Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

“I hope I can get an autograph from Boris Minor and every one of the Karloffs,” said Leslie. “Oh, and I hope my grandpa comes back!”

  DA-DING!

  The doors opened on a deserted tunnel. It was taller and broader than the one that had led them to Dr. Heppleworth. The walls were smoother, and the floor had been swept . . . or perhaps it was simply well-traveled, its dust kicked away by marching feet. There seemed to be even fewer luster bugs to light the interior, so vast, quavering shadows haunted every surface.

  Elliot and Leslie strained their eyes to peer into the tunnel, but it was no use. Its depths quickly faded to an indecipherable darkness. What so-called “secret” awaited them at the other end, they wondered.

  As they tiptoed along the tunnel, they smelled something. It was a salt-and-peppery and (almost) appetizing odor, but there was something vague about it. It was as if the scent had been made hazy by an olfactory version of the Impressionisticator™.

  At last, they arrived on a balcony overlooking a large space very much like the laboratory at the DENKi-3000 Creature Department. There was machinery everywhere: cogs and gears; buttons and switches; dials and readouts; cables and chains and countless conveyors. However, unlike the Creature Department, where it always seemed like there were a hundred different projects and experiments going on, this room had only one. Every cog, button, and conveyor was dedicated to a single purpose.

  Making food.

  Eerily, there was no one here. Everything was automated. Monstrous articulated claws stirred huge vats of raw ingredients—vegetables and meats and grains and seasonings. The mixtures sluiced through pipes into blazing ovens.

  “Why do I feel like I’m in the belly of giant robot—with stomach flu?” asked Elliot.

  “Because zat is exactly what it looks like,” said Jean-Remy.

  Finally, trays emerged from the ovens with meals that looked disturbingly familiar.

  “Is it just me,” said Leslie, “or is there something weird about those TV dinners? Don’t you think they look like—”

  “Faces!” said Elliot. They had seen one just like it before. “They all look like a ‘Special’ from The Smiling Mudsucker.”

  “Zees must be what Quazicom and ze ghorks think ze manufacture of food ought to be. Speaking for ze French, it is appalling!”

  “Come on,” said Elliot. “If we’re going to find my uncle and the others, we should keep moving.” He pointed farther down, to a dim glow of light leaking into the end of the passageway.

  They tiptoed along, having no idea where they were headed but confident that, thanks to being Totally Blurrified!, no one would spot them.

  The tunnel rose up in a slope toward a huge, underground coliseum, teeming with ghorks. Staying close to the rear wall, they tiptoed into the chamber. All the ghorks had their attention focused on a plateau of stone at the center. On this platform, seated all in a row, were the Five Head Ghorks: Iris, Adenoid Jack, Wingnut, Digits, and Grinner.

  A great black cube hung above them, with a view-screen on each of its four sides. Suddenly, the coliseum was filled with strident, forceful music, like something you might hear before an action-packed news bulletin. All the view-screens flashed to life, showing a stylized Q above the words:

  quazicom inc.

  taking over everything, one company at a time

  The words faded and were replaced with a shadowy face. Its only visible feature was a set of gleaming white teeth. It was the Chief.

  “Welcome,” he said, in his loose-gravelly voice, “I’m sure you must be as anxious as I am to finally meet the Fabled Sixth Ghork! Weeks ago I sent your faithful leaders—Grinner, Iris, Adenoid Jack, Wingnut, and Digits—to search all of creaturedom to find him, and now, at long last, he is here with us tonight, the ghork who will lead us in victory over the rest of creaturedom!”

  A terrible cheer rose from the sea of ghorks.

  “Before we begin the proceedings, however, there is a question that needs answering. . . .” Two tiny daggers of light sparkled in his invisible eyes. “What is that little girl doing at the back of the room?”

  Every ghork in the coliseum turned in their seats and looked directly at Leslie. Leslie, meanwhile, looked down at herself and saw—to her horror—that her blurrification had worn off. When she looked up again, she was surrounded by sneering ghorks.

  “Would you believe I’m a cabaret performer?” she asked.

  (No, they wouldn’t.)

  The ghorks grabbed Leslie and pulled her toward the front of the crowd.

  “What should we do with her, Chief? You want us to lock her up with the others?”

  The chief shook his head. “Let her stay. I’d like her to witness the terror of the Sixth Ghork!”

  Up above Leslie, Jean-Remy’s blurrification had also worn off. Before he could flutter away, one of the hand-ghorks leapt up and plucked him out of the air like an insect. Jean-Remy was also pulled forward and given a front-row seat at the Great Hexposé. Only Elliot remained Totally Blurrified!

  Up on the plateau, Grinner pointed at Leslie. “I know you! You’re that girl from the hotel. What happened to your little friend, the dorky kid in the fishing vest?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leslie told him. She hoped to give Elliot enough time to slip away unseen. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” she lied. “In fact, I have no idea where he is!”

  Grinner gritted his teeth and laughed. “What do you think, I’m stupid? When I asked, what happened to him, I didn’t mean, where is he? We can all see he’s right behind you! What I meant was what happened to him?”

  Leslie turned around and—

  “AAIIIEEEEGH!”

  She screamed because, just like she and Jean-Remy, Elliot’s blurrification had also worn off. Now that he was visible again, Leslie saw that her friend was no longer the person she remembered. In fact, Elliot didn’t look like a person at all.

  Elliot was a creature!

  CHAPTER 20

  In which the five ghorks unveil a Sixth

  Elliot was a creature. There was no other way to put it. It wasn’t just his fingertips that had transformed. It wasn’t just his hand. It was all of him.

  Elliot.

  Was.

  A creature!

  To make matters worse, he was now locked in a cage with Leslie and Jean-Remy, at the front of a coliseum full of ghorks.

  Elliot looked down at himself. His hands looked more like paws. They bristled with hair like his father’s shaving brush (if it was green). His fingers were tipped with dull, twisted talons—and his feet! They were huge! They had swollen so big, they had burst clean out of his sensible loafers. When he looked down, he saw only a pair of monstrous green clompers that were half grizzly bear, half emu. Three sharp black toes, splayed wide in three directions, poked out from under a shaggy thatch of moss-green hair.

  What he wanted most of all was to see his face. When he raised his hand (or rather his paw) he felt chisel-sharp cheekbones and nothing but hair. When he opened his mouth he felt a jagged mountain range of teeth. He felt an elongated jaw, almost like a snout. He even felt a cold wet nose, and if he crossed his eyes he could see it, a distracting black blob. Is this what a dog sees everywhere it goes? he wondered. Or a yeti? One thing was for sure: His glasses didn’t fit properly anymore. They kept slipping sideways. If only he had a mirror!

  “My face,” he whispered to Leslie. “What does it look like?”

  “Let me say this,” she replied. “At least you didn’t turn into a ghork.”

  “Okay, but then what am I?”

  “I think you look quite dashing,” said Jean-Remy, “and zat is a great compliment coming from someone as impeccably handsome as myself.”

  Elliot sighed. “I think we have very different definitions of handsome.”

  “You know,” said Leslie, �
�you actually look a bit like the original drummer from Boris Minor and the Karloffs. He left the band after their second album.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “He was a really good drummer.”

  Elliot threw up his hands. “But everyone in that band is dressed up like a spook!”

  Leslie nodded. “Think of it this way. You look like . . . a rock star!”

  “Boris Minor and the Karloffs are not the kind of rock stars I’m into.”

  “Are you into any rock stars?”

  “Can’t you just pleeease describe what I look like?”

  Leslie took a deep breath. “Like the world’s dorkiest werewolf —and probably the greenest.”

  Elliot adjusted his glasses. “Not cool.”

  “It could be the vest,” said Leslie.

  “What?”

  “I know you’re not going to like this,” Leslie told him, “but maybe you’d look better without the fishing vest.”

  Elliot regarded his friend suspiciously. “Why am I not surprised to hear you say that?”

  “I’m being serious,” Leslie told him.

  Elliot looked down at himself. “But I never take it off.”

  “Don’t tell me you sleep in it!”

  Elliot shrugged. “Sometimes. If I’m really tired.”

  “You love it that much?”

  Elliot nodded gamely.

  Leslie threw up her arms. “A bright green fishing vest? Seriously?! Can you really not tell it’s the single most dorky article of clothing any twelve-year-old in the complete history of all possible twelve-year-olds has ever worn?”

  Elliot did have a vague idea that some people thought his fishing vest was a little—well, dorky. But Leslie was his friend. She couldn’t really think . . .

  “You hate it, don’t you?”

  Leslie winced. “I just think you should take it off once in a while.”

  “You really think I’d look better if I did?”

  Leslie hesitated before she answered. “I just think it might clash with your new look. Very few people can pull off green-on-green.”

  Elliot fiddled with the zipper on his fishing vest. Slowly, inch by agonizing inch, he pulled it down. Then he slipped out of his most prized piece of clothing. For a moment, he hugged the shapeless fabric to his chest like it was a baby. His baby. Then, very slowly, he folded it (with the utmost care, of course) and stowed it away in his knapsack.

  “What do you think?” he asked. He rolled up the sleeves of his yellow rugby shirt and spread his hairy green arms. “Better?”

  Leslie squinted at him. She looked just about to say something, when she was interrupted by Grinner, who rose from his seat and stepped up to the microphone.

  The unveiling of the Sixth Ghork had begun.

  “In the beginning, we ghorks were nothing more than a ragtag bunch of ogres-slash-trolls-slash-overgrown gremlins, aimlessly wandering around our secret underground lairs without any real sense of purpose. Back in those days, there was very little to set us apart from any old ogre, troll, or overgrown gremlin. But then something happened. One of our ancestors was born . . . a little different.”

  There was a smattering of cheers from the crowd.

  Grinner glanced over at Adenoid Jack. “Maybe that first little ghork’s nose was just a little bigger than the others.”

  Adenoid Jack pointed two fingers at his schnoz and then pumped one fist in the air. The nose-ghorks hollered and snorted.

  “Or perhaps,” Grinner went on, “it was the ears that stuck out. Or the eyes. Or the hands.” With each reference to a new sense, Grinner looked to one of his compatriots, and cheers erupted from the appropriate segment of the crowd. When the cheers of the hand-ghorks died down, Grinner smiled. “Then again, maybe that little ghork was born with a big . . . mouth.”

  There was a boom of cheering from the mouth-ghorks.

  “Whichever it was, that small difference set that ghork apart, and so began a grand tradition! It not only defines who we are as ghorks but is the very thing that has brought us here today. Today is the day we fulfill an ancient Ghorkolian prophecy! Because today, the five Ghorkolian tribes . . . become six!”

  These words received the loudest cheer of all. On the view-screen, even the Chief was clapping his shadowy hands.

  “Of course,” Grinner went on, “there were those who didn’t believe the Fabled Sixth Ghork existed. They said it was a myth! An impossible dream! But the five of us—the Five Ghorks—we never gave up. We searched and searched, scouring the twenty-three corners of creaturedom, until one day . . .” Grinner spread out his arms, looking to the far edge of the plateau. “. . .we found what we were looking for.”

  Elliot and Leslie watched as five young ghorks (one from each tribe) walked up the slope to the plateau, carrying with them a great black palanquin. It was a wooden box like the passenger compartment of an engineless taxicab. The exterior was ornately carved and topped with a domed cupola roof. Four carrying poles protruded from its corners. Each was settled on the shoulders of four of the ghorks, while the fifth, a willowy hand-ghork, followed behind.

  The palanquin’s dark wood looked as if were charred, like something scavenged from the dead trees of a forest fire. Thick red curtains hung inside the windows, so it was impossible to see inside.

  The four ghorks marched slowly to the center of the plateau, where they set the palanquin down. There was a crack of electricity as a spotlight lanced through the air. It illuminated a bright white circle directly in front of the palanquin’s door. Next, one of the hand-ghorks grasped the handle. He froze in that position, waiting.

  Grinner leaned forward, his teeth nearly clicking against the microphone, and whispered, “And now . . . to lead us all in ultimate victory, I proudly present . . . the Sixth Ghork!”

  The coliseum fell absolutely silent. The palanquin door was pulled open. Behind it, a velvet curtain billowed. Then . . .

  The Fabled Sixth Ghork stepped into the spotlight.

  “He’s shorter than I expected,” Leslie whispered.

  It was true. The Sixth Ghork wasn’t terribly impressive. He was rather small, even compared to the smallest of ghorks. In fact, he wasn’t much taller than Elliot himself, but perhaps that was because he was so young. He had the mottled green skin of a ghork, but none of their obscenely enlarged features. He didn’t have a big pointy nose, or a big slavering mouth, or big bulging eyes, or big floppy ears. He didn’t even have enormous hands. In a freakish, ogre/troll/overgrown gremlin sort of way, he looked quite ordinary.

  Also unlike the other ghorks, whose expressions ranged invariably between a sour scowl and a bitter sneer, the Sixth Ghork’s face was expressionless. He almost looked bored.

  It was only when Elliot’s eyes traveled down to the floor that he saw what set him apart.

  His feet!

  “They’re huge,” Elliot whispered.

  Not only were they enormous, but (again, unlike all the others) the Sixth Ghork was wearing shoes. They were bright red, high-cut dress shoes, with blue stars on the outsides of each ankle and a yellow checkered pattern over their bulbous toes.

  “Everyone,” said Grinner, “I’d like you to meet Giggles.”

  “Hold on a minute,” said the Chief, who didn’t sound terribly impressed. “Did you say—”

  “Giggles,” Grinner repeated in an ominous tone.

  “Why are you saying it like that?”

  “Because that’s his name.” Grinner raised his hands and fluttered them like ghosts. “Giiiiiiiiggles!”

  “The Fabled Sixth Ghork,” said the Chief, “is called . . . Giggles?”

  “Exactly!” cried Grinner.

  The Chief folded his arms. “It’s not the sort of name that strikes fear into the hearts of one’s enemies.”

  “I wasn
’t finished,” said Grinner. “You see, Giggles is called ‘Giggles’ because he has an amazing sixth sense that no other ghork in the world possesses . . . a sense of humor!”

  The vast crowd of ghorks oohed and aahed in wonderment.

  “A sense of humor?” said Elliot.

  “Definitely not what I was expecting,” said Leslie.

  The Chief of Quazicom agreed. “A sense of humor?!” he boomed. “I bankrolled expeditions to all twenty-three corners of creaturedom, and this is what you bring me?! You do know I had to murder three of my best accountants just to get funding approval!”

  “B-but, Mr. Chief, sir,” Grinner sputtered. “We looked everywhere! You gotta believe us, this most definitely is—”

  “Mind-reading! Predicting the future! Telekinesis! That’s what people mean when they talk about a sixth sense!”

  “Aha!” said Grinner. He flashed a triumphant smile at the Chief’s looming shadow. “Maybe that’s what people say, but we’re talking about ghorks here. And this is Giggles. He comes with a Ghorkolian sense of humor!”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “Of course! Just look at him!” Grinner pointed at Giggles. “Look at his face. Expressionless! Utterly expressionless! Do you know what that means?”

  “No,” said the Chief. “Should I?”

  “Lemme explain,” said Grinner. “You see, Giggles here never laughs. He never even cracks a smile. That’s because he has the driest, most dour sense of humor in the world. Nothing in the known universe is capable of making Giggles giggle! Amazing, huh?”

  The Chief buried his shadowy face in his shadowy hands. “I don’t believe it. I blew three years of Quazicom’s research and development budget on this. This! A weasely little ghork in clown shoes! I swear, I’ll have to take over five new companies this year alone, just to make up the shortfall!” He glared out at the sea of ghorks. “I’m sorry, but you guys really need to work on your ancient Ghorkolian prophecies. This is unacceptable!”

  “B-but, Chief! Mr. Chief! Sir! Your highness! You have to—”

  “No, I don’t! You’ll just have to go back out there and keep looking. I don’t care if you have to bring me back a Fabled Seventh Ghork, but please—bring me something I can work with. An extremely dry sense of humor? You expect us to take over creaturedom with an extremely dry sense of humor?”