The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  The penguin thug spat at me.

  “I’m not tellin’ you nothin’!”

  “See? There we go. Now we’re communicating better. There’s a difference between the two things.”

  “Yeah? What it is, bear?”

  “If you don’t know nothin’, I could torture you all day and nothing would come out. But, if you just won’t tell me anything then I could probably extract something.”

  The penguin thug coughed out a nervous fake laugh. “Ha! That’s rich comin’ from the teddy bear. You ain’t got the balls!”

  I’m not certain if I had ever intended for this to be a bluff, but if I had, that possibility was gone now. As any man would be who lacked genitalia, I was awfully sensitive. I grabbed the knife with both hands and with all my teddy bear strength, I made a long cut in his bare chest.

  “You Furries. You make me laugh. Walkin’ around, pretending to be what I am. It’s insulting. It’s hilarious, too. I’m gonna give you what you want. Chang, stuff ‘im.”

  My chauffeur’s yellow skin turned pale.

  “Mr. Plush—”

  “Take the cotton and stick it in the hole, Chang. Then sew it.”

  The penguin thug’s eyes widened. They must have looked enormous to Chang.

  “Please, mister, you can’t—”

  Chang gave his customary bow. “As you wish, most honored Mr. Plush.”

  So, Chang stuffed the wound with cotton and sewed it shut. The penguin thug made several noises I never expected to hear out of a man or a penguin. I glared at him with my round, black plastic eyes. I knew he couldn’t see any expression behind them, but from the look on his tear-stained face, I could tell that he knew I was glaring and he knew I wasn’t above cutting him again.

  “I do know somethin’ and I’ll tell ya.”

  “You don’t say? I’m glad, because Chang could easily undo all those stitches one by one…”

  “Halperin’s working with a man from outta town who just started coming around. He knew this place was ripe for plucking. Halperin could be scared, could be shaken down. He’s a coward underneath the whole Mandarin act.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. And I mean that literally. Stop stalling. I am not a patient little bear.”

  “His name’s Kewpie Doll Steve.”

  “Better. If he were in the phonebook, that is. Chang, undo the stitches.”

  Chang once more gave his customary bow. He elongated it, seeing that this time I actually was bluffing.

  “Wait…you don’t gotta do that. The Monogram Marshmallow factory’s a front for his hideout.”

  Great. Kewpie Doll Steve was hanging out at the Monogram Marshmallow factory. The worst part of having lost my memory is having to rediscover what a stupid town I lived in one day at a time. There were towns where it was hard to solve a mystery, where it took a smart man and not a guy willing to torture idiot henchmen for answers. There were towns where furry prostitution wasn’t a criminal calling. There were towns outside the protectorate of crotchety teddy bears. Somehow, I still felt attached to this one and it bugged the hell out of me.

  I juggled my failures in my head like so many oranges: I had failed as a writer and failed as a gambler, so I failed as a person and traded bodies with Jimmy Plush. I had failed as a man for not convincing my girl to get out of Halperin’s press-on nailed grasp. I had failed as a detective when I got knocked out and left Lillian Benzedrine to Halperin’s very limited mercies. She was probably somewhere dressed up as a French poodle to amuse out-of-town businessmen as her husband dangled in a chair over a vat of acid. My conscience was in the same position and there were scissors at the rope. Snip. Splash. Stab. I plunged the knife deep, penetrating his heart as all the disappointments had mine.

  I waited for Chang’s reaction. I wanted him to shake his head in disappointment. I wanted him to cry or tell me I’d gone too far and he should’ve been spared since he gave me the information he needed. But Chang had worked for the real Jimmy Plush, who had done things Chang refused to tell me about, who had done things that made Chang grateful for me, as bitter as I could get and as sick as could I be of his small outbursts of impertinence in the midst of fawning loyalty. Chang wasn’t surprised.

  “Your orders, Mr. Plush?”

  I sighed. “Finish the job, Chang. We need to send a message; we need Halperin to know that Jimmy Plush is no fool, no weakling and isn’t going to be pushed around.”

  So Chang and I got to it. It took hours, stank like nothin’ else I’ve ever smelled and we had to buy a lot more cotton and give Jean’s kitchen quite the scrubbing, but it was worth it. Halperin would get the message now, and I wouldn’t have to do this again. Hopefully. I can’t say I was that crazy about the whole experience.

  We dropped off the corpse outside J.L Wong’s and drove like the wind for the Monogram Marshmallow factory, where Kewpie Doll Steve or somebody who knew where he was should have been.

  I wasn’t at all shocked to find Halperin’s gunsels Tusky and Bernstein guarding the back door. Might be a big city, but it was a pretty damn small world. Much as I wanted a piece of that walrus, stuffing that penguin had slightly eased my thirst for revenge, and I was thinking clearer.

  “Chang, you take down the walrus. I’ll take the squid.”

  Chang seemed concerned. “You realize there is no counter to squid-style martial arts.”

  “I do, Chang.”

  “And you are angry at the walrus…”

  “Don’t worry about me, Chang. I’m sure it will all work out.”

  I sprang from the car and put a bullet right between Bernstein’s eyes. There was no counter to squid-style martial arts, but as of yet the Chinese really hadn’t come up with a way to get around being shot in the head. Having untied the Gordian Knot with my gun, Chang readied himself for the walrus’ charge. Tusky could have countered the Chinese fighting arts as well, but was, as I suspected, blinded with grief and anger at the death of his lover.

  Poor Tusky charged directly into a move whose name Chang says translates roughly into “Gilded Battle Axe Fist.” The walrus vomited out a big fishy mess and then imploded. Made me wonder why Chang had never chosen to do that before. It would have made things much easier.

  Of course, it wasn’t that easy. The ruckus of the exploding walrus and the vanquished squid attracted plenty of attention. The door burst open and there were all manner of Furries on the other side of it, from neon yellow opossums, to perpetually smiling wolves, from angry rats to loveable mandrills to cartoonish chipmunks to placid, Zen tortoises. There were some fifty of them pouring out of there, but we were ready to make some fur fly.

  High on our victory, we took them three, four at a time; me letting bullets fly, tripping up a pink cow with a low kick as I shot a badger in the eye. With the Gilded Battle Axe Fist and the Decapitation Kick, Chang went through a pair of cuddly coyotes without blinking an eye and then brought the fear of God into a young tortoise that fled surprisingly fast. I took a few punches, dodged a few bullets, but I gave better than I got, because I’m Jimmy Plush and there ain’t no walking stuffed animal in this town, real or fake that can stand up to me when I’m angry and I’ve just put a bullet in the head of somebody who I thought was unbeatable. Plush heads and the real heads underneath them littered the alley outside the Monogram Marshmallow Factory. There’s nothing like the scent of fake fur, hot lead and spilled guts in the night to prove you’re a real man.

  “Chang, you’ve redeemed yourself,” I said to the chauffeur, “but I need you to stay in the car.”

  “Mr. Plush, who knows what kind of ambush—”

  “I think the ambush is over. I’m going in to investigate and hopefully find Kewpie Doll Steve.”

  “As you wish, most honored Mr. Plush.”

  Like I said, in some towns mysteries are tough to solve and it takes a real smart man to unravel it all but this ain’t one of the towns. Criminals, God bless ‘em, were usually found exactly where you expected to find them, comple
tely unafraid of being undermined by the likes of myself or the frequently-absent police department. Emerging from the shadows, walking past two large inflatable sculptures of Murray, the Monogram Unicorn was a figure about my size.

  Kewpie Doll Steve stepped into the light. It was eerie, how much he looked like a she. Like my own empty plastic eyes, his showed no feeling, but looked a bit flirty on account of the long, curled eyelashes and nonexistent eyebrows. His huge, infant lips had been painted red, which was the color of the short, checkered dress he wore. The ensemble was completed by a pair of little white party shoes. The illusion broke when he laughed a heavy cigar-burned laugh.

  “This is him? The guy who brought down my men? Who gives Vic Halperin trouble? You’re a riot, Jimmy Plush. You’re just as much of a joke as me!”

  I squeezed off a shot at the doll, but now of all times, the gun clicked “sorry, out of ammo”.

  “Don’t worry, Plush. I don’t have a gun. Don’t need one either, teddy bear!”

  The talking doll was quick and caught me off guard, he leapt like a jaguar, pinning me to the ground and punching me hard in the face. A guy like this was strong for the same reason I had to be strong: cause he looked nothing like a man. Cause he looked soft. As the punches rained down like brokers when the market goes south, I understood more than ever why I was so angry. I rolled him off me and took his position on top.

  His head squeaked with each of my blows, which left me wondering just what could be done to a guy like this. Could his brain be damaged? Could he be unstuffed? Not by a guy with no hands who doesn’t have anything to cut him with. I was out of bullets, too. I’d have to do something the criminals in this town usually didn’t require me to do and that was think. I got off him and danced around like a boxer, putting up my knuckleless dukes.

  Kewpie Doll Steve kicked surprisingly hard, sending me flying backwards into the side of a marshmallow vat. It was hot. I moved away from it quickly, knowing my own flammability a bit too well thanks to a run-in with Skinny Valentine and a cigarette lighter. I scurried lightly up the ladder leading to the vat, hoping Kewpie Doll Steve might be dumb enough to follow. Naturally, he took the bait.

  I scrambled up the ladder one step at a time, defending my position with punch after punch and from punch after punch. Every couple of hits, I would be nearly as oblivious as he was or lose my footing on the ladder, but then the plan would come back to me, along with the knowledge that there would be no other way to bring this guy down. Pathetic that I had to rely on a vat of hot marshmallows.

  We reached the top and I shuffled along the rim, balance aided by my relative lack of mass, his balance aided by the same. I risked my position to rush him and nearly fell in myself. Like Holmes and Moriarty, we were caught up in a moment of mortal struggle and almost plunged to the death together. Almost. My hands found the rim as he fell screaming into the white, hot gooey abyss. Awful way to go. I shuffled along the rim again until I reached the ladder and worked my way down to enjoy my moment of triumph.

  I should have known I was never that lucky. When I hit the ground, a bullet caught me in the back, bringing me down. I felt my consciousness start to puff out of my body like a wisp of smoke. I wish I wasn’t a guy who fainted so easily. The trenchcoated assassin left his hiding place and climbed gracefully up the ladder, reaching in, grabbing the marshmallow covered Kewpie Doll Steve from the pit of ooze and climbing down just as quickly as he climbed up. Before blacking out completely I caught a glimpse of the guy’s face. Just when I thought my day had gotten better, it went back to being a regular god-awful day in the life of Jimmy Plush, teddy bear detective. The face had been my own only a month back, the face of one Charles Hatbox, but behind the eyes there was the bear with whom I’d traded bodies, that bastard, the real Jimmy Plush.

  HAT

  ROY KESEY

  He came in through the door, and they gave him a paperclip and told him to make an airplane. When the airplane is finished, they said, you may go, or you may stay. As you wish.

  He took off his hat.

  - Am I permitted the use of tools?

  - Yes, they said. Tools are allowed. Of course, a master would never need them, but the journey is long and you are just beginning. For now, tools are allowed.

  - And may I use additional materials?

  Of course not. Use what you are given.

  With a soldering iron, a file, and two small pairs of needle-nose pliers, in five days he’d made an airplane of the paperclip, and he led them to see it.

  No, they said. It is not an airplane.

  - But look! The wings, the tail, even the landing gear . . .

  It is not an airplane, they repeated. It is a toy. You must make an airplane.

  - What does an airplane have that my toy doesn’t?

  Your toy has almost nothing that an airplane has, they said. Where is the engine? The propeller? The flaps and rudder, the fuel gauge, the gyro horizon? Your toy is no airplane, sir. Please do not call us again until your airplane is ready.

  - Then I will need more tools, and additional materials.

  All the tools you like, they said, though a master would never need them. But no additional materials. Use what you are given.

  For eight months he labored, epoxy and tweezers, loupe and engraver. Finally the paperclip was an airplane with everything that an airplane must have, and again he led them to see it.

  - I have finished, he said. May I go?

  No, they said. It is still not an airplane.

  - Of course it is. Just look—the oil gauge and altimeter, the removable cowling, the engine with its pistons and valves . . .

  Very well, they said. If it’s an airplane, start the engine. Start the engine, fly the plane, and then you may go.

  - I have to make it fly?

  Of course. Airplanes fly. If yours does not fly, it is not an airplane.

  - But—he began. Then he bowed his hatless head, and they walked away.

  For nine years he labored, centrifuge and compound microscope, laser and interferometer, micro-tomes and -pipettes and -needles. By the time he finished he was blind in one eye, but the airplane was ready, a point of silver-gleaming, wingspan of a millimeter and a millimeter from nose to tail. Then he called for them, and they came. One by one they perused his work. Finally they asked, And does it fly?

  - Of course.

  With a thread of spider-web he spun the propeller, and the plane slipped along the desktop, lifted and dipped and transcribed Giotto’s circle before landing once again on the desktop.

  It is a fine plane, they said. You are well on your way.

  - May I go?

  If you insist. But you are not yet a master. Stay with us, and learn to build without tools.

  - One can learn on one’s own.

  Slowly, said one. Poorly, said another. Those who learn fastest and best are those who learn from those who learned first. Stay, learn from us, become a master.

  - No. You have said I may go, and I shall.

  So saying, he put on his hat and left.

  Forty-one years later he returned.

  - So at last you have decided to learn more? they asked. You wish to become a master?

  No, he said. I have learned what I wished to learn.

  - Is that so? We would accept your word if we accepted the word of anyone. As things stand, we must see proof.

  Very well, he said. Bring me a thumbtack, and I will make you a submarine.

  - How interesting. And which tools will you be needing?

  No tools, he said. Just the thumbtack.

  The thumbtack was brought, silver-gleaming and sharp. He set it in his hat, and they watched for three days and nights as he taught it to love. On the fourth day he rose, took the thumbtack in his left hand, placed his hat on his head, and led them to the sea. There, he set the thumbtack in the water and taught it to float.

  - But it is still just a thumbtack, they said.

  Yes, he answered. And no.

  So saying,
he stepped aboard, took the helm, and submerged.

  THE SHARP-DRESSED MAN

  AT THE END OF THE LINE

  JEREMY ROBERT JOHNSON

  He was collecting roaches. They moved faster than he’d expected. They’d be within centimeters of Dean’s fingers and suddenly speed left or right with quarterback maneuverability. Crafty fuckers. Even more survival driven than he gave them credit for.

  Survival, Dean’s modus operandi. He understood the cockroaches on that level. Both of them had a clearly established Goal One:

  Do Not Die.

  He left out muffins. They swarmed the muffins. Dean harvested the unsuspecting bugs by the handful.

  He replaced his regular bulbs with UV black lights, so he could see, but the roaches didn’t scatter like they would under normal apartment light.

  In between roach round-ups, he watched television. He grimaced. He cringed. Every image on the screen was a fat, flashing sign that read WWIII.

  The news showed Conflict with a capital C, international and senseless.

  It caused Dean to sweat stress and stink up his flop pad, the worst in all of D.C. Check the rotting floorboards, the dripping faucets. Noise-aholic neighbor bass and baby screams as the soundscape. Swinging bare-bulb ambience. Mildew and asbestos fighting for airspace. Punctured pipes leaking slow into linoleum cracks. Plastered pellets of roach shit as the common denominator.

  Living cheap. Barely living.

  He watched television. The President poked angry bears with sharp sticks.

  We will not relent to this Axis of Assholes!

  Take that Iraqi-Bear!

  They’re hoarding weapons and plannin’ rape missions!

  Yield before us Korea-Bear!

  Commie baby-killers, pure and simple!

  Oh, China-Bear, you’ll rue the day!

  The President was up in the polls. The populace—petrified and war weary, but strangely supportive, Dean included. He’d back a bully as long as El Presidente could guarantee a win. It was that possibility of a loss that spooked Dean to screeching simian defense levels. A loss, at this heavily armed and nuclear point in world history, meant Apocalypse.