Paws

by Stefan Petrucha

  Jane’s eyes go wide. “I was furious! I swore revenge!”

  Dick guffaws. “She sure did! Naturally, I wasn’t going to let her one-up me, so I swore revenge, too.”

  She sighs. “As you can imagine, I wasn’t going to let him win out, so I swore double-vengeance on Dick, even though I was sick of all the swearing by then.”

  If Dick had shoulders to shrug, he would. “Looking back, I admit it sounds petty. We were a couple of confused kids stuck in one head. What did we know?”

  Dick, or Jane, or both, offers a sheepish grin.

  What do you know? Even the monsters have my DNA. It’s been one big, crazy extended family. At least it explains my attraction to Dick and Jane. It may even explain why I’ve been so drawn to the puppies, so hesitant to kill the monsters.

  It’s really not like me.

  For once, the Merc with a Mouth is speechless. Emily, too. Even the agents behind her are posing in variations of stunned-with-mouth-agape. Only Al seems to take it in stride. I nudge her with one of my squishy stumps.

  “Hmm? What’d I miss? I fall asleep again?”

  So it’s been me, all along. Deadpool flowing from Deadpool into Deadpool, making Deadpool from Deadpool for Deadpool’s sake— so that from the beginning to the very end, all there is, and all there shall ever be, is Deadpool.

  And all the while, the pounding from my unruly half-children upstairs grows louder and louder. But kids always give you headaches, don’t they?

  CHAPTER 29

  SOMETHING heavy gives way with a sound like the sledgehammer of a mythic giant smashing down on our mortal world. The echo makes it placeless to the ear, and the raining debris hides the source. That crap coming down isn’t even concrete or plaster. Old-school construction material crumbles in rocky bits and powder. This stuff has sharper edges, like shattered plastic. Even the smallest bits, still not tiny enough to count as dust, are skin-piercing and jagged.

  No one has any problem figuring out where the next crash comes from. This one gives off a concussion wave that blows out from the ramp Al and I took to get down here. The force makes waves in the puddle I’m becoming. All at once, the guttural introductions of the monster crew are no longer quite so muffled. The individual names—like Droom, Grogg, Monsteroso, and so on—seem to cancel each other out, leaving the only recognizable words a chorus:

  “I am…! I am…! I am…!”

  I am This from That, the Thing from Anywhere but Here.

  Melting must be mellowing me. A few minutes ago, I’d think saying your name over and over was totally lame. Like, who cares? Now it strikes me as sad. They’re not even repeating their own names. They’re clones, their brains a bunch of nerve endings grown in a certain way. But to them, that name’s their only memory, the only thing giving shape to their crazy wild, screaming, flesh-eating rage.

  I am, I am, I am.

  They’re announcing their existence just to prove to themselves they’re really there.

  That, I can sympathize with. Except for Orrgo the Unconquerable. That’s just stupid. Ain’t no amount of existential angst gonna save that sucker’s pride. Am I right?

  Does make me wonder what my own last words should be. I’d love to go for something cryptic, like I stare off into space the way a cat does, eyeing something invisible that the faithful assume is an entity from the Great Unknown, a spirit guide come to take me into that undiscovered country. With my last breath, I point at it and whisper:

  “You’re wearing that?”

  Then again, I talk so much, I’ve probably already said everything. Just take all my quotes, put ’em in a document file, shake it like a magic eight ball, and you’ll get everything from the meaning of life to how to replace the spring-loaded soap-dispenser door on a dishwasher.

  Oh, but my mouth’s only half the deal. Can’t forget the merc, the muscled body moving through space—fists punching, feet kicking, guns blazing, blades swinging, breaking hearts and minds, and leaving exquisite corpses in its wake. Even if I come up with the last thing I want to say, what’s the last thing I want to do? That answer’s easier. Wait for it…

  Kill something. Not just anything. Something that deserves it— something so screwed up, so beyond redemption, it’s better off dead.

  Now where, oh where, can I find something like that right now?

  The puppies cower in a corner. The agents take cover, aiming their useless weapons toward the ramp. Em screams the obvious:

  “They’re getting through!”

  There’s only one weapon that isn’t useless: the ADD. But it’s leaking—a death sentence for anyone who touches it.

  Blind Al surprises me. Face plastered with grim determination, she reaches for the weapon. I know what she must be thinking: “You’re cowards, the lot of you! We’re all going to die anyway, but I’m the only one willing to do what has to be done!”

  I call to her. “No! Al, old friend. Let me do it. I’ll take the ADD.”

  “The ADD? Crap! I thought it was a bottle of water!” She runs off, screaming, “Sweet Lord, why didn’t someone say something? What is wrong with you people?”

  Not so easy moving around with one arm and one leg, but they’re still all muscle. A tug at the table edge gets me up. I hop for the gun. Seeing me, the agents and the puppies go silent. Preston calls out, unable to conceal the emotion in her voice.

  “Deadpool…don’t.”

  “Really? I mean, it won’t be easy. A few of my internal organs feel ready to drop. But why not?”

  She swallows. “Good point.”

  I wrap my hand around the fancy spray gun. The crack isn’t oozing for the moment, but that’ll change once I start bumping with the beastie boys.

  “Get everyone out of here. Leave the kids to me. Bye, Em.”

  She says something, but the lab starts to shake again. The lights on the ramp are blocked by huge, writhing shadows. The monsters announce their arrival:

  “I am…! I am…! I am…!”

  After all, it’s not like they could sneak in.

  The last I hear from Agent Emily Preston are her commands to her agents:

  “Grab those puppies and fall back!”

  As they obey, the command is repeated: “Fall back! Fall back!”

  It’s down to me—yours truly, numero uno, the guy with his name in the title. I hop toward my destiny. Spring my way to kismet. Pogo myself to my fate. Between the falling rubble and my dying senses, I can’t see what’s going on behind me anymore. Have to trust that they’re all getting out.

  I sure see what’s ahead, though—a double-page splash, at least. Hell, I’d blow the print budget and get something bigger for the full impact, like a Playboy centerfold. I’m facing a seething, struggling mass of gargantuan life gone mad. As it bursts out toward me, there’s no way to tell where Fangu ends and Sserpo begins, if that’s Droom’s claw or Orrgo’s foot. But them’s the breaks.

  Before too many missing muscles make it impossible for me to move, before my heart melts down, I crouch and leap, soaring through the air one last time as I embrace the world’s largest monster stew, releasing the nano-catalyst as I go. I want to say I achieve satori, that special state of grace and enlightenment. That this—my last martial-arts move—is a sublime mesh of discipline, will, and form. That if nothing else, in my final moment, I achieve perfection.

  But as I fly, I fart like crazy. We’re talking major flatulence, with a smell that could knock a buzzard off a crapwagon. At least I think it’s gas. Could be my intestines.

  Doesn’t matter. Gravity’s already been defeated. As I hurtle toward several orifices whose nature and identity confound me, it’s all about momentum. No need for thought, or will, or anger. The pain manages to hang around, probably because of the liquefaction thing. But we’re the best kind of old friends, pain and I—and he always manages to surprise me.

  I spray and spray and spray. As they melt, their final cries of being echo in my skull:

  “I am.! I am.! I am.!”
<
br />   I look at the ADD. A glistening drop at the crack seems to wink at me, beckoning me into the void. Y’know, in retrospect, I could’ve just cut off my arm before the nano-catalyst spread this far, but you can’t think of everything while you’re melting. Now, part of me wants to force myself fully into my last moment, to rage against the dying of the light. But then reality, or whatever you want to call it, decides to fade.

  The hallucinations return for a greatest-hits parade, but they play out backwards. First I stand with Sophie McPherson outside school. Then I watch my dog slip from its leash. Then I’m home, waiting for the phone to ring.

  And finally, I’m on the middle-school court, up and leaping toward the hoop.

  Sophie’s watching me, squealing my name over and over in girlish delight:

  “Wade! Wade!”

  It’s just like before—the crowd, the lights, the cheering. Only it’s different.

  For starters, and this is strange, Sophie’s voice changes into a bark.

  “Yip! Yip!”

  She’s not the only girl I’ll ever love anymore. Her name isn’t even Sophie McPherson. It’s Betty Farfield, a kid from Spanish class I strong-armed into dog-sitting during the game, because Dad said if I ever left that dog alone he’d kill it.

  My puppy’s in Betty’s lap, barking like she’s calling my name.

  It’s the dog I’m looking at while I make the shot.

  Just as I remember I’d named her Sophie, the ball goes in.

  I never touch down on the squeaky gym floor. The ceiling lights wriggle and disappear. The cheers become a hum. The salty sweat on my skin feels like acid.

  I’m lying down, I think. A blurry Preston is holding the world’s longest hypodermic needle. As she babbles some high-tech gobbledygook meant to explain why I’m not dead yet, the needle enters my neck. Her voice is like a buzzing mosquito—a mosquito well versed in biochemistry, but a mosquito.

  “I used the equipment here to produce a serum that will either bind with the nano-catalyst, making it inert and allowing you to regenerate, or change you into a lemur.”

  I look down, trying to see what could possibly be left of me that still hurts, but I can’t see anything. Where’s the rest of me?

  Al stands by, tsking. “You should’ve quit while he was a head.”

  I fade back to fantasyland.

  I’m in our backyard, by Sophie’s grave, feeling bad that the marker I made looks so crude. I dug the hole myself while Dad went bowling.

  Sophie, the human version, is by my side, smelling like strawberries, her thin arm around my shoulder.

  I look at her. “Don’t know why I’d bother asking, but you were never real, were you?”

  She giggles. “You might be better off asking if I was ever really alive.”

  “Okay. Were you?”

  “No.”

  I nod at the little grave. “What about her? What about Sophie?”

  “Well, Wade, that’s the thing about being really alive—for most of us it means you can really die.”

  CHAPTER 30

  IN THE end, how do I know everything’s not a dream? Some philosophical crap, like I think therefore I am? Never put Descartes before de horse? When it comes down to it, if even a nitwit like Bob can grow a new Deadpool, what the hell does I or me mean?

  To sum up, what the #@&^ is reality?

  I’ll tell you, son, or daughter—or whatever version of me you happen to be—I’ve made a decision about that. I’ve decided that the whole what-if-life-is-all-an-illusion thing is total bull. Words only have meaning in context, and context is only the result of comparisons, so everything can’t have a context. Say everything’s a dream, and dream becomes meaningless.

  It’s as damn silly as saying everything’s real.

  Meaning, from here on in, I’ll go with whatever’s right in front of me and revise as I go along. Big monster? If I can stick my hand through it, sure, it may be a dream, or a freaking ghost. Whatever. As the GPS would say: Recalculating…recalculating…

  Look at it one way, and Preston’s deus-ex-machina maneuver worked—it saved me. Look at it another, and dying ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Living sure isn’t. It’s taken a week for me to grow back all my pieces—a very long week. Every time a nerve ending regenerates, it’s sure to let me know about it.

  No wonder I’m nuts.

  To review, Sophie the girl never existed. Sophie the dog did. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to today as blue skies, cotton clouds, and green Central Park fill my eyes, and warm wind whistles through my scar tissue.

  Tomorrow, who knows?

  On the lighter side, I’m in one beautiful, healed piece again, and the late Agent Bob’s dastardly plot for world domination has been foiled. Hard to believe, but here I am, Deadpool, perfectly content, maybe for the first time ever, hanging with Mr. Snuffles and playing catch with a certain disembodied head. Preston was so busy with the cleanup, she let me keep both of them.

  Okay, maybe I ’ported out with them, and she’s going nuts looking for us, but it’s pretty much the same thing. Besides, whose head is it anyway? Is it Dick? Is it Jane? What’s in a name?

  As for Mr. Snuffles, well, let’s just say he likes me and I like him just fine.

  Sure, people keep their distance, and the sirens will wail sooner or later, but right now everything’s perfect. And like I just said, right now is all you ever really have.

  The head screams as I toss it. “Nooo! Not again!”

  Snuffles and I move our heads in unison, tracking its arc way up in the air. Eager, he tenses, wagging his tail faster and faster, until it’s moving so quick I pick up a breeze. But he’s not going for it yet. Not Mr. Snuffles. He knows what most of humanity has yet to learn—that half the joy is anticipation.

  The head peaks and begins to fall.

  I slap my thighs. “Go get him, boy! Go!”

  Zoom! He’s off, pint-size legs moving so furiously they don’t seem to touch the ground. He hits the head so hard he goes rolling over it into the grass, snout first. Quick as a lick, he shakes it off and barks at it, like the head hit him rather than the other way around. Then he opens his puppy mouth wide, grabs it twixt eye socket and cheek, lifts, and comes trotting back to me.

  And all the while, the head is still screaming, “No! No! Sweet heaven, no!”

  Heh.

  I pick it up and rub Snuffie’s back. “Good dog! Good dog! Again? Again?”

  I know what he’s thinking, so he doesn’t have to nod, but he does. I throw it again, long and hard.

  “Please! Stoooooppppp!”

  We wait, and off goes the dog again, a streak of happy fur against the big, bad world. I tried to fight it, tried to keep my distance, to keep my heart shut—but in the end, if a dog can’t be your best friend, who can? Maybe I was cruel to Bob and Blind Al, and Preston has her family to tend to, but Mr. Snuffles? This’ll be different. I’m going to be there, stay with him, feed him, take him for walks, get him his shots, and…

  Oh, crap.

  Threw that one a little hard. It landed in Park Avenue traffic. Damn.

  “Wait! Come back, Mr. Snuffles! Come back!”

  He’s still running. He can’t hear me. I’ll be damned if there’s going to be a sad ending. Rested and whole, I streak across the field. The head hits the top of a bus just as Snuffles reaches the first lane. The roof of the bus is too high to reach, so he stops, waits patiently, and watches it roll off into the middle lane. Seeing his chance, Snuffles springs into action and races under the bus.

  Pouring it on, I reach the sidewalk in time to see him pop out on the other side.

  The falling head hits a Beemer’s windshield. The cellphone-talking driver slams on his brakes. The luxury-class sedan swerves sideways, heading straight for the dog. For a second my heart’s in my throat, terrified he’s had it. I want to grab him and protect him with my body, but there’s this big-ass bus between us.

  Fortunately, there’s a window open. I sail
through, toss my Metrocard at the driver, wave to the puzzled commuters, then crash out the other side. Hitting asphalt, I scoop a cheery Mr. Snuffles up in one hand and use the other to stab a katana into the oncoming Beemer’s passenger door. In a move that’s pretty nifty if I say so myself, I use the hilt of the blade to propel us up and over the car.

  We land safely in the crosswalk as the blinking sign turns to WALK.

  I press Mr. Snuffles against my face. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again! Don’t you ever!”

  There’s the usual screeching and crunching as a couple of cars collide. Six, maybe. But who cares? They’ve all got airbags and insurance. If they were obeying the speed limit, no one was going over thirty. And everyone obeys the speed limit, right?

  Better get out of here, though. I’m a bit on the lam, trying to keep it on the down-low.

  Too late. I’m bending over to pick up the head when a S.H.I.E.L.D. hover-flier lands a few yards ahead of me. Preston steps out, her angry-librarian face already in place.

  “Wade, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I kick the head under a hot dog cart and hide Mr. Snuffles behind my back. “Emily! What’re you doing here? Thought the job was over.”

  “It is. Just a little unfinished business.”

  “You already paid me. What else?”

  “Once we completed searching the databases at the lab, we were able to track down the remaining monster pups. I also thought you’d like to know that the collie is back at the hospice, and all those real dogs you rescued from Withers are being placed in a shelter to be adopted. There is one puppy that has to go back to its rightful owner, though. A Labrador?”

  “Another puppy? Nope. Don’t think so. Think you got them all.” I try to stuff Snuffles under my shirt, but he growls and crawls into my arms.

  I really have to have this suit washed.

  And then a certain little girl steps out from behind Preston.

  “Santa! The nice lady elf said Snuffles is all fixed. She even gave me a ride in her sled.” She leans forward and whispers, “It’s a secret, but the reindeer are invisible!”