Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  “We can’t just leave you in here,” said Elliot.

  Heppleworth shrugged. “I’ve already been in here a long time. One more day won’t hurt. But please, hurry! They’re almost here!”

  Reluctantly, they backed away from DUNJIN #1 and scurried into the shadows, just as the ghorks came pounding around the corner. Elliot and Leslie ran and ran, taking the left side every time the tunnel split.

  Eventually, they saw crisscrosses of yellow lamplight, shining down through drainage grates above. At last, they reached a rusty ladder that led up to a grate they could push open. They emerged into an alleyway similar to the one where they had hidden from Grinner. At the end of the alley, they heard the babble and buzz of the Simmersville market square, just as Heppleworth had promised.

  “Leslie Fang! Where have you been?!” Leslie’s mother came rushing across the square. “We’ve been looking all over town for you two!”

  Elliot’s mother followed close behind. She grabbed her son tightly by his arm. “We’ve been worried sick,” she told Elliot in her sternest voice. “Perhaps you’d like to explain where you’ve been all this time!”

  “You know where we’ve been,” Elliot protested. “We’ve been running away from ghorks all night long!”

  His father frowned in disbelief. “You don’t expect us to believe that, do you?”

  “You were there! You saw him! Grinner even tied you guys up in a tablecloth!”

  “Please, Elliot,” said his mother. “We’ve had quite enough of your creature stories.”

  “Your mother’s right,” said his father. “That incident in the hotel was nothing more than an eccentric chef in a very good costume. After you two ran off, the waiter apologized—profusely.” He shook his head, obviously recalling the fuss. “You know how these genius chefs are. Temperamental!”

  Elliot waved his arms around the square, indicating the crowd of festivalgoers. “You guys are as bad as everyone else! Why won’t anyone believe us?”

  “Because,” said his mother, “you are quite clearly making all of this up.”

  “So that’s it!” said Leslie’s mother. She pulled her daughter until they were face to face. “I just knew it!” She waved a finger at Elliot. “You little Lothario! I’ll bet you dragged Leslie off for more of your sneaky smooching!”

  “What?! No!” Leslie fought free of her mother’s grip. “And what do you mean—more? We’ve never smooched, not even once! Everything Elliot said is true!”

  “Please,” Elliot told his parents. “You have to believe me! I know you think they’re weird, and yes, they’re all creatures, but they’re still my friends, and they’re in trouble!”

  “Friends?” asked his mother. “What about Leslie? Isn’t she your friend?”

  “Not if they’ve been smooching, she isn’t,” said Leslie’s mother.

  “Mom! Enough with the smooching! Elliot’s right, and those creatures are my friends, too.”

  Elliot’s father crouched down until he and Elliot were face-to-face. “You may not like to hear this,” he said, “but listen, son. Have you and Leslie ever considered finding some new friends?”

  Elliot’s mother nodded. “Maybe some that aren’t so . . . creaturely.”

  When he heard this, Elliot felt sick. It wasn’t simply that his parents didn’t believe his friends were in trouble. It was that they didn’t believe he should even be friends with them in the first place. He wondered if what he had told Leslie in the darkness of the Coleopter-copter might really be true. Maybe he and his parents were just too different to understand one other.

  As his parents dragged him back to the hotel, Elliot was convinced he and his parents might truly be of a different species. If that’s true, he thought, maybe I don’t belong with them at all. Maybe I belong . . . in creaturedom.

  CHAPTER 17

  In which Digits tries not to lose count, and Reggie makes the fine distinction between “abominable” and “iniquitous”

  For the creatures of DENKi-3000, it was a long walk to their dungeon. They were shackled together in a chain gang, shuffling through the shadows and dust. Gügor, Patti, Harrumphrey, Reggie, and all the rest were being marched down a winding tunnel, flanked on every side by an army of ghorks. The only creature missing was Jean-Remy, who had expertly escaped capture.

  Leading the way were the Five Ghorks—Grinner, Iris, Adenoid Jack, Wingnut, and Digits—the leaders of the five Ghorkolian tribes. None of them spoke, apart from Digits, who finger-counted the doors of cell after cell after cell . . .

  “33 . . . 34 . . . 35 . . .”

  Every one of them was empty.

  “What’s he up to?” Patti whispered, pointing to the vacant dungeons. “If they wanna lock us up, why don’t they just go ahead and use one of these?”

  “We’re not allowed,” said Wingnut, whose radar-like ears had picked up the bog nymph’s question. “It’s because of the Chief, see? When it comes to dungeons, he’s got what you might call a favorite number.”

  “Which one?” asked Gügor.

  Iris shrugged. “He calls it the saddest number in the entire universe! That’s what makes it the perfect number for a dungeon.”

  “You didn’t answer his question,” said Harrumphrey. “Which number is it?”

  “Ssh!” said Iris. “You’ll make him lose count.”

  “48 . . . 49 . . . 50 . . .” counted Digits, starting once again on the long thumb of his first hand. “51 . . . 52 . . .”

  “Typical hand ghork,” muttered Cosmo Clutch. “Gotta use all his concentration—and all his fingers—just to count to ten.”

  “You’d think with a name like Digits,” said the professor, “he might try learning some advanced mathematics.”

  “66 . . . 67 . . . 68 . . .”

  “Look here,” said Reggie, chains rattling against the gold and jewels of his ceremonial saber. “You have no right to treat us so appallingly. Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Yeah,” said Bildorf, who was perched with Pib on the bombastadon’s left epaulette. “He once brought peas to his aunt Agatha!”

  “I think you mean peace to Antarctica,” Pib corrected.

  “And I said CAN IT!” screeched Iris.

  The creatures fell silent, but it wasn’t because Iris had shouted at them. Just as Digits counted his way through the eighties (“80 . . . 81 . . . 82 . . .”), they heard something. It was something so beautiful they wanted nothing more than to stop and listen.

  What they heard was music. The unseen singer’s voice was so pure and bright and crystal clear it seemed to wash away the shadows. Only Gügor recognized it. He even knew the words. That was because a long time ago, in his knucklecrumpler youth, he had played that same melody on creaturedom’s first ever electrombone.

  It was Eloise-Yvette . . . and she was singing their song:

  After sunset, strolling home

  Empty streets, I’m all alone.

  The sky is deep and full of stars

  There’s nothing like this feeling.

  Beneath a city no one sees

  Shadows feel like friends to me.

  The earth is deep and full of life

  My heart could do with healing.

  “98 . . . 99 . . . 100 . . . and finally,” Digits puffed. “Here we are!”

  The entranceway was a huge section cut from the wall. This great hole was barred with a spiderweb mesh of iron bars. Above them, carved into an ornate wooden plaque, was a number. The middle zero was lower than its neighboring numerals, so it looked like this:

  1o1

  Grinner smiled up at it. “The Chief’s right,” he said. “That’s gotta be the saddest number ever. Looks like some poor old sad-sack, wailing his eyes out!”

  The creatures couldn’t help but shiver. The number 101 really did look like a crying face, its eyes scrunc
hed tight with tears streaming down.

  The professor didn’t think it was fair to accuse this particular number of being the saddest in the entire universe. As a man of science, he knew it was just a number. But in light of where they were, even he couldn’t stop a chill running up his spine.

  “You mean you dug out a hundred empty dungeons,” he said, “just so you could lock us up in Dungeon 101?!”

  “Cool, huh?” said Digits. “It was the Chief’s idea.”

  He unlocked the door and the creatures, freed of their shackles, were pushed inside. Dungeon 101 was as vast as the Creature Department laboratory at DENKi-3000, and surprisingly, just like the laboratory, it was full of computer mainframes, strange apparatuses, and jumbled heaps of arcane equipment. It was also full of other things: comically enormous cooking equipment, cauldrons as large as moving vans, cake mixers that towered like cranes, blenders as big as upturned cement trucks.

  There were creatures, as well: ankle snypes and mini-gryffs, triple-bearded oven trolls and jellyboned wimplebeests, pit lizards and slobberwolves, and many others that defied description. These were the creatures of the Heppleworth Food factory’s own Creature Department. They were gathered in groups around tables covered with pots and pans, bubbling chemicals, and colorful ingredients. Only at that moment, they weren’t cooking. They had left their stew pots and chemistry sets to stare up at the fairy-bat floating above them.

  It was her. Eloise-Yvette. Gügor’s One True Love.

  Seeing her again after so many years, the knucklecrumpler gasped. She had the same fine features as Jean-Remy, but there was a softness to the curves of her heart-shaped face, her plump lips, and her mop of black curls (kept in check by a braided tassel, tied around her pale blue forehead).

  “That’s enough!” Grinner sneered, clanking open the gates. “Knock it off and get back to work!”

  “Googy!” cried Eloise-Yvette, when she saw her old friend. She soared straight for him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Gügor’s whole body tingled. He knew he was blushing, but he couldn’t help it. The rosiness began in his toes and bloomed upward, turning him peachy-pink all the way to his colorful dreadlocks.

  Eloise-Yvette fluttered up in front of him. “You came to save me! Oh, Googy! Mmmmwah! Mwah! Mwah! Mwah!” She pecked four kisses on his cheeks in traditional Parisian style. (Gügor glowed even redder than before.)

  Eloise-Yvette hadn’t changed at all. Her voice still had the same smoky lilt he remembered, tinged with only the slightest French accent.

  “I was worried I might never see you again!”

  “Worried?” asked Gügor. A great rabble of butterflies flapped and flipped in his tummy. “You were worried about Gügor?”

  “Of course I was worried! I think of you and Jean-Remy as my two brothers. My blood brother and my big brother!” She giggled and looked past Gügor toward the others. “But where is he?”

  The butterflies stopped flipping and flapping. “Brothers,” he said, with a note of sadness.

  “Of course! But seriously, Googy, where is he? Where’s Jean-Remy?”

  “Gügor doesn’t know. He must have escaped.”

  Eloise-Yvette sighed. “I have something I wanted to tell him. It is important.”

  Harrumphrey waddled over, grimacing at Gügor. “Did she just call you Googy?”

  Gügor didn’t answer, but the fact that he went right back to blushing was all the confirmation Harrumphrey needed.

  Eloise-Yvette introduced some of her friends from the Hepple-worth Food Factory’s Creature Department. She explained that this dungeon had previously been the department itself, but when Quazicom took over, it became Dungeon 101, and everyone was locked inside. Now the ghorks were forcing them to concoct an elixir that would do the unthinkable—turn a human being into a ghork.

  “Abominable!” cried Reggie. “Absolutely abominable! No, hold on a moment. It’s worse than abominable! It’s . . . it’s . . . iniquitous!” He paused to catch his breath. “Wait, which is worse? Abominable or iniquitous? Oh, dear. I haven’t thought this through, have I?”

  “You’re surprised?” asked Bildorf.

  “You never think anything through,” said Pib.

  Eloise-Yvette swooped off to join her friends from the Heppleworth Food Factory Creature Department. All the while Gügor could hardly take his eyes off her.

  “So you gonna tell ’er, or what?” asked Patti, reaching up to nudge Gügor in the ribs.

  “Gügor is shy,” said Gügor, twisting his face.

  “You have a supreme grasp of the obvious, doncha, big guy?”

  “With hands like those,” said Harrumphrey, “he’d have a supreme grasp of anything.”

  Gügor nodded. “That’s why Gügor prefers machines. Gügor . . . understands them. Besides, wrestling with refrigerators helps Gügor relax.”

  “Sure,” said Patti, “but can you fall in love with a refrigerator?”

  Gügor had nothing to say to that.

  Patti smiled and stroked an encouraging circle around the small of Gügor’s back. “You’re going to have to tell her how you feel sooner or later.”

  “Here’s how you do it!” Cosmo Clutch stepped up to Gügor, pointing his chocolate cigar in the knucklecrumpler’s face. “Like this.” He took Patti in his arms as if he were about to stride into a tango.

  Patti regarded him suspiciously. “Watch it, bub. One whip of my hair and you’ll get a mouthful of swamp.”

  Cosmo winked at her. “Bit of silt never hurt anybody.” To prove it, Cosmo spun Patti in a circle and sent dollops of her bog-nymph clay flying everywhere (even, just as Patti promised, into his mouth). He didn’t seem to mind, however, as he cradled her into a low dip, smiled with muddy teeth, and said, “You are, and always will be, the only girl for me!”

  Patti giggled.

  “See?” Cosmo said, looking up at Gügor. “Nothin’ to it.”

  Cosmo’s wooing demonstration was cut short by a huge view-screen looming above them. It flashed and crackled to life, and a shadowy figure appeared. It was the Chief of Quazicom!

  His eyes moved over his prisoners, finally settling on Professor von Doppler. “Welcome,” he said in his loose, gravelly voice, “to our newest . . . employees.”

  “We don’t work for you,” the professor told him defiantly, “and we never will.”

  “We’ll see about that, but first I’d like to thank you for accepting my invitation. I’m so glad you could make it.”

  The professor folded his arms across his chest. “Invitation? What are you talking about?”

  “You know, Professor, for a learned man, you really haven’t learned anything. I’m the Chief; I always have a plan. Why else would I let Eloise-Yvette send her little letter? I wanted you here all along, and now here you are, my two favorite Creature Departments in one place.” He rubbed his hands together excitedly. “The Heppleworth Food Factory Creature Department will produce my elixir, and the DENKi-3000 Creature Department will produce . . . my weapons.”

  “We’ll do no such thing,” said the professor. “If you want a weapon, get your flunkies at Quazicom to make it themselves.”

  “Quazicom? Produce an actual product?” The Chief laughed like this was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

  “You can’t, can you?” said the professor. “Because your company—if you can really call it one—has nothing to it. It doesn’t produce anything! It’s an empty shell! A greedy husk of nothingness!”

  The Chief nodded smugly. There was something menacing in the way he accepted the worst insults as compliments, as if his whole outlook on life was twisted inside out. “Of course we don’t produce anything,” he said at last. “You’ve hit upon the great beauty of the modern global corporation. We no longer need to produce things, we merely need to own them.” He smiled wickedly. “And now I own
you.”

  “You might have locked us up in your dungeon, but you don’t own us, and you never will.”

  “I understand how you might feel that way,” said the Chief. “But before you say any more, let me introduce you to Quazicom’s unique Incentivization Program.”

  The professor winced. “Incentivi—is that even a word?”

  “It’s how we at Quazicom motivate our prisoners—I mean, employees,” said the Chief. “After all, motivation is what separates a good employee from a great one. Let me show you what I mean.”

  He snapped his fingers, and the ghorks guarding the dungeon threw open the gates. They poured inside with their clubs and nets and headed straight for Eloise-Yvette.

  “NO!” cried Gügor. One of the hand-ghorks jumped up to snatch Eloise-Yvette out of the air and when he saw that, Gügor went berserk.

  In his mind, he saw every rock, every tree stump, every refrigerator, every vending machine, every bizarre Creature Department invention he had ever punched, kicked, wrestled, crumpled, throttled, or thrashed. Now he did the same to the ghorks, tossing them left and right like old fridges. When the others moved to help him, however, barred walls dropped from the ceiling, corralling them off in one corner. Gügor fought bravely on alone, but it wasn’t enough. There were simply too many ghorks for just one knucklecrumpler, no matter how big and strong he was.

  “Eloise . . . Yvette,” he rasped, as he finally crumpled himself, underneath a pile of fifty ghorks.

  Jean-Remy’s sister had been taken outside and locked in an enormous cage. It was set on creaking wheels that screeched as a team of ghorks rolled it forward.

  “Googy!” Eloise-Yvette called as she was locked inside.

  Gügor was so exhausted he couldn’t answer. He didn’t resist as they dragged his limp body out of the dungeon and threw him in the cage with his 1TL.

  “Now then, as I was saying,” said the Chief. “This is how Quazicom’s Official Incentivization Program works.” He looked to the creatures of the Heppleworth Food Factory. “Either you give me an elixir to turn everyone at the food festival into ghorks or I’ll grind up your pretty little fairy-bat friend and feed her to my henchmen. And since pretty little fairy-bats don’t have much meat on their bones . . .” He turned to the creatures of DENKi-3000. “Either you guys give me a prototype of a shiny new weapon, or I’ll grind up the knucklecrumpler, too. Got it?”