Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  So they did, but Orphelina was right. On shelves that should have brimmed with essences, they found only dust, while the jars and bottles they did discover contained essences that were useless to them: Revulsion (a jar of slimy bile), Glibness (a bottle writhing with slippery pink tongues), Chaos (a container floating with the ruined remains of smashed dollhouse furniture), or Procrastination (an old reliquary full of handless watch faces).

  With the hour of the cabaret fast approaching, they decided to split up in hopes of covering more ground. They soon found that, as with DENKi-3000’s Abstractory, the deeper they went, the more peculiar (and more creaturely) the essences became. Leslie found the Lingering Sense of Defeat after Arm Wrestling a Marrowrangler (a bottle of shadowy rain clouds), and the Idleness of a Slumber-Sloth (a lump of cold stone, shaggy with moss). Meanwhile, Elliot came upon the Cowardice of a Jellyboned Wimplebeest (a jar of yellow custard), and the Anxiety of Not Knowing Where to Look While Having Tea with a Many-Eyed Goggle-Ogler (a jar of cloudy fluid, floating with—what else?—eyeballs).

  “Elliot! Over here!”

  Exactly as Leslie predicted, there was a hidden room the ghorks had missed. The entrance was concealed at the end of one of the narrowest isles.

  “I just let my mind wander,” Leslie told Elliot when he joined her. “My eyes went a bit fuzzy, and then I saw it—a secret door!”

  It was perfectly round, with a hollow knot in the wood. When Leslie poked her finger into the knot, Elliot heard a click, and the door came open. They crawled through and found a small dark room. As soon as they entered they knew they had found what they had hoped to find. The room fluttered with luster bugs and brimmed with essences!

  “You found it!” Elliot was so happy he couldn’t help but give Leslie a hug.

  She was less than receptive. “Quit it, you’re like a porcupine!”

  Elliot jumped back. He had forgotten about his transformation into a three-toed bristle-imp. Perhaps it was a sign he was growing more comfortable in his creaturely skin. It was just as Jean-Remy said. He had become a creature—inside and out. But he couldn’t think about that now. They had work to do, finding the right essences. “We need to find the three funniest, silliest ones they have,” he told Leslie.

  He had only just turned to begin the search when she answered, “What about this one?”

  It was a cylindrical jar of subtly frosted glass. Inside, a ring of misty figures stood shoulder to shoulder, all of them facing outward.

  “Is it just me,” Leslie asked, “or do these guys all look like Reggie?”

  Elliot squinted into the glass. “They’re bombastadons.”

  At first glance, the figures looked like ghosts, made of nothing but mist. But a closer look revealed they were actually composed of falling snow, tiny flakes that fluttered down to collect on their feet, which were the whitest, most substantial part of their bodies. Each of the ghostly bombastadons raised their knees and kicked out their toes in perfect unison, like a bizarre cross between marching soldiers and dancing girls. The label said:

  The Closing Ceremonies of a Bombastadon’s Midwinter Boot-Washing Festival

  Elliot laughed. “It’s perfect!”

  He slipped the jar into his knapsack and cradled the glass with the fabric of his fishing vest. His fishing vest. He had never gone for so long without it before.

  They moved through the small array of shelves, until an oddly shaped bottle caught Elliot’s eye. It had a spiraling, conical shape like a seashell, and it was full of what appeared to be throat lozenges. Each one had been painted with a cartoonish drawing of a face, its mouth wide open and its tongue lolling comically out from one side. The label said:

  A Screaming Wee-Beast Discovers Laryngitis

  Leslie giggled. “Yep, that one’s silly enough!”

  It was Leslie again who found the third and final essence. It was a multicolored stained-glass jar with a tiny disco ball hanging down inside it. At the bottom, short lengths of colorful yarn had knotted themselves into shapes that Leslie recognized as creatures, and all of them were doing an absurd rendition of a disco dance. The Hustle, the Robot, the Bump, the Boogaloo, the Penguin—they were doing them all!

  “Here’s number three,” Leslie said, passing the bottle to Elliot. He laughed when he read the label, which said:

  Hitting the Disco with a Dandemalion Schboov

  “Perfect,” he said, but when he peered into the jar, his laughter stopped. He saw something inside he didn’t expect to see: himself. A hundred tiny images of Elliot’s face flashed in the mirrored squares of the spinning disco ball. He saw, at last, what he looked like.

  In the countless reflections, he saw a face completely covered in the same moss-green hair that covered the rest of his body. He saw a canine snout, softly shining teeth, and a thin pink tongue. He saw pointed tufts of hair hanging from his cheeks and a pair of broad fox-like ears rising from the top of his head. The only part of his face he recognized were his eyes, blinking back at him from behind a pair of crooked glasses. He straightened them.

  I really am the world’s dorkiest werewolf, he thought.

  As he looked at himself, Elliot felt a strange calmness come over him. It was as if he was gazing upon his true form. Hadn’t he been obsessed with creaturedom ever since he had discovered it? Wasn’t it true that, more than anything else in the world, he wanted only to be like his uncle, deep in the world of creatures? And what about when he shouted at his parents at that restaurant? He had done that because of how different he felt from them. A different . . . species.

  “It’s the real me,” he whispered. “I am a creature.”

  “I know that,” said Leslie. “You’ve been one since this morning! But we can’t just stand around admiring ourselves in tiny disco balls! The cabaret’ll be starting soon! We have to go!”

  After thanking Orphelina, they carried their essences back to the laboratory. Harrumphrey, Patti, Jean-Remy, and the other creatures were crowded around a table, its top covered with a white silk cloth. An odd shape, the size of a lumpy watermelon, lay beneath it.

  “We banged this together as fast as we could, but it should work—provided you’ve brought us the right essences.”

  “Can we see it?” Elliot reached for the white cloth, but Harrumphrey stepped forward to block his way.

  “Not so fast,” grumbled the hufflehead. “Before you can see the prototype, you have to promise us something.”

  Elliot’s hairy green face rumpled suspiciously. “Should I be scared right now?”

  Patti folded her arms sternly. “Since it was your bright idea to have us perform in this crazy food festival cabaret, we’ve decided it’s only right if you perform, too.”

  “Me?!”

  Leslie laughed. “Looking like that, you’ll fit right in!”

  “So will you,” said Patti, looking at Leslie.

  Leslie pointed to herself in surprise. “But I’m not a creature.”

  “Neither am I,” said the professor, “but we’ve all got to do our part. If we’re going to save the day with cabaret, we’ll need everyone’s help.”

  Bildorf and Pib, perched as ever atop Reggie’s epaulets, shimmied their hips and sang, “Save the day with ca-ba-ret! Save the day with ca-ba-ret!”

  “Save it for the song-and-dance number, you two!” Elliot flapped his arms for them to stop chanting the silly slogan. “All right, we’ll do it,” he told his uncle. “We’ll perform. So now can we see our—”

  “That’s it!” cried Cosmo Clutch, who until then had been standing alone by the wall, sucking thoughtfully on his chocolate cigar. “I knew there was something!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Leslie.

  Cosmo rushed over. “That’s it! That’s the answer! Cabaret!” He grabbed the professor’s shoulders and shook him like a human maraca. “That’s the only thing that can
save a Wednesday!”

  Everyone stared at Cosmo Clutch.

  “Aren’t you excited?” asked the daredevil, squinting at his friends. “With cabaret we can’t fail!”

  “I hate to burst your bubble,” said Leslie, “but today’s Saturday.”

  Cosmo slapped his forehead. His antlers trembled with disappointment. “One of these days I’m going to invest in a calendar.”

  The professor looked down at the lumpy sheet on the table. “It’s a good thing we’ve got a backup plan.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” Elliot looked to Jean-Remy. “Can we please see our invention now?”

  Jean-Remy swooped up to the table and whipped away the cloth. Underneath was what appeared to be a set of bagpipes, but with one pipe larger than the rest. The larger one resembled the barrel of a bazooka or a blunderbuss, with one significant difference. Extending out from the end of the barrel was a creaturely hand, complete with fuzzy brown hair and cartoonish yellow claws. The fingers of the hand hung slack, as if it had been trying to make a fist but had given up mid-clutch. As if it was straining toward the very last cookie at the bottom of a very deep cookie jar. Zigzagging across the device were a series of comical pink lightning bolts. The overall effect was one of utter ridiculousness.

  Elliot and Leslie smiled at each other.

  “It’s perfect!” they cried.

  CHAPTER 25

  In which the audience thinks it’s all part of the show

  If you had been in the Simmersville market square that warm Saturday evening, you would have been in for quite a show. The stalls and restaurants around the edge of the square teemed with people. You might have noticed one stall was more popular than all the others, a stall clouded in a perpetual puff of steam. Deep inside the mist, a woman with long black hair passed out small cardboard boxes filled with delicious dumplings.

  Despite the popularity of the stall, it was clear the woman was worried. Her anxious eyes looked past every customer she served, searching the crowd for something, or perhaps someone. The woman, of course, was Leslie’s mother. Imagine how surprised she would have been to learn that, at that very moment, her daughter was right below her feet. . . .

  Leslie, Professor von Doppler, the creatures of DENKi-3000, Cosmo Clutch, Elliot, and the other “specimens” were all being ushered along a huge tunnel directly below the Simmersville market square. Leading the way were the Five Ghorks. Behind them came the charred black palanquin that contained Giggles, the Fabled Sixth Ghork. Last in the procession was the monstrous blender, with Gügor, Eloise-Yvette, and Dr. Benedict Heppleworth, still locked in a cage, dangling helplessly above its glittering blades.

  Gügor still lay motionless on the floor of the cage, with Eloise-Yvette still hovering above his face, softly singing to him. Dr. Heppleworth stood near the bars. If he was angry or resentful or even frightened, his face showed nothing but an eerie calm. Nevertheless, he must have known that if Elliot and Leslie’s plan failed, all three of them would be gobbled by ghorks.

  They emerged from a hidden exit into an alleyway adjacent to the stage. They saw the market square was packed with people; it was standing room only for the famous cabaret.

  On the stage, three women—a juggler, a contortionist, and a fire-eater—were all dressed up like peacocks. Elliot wondered if, with all that plumage, eating fire was such a good idea. But when their performance reached its climax (featuring a chainsaw, a pyrotechnic rubber chicken, three bowling balls, and a whole circus of somersaults), all three women emerged unscathed.

  The crowd cheered. On the huge view-screen above the stage, the cabaret emcee appeared. He was a plump-faced man with rosy cheeks and a smile like he was trying to sell you a barbecue on late-night television.

  “Wonderful! Amazing! Stupendous!” he cried. “Wasn’t that just magnificent?”

  The crowd clapped politely, and the image of the emcee’s face trembled and vanished from the view-screen. A moment later, the man himself sauntered onstage. His body was as plump as his face, and he wore a gleaming white suit to match his shimmering teeth. Under his arm he carried a clipboard, clamped with white paper.

  “Now, tell me,” he called to the crowd, “how many people here like . . .”—he flipped a page on his clipboard—“The Plaice to Be fish and chip shop?”

  “HOOORAY!” shouted the crowd.

  “And what about our Kebabylon Nights Turkish restaurant?”

  “HOOORAY!”

  “I’m sure many of you have already sampled the delectable sirloin steaks at The Grill from Ipanema!”

  “HOOORAY!”

  The emcee rattled off a list of Simmersville’s silliest restaurants.

  “Thai-ranysaurus Rex!”

  “Balti Towers!”

  “The Pie’s the Limit!”

  “HOOORAY! HOOORAY! HOOORAY!”

  “Well then, you’re all in for a treat,” the emcee went on, “because after our next performance, we’ll be serving the food festival’s Final Feast, featuring the best food from all these and more!”

  The promise of one last meal received the loudest cheer of all. Then, while the emcee went on with more of his patter, technicians cleared the stage and set up a drum kit, microphones, and keyboards for the next performance. Seeing this, Leslie grabbed Elliot’s hairy arm and squeezed.

  “Ow!”

  “This is it!” Leslie whispered. “They’re on next!”

  Elliot was confused. “Who’s on next?”

  “You know, them!”

  “Now,” said the emcee, “what everyone’s been waiting for! Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sincere pleasure to introduce those costumed, capering crooners . . . Boris Minor and the Karloffs!”

  The crowd went wild. Leslie went wild, too, jumping up and down and squeezing Elliot’s arm so fiercely his fingers tingled. “Stop that!”

  First, the drummer came onstage, in his usual outlandish getup. The crowd gasped because his costume was so strange and yet so lifelike. He resembled a four-armed hammerhead shark. When he took his seat at the drum kit, he picked up not two, not three, but four drumsticks. Then came the lead guitarist, a horned, bright-red she-demon; the bass player, whose thick mop of blond hair grew all the way down to his feet, hiding his entire body save for his two spindly gray arms (with which he held his instrument); and the keyboardist, who resembled a portly lemon-colored tree sloth in a black trilby and matching bow tie.

  Finally, clomping onstage with a slow, zombie-like shuffle was Boris Minor himself. His face and neck were an ugly patchwork of scars and stitches, and the bolts on the sides of his neck spurted steam with every step. His voice, however, was as smooth and sweet as a pot of honey.

  “Simmersville,” he purred into the microphone. “Are you ready to rock?”

  “YEEEAAH!”

  KER-RANG! With a deep reverberating twang from the hairy bass-player’s guitar, the band launched into one of their biggest hits, “The Zombie Stomp”:

  Let’s d-d-do the monster bash!

  Those feet, you stamp.

  That head, you thrash.

  Those hips, you shake.

  Those teeth, you gnash.

  Do it, baby . . . with m-m-much panache!

  Now t-t-try the zombie stomp!

  Put out your arms.

  Go clump and clomp!

  On stiff old legs

  Go tramp and tromp!

  Let’s find some brains . . . to ch-ch-champ and chomp!

  Now how ’bout the creature conga!

  You know the words

  So sing along-gah!

  You feel the beat?

  So bang your gong-gah!

  Do whatcha like! Ain’t n-n-nothin’ wron-gah!

  “BLEGH!” said Wingnut. “There’s nothing I hate more than gothic surf-rock!” He grabbed two of Digits’s enormous fingertips
and shoved them in his ears.

  Up on stage, the view-screen above the band flickered and fizzled. The vague silhouette of a man appeared. It was the Chief!

  “There he is,” said Grinner, leading the prisoners toward the square. “Get movin’, creeps.”

  Boris Minor and the Karloffs were just reaching the end of the song when the marching procession of ghorks, the creatures of DENKi-3000, the palanquin, and the gigantic electric blender all emerged from the alleyway. At first, the crowd was so enthralled with the music, they barely noticed. In fact, quite a few people in the crowd waved to the ghorks, believing the appearance of a bunch of ogres (or trolls or perhaps overgrown gremlins) was all part of the show.

  Even when the ghorks threw an enormous net over the entire stage, the crowd cheered at the sudden heightening of drama. The only ones put off by the arrival of the ghorks were the band itself.

  “What’s the deal?” Boris Minor droned into his mic, never once losing his incredible cool, even as the ropes of netting tangled around his skeletal body. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re trying to play a gig here.”

  The ghorks didn’t care. They yanked the band offstage in a cacophony of feedback and sour notes. Boris Minor and his bandmates were promptly hoisted up, instruments and all, and slung from a nearby building’s fire escape.

  “My sincerest apologies to the entertainment,” said the Chief (in a voice that wasn’t apologetic at all), “but there’s been a change of plans.”

  “That’s odd.” The emcee flipped frantically through the pages on his clipboard. “I don’t remember anyone else on the bill.”

  “Good people of Simmersville,” said the Chief, “I’m sure you’ll be happy to know the guest of honor has finally arrived.”

  The palanquin was carried on stage and set down in the corner. The door was opened, and from inside, the ghork attendants brought out a throne. It was jaggedly carved from the same black wood as the palanquin itself. Then Giggles emerged, his face as imperiously blank as ever.

  “Now,” said the Chief, “I’d like to introduce the real final performance of the evening. I’ve been told it’s guaranteed to make everyone here laugh. Everyone.” His shadowy eyes glared down at Giggles. “Let’s see if that’s true.”