Gobbled by Ghorks

by Robert Paul Weston

  Elliot, Leslie, and their friends were pushed up onto the stage. Leslie took the opportunity to wave to her mother, hoping to let her know she was okay, but instead of looking relieved to have finally found her daughter, Mrs. Fang folded her arms and glared at the professor and his creatures. Elliot saw his own parents standing near the entrance to the Simmersville Inn. When he waved to them, they didn’t respond. Of course they didn’t. How could they know the hairy green bristle-imp on stage was really their son?

  “Oooh! I get it!” said a man in the front row. “Creatures!” He pointed to Boris Minor and the band, to the ghorks flanking the stage, and finally to the creatures of DENKi-3000. “That must be the theme for this year’s cabaret.”

  “I’m not really into fantasy,” said the woman beside him, “but you have to hand it to the organizers. Those costumes are unbelievable!”

  “Somebody wanna explain,” droned Boris Minor, still dangling inside the net, “what the green dudes are doing on the stage? ’Cuz, y’see, no offense, but I thought we were the big finale.” He sighed heavily. “Could somebody get our booking agent on the phone?”

  Professor von Doppler trembled to the front of the stage. Stooping over the microphone, he looked crooked and uncomfortable. It was clear he was incredibly nervous. “M-Mr. M-M-Minor, sir? We’re t-terribly sorry for interrupting your p-p-performance, but there’s been . . .” He gulped, and the plonking sound of his Adam’s apple echoed from every speaker. “There’s b-b-been an unfortunate change of p-plans. So without f-further ado, I w-would like to introduce, in their t-triumphant d-d-debut here at the Simmersville F-F-F-F-Food Festival D-Dinner-Theatre-Style Cabaret, the curious, delirious, hilarious creatures of DENKi-3000!”

  CHAPTER 26

  In which Cosmo Clutch does some fancy footwork, Reggie smashes the footlights, and the Chief would have preferred a death ray

  There is a special brand of joy that comes from discovering creatures are real. It is a joy that makes you feel lighter than air, as if you are floating away from all of life’s worries, bouncing on a soft pink cloud of pure giddiness. That warm Saturday evening, the audience in the Simmersville market square laughed with just this sort of joy.

  Or, to put it another way, they laughed and laughed and laughed! The performance from the creatures was filled with the strangest music, the most absurd lyrics, and the clumsiest dancing anyone had ever seen. For the creatures themselves, however, there was a problem.

  “Look at Giggles,” said Leslie. She was standing in the back row of performers, waving jazz hands and doing awkward, bowlegged knee bends with everyone else. “He hasn’t even twitched.”

  “Just wait,” Elliot told her. “The show’s not over yet.”

  Cosmo Clutch had taken Gügor’s place in the performance. He compensated for his tone deafness with fearlessly fancy footwork. When he attempted the splits, he pulled a rather tender muscle—and the crowd roared with laughter. (Not Giggles, though. He didn’t react at all.)

  At last, it was time for the newest additions to the performance: Elliot and Leslie. They fist pumped and knee bended to the front of the stage, while the creatures performed a poorly choreographed interpretive dance, meant to reflect their emotions (it didn’t).

  Leslie went first:

  My name’s Leslie. Here’s my tale.

  Is it weird? It’s off the scale!

  In the park is where it started.

  I was feeling sour-hearted!

  Glum and sitting on a bench,

  pretending I was (sort of) French.

  Then my friend here came along

  and showed me where I might belong!

  Now my crew is kind of freaky,

  very weird (and very geeky).

  But friends like them? They’re not so bad.

  They’re the best I’ve ever had!

  And so on.

  The crowd laughed and cheered for Leslie’s verses, but Giggles remained unmoved. Then it was Elliot’s turn:

  Hi there, folks, I’m Ell-i-ot!

  I’m giving cabaret a shot!

  First of all, I have to say

  I’m not supposed to look this way!

  These teeth? These claws? All this hair?

  (I have it growing everywhere!)

  I’m now a creature, to the core,

  I’ll be this way . . . forevermore!

  So listen, Mom! And listen, Dad!

  I’m sorry if I made you mad.

  I hollered at you both this morning.

  I ran away, without a warning.

  So please accept, to you, from me,

  this musical apology!

  I’m still your kid, your only one,

  your hairy creature of a son!

  A fuzzy, slightly dorky shrimp

  (specifically, a ‘bristle-imp’).

  Furry! Itchy! Prickly! Starchy!

  But please—don’t be mad at Uncle Archie.

  I’m just a fuzzball, that’s my fate.

  I think it was . . . something I ate!

  So Simmersville, your food is nice,

  but skip ‘the Special’—that’s my advice!

  Finally, looking once again to thump into the spotlight at the very last moment, Reggie thundered forward. Bildorf and Pib gripped tenaciously to his epaulettes in a clumsy trio. First, there was Bildorf:

  Well, we hope you liked our dance,

  And laughed so hard you wet your pants!

  Then Pib:

  But now’s the end, and so we say

  We hope you liked our cabaret!

  At last, all together, Reggie, Bildorf, and Pib sang out: “OUUUURRRRR CAAAAAA-BAAAAAAA-REEEEEEEEEEEEEET!”

  Reggie sang the last syllable, and his submaritone shattered every one of the footlights. The crowd was about to rise to their feet for a standing ovation, only they couldn’t. They were laughing too hard. The song and dance of the creature cabaret had been so absurd, the crowd was incapacitated with laughter.

  Unfortunately, the only reaction from Giggles was a single yawn.

  Elliot hung his head. It hadn’t worked. Giggles hadn’t so much as tittered. The cabaret had failed. Up on the view-screen, even the Chief seemed a bit disappointed.

  “I suppose,” he said to himself, “a fiendishly dry sense of humor is the best the ghorks have got.” He shook his head, as if being let down by his mottled green henchmen was an experience he had all too often. “Figures,” he muttered, shrugging his shadowy shoulders. “At least I’ve got a gigantic blender to cheer me up.”

  The Chief snapped his fingers, and one of the hand-ghorks rushed eagerly to the blender’s controls. He pressed one enormous button labeled Purée.

  WHIZZZZZZZ! went the blender’s countless blades.

  “Ooooh!” went the audience, who could hardly believe there was more excitement to come. Now they assumed they were being treated to a Houdini-style escape routine. In the top corner of the view-screen, a timer appeared. It showed five minutes on the clock—and it began to count down.

  (4:59 . . .)

  Inside the cage, Eloise-Yvette slapped Gügor’s face and tugged on his colorful dreadlocks. “Wake up, Googy!” she cried. “You are the only one strong enough to break us out of here—I hope! But please! You must wake up!”

  (4:55 . . .)

  Even Dr. Heppleworth, who had been so stoic until now, leapt around Gügor, trying to shake him awake. But Gügor didn’t move.

  “Wait! Stop!” said Elliot, waving his hand at the view-screen. “You can’t do this!”

  “Elliot’s right,” cried Leslie, “you said you’d only grind them up if we failed to give you a special DENKi-3000 superweapon!”

  “I know,” said the Chief, “and you haven’t.”

  “But we have it right here!” said Elliot.

  The Chi
ef seemed surprised. “Really? Where?”

  (4:39 . . .)

  Leslie ran to the professor. All along, he had been hiding the device under his lab coat (this was partly why he seemed so awkward at the microphone, and why his posture had been so crooked and lumpy). From under his lab coat, Leslie pulled the strange bagpipe-bazooka, covered with flamingo-pink lightning bolts.

  “That?” asked the Chief. “That’s the DENKi-3000 Creature Department’s idea of an ultimate weapon?!”

  “What’s the matter with it?” asked Elliot.

  The Chief frowned. “It looks like a . . . like a . . . well, I don’t know what it looks like, but it certainly doesn’t look very menacing.”

  “Even so,” said Elliot, “I’ll bet you’re dying to know what it is.”

  “Maybe. . . .” said the Chief.

  “Admit it,” said Leslie.

  “Fine! I admit it! Just tell me already!”

  “You told us you wanted a revolutionary weapon,” Elliot said. “Well, there’s nothing more revolutionary than this!” He pointed to the strange device in Leslie’s arms.

  “We call it,” said Leslie, “the Tickle-Fingler!”

  “Excuse me?” said the Chief.

  “The Tickle-Fingler,” Elliot repeated.

  “Please,” begged the Chief, “tell me that’s secret code for ‘apocalyptic death-ray.’”

  (4:04 . . .)

  “It’s kind of the opposite of an apocalyptic death-ray,” said Elliot.

  Up on the view-screen, the Chief threw up his hands. “How can an ultimate weapon be the opposite of an apocalyptic death-ray?! An apocalyptic death-ray is an ultimate weapon. It’s the ultimate ultimate weapon, everybody knows that!”

  Elliot smiled. “This is even better.”

  “Is it at least a maiming ray?” asked the Chief hopefully.

  Leslie shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Does it draw blood?”

  “Never.”

  The Chief threw up his hands. “What’s left?! A poke-in-the-eye ray?”

  “Nope,” said Elliot. “The Tickle-Fingler shoots a one hundred percent giggle-beam!”

  “A laser of pure silliness,” Leslie explained.

  “And that’s what makes it so revolutionary,” Elliot went on. “What you’re looking at is a totally effective weapon, one that leaves whoever you use it on completely helpless, but it comes with no apocalypse required!”

  Leslie grinned proudly. “No one even gets poked in the eye.”

  (3:32 . . .)

  The Chief made a gravelly grumbling noise from the back of his throat. “So when you say effective, in a more accurate way, you mean ineffective.”

  “Nope! Watch this.” Leslie pulled the Tickle-Fingler’s trigger and squeezed its air bladder under her armpit. Instantly, the fingers on the end of the bazooka barrel started wriggling like worms. There was a loud electrostatic crack, and a spiraling beam of purple light shot from the fingers. Leslie waved the giggle-beam over the crowd, and every person in the audience started laughing, even harder than they had at the cabaret. These weren’t regular, run-of-the-mill, knock-knock-joke guffaws. These were deep, all-encompassing, all-consuming hysterics. In moments, every face in the crowd had turned red and glistened with sweat. People were doubled over, clutching their guts and choking on their own mirth.

  “Perhaps,” said the Chief, “I was wrong about the Tickle-Fingler.”

  (3:05 . . .)

  “Wait,” said Elliot, “there’s one more thing. We’re going to show you how wrong you were about Giggles—by finally making him laugh!”

  Leslie swung the Tickle-Fingler around and aimed its beam at the Fabled Sixth Ghork. It struck Giggles right between the eyes, but had no effect. Giggles merely went crossed-eyed.

  He still wasn’t laughing.

  “What is it with this guy?” Leslie wondered. She squeezed the Tickle-Fingler’s air-bladder up to full power. The giggle-beam made the Sixth Ghork’s whole body glow a neon purple. Then something very strange happened. His enormous shoes started to laugh. The bulbous toes rose up off the soles and started chuckling.

  “Whoa,” said Elliot. “This thing even works on his shoes!”

  “All right,” said the Chief. “That’s enough. You had your chance, and you failed. But I thank you. I’m beginning to believe what Grinner told me. His dry sense of humor is so dry it’s tantamount to evil, and you know how the saying goes: Evil is good!”

  “No, it’s not,” said Leslie. “You can sort of tell from the word. Evil. See?”

  “Don’t go philosophical on me, kid. I’m a businessman.”

  The Chief nodded to his henchmen, and the ghorks threw a second net over the stage and trapped the creatures of DENKi-3000. Only Elliot and Leslie, standing at the front of the stage, remained free. But they were soon surrounded by the Five Ghorks.

  Leslie spun the Tickle-Fingler to defend them, but Grinner snatched it away from her. He tossed it across the stage, where its air bladder wheezed empty and its wriggling fingers stopped moving. Then Digits snatched up Leslie and Elliot themselves, one each in his huge hands.

  “Sorry, kids,” said the Chief. “I’m as surprised as you are, but this proves Giggles really is who we think he is: the Fabled Sixth Ghork! Anybody that joyless gets my vote when it comes to leading a ghork army.” The Chief smiled malevolently down on the audience. “So, about that army . . .”

  He snapped his fingers, and new processions of ghorks marched out of the alleyways that fed into the market square. All of them were dressed like disheveled waiters and carried domed silver trays, exactly like the one with which Elliot had been served his “Special.” The moment Elliot saw them, his heart flipped in his hairy chest. Every one of those dishes would be spiked with the secret potion!

  (2:26 . . .)

  “No! Stop!” He waved his hairy arms at the crowd. “Remember what I said in my song-and-dance number just now? I said skip the Special! I was serious!” Elliot moved his hairy green hand up and down his hairy green body. “Look what it did to me!”

  But the crowd only laughed. They still believed it was all part of the show.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” The Chief beamed. “May I proudly present your Simmersville Food Festival Final Feast!”

  The ghork waiters lifted the huge domed platters. Under every one was a grotesque dish, each in the shape of a ghork-inspired face. Hideously huge eyes, ears, noses, hands, and mouths all glistened and steamed on the plates.

  “No!” cried Leslie. “Please! Don’t eat them!”

  The festivalgoers just laughed. Many of them were still snickering after being shot with the giggle-beam.

  “We’ve got to stop them,” Elliot whispered to Leslie, “but no one believes us.”

  “Wait,” said Leslie. “Remember what you said when you were first served the Special?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  (2:10 . . .)

  “You said, ‘If that thing moves, I’m not eating it.’” Leslie’s eyes moved pointedly over to the Tickle-Fingler, lying still on the stage. Elliot immediately understood, but he had to break free of Digits’s stifling grip. And there was only one way to do it.

  “RAWR!”

  Elliot snarled like the strange creature he was and sunk his teeth into the flesh of Digits’s enormous thumb.

  “Yooooow! cried Digits, letting go.

  Elliot ran for the Tickle-Fingler, picked it up, and kept going, dodging left and right to avoid the grasping hands of the Five Ghorks. Snot-balls from Adenoid Jack’s cannon-like nostrils whizzed past his head. Looping the Tickle-Fingler’s strap over his shoulder, he inflated the air bladder up to full power. Then he jumped off the stage.

  He ran through the crowd, hitting every one of the ghorks’ hideous dishes with the giggle-beam. As soon as he did, the dishes
began to laugh. Glistening red-pepper lips, chattering corn-on-the-cob teeth, flopping pork-chop tongues, joggling rump-steak cheeks, bulging boiled-egg eyeballs, writhing spaghetti hairdos—it all came to life, cackling maniacally at the diners, who were so terrified they dropped their knives and forks. Their meals weren’t just moving . . . they were laughing!

  (1:42 . . .)

  And they kept laughing. Elliot’s giggle-beam had been so intense, every dish was beginning to disintegrate. The repulsive faces laughed so hard they slid off their platters and dissolved into a runny sludge. In no time, every dish the ghorks had prepared was dripping away between the cracks in the cobblestones.

  “You’ve ruined everything!” cried the Chief.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” replied the emcee. “There’s plenty of other dishes we can provide for the Final Feast.”

  “No!” growled the Chief. “It had to be those ones! We’ve used up all of the elixir!”

  But the chefs from the food stalls didn’t mind. They were already coming out with new dishes to replace the ones that had just giggled themselves into oblivion. Frustrated, Grinner jumped off the stage, just as a chef from a nearby food stall was bringing a perfectly cooked filet mignon to one of the diners. He snarled angrily at the man and tipped the chef’s plate onto the ground.

  “How rude!” The old woman who had been patiently awaiting the steak (which now lay steaming on the cobblestones) picked it up and—WAP!—used it to slap Grinner in the face.

  Thus began the biggest food fight in the history of Simmersville.

  (1:14 . . .)

  CHAPTER 27

  In which the festivalgoers have a bit of fun

  Elliot and Leslie could hardly believe it. It was an astonishing thing to watch. An entire town going head-to-head with an army of ghorks (or ogres, or trolls, or overgrown gremlins, or whatever they were), and winning.

  Every kind of foodstuff from Simmersville’s most famous restaurants flew through the air in a blizzard of fruits and vegetables, meats and cheeses, eggs and flour, herbs and spices, and just about every ingredient you could name.