The bar was lively, but not in that way that required raised eyebrows or heavy emphasis to accompany the word. Sure, some of the individuals drinking in the place looked like they’d stepped out of a fever victim’s nightmare, but they were keeping themselves to themselves as they enjoyed a quiet drink, tucked into some disturbingly wriggly bar snacks, or huddled around what Cal could only assume was a quiz machine. From the way they groaned after every tap of the screen, it didn’t look like they were doing very well.
There was an air to the place that bordered on being festive. Strings of twinkling lights were slung above the long metal bar. Bursts of good-natured laughter filled the air. In the far corner, Cal spotted something that he at first thought was a Christmas tree, but then it had moved and he’d realized it was a heavily built woman wearing a dress he could only think to describe as ‘ill-advised.’
Ordering drinks had been easier than he had expected. He had no idea what any of the vibrant liquids on display actually were, but after pointing at a bottle of something the color of unripe bananas and pressing his thumb against a pad, he’d returned to the table armed with two tall glasses.
Splurt raised his graying head and gave Cal a goofishly gummy smile as he returned to the table. Once the drinks had been set down, the shapeshifter – still firmly shifted into the shape of Dorothy out of the Golden Girls – stood up and wrapped his arms around Cal, pulling him against his chest.
“Hey, I missed you, too, buddy,” Cal said, as Splurt kissed him lightly on top of the head. “Thanks for that,” he added, once Splurt had released him again.
They both took their seats, and Cal raised his drink in toast. “To you, pal,” Cal said. “Thank you for being a friend.” He waited a moment for a reaction, then shook his head. “Yeah, that totally went over your head, didn’t it? Golden Girls theme. Doesn’t matter. Cheers!”
He sipped his drink. It tasted like soap. He shrugged and took another sip. He’d had worse. Splurt stared blankly down at his own drink.
“It’s good,” said Cal, nodding in encouragement. “I mean, no, it’s not good, it’s pretty fonking far from good, but it’s not bad.”
He took a bigger gulp and winced. “Well, not terrible,” he said, his voice croaking.
There was a sudden twanging sound like an elastic band stretching and snapping into place. Cal watched with a growing sense of horror as Dorothy out of the Golden Girls unfurled an insect-like proboscis from within her mouth, and thrust it deep into the glass of green liquid. With a slurp, the glass emptied, then the appendage rolled up like a party-blower and vanished behind Dorothy’s wrinkled lips once more.
“Well, there’s something I’ll never be able to unsee,” Cal muttered, forcing down another swig of his drink.
Settling back in his chair, he looked across the bar and was struck by how much it reminded him of Earth bars. Even the music – a generic up-tempo song about someone whose heart had been broken ‘in that Grunshun way’ – could have come straight out of MTV. Apart from the bit about the Grunshun way, obviously, which even after four verses and an annoyingly catchy chorus, Cal was still none the wiser about.
It was hard to believe that bars probably didn’t exist on Earth anymore. Not since Zertex had flooded the planet with mind-controlling parasites in an attempt to cover their tracks after they abducted him.
He wondered, not for the first time, if anyone was still alive. And, if so, what sort of world were they living in? He’d been quite partial to the occasional zombie movie, but if the whole world was currently plunged into the middle of one, he was relieved that all he had to worry about was a malevolent galactic government and the occasional gangster made of rock who got a hard-on at the thought of Cal eating himself.
With that, Cal downed the rest of his drunk, convulsed from head to toe, then stood up. “Another round!” he announced, then he flicked finger-guns at Dorothy out of the Golden Girls several times, for reasons he wasn’t quite clear on, and walked awkwardly towards the long, stainless-steel bar.
The music changed. Something that sounded suspiciously like a novelty Christmas hit began to blast from the speakers. On either side, Cal was dimly aware of a few people getting to their feet and dancing, but it felt muffled and indistinct, like he were viewing it through a net curtain.
His legs felt funny. Funny strange, as opposed to funny ha-ha. He tried to talk some sense into them as he stumbled through the crowds, but they didn’t really listen. In fact, he thought he heard them laughing at him for a moment, and made a mental note to give them a serious talking-to once he got them home.
Cal frowned. Something about those last few thoughts didn’t feel quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Besides, he had more pressing things to worry about, like the fact the whole space station had started rotating. As if that weren’t bad enough, it was rotating both clockwise and anti-clockwise at the same time.
“Well, that’s fonking selfish,” he slurred, then he looked around him, wondering who had said that. “Yeah, you’d better run!” he said, failing to spot whoever had spoken in the merrily-jigging crowds around him.
The bar appeared as if by magic, catching him by surprise. He let out a little, “Wah!” of shock, then glanced left and right to see if anyone had noticed.
By the third glance to the left, he’d forgotten what he was looking for and frowned deeply. The room was still gyrating, so he leaned against the bar to try to hold it down. The metal of the bar top felt pleasingly cool against Cal’s hands. He pressed them flat, splaying his fingers wide, and gave a contended sigh.
He wondered it if would feel as pleasant against his face. He tried. It did. “This is nice,” he said, then he whipped his head up, belted out the one line of In that Grunshun Way he could remember, then snapped to attention and tried to pretend the last few seconds hadn’t happened.
“Barkeep!” he called, ringing what he imagined to be a tiny bell, but was, in fact, just his fingers. “More drinks over here, if you please!”
He gazed down at the bar in front of him, appearing surprised by the lack of drinks. He reached for one anyway, just in case it was there but somehow invisible. It wasn’t.
Frowning, he looked along the bar in both directions. The bartender, a portly chap with a red waistcoat and either one eye or three eyes, depending on how hard Cal tried to focus, stood at the far end of the counter. He was listening to either one man or three men who were talking to him in what, even to Cal’s reduced powers of deductive reasoning, looked to be quite an aggressive way.
Cal raised a hand, trying to get his attention, waited in that pose for approximately three fifths of a second, then tutted loudly and staggered towards the group, mumbling a stream of half-formed gibberish, and leaning on the bar for support.
As he got closer, Cal decided there were definitely three men, but he still couldn’t make up his mind on the barman’s eyes. He could make out some of what the angry men were saying. It was something about a girl. Or a baby. A baby girl, maybe? They were keen to find her, anyway.
“I used to be a baby,” Cal announced, the words sort of dribbling out of his mouth and down his chin. The three men and the bartender turned to look at him. Something about the men reached all the way through Cal’s inebriated haze and gave his brain a slap. His brain, unfortunately, chose to ignore it.
“You look mean, like… big meanies,” he said. He giggled in a way he’d never giggled before, then leaned across to the bartender and whispered in a voice that was several decibels louder than his normal speaking volume. “Can I get two more drinks please? Thank you very much. I like your waistcoat, by the way. Well done.” He turned his attention back to the three men. Two of them were considerably larger than he was, while the other was a good foot or so smaller.
“Or is he sitting down?” Cal asked out loud. He squinted and examined the smaller man. “Nope,” he concluded. “Just a shorty.”
“What did ‘e say?” the smallest man growled. “What’d you say, yo
u fonking nonce? You got a deathwish or somefink?” The way he pronounced ‘deathwish’ made it sound like ‘deafwish.’ This amused Cal no end, and he erupted in an explosive cackle that stopped just as quickly as it started.
“Shhh!” said Cal, putting a finger to his lips. “Let’s just be friends. It’s nicer.” He put an arm around the small-but-surly looking gentleman’s shoulders and pulled him in close. “See?” he said, then he leaned down so his mouth was close to one of the man’s misshapen ears and began to sing the first few lines of the Golden Girls theme in a husky, breathless whisper.
“Dorothy!” Cal gasped, straightening up and turning around on the spot. “Has anyone seen Dorothy?” He spotted the now furious-looking little man and reacted in surprise. “Oh, look at you. You’re titchy! I bet I could fit you in my pocket.” He chewed his lip. “Should we try? Is that allowed?”
Cal was vaguely aware that the other two men were standing behind the smaller one now. They really were an ugly bunch, all scars and rotten teeth and lank, greasy hair.
They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite remember what. The one with the eyepatch especially, he thought. “You have a very black beard,” Cal said, reaching out and waggling his fingertips in the eyepatch-guy’s facial bush. “Does that tickle?”
“All right, that fonkin’ does it!” the smallest of the men growled.
“Hey, gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s go easy now. It’s Kroyshuk, after all,” said the bartender in a voice as rich as hot chocolate. There were three clunks as he set shot-sized glasses of red liquid down on the bar. “Clearly this fella can’t hold his liquor, but he’s harmless enough. Nothing a gang of fearsome space pirates like you need worry about.”
On the words space pirates, the barman shot Cal a warning look. It was designed to make him stop talking and walk away, but instead had completely the opposite effect.
“Wait, you guys are space pirates?” Cal yelped. “Me too! I’m a space pirate! Well, we’re pretending to be, but don’t tell anyone else that.” He tried to tap his finger against the side of his nose in a secretive way, but missed and poked himself in the eye instead. “Ow. What was that for?” he muttered, glaring accusingly at his own hand.
The smallest pirate let out an animal-like snarl, then flicked one of his arms back with a sudden jerk. Through the alcohol-murk, Cal spotted something sharp, metallic and pointy, and came to the conclusion that, all things considered, this probably wasn’t a positive turn of events.
“Hey, be careful,” Cal slurred, closing one eye so he could better focus on the tiny pirate. “You’re too little to be playing with stuff like that.”
“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” the pirate hissed. He lunged forwards, thrusting the blade upwards towards Cal’s woefully underprepared intestinal region.
A large shape in an unflattering cardigan bounded past Cal before the blade could connect. There was a thud as Dorothy out of the Golden Girls drove her knee into the little pirate’s lower jaw, then a series of rapid pops and a scream as his blackened teeth exploded in their sockets.
A blur of activity followed. Neither of Cal’s eyes were functioning particularly well by this point, so he was quite sketchy on the details. He was vaguely aware of Dorothy out of the Golden Girls delivering a spinning roundhouse kick, but couldn’t for the life of him work out who was on the receiving end. He was reasonably confident it wasn’t him, but beyond that the recipient was anyone’s guess.
A bone snapped. There was something like a howl. Cal found his attention drawn to the three glasses lined up on the bar in front of him. “Finally!” he said, oblivious to the rrrrip of tearing beard and the wailing of-dehaired pirate that followed. “Our drinks are here. Bottoms up!” he said, then he tipped the fiery red contents of all three glasses down his throat, one after the other.
Something happened. He couldn’t say what, exactly, but definitely something.
He touched his nose, suddenly fearing it wasn’t there. It was, he thought, but not with any degree of certainty. He tried to touch it again to double-check, but missed his face completely.
He pulled his mouth into a circle of surprise, then laughed a sort of staccato laugh that made everyone at the quiz machine and the closest few tables turn to look at him.
“Shhh,” he said, to no-one in particular. “Not so loud!”
Yes, something had happened.
Or was happening, perhaps?
Or, Cal realized just a little too late, was about to happen.
The floor became the ceiling. The walls became the door. Time slowed down and started to run very quickly all in the same moment. Cal looked down at his shoes, and his shoes, for their part, looked back.
“Alright?” he asked them, then he toppled forwards like a falling oak and smashed, face first, through a chair.
5.
Cal opened his eyes. His brain screamed. He closed them again.
He tried to think, but he was still in that not-quite-awake phase where his IQ was so low that thinking wasn’t yet a possibility.
He opened his eyes. His brain screamed. He closed them again, and had a serious case of Déjà vu.
His lips were as dry as parchment. His hair hurt. There was a weight on his chest that he assumed was probably cancer. That was a bummer.
He tried to think again, but his thoughts were scattered and disconnected, like train carriages after a derailment. Accessing memories from more than a few seconds ago was still not possible, so he focused on the more recent past, instead.
The ceiling. From the brief glance he’d got of it, it had been white. Had being the operative word. Now it was a murky swirl of creams and browns, with a bulge of black mold in the corner.
The fact he’d been facing the ceiling told him something else, too. It took him a moment to figure out what it was. He was lying down.
From somewhere not too far away, there came a crash and a scream. He held his breath. It was all he could really contribute to the situation at the present time.
“Splurt?” he said, his voice coming out like crushed glass. “You there?”
There was no reply, but then as Splurt couldn’t speak to the best of anyone’s knowledge, this didn’t reveal much. Cal had no choice but to open his eyes again. His brain protested, but his brain would just have to learn to live with it.
Cal lifted his head. The brain’s protest was joined by every other part of his body, all demanding to know what the fonk he thought he was playing at. He managed to keep his head raised long enough to figure out that neither Splurt nor Dorothy out of the Golden Girls were in the room, then collapsed back onto the pillow again.
There was another crash. Raised male voices. A woman’s sob.
“Hey!” he managed, but it was little more than a whisper. His arms slipped down to his sides, and he realized the weight on his chest hadn’t been cancer, but his hands. That was something, at least.
The part of his brain that processed smells chose that moment to wake up. “Oh, Christ,” he grimaced draping an arm across his face. The room reeked. It was sour and mulchy at the same time, with a tangy note that could have been just a suggestion of horse urine.
It was the same smell he’d been hit with when he and Splurt had gone to check out their room. Ignoring his body’s complaints, he lifted his head again and looked around. Yeah. This was the same place.
His thoughts shuffled into something more closely approximating chronological order. He remembered the bar. He remembered drinking. He remembered something about wanting to put an angry little man in his pocket.
After that…? Not much. Flashes at most. A chair. Some shouting. A blood-soaked Dorothy out of the Golden Girls. Some more shouting. Then… Mech?
He blinked.
Yes, Mech had been there. Loren and Miz, too, he thought, although he couldn’t see them, just sort of vaguely sense their presence.
‘No, please, no, don’t!”
The cry came from somewhere just beyond the door. Cal fixed his gaze
on it until it shimmied into some sort of focus. It was then he saw the note pinned to it. We’re up in Mumfle, it read, then was signed in quite an official-looking squiggle at the bottom by Loren.
“Where the fonk is Mumfle?” Cal wondered, then the sharp crack of flesh slapping against flesh and a brief, breathless sob of shock made him shift his gaze towards the door handle.
Cal swung his legs out of bed and stumbled towards the door. The carpet alternated between moist and sticky and hard and flaky in the space of a few steps, and he realized he had no shoes or socks on.
Still, no time to worry about that now. Besides, he’d thrown all his momentum into reaching the door, and now had no means of stopping. He stumbled into a little table with a solid-looking metal lamp sitting on top, apologized profusely, then pulled open the door.
“Hey, what’s all the noise?” he demanded, then his voice trailed off.
Eight large and surly-looking space pirates filled the corridor directly outside his room. They surrounded the same pregnant alien woman he and Splurt had met earlier. Her vibrant pink skin had a blush of deep red across one cheek, and a graze across the other. Two pirates held her arms, one on each side, but her hands still instinctively reached for her swollen belly, trying to shield it from harm.
The woman’s eyes met Cal’s. They were naturally wide, but he suspected they were currently wider than they had ever been. The emotion in them struck him like a hammer-blow, shattering the crust of his hangover and snapping him… not to attention, but into less of a bleary-eyed slump.
There was everything in those eyes – helplessness, despair, fear, doubt and - the one that really kicked Cal in the nuts - hope. She thought Cal was going to save her. Him. On his own. From eight big ugly bimsterds with knives and swords slung at their hips.
“Help me,” she pleaded. “Please. They want to take my baby.”
Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories Page 16