Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  “Quit gripin’,” said Patti. “Just be glad they decided to take on some responsibility for once.”

  “It’s Reggie we have to thank,” said the professor. “Ever since those two befriended him, they’ve given up devoting their lives to mischief and wisecracks. Thank goodness!”

  “We’ll see how long it lasts,” Harrumphrey harrumphed.

  Bildorf and Pib pushed the mail cart around the laboratory, delivering postcards, envelopes, and packages to delighted creatures of all shapes and sizes.

  They handed Jean-Remy a delicate envelope. The moment he saw it, his face went even paler than usual. He flew up to perch on the edge of the Think Tank, staring at the envelope.

  “Whatcha got there, JR?” asked Patti.

  Jean-Remy didn’t answer. He opened the envelope and tugged out a single page. The moment he began to unfold it, there was a swell of music, the mournful whine of a hundred violins. He slapped the paper shut. The music stopped.

  “What was that?” asked Elliot.

  “Sounds to me like a singing telegram,” said Harrumphrey, “and judging by the tone of those violins, it’s not good news.”

  Jean-Remy slid the folded page gently between his fingers. “It’s from my sister,” he said. He opened the letter all the way, and the same keening music filled the laboratory.

  Then the telegram began to sing. . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  In which Reggie’s paunch packs a punch

  Deep in the tunnels below the Creature Department, Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut was listening. He was quite adept at hearing things. He was a regimental bombastadon, after all, native to the vast white wastes of Antarctica. When you were swatting away berg-biters in the midst of a blizzard, you certainly couldn’t rely on your eyes to save you.

  There were no berg-biters here, however. What Reggie heard was something else, but something just as unsettling.

  Footsteps!

  This came as a surprise. Over the past few weeks, the tunnels below the Creature Department had fallen eerily quiet. Prior to the great melee the creatures now called the Battle of Bickleburgh, Reggie could expect at least a weekly scuffle with the odd ghork. But he hadn’t drawn his ceremonial saber in ages! Now, however, he placed one hand on the hilt.

  They were coming closer. Clomping, clumping, lumbering footsteps. This wasn’t the sound from just one pair of feet. No, this sounded more like . . .

  Three.

  Or four.

  Or six!

  “Oh, dear,” Reggie whispered to himself.

  That was when they emerged from the darkness around the corner. Not three, not four, not even six, but seven nose-ghorks! They pumped their arms and raised their knees high with every step, thumping their feet so hard their ample reserves of snot were shaken loose. With every second step, a long pendulum of mucus swung a little lower.

  SLOOORP!

  All seven ghorks snorted in unison, and each string of slime was vacuumed up into their tremendous schnozzes.

  “Halt!” Reggie drew his ceremonial saber (at last) and brandished it at the group. “Identify yourselves!”

  “What’s the matter?” said the leader. “You’ve never heard of Whiffer and the Sniffle-Snufflers?”

  “It is my great pleasure to inform you that I have not.”

  The nose-ghork who called himself Whiffer seemed shocked. “You’re kidding! We’re famous.”

  “Your entirely self-proclaimed renown,” boomed Reggie, “is no concern of mine. Your destination, however, is of the utmost consequence!” To demonstrate his seriousness, he puffed out his chest and raised his ceremonial saber even higher. “I cannot let you pass.”

  Whiffer, seeing he outnumbered Reggie seven-to-one, was unfazed by this warning. His beady eyes scanned up and down the bombastadon’s bulky body. “Like I’m gonna take orders from a blubbery butterball dressed up like a shopping mall security guard.”

  Reggie’s jowls trembled with indignation. “Security guard?! Outrageous! This is the very uniform I wore while bringing peace to the vast wilds of—”

  Whiffer snapped his fingers. “Would somebody please pop this air bag?”

  The six other ghorks leapt at Reggie. Three of them latched onto his arm, rattling his ceremonial saber until it clanged to the cold stone floor.

  “Scoundrels! You might’ve cracked its immaculate golden finish!”

  “We’ll crack a lot more than that,” snorted one of the ghorks.

  All seven of them strained to push Reggie against the wall. He indeed cracked the back of his head against it—though the sound was less of a crack and more of a splodge. That was because Reggie’s skull was covered with just as much blubber as the rest of him. Instead of being knocked unconscious, he was merely dazed. He slumped to the floor, where the ghorks piled on top of him, pinning him down. At last, Whiffer leapt right on top of Reggie’s belly.

  “Oof!”

  The lead ghork leaned forward and flared his bottomless nostrils. Two strings of snot dangled above Reggie’s face, ready to drop at the merest sniffle.

  “Get away from me, you putrid, mucilaginous scamp!” Reggie tried to wrestle free, but it was no use. “You can not, and will not, pass!”

  Whiffer sloorped the twin boogers back up his nose. He peered down the tunnel where Reggie was looking. It was the one that led to DENKi-3000 Headquarters. “Down there? Who ever said we wanted to go down there?”

  Reggie was confused. “You mean you’re not here to besiege the Creature Department, to imprison my friends, and steal our wondrous inventions?”

  Whiffer snorted. “Besieging is so last week.” He stooped even closer to Reggie’s face. “This time we’ve got a much better plan.”

  “And what might that be?”

  Whiffer chuckled. “Like I’m gonna tell you.”

  Oh, but you must, thought Reggie. It is imperative! As the Creature Department’s honorary part-time security guard, it was his solemn duty to extract information. But in his current position, he couldn’t do it with force. No, this called for . . . what was the word? (Reggie had never paid much attention to the subtler forms of combat, back at the Antarctic military academy. He was a bombastadon, after all. They were hardly known for subtlety.) What was it again? Diverse psychology? No, that wasn’t it. Perverse psychology? Definitely not! Oh, yes, now he remembered. . . .

  “Ooooooh!” he said to Whiffer, rolling his squinty bombastadon eyes. “Now I get it. You don’t have any plan at all. Well! I should have known. Ghorks never do!”

  Whiffer stomped one foot into Reggie’s gut.

  “Oof!”

  “Yes, we do! Our plans are the best! Right, guys?”

  The other ghorks produced nasally murmurs of agreement.

  Reggie shook his head in feigned disappointment. “Is that so? And when was the last time a ghork plan worked? Tell me that.”

  Whiffer looked to his friends. “Remember that time we planned a surprise retirement party for old Nostrildamus?”

  The other ghorks laughed.

  “That was some bash!” said one of them.

  “He never saw it coming!” cried another.

  Reggie smiled. “A surprise retirement party? That’s the finest thing you’ve ever planned? Pitiful! I believe you’ve just proved my point—you ghorks can’t plan anything!”

  Whiffer gritted his teeth. He leaned close to Reggie’s face. “Not this time,” he whispered. “See, this time we’re not going to boring old Bickleburgh.” He pointed into the darkness of the other tunnel. “We’re going down there, to Simmersville. It’s all been planned. That’s where we’re gonna have the Great Hexposé!”

  Reggie was pleased at having loosened Whiffer’s tongue, but he had no idea what the ghork was talking about. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “The great what?”

  Whiffer
’s eyes clouded with a misty brand of madness. “The Great Hexposé!”

  Reggie raised his head off the floor. “Look here! I would appreciate a straight answer, you loony! You can’t simply repeat the name of the mysterious event in a dreamy voice and expect me to understand! In any case, I’m quite certain you’re mispronouncing the word. I believe what you mean to say is exposé.”

  “No, I mean Hexposé.” Whiffer straightened himself, still atop the plump summit of Reggie’s belly, and tapped his temple. “We ghorks, we’re smarter than we look, see?”

  “Smart?” said Reggie. “You, sir, look about as intellectually adept as a warm stream of your own snot-rocketry!”

  Whiffer stomped his other foot.

  “Oof!”

  “Hex has two meanings,” said Whiffer, puffing out his narrow chest. “First, it means the number six, get it? And second . . .” He held up two fingers. “It means a curse. It’s the curse of an ancient Ghorkolian prophecy. The prophecy of the Sixth Ghork!”

  Reggie now found himself in what was (for him) an unusual situation. He didn’t know what to say. How could there possibly be a Sixth Ghork? In all of creaturedom, there were only five kinds of the despicable villains. Nose-ghorks, like these ones pinning him to the floor, along with the mouth-ghorks, eye-ghorks, ear-ghorks, and hand-ghorks. One, two, three, four, five . . . but a sixth? Preposterous!

  “The prophecy says that when we find him, we’ll be unstoppable!” Whiffer leaned even closer to Reggie’s face. “And guess what, blubber-butt? Grinner and the others have found him! They’re going to unveil him at the Great Hexposé and that’s only the beginning.”

  The beginning of what? thought Reggie.

  “Of course,” said Whiffer, “now that we’ve told you, we have to make sure you don’t tell anyone else.” The ghork sniffled, and two pillars of snot slithered toward Reggie’s face like a pair of glistening green pythons. Reggie yanked on his arms and legs, but the ghorks pinning him down wouldn’t budge. For a regimental bombastadon, however, arms and legs played only a small role in hand-to-hand combat. In fact, at that very moment, Whiffer was crouched on top of Reggie’s greatest weapon.

  His belly.

  It had been a long time since Reggie had performed a Bombastadon Belly Bounce Maneuver. It was potentially quite a dangerous (not to mention mathematically challenging) defensive technique, and ought to be employed only in the most desperate of situations. This was surely one of them, wasn’t it?

  He took a deep breath, casting his eyes over the cave’s geography. Without a blackboard and an abacus, he couldn’t be certain the math was correct, but he would have to chance it.

  “What’s the matter?” Whiffer sneered. “You scared? That why your face is all red? Don’t worry. It’ll all be over in—”

  BA-BOOM!

  Reggie exhaled and flexed his monumental belly muscles. Instantly, Whiffer bounded off Reggie’s paunch and somersaulted up to the ceiling of the cave. When he came back down, Reggie angled his belly to bounce him straight into two of his compatriots. The trio flew off in three different directions, ricocheted off the walls, and returned to hit the remaining four. Soon, all seven ghorks were flailing across the room, bounding off Reggie’s belly as if it were a fiendish trampoline.

  At last, Reggie altered the angle and sent all seven ghorks thumping into the wall, where they slumped down into a bruised and dizzy heap. Then Colonel-Admiral Reginald T. Pusslegut climbed to his feet and retrieved his ceremonial saber from where it had (unceremoniously) fallen. He hoisted up Whiffer by the scruff of his neck and pointed his saber into the ghork’s face. “I want you to tell me everything you know about this so-called Sixth Ghork.”

  “I’m not . . . telling you . . . squat,” Whiffer panted. “And guess what, you’re not the only one with fancy moves. Watch this!”

  SLOOOOOOOOORRRP!

  All seven ghorks discharged the full contents of their prolific sinuses at Reggie. In an instant, his beautiful uniform was ruined, and he was soaked to his blubbery skin with a gooey, gluey (and disgustingly warm) muck. Taking advantage of Reggie’s sliminess, Whiffer slipped free of the bombastadon’s grip. He and the rest of his gang scampered into the shadows of the tunnel toward Simmersville.

  Reggie’s first thought was to chase them, but with only a single step, he slipped head over heels into a slimy puddle of his own drippings.

  “Mucilaginous scamps,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 3

  In which Jean-Remy surprises everyone, and Gügor surprises Jean-Remy

  At the top of Jean-Remy’s telegram, a jungle of curlicues and flourishes surrounded these words:

  Wail Mail Inc.

  ~ When you need your message to get through

  LOUD and CLEAR! ~

  (Delivering fine musical Yell-A-Grams to all of creaturedom, since 1602)

  “Look,” said Leslie, pointing to the page. “Something happened to the letter!”

  A third of the way down the page, a jagged gash cut across the words. The letter appeared to be torn almost completely in two.

  “Don’t worry,” said Harrumphrey. “That’s not a tear. It’s a mouth.”

  “A mouth?” asked Elliot.

  “Of course,” said Patti. “It’s a singing telegram.”

  Jean-Remy opened the page a little farther and it suddenly came to life, fluttering in his hands. The tear creased itself into a distinct pair of lips, and the telegram began to sing:

  My dearest BROTHER!

  Something TERRIBLE has happened! I know it’s been a long time, but please believe me; I had NO CHOICE but to write! Because I NEED YOUR HELP! After you left Paris all those years ago, I missed you TERRIBLY, and so I followed you across an OCEAN! I’ve tried to find you so many times!

  I thought I had LOST YOU, lost track of you completely, but then I saw the news of the BRAVE BATTLE you and your friends fought against those insufferable ghorks! What a surprise to discover all this time you’ve been working in a creature department not far from my own! The company where I work is called HEPPLEWORTH’S HEALTH FOOD! At our factory we make the most delicious dishes you can possibly imagine!

  Or at least we USED TO!

  (Here, the violins spiraled down through a cascade of minor notes.)

  OH! Oh-oh-oh-oh-OOOOOH! Oh! Oh, yes, my dear Jean-Remy, YOU MUST HELP US! Quazicom and the ghorks have taken over the HEPPLEWORTH FOOD FACTORY! This very weekend, at our city’s ANNUAL FOOOOOD FESTIVAAAAAAAL, they are planning something TRUUUUULY HORRENDOOOOUS!

  YOU and your FRIENDS are our only hope! I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but please, brother . . . WILL YOU HEEELLP UUUUUUUUSSS?!

  Your sister!

  Eloise-Yvette!

  The song ended with the five dainty syllables of El-o-ise-Y-vette, tinkling off what sounded like a xylophone. On the final plink, everyone applauded. (It was the respectable thing to do. The telegram had an exceptional voice.)

  “You have a sister?” asked Harrumphrey. He was as surprised as everyone else.

  Jean-Remy nodded. “Eloise-Yvette. Zat was her voice. But zis telegram? No, it can only be a fake.”

  “You callin’ me a liar?” asked the telegram. Its voice was no longer that of an angelic soprano. Now it sounded more like a New York cabbie. “Listen, buddy, this here’s the genuine article. I was there when your sis wrote it!”

  Jean-Remy crumpled the paper.

  “Hey! Watch where you’re foldin’ that, buddy!”

  Jean-Remy flew across the laboratory and dropped the telegram in the trash bin.

  Elliot couldn’t believe it. “Jean-Remy! What’s the matter with you? What if it’s not a fake?”

  “It must be,” said Jean-Remy. “Ma soeur? She does not work in some nearby food factory! She is in Paris! Probably singing in some seedy club under ze street!”

  “What if she
’s not?” asked Elliot. “She said she followed you here.”

  Jean-Remy stubbornly refused to believe the telegram was genuine. “No,” he said, slicing his hand through the air as if to cut off further discussion. “It is not true.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” said Leslie, “and I can prove it.”

  Jean-Remy paused, hovering in the air.

  “You can?” Elliot looked at his friend. “How?”

  “The food festival,” Leslie explained. “The Simmersville Food Festival. Heppleworth’s Health Food is the main sponsor. I know all about it because every year there’s a big market square where chefs come from all over to set up stalls and show off their new dishes. Grandpa Freddy goes every year, and I was hoping he’d be back in time, but . . . well, it doesn’t seem like he’s gonna make it.” Leslie hung her head. “This year it’ll just be me and my mom.”

  “Okay,” said Elliot, “but what does that have to do with the telegram? I thought you said you could prove—”

  “I can. Jean-Remy’s sister mentioned the food festival. It’s famous, but not that famous. How would she know about it if she lived in Paris? She must be working at Heppleworth’s!”

  Jean-Remy floated down to Leslie. “Zat does not prove anything. Anyone could have penned ze telegram.”

  Elliot was still confused. “Why don’t you want to help your sister?”

  Jean-Remy sighed. “You do not understand. Even if ze telegram is real—which it is not—why would I want to help a sister like Eloise-Yvette? She is vain and selfish and cannot be trusted!”

  Everyone was shocked to hear this. How could Jean-Remy, so beloved by everyone, have someone like that for a sister?

  “No,” said a slow, deep voice, from over near the trash bin where Jean-Remy had just discarded the singing telegram. “Eloise-Yvette isn’t like that at all.”

  It was Gügor. He had reached into the bin with his enormous knucklecrumpler hand and fished out the envelope.

  Jean-Remy narrowed his eyes, regarding the knucklecrumpler suspiciously. “And how,” he asked, “would you know?”