Munmun

by Jesse Andrews

  LIFEANDDEATHWORLD

  I woke up, Usher didn’t, thankgod for that, hope he can keep this psycho girl Willow in Dreamworld somehow with his prettygood dreamstuff, definitely aboveaverage.

  Prayer in her sleep atleast wasn’t writhing around, for her it was just pretend horniness, but who cares, still awfull and gross. I shook her awake.

  “Oh no no crap,” she said. “Oh Warner, what the hell.”

  “Willow saw you having a stupid bangdream with Grantagain and now she wants to feed us to the lynxcat so I’m probably saving our lives, idiot,” I said.

  She slapped my face.

  “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “You’re slapping my face right now?”

  “Never talk to me like that,” she spat.

  “We have to crack a window and get out of here like immediately,” I said.

  But first of all in the dim dark it was hard to see anything like how to turn the lights on. I shimmied down the sinkleg to the floor to look for light or window options.

  “How is Usher going to get down here,” wondered Prayer.

  “Look at my very surprised face at learning this new knowledge of, you care if Usher even lives or dies,” I said, pointing to my face.

  I jogged across the floor looking for holes or something to climb or anything, and finally I did find a door somewhere. I was hoping it went outside. But when I squeezed underneath I found myself in a blind dark closet.

  “Warner, the lynxcat can hear you,” said Prayer, and obviously I could hear it scrabbling and yowling around up there and I thought for the billionth time, how sick must riches be in the head to keep these murderous jerks around.

  I bashed into mops, brooms, random shoes, jugs of cleaning acids and gels. Finally I hit something cool and round and atfirst I didn’t know what it was.

  Then I figured it out.

  “Prayer,” I said. “Okay. Wake up Usher, then come down here immediately.”

  It was one of the cleaningcars the middlepoor maids had been using, basically a wide glasstic rollerpod. Then ontop you’ve got a littler pod that can shoot up and out on a flexy laddercrane, to clean even those hardtoreach places.

  The rollerpod was built for someone atleast quarterscale. So I was too littlepoor to work the footpedals and steeringpad at the same time. But if we stuck Prayer down there in the footspace, meanwhile I’m up here steering with the pad and yelling commands, maybe that could work.

  Or maybe it can’t because apparently Prayer can’t work the pedals, because her entire body isn’t as strong as an average quarterscale foot, how is that possible, Prayer can you even do a single pushup.

  “Try putting your whole weight on it,” I yelled.

  “Why don’t you put your stupid weight on it,” she yelled back.

  So we scrambled around switching positions, her on the steeringpad, me on the footpedal, while upstairs we heard Willow thump around toward the door and talk to Bixquick.

  “Bixie, you’re awake too, huh,” we heard that psycho girl say. “Ow. I know, Bix, I know. They’re so annoying. Ow. Bix, don’t bite me, you stupid freak.”

  I wedged myself against the ceiling of the sweatysmelling footspace and grinded into the pedal as hard as I could and something finally worked and bam, we smashed our way through the closet door and out into the basement. Prayer immediately steered us into the leg of a tabletop. A corner of Mountainmilkcowisland fell on top of us and exploded everywhere. I got thrown around, hopped onto a second pedal, mashed it, thankgod it was the brake.

  “Oh, this makes no sense,” said Prayer. “Left is right, I think.”

  The basement door creaked open and we heard Bixquick snarl happily and pad down the stairs.

  “Okay, hit the gopedal again,” said Prayer, and I hit it again, and we lurched into another table leg and a bunch more of Mountainmilkcowisland collapsed to the ground, throwing up paintchips and plasterclouds.

  “Yeah, left is right,” said Prayer. “Well, that’s stupid, but I think I got it.”

  Usher peered over the sinklip, gazing down at us with terrified eyeballs. We whirligigged in his basic direction, crunching cows and barn walls. Meanwhile Bixquick stalked us through the debris.

  Next problem for Team Save Usher From Getting Eaten was, once we were under the sink, we couldn’t get the cranepod to raise.

  “Ohmygod, hit the laddercrane pic on the screen,” I yelled.

  “I’m hitting it, idiot, all that happens are flashing words,” yelled Prayer.

  Bixquick decided it was time to eat us and bat bat batted the glasstic between me and him a couple times, fortunately glasstic is a superstrong miracle substance.

  “nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnNNOWWWW,” said this huge murdercat.

  “Crap, please go away,” I begged.

  We stared at each other. My eyes were dumb stones, his were liquid evil.

  Then he flicked his head up toward Usher, froze, unfroze, waggled his butt like a maniac.

  In desperation I jumped on a third little pedal, more of a button, and the cleaningcar stopped jittering around and froze, legs tripodded out the sides and clamped onto the ground, finally the cranepod started spooling upward.

  Bixquick bounded onto the sink.

  Prayer was mashing the screen with both hands and staring up desperately at the dreamyslow spooling cranepod and there was no way it was going to get there before Usher got his spine broken or face ripped open or whatever.

  Bixquick sniffed Usher once with his ugly slugstripey head.

  Then Usher just rolled off the edge.

  He fell about a foot through the air and mostly hit the top of the cranepod. Its door was spazzing openshut openshut and he just kind of dangled there in its mouth and let it chomp the middle of his body while we pulled up the tripod legs and sucked the cranepod back toward us.

  By the time we got to the stairs the cranepod was sitting on top of us again and Usher was all the way inside limply settling himself. So we rolled up the steps in our amazing ball and past Willow and across the hallway floor with Bixquick scampering uselessly behind us, and we bashed the front door a few times until Willow yelled “UGGH FINE” and furiously just opened it for us, legblocking the scrabbly lynxcat as we rolled out into the night.

  A few blocks away we stopped and brought Usher into the main pod with us. He was mostly okay, just a couple ribs and fingers broken and a bruisedup face.

  “Than nks,” he said to Prayer.

  “Hey, ofcourse,” said Prayer.

  “Usher, why the heck are you thanking her,” I said.

  “F for savi ing m me,” he said.

  “It was her fault we all almost got killed,” I said.

  “It was your stupid fault we ended up in that house in the first place, so, more your fault than mine, so maybe you should apologize to everyone right now,” Prayer said, and I knew she was wrong but the words were true.

  “Prayer, Usher, I’m sorry I tried to get us to law school faster,” I said.

  Prayer grumped.

  “Part Two, I’m sorry I got us detoured to a house where a boy could possibly live, because, big planning mistake by me,” I added.

  “I liked that boy and guesswhat, idiot, he liked me,” she said.

  “He liked that you were getting naked at him, sure,” I said.

  “Warner, you need to shut up,” snapped my sister. “You think someone like him couldn’t like someone like me, but just shut up. You don’t even know what happened.”

  We rolled down the hillside as the darkness behind us melted pinkly. We were still high enough to get sometimes glimpses of the whole awakening city of Lossy Indica, all the way to the fogeaten beach.

  “We didn’ ’t get the th thirty m munmun,” realized Usher.

  “Also we lost the emergency munmun and all our freaking clothes,” I pointed out.

  “We got a car atleast,” Prayer said.

  It was full on morning when we got back to that middlepoor neighborhood and people were hustling and bustling, h
osing sidewalks and putting out lawnchairs and eating more soups.

  Now three littlepoors in a middlepoor cleaningcar will get some stinkface looks out on the streets and sometimes stopped and demanded, what are you doing. Lucky we had me who is pretty good with stories and lies.

  “Just a transport mission to the law school,” I kept explaining. “Lossy Clean Co had too many cars up in the hills, not enough at the law school, but not worth it to send a truck or a middlepoor, so if you’ll excuse us, thankyou and yourewelcome.”

  Mostly middlepoors nodded grumpily and said nothing, a few helpfully gave us law school directions, a few others kicked or threw us into the street and yelled not to take their jobs, so prettyquick I learned to stop saying the part about not worth it to send a middlepoor.

  By the time we got to law school the glasstic was scuffed pretty bad and the steeringpad was beeping and flashing the same word overandover.

  “BATTL L, LOW,” read Usher.

  “Battlow,” Prayer and me realized.

  I say we got to law school but it didn’t really feel like we had got to anywhere, because this law school wasn’t a big glorious parthenon. Firstofall it was a spreadout suburb of a bunch of different buildings, and secondofall they were all just grubby officeblocks and their dowdy frumpiness made me start to worry that we really didn’t have a plan and how the heck was Prayer going to meet husbands in these things.

  We asked a few people if this was for real the law school.

  “Yup,” said an old middlepoor, running a Quickstand. “You’re right in the middle of campus.”

  If these were even lawstudents it was super confusing because they were dressed all slummy. But their scale was middlerich, striding up and down the street chattering into phones and screens, briskly stepping around the middlepoors underfoot.

  “Which building are you headed to,” asked the Quickstand guy.

  “The main one,” I said.

  “Admin or lecturehall,” he asked.

  “Leckcherall,” I said.

  “Couple blocks that way,” he said, thumbing the air.

  “Sir, we might not make it because we’re battlow,” said Prayer. “I know it is a big request, but could we possibly charge up on a little of your juice?”

  He gave her a long look and breathed out of his nose and screwed up his mouth and shook his head.

  But he also said, “Fine.”

  While our car sucked his juice he sat us on his counter to chat and gave us a little tapwater and some shards of chip. His name was Paddy. Bodywise he was chubby and purply black with white curls dusting his head.

  “Don’t see too many littlepoors in Sand Dreamough,” he told us. “You seem young so let me give you a little advice. Get yourselves that education while your brains are still soft. Because once that brain hardens up you can’t learn anything new.”

  “Sure, yeah,” I said, feeling crappy because who the heck was going to give us an education.

  “If you want to scale up, you got to make yourself usefull,” said Paddy. “Nobody’s gonna scale you up just to be nice.”

  “Well that is pretty wise, and you are very kind to give us not just juice and food but also wisdom,” Prayer said.

  “You won’t get to my scale with zero education, and that’s a fact,” said Paddy. “I started about twofifth the size I am right now and I never married or had any babybrats. So all my munmun goes to my own scale and that’s it. That’s one way to scale up, real slow over time, but it’s lonely. I mean, you get used to it. But look at me! I’m so lonely and bored, I’m talking to you!”

  “For sure, yeah,” I said.

  “So sop up that education while you still can because you don’t have a whole lot of years left of being young and soppybrain,” he said. “You’ll be my age quicker than you think.”

  “If we even live that long,” I said.

  “Warner, don’t be depressing,” said Prayer.

  “No, he’s got a good point,” agreed Paddy.

  “Mister Paddy, I’ll be honest,” I said. “How do you suggest we even get an education? They don’t make schools for littlepoors.”

  “Well,” he said, and then he was quiet for a while.

  “Well, can you read,” he asked finally.

  “Nope,” I said.

  He glanced at Prayer.

  “No,” said Prayer all ashamed.

  “Dang,” said Paddy.

  “I c cc can,” said Usher.

  “And you’ve got the palsy,” said Paddy. “I was wondering, why don’t the gray one speak. Dang, dang, dang. Three of the littlest littlepoors you could find and two can’t read, third’s got the stuttershakes. Wow and dang. God help you kids. You know it won’t be easy out there. Where do you even sleep?”

  “Right now we sleep in the car,” I said.

  “Wow and dang,” he said again.

  “We’re actually pretty happy to have a car to sleep in these days,” I said.

  “Beep,” said the car, battfull.

  He lowered us into the car onebyone, hands a little sloppy from chipgrease.

  “Thank you onceagain for the juice, water, food, wisdom, advice ingeneral,” said Prayer. “Allinall, we don’t get a lot of kindnesses from people, so, we really appreciate it.”

  He twisted up his mouth again like he was in pain.

  “Well, uh,” he said. “Well, nevermind. Nevermind.”

  But we waited for him to stop neverminding.

  “Well,” he said, “what I mean to say is, uh, and just for a night, or two, but uh, you need a safe place to park while you sleep, you can park it out back of the stand.”

  “Ohmygod, thank you,” cried Prayer.

  “Just let me know beforehand, okay,” he said. “And just you three. Don’t be bringing other littles to my stand now.”

  “Ofcourse ofcourse, just us,” she said, Usher and I nodded like maniacs.

  “Don’t even tell anyone because the moment poors start thinking I’m soft and forming a charity line in front of my stand, scaring away business, that’s the moment Quickstand takes this stand away from me, allright,” he told us.

  “Nope nope nope won’t bring anyone,” said Prayer.

  “And you’d better believe if I catch a whiff of you burning weeds or rocks, just one whiff, you’re the cops’s problem and not mine anymore, you got that,” he said.

  “Dd d dd dDefinitely y not,” yelled Usher, surprising everyone into shutting up.

  “Just a couple nights,” said Paddy.

  So we slept that night in the car under Paddy’s recycling, and the next night too, and actually for a few months that was our home. Usher and me slept downstairs and Prayer slept up in the cranepod. We used the car only for shelter, went everywhere onfoot, didn’t want to risk riding around and then some grumpy middlepoor yanks us out and rides off, and then no more bedhouse for Team Prayer Usher Warner.

  Each day had the same shape.

  Step One, Paddy wakes us up, gives us crumbs of his breakfast, talks at us for pretty long about people and time and governments and churches and basically just what everything is like and wouldn’t you love to change it, well toobad, you can’t change people and that’s just the end of it.

  Step Two, we commute as a squad to the lecturehall and everybody goes to work. You can sit for free in lecturehall and they just call you an odditor. So, Usher, he just does odditing the whole day, list list listening, memorizing ideas and laws, squinting at the board which unless he gets a weirdly good seat he can’t really see it, also healing up his ribs by not moving very much.

  Prayer, she rambles around asking for carries up and down the stairs to class or hangs out on studydesks and lunchtables looking daydreamy, playing with her hair, examining her nails, hoping someone will start a convo with this cute lonely dreamer.

  Me, I try random schemes to earn munmun, all failures. Do littletasks for people, collect trash to sell, woo law school women like Prayer woos law school men. No luck.

  Step
Three, we meet at five near the doors and commute home as a squad and Paddy usually gives us a little dinner, otherwise every law school trash has pizzarinds.

  Step Four, sleep and dream.

  DREAMWORLD

  So, yes, I thought for a few days if Prayer can trap a middlerich husband maybe I can trap a middlerich wife, because my face and body are not so bad. I’m littlepoor strong, meaning ropey arms and shoulders from climbing everything all the time, plus no scars sores or blisters on my face, cherrywine skin not too different from Prayer’s, maybe a little more orange, but better thicker hair, and save the best for last, all my teeth are still in there.

  But it doesn’t matter how good teeth and hair you have, or how fast you can climb a chair. Law school women are not excited to marry a fourteenyearold littlepoor. At lecturehall mostly we talked about what was I even doing there.

  “I just chill here at times,” I would say.

  “So you don’t have like classes to go to or anything,” law school women would say.

  “I could go to the class of you,” I would say. “Today’s lecture, how to love you, or you could even just teach me how to read.”

  “We’re a little busy and stressedout for that,” they would say.

  “Would it relax your stresslevels to meet your lovematch for your whole life, and never have to worry about the question of who to love, ever again,” I would say.

  “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” they would say. “I literally can’t even begin to deal with this.”