowed to a jog and deactivated the Decanter of Endless Water as he approached cautiously. “Take it easy, Tim. I just want to help you.”

  “I'm doing pretty good on my own, thanks,” said Tim, gradually disappearing again as the water dripped off him. “I need your help like I need a second asshole.” The sound of a cocking crossbow stopped Cooper in his tracks. “Stay where you are.”

  Cooper noted that while Tim wasn't trying to flee again, he did appear to be squirming around quite a bit, like he was hastily trying to do something that Cooper couldn't figure out.

  He's up to something. You have to stop him.

  “Dude, chill the fuck out. I'm not going to hurt you.”

  “You're goddamn right you're not going to hurt me,” said Tim. “Because if you take one more fucking step toward me, I'm going to shoot your stupid ugly ass.”

  At least hit him with the water again.

  “Fine,” said Cooper. “Geyser.”

  An almost entirely visible water-cast of Tim rolled backward with both hands around one of his ankles. His crossbow slid away, becoming properly visible now that slid out of his possession, as did a brown leather boot. Tim scrambled after the boot.

  He chose the boot over his weapon. You cannot allow him to get it!

  Cooper didn't understand why Nabi was so put off by Tim's choice of footwear, but he supposed there was no harm in tackling him. “This is for your own good,” he said as he lunged at Tim, who was hurriedly trying to shove his invisible foot into his visible boot.

  Tackling an invisible person was tricky, and Cooper wasn't sure which parts of Tim he was holding on to.

  “Get the fuck off me!” said Tim, becoming fully visible as he kneed Cooper in the nuts.

  Cooper doubled over in pain and threw up. Tim squirmed out from under him, jumped on his back, and wrapped his elbow tightly around his neck. Cooper stopped breathing when he felt the sharp blade of a dagger just below his eye.

  “Come on, man. It's me, Cooper. We've been best friends since the third fucking grade.”

  “Bullshit,” said Tim. “You ditched me on the road.”

  “We ditched each other. I had to go help our other friends. You just went to get shitfaced.”

  “You didn't stand up for me when Frank kicked me out of the Whore's Head.”

  “I feel bad about that,” said Cooper. “But to be fair, you were being a total asshole.”

  “Did you take a shit in my scroll tube?”

  Cooper sighed. “Yeah. Frank said that was the only way he'd send it to you, and I was still pretty pissed. But come on. That's not something to get so worked up over.”

  “No?” said Tim. “How about when you hunted me down like a dog with Tony the Elf? Am I overreacting to that too?”

  “I wasn't going to let them hurt you. We just needed to get back Frank's dice.”

  “I never had the fucking dice! That shithead drow who was trying to fuck my sister stole them.”

  “We know that now. Katherine got him resurrected, so everything's cool.”

  “She did what? How big was that dick that she went so far out of her way to bring it back to life?”

  “Dude,” said Cooper. “That's no way to talk abo
ut your sister, especially since she thought she was getting you resurrected.”

  Tim sighed. “The whole point of faking my death was to keep you assholes out of my hair while I fixed everything.”

  “What the fuck do you think you're fixing? You've done nothing but make things worse ever since you ditched me on that fucking road.”

  “Listen, Cooper,” said Tim. “You're a goddamn moron. I've got genius level Intelligence, so maybe you should leave the thinking to me. I need you to stay the fuck out of my way until I can make things right. If you come after me again, I'll have no choice but to...”

  “To what?” Cooper challenged him to finish his sentence. “Kill me?”

  “Just do us both a favor and don't put me in a position where I have to make that choice.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Tim slid the blade back away from Cooper's eye. “Tell the others to keep their distance. When I've got all the pieces in place, I'll come for you.”

  “Listen, man. We all know you didn't take the dice. If you just come back with me, we can all work together and –”

  “Goodbye, Cooper,” said Tim. “Fertile Desert.”

  *

  The intensity of the midday sun dimmed suddenly, as if Cooper had just jumped six hours either forward or backward in time. He felt a chill in the air and cool sand under his hands and knees.

  “What the fuck?” said Tim, pushing himself backwards away from Cooper. “Why are you here? I specifically came to the most isolated place I know so I could be alone to think.”

  Cooper rolled onto his back and sat up to face Tim. “Fuck if I know. You're the one with genius level Intelligence.”

  Tim laughed and shook his head. “I had you in a headlock. The game must have counted you as one of my possessions when I teleported.”

  “Well hop on and put me in another one. I need to get back to Arby's.”

  “You're jonesing for curly fries that bad?”

  “No,” said Cooper. “Well, kinda, now that you mention it. But I got bit on the ass by a wererat while we were looking for you. Stacy's brewing me up some kind of antidote so I don't turn.”