by D. M. Guay
“Before I forget. Special order.” Bob the Doughnut Guy pulled out a box holding a single glazed with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. He handed it to me. “Oops. My bad. Two for Doc today.”
His arm disappeared, elbow deep, into the Dolly's box again. He handed me a second small box containing the same kind of doughnut. “The natives must be restless over at the Pawn Shop, huh?”
He winked. Winked! Gulp. I'd seen what this doughnut could do. The real question was why on earth did Doc need two of them? Wait. No. Don't answer. Forget I asked.
“Your buddy's back.” Kevin's face pressed against the window, watching the puffed-up guy in the tracksuit yank on the back door of the Dolly's truck like it was his job. “He really wants a doughnut.”
“What? Not again!” Bob the Doughnut Guy stomped over to the door.
I was still hungry, so I followed him as far as my combo meal and took another bite of my burger, determined to give it one more chance. It didn't taste any better.
Before he ran outside to confront the puffed-up jogger, he turned back to me and said, “Let me know what y'all think of the buns. Dolly's is baking those for Monster Burger now.”
Pfooooooot. Yep. I spit that burger straight out of my mouth. Zombie fry cooks. Buns forged in the devil's oven. And no salt? A man could only bear so much.
Kevin wasn't deterred. He ate his combo down to crumbs. “I swear it tastes better because it's free. Urrrrp.”
Yep. He burped.
As we watched the pink Dolly's van peel out of the parking lot, addicted jogger running full speed behind it, a green light flashed above Kevin and a gigantic red hand with long black nails emerged. I froze with fear. I thought it was going to grab Kevin, but it reached right past him, aiming for my food.
“Aw, hell no!” Kevin bit down on the hand just as it descended on my fries. “Get a job, you no good freeloader.”
Yep. That red monstrous hand belonged to Kevin's roommate. And from the size of that fist and the deep red of his skin, I could honestly say I prayed Kevin would never invite me over.
“Don't worry, kid,” he said. “I won't.”
The hand flinched and pulled back inside the portal, but relief was short lived. Another portal opened by the heat vent on the ceiling above us, and two red hands poked out and started rubbing together, warming themselves.
“See? This is why I'm saving up for my own place. I'm the only one with a job. The jerks can't afford to turn the heat on, so now I gotta put up with this shit. Freeloaders. All of them!” He screamed at the hands. “I can survive down to zero, you bastard. And I'll do it. I ain't paying the heating bill! Get a jooooooob!”
“How many roommates do you have?”
Kevin put a leg up. “Nope. Not talking about it. Puts me in a bad mood.”
Wow. If this wasn't his “bad” mood, I'd hate to see what was.
The red hand fiddled with the lever, opening the vent wider. Hot wind gushed down on us.
“That's it. Stop messing with my stuff. Get outta here.” Kevin scuttled up the wall, across the ceiling and jumped onto the hands. “Faust ain't paying to warm your dumb ass up. You got blankets, use 'em. Get a job if you want heat!”
A second later, three dirty pixies fell out of that same heat vent. They knocked Kevin off the giant red hands, and he went splat, belly up, legs kicking, in his ketchup lagoon. “You gotta be kidding me. Help me up, kid.”
I threw him a french fry life preserver. He hopped up, drenched in ketchup, and immediately went into full Karate chop mode. But the pixies didn't want Kevin. They flew right for the doughnut case. They pressed their dirty naked little bodies against the Plexiglas and pounded and scratched their little fists, determined to get in.
“Holy shit!” Kevin screamed, unfurled his tiny wings, and bzzzzzz roach-flew across the counter. He immediately got into a fistfight with a pixie. “Get over here, kid! Keep 'em away from the devil's food, no matter what. If they're twenty foot tall, we're toast. You can kiss your fat ass good byyyyyyyyyye. Hi ya!”
Oh. I hadn't even thought of that. Nope. I definitely didn't want the pixies to eat the doughnuts, so I waved my arms, trying to swat them away. Of course, I hit nothing. Again. Those pixies were wily. I did get poked in the eye a couple times, though.
That's when DeeDee stepped through the stockroom door, Larry's rancid lunch in hand. “Kev. I caught your roommate turning up the thermostat. He set it to 130 degrees. Can you tell him to cut it out?” She stopped when she saw us swatting and flailing around the doughnut case. “Uh, what are you guys doing?”
“Pixies!” I squeaked. “Doughnuts! Help!”
That pretty much summed it up.
DeeDee sat a heaping tray of something wholly unappetizing next to Larry. Seriously. It was pink and dull brown and green all mixed together. Blech. She walked over and flipped a lever on the doughnut case. “There. Now they can't get in.”
“What?”
“The case locks. I thought you knew.”
Even Kevin looked surprised.
Then, DeeDee lifted one hand, watched the pixies hawklike for a minute or two, and slapped her fist down. By the time it hit the counter, she had grabbed all three pixies. They cursed and spat, and one bit her with its dirty yellow fangs. “Ouch.” She shook them so hard they squeaked, growling, “I told you, you can't stay here. There's a cemetery on the other side of Monster Burger with plenty of nesting spots. Go live there.”
She stomped right through the front door and dropped the pixies on the sidewalk. They fluttered up and around her and away as she yelled something at them and pointed at Monster Burger.
Another small green portal opened above the remains of my burger and fries. A red hand emerged, grabbed the corner of the burger wrapper, pulled in my combo, and disappeared.
“Are you kidding me? Get a job!” Kevin screeched, but it was too late. That red monster hand was long gone. “Know what? I'm done. Hold the fort. I'm gonna give that jerk a piece of my mind. I'll be right back.”
Kevin somersaulted through the air and landed gracefully on the counter. He stood up, smoothed himself out, and crinked his neck back and forth like he was getting ready for a fight. He was in the zone. Until he glanced at the doughnut case. “Are you shittin' me?” He pressed his face against the Plexiglas “No good...recking freckin...God damn pumpkin spice! Hand me the tongs, kid.”
I did.
“Unlock the case. I'm going in.”
I did, and he did. With some sort of rage-fueled super-roach strength, he tonged those two pumpkins spice fritters out of the case. “Give me a hand with these, kid.”
“I'm not touching those!”
“Fine.” He stacked those fritters on top of each other and pushed them all the way to the end of the counter, through the cheap cigarette carousels, onto the floor.
They, and Kevin, landed by DeeDee's boot when she stepped back in. “Uh, do I want to know what you're doing?”
“Hold the door.” As Kevin pushed those pumpkin spice fritters across the linoleum, I heard grunting. And lots of potty words, sprinkled in with some normal words, including, “No...gerd. Dang. Soccer mom. Pumpkin. Spice. Killing. Civilization. Marketing. Sheep. Basic. No!”
DeeDee and I watched Kevin push those pumpkin spice fritters outside onto the sidewalk. Then he jumped up and down on top of them, cursing Bob the Doughnut Guy's good name. When he had finished, he slipped through the doorjamb, put one leg up and looked away, signaling he never wanted to speak of it again.
Alrighty then. Nothing to see here.
“Okay. I'm going to feed Larry,” DeeDee said. She tilted her head toward Kevin. “Good luck with that.”
DeeDee did feed Larry. And the unholy stench of rancid meat he called dinner filled the store. Kevin was having none of it. “Hey, sweetheart! Can you feed that overgrown melon a little faster? I can smell that rotten garbage all the way over here. Geesh.” He held his nose. “I'm sensitive, remember? Thanks to my delicate condition.”
; I looked at him. He looked at me. “Because I'm a roach. Duh.”
Oh. Silly me.
“It takes as long as it takes, Kevin. You know that.” DeeDee pulled on a pair of elbow length rubber gloves and started spoon feeding rotten meat to each of the baby Larries. “Hey. While the store's empty, can we talk? Something's bothering me.”
“That time of the month?” Kevin said. “Heh heh.”
My jaw dropped. Oh, man. Even I, who knew nothing about women, knew enough not to say that.
“Very funny.” She didn't mean it. “Monster Burger has a zombie crew. Doesn't that seem odd? You have to be pretty high level to get a zombie permit. They don't hand those out to just anyone.”
Kevin shrugged. “There's only one zombie plant in this region and Steve runs a tight ship. His shit's always in order. Well, except for mucking up my store. Other than that, he's always by the book, T's crossed 'n' shit.”
“Yes. But who owns Monster Burger? Mr. Jimmy couldn't get zombies, and he tried for years.”
Oh, snap. Mr. Jimmy was in on it.
Speaking of snap, Big Larry leaned over and crunched down on that rotten meat. He ate all of it right out of DeeDee's hands, tray and all. “Oof. Careful there, Larry. I asked Doc and Henrietta. They didn't buy it, and they don't know who did. If it were Faust, wouldn't he have told us? He's the shadow boss in this sector. He owns the only zombie permit.”
“Look, Faust probably bought Monster Burger the second the ink dried on Mr. Jimmy's death certificate,” Kevin said. “You need to unbunch your panties. Faust protects his interests and his gates. If he didn't buy it, he knows who did. It's all good. You'll see. Now, why don't you grab me one of my back-up combo meals? I'm still hungry.”
Chapter 12
Two days off work. Thank God. I stepped in the front door and dropped my keys in the bowl. I sighed, relieved. Headless dudes? Hell plants? It had been a heck of a shift.
It was a little before seven in the morning, and the downstairs smelled like coffee. Mom stood in the kitchen in her fuzzy bathrobe with her back to me. “Morning, Mom.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.” She didn't turn around. She just swayed back and forth, very slowly.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “Mom?”
“Uuuuuuuh.”
Weird. I know she heard me come in. My Mom had ears like a bat. Once, she pinpointed the exact moment Big Dan and I opened a bag of cheese puffs in the basement with a single crunch, mouth closed, even though she was in her bedroom on the second floor. (For the record I wasn't allowed to eat in the basement anymore, not since the ants/exterminator incident, but let's never speak of that ever again.)
I walked up behind her, slowly. She didn't notice. She was hunched so far over her forehead was nearly on top of the coffee machine. She moaned. “Uuuuuuuuuuuh.”
Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. What if—? Oh, God. She sounded just like the cleaning crew. The zombie cleaning crew. What if one got out? What if it got her? What if she'd turned? “Mom?”
My voice shook. I blinked back a tear and tapped her shoulder. Her head tilted back, oh so slowly, then she groaned and shuffled her slipper-clad feet around to face me. Her eyes were raccoon slits, puffy and red and streaked with the remains of poorly washed off mascara. Her skin was pale. “Uuuuh.”
Nooooooo! They got my Mom! It's not fair. I did everything you asked, God! Why are you punishing me!
“Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuooooooohi honey,” Mom said.
Praise Jesus! False alarm. Not a zombie. Just plain old Mom, comatose by the coffeepot, desperately waiting for it to finish brewing. Did I mention she wasn't a morning person?
She yawned and her breath smelled like a camel had taken a dump in her mouth. “Oof. Sorry, honey.” She waved her hand in front of her face, in a vain attempt to waft the camel away. “Book club decided to meet at a wine bar last night. I'm never drinking on a week night ever again.”
She yawned again. “Howa wah wooook?”
“Oh. It was fine.” No one died, and the world didn't end. I count that as a win.
She managed to open her eyes partway, but only by raising her eyebrows up to her hairline. She saw me and seemed confused. “Uuuuuh...How did you get all this dirt on you?” She put a fingernail on my shirt and started scratching chunks of Larry's potting mix off my chest.
I shrugged and said, “I'm going to bed.”
“Okay, honey. I put your mail and your clean laundry in your room.”
“Thanks.” I turned to go.
“Uuuuuh, while I'm thinking of it. Can you clean your closet? It sounds crazy, but I swear I heard something rooting around in the bottom. It sounded like grunting! Little Scooter next door lost his hamster. Maybe it's hiding at our house?”
I froze. Grunting? That was no hamster. I knew who—or rather what—that was.
The coffee maker beep beep beeped. “Oh, thank God!” Mom descended on the pot like a caffeine-seeking missile, so desperate and elated she no longer cared about the mystery creature in my closet.
Phew.
I tried to play it cool, but as soon as I rounded the stairs and Mom couldn't see me, I ran to my room, taking the stairs two by two. Sure enough, the second I stepped in I heard snorts that reminded me of the sound cartoon pigs make when they root around in muck.
“Appropriate, given the state of your closet.” Angel eight ball lay in a short round basket of clean folded laundry. Well, it was clean. Gertrude was asleep in the middle, rolled up around angel eight ball, shedding, and snore-drooling all over my “D.A.R.E. To resist drugs. Those are mine.” T-shirt.
Ahem. Yeah. I should probably get rid of that shirt, now that I think about it. It's not helping the Mom situation.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” angel eight ball said. “You might want to get on that.”
Groan. The nagging never stops, does it?
“I could nag you from now until the day you die. Literally. I have an eternity. Also literally. Now go see why your employee manual is making weird noises.”
“Hell no. I'm not touching that demon book.”
“You really don't want your Mom to find it first.”
Shoot. He had me there. No. No, I did not. If paying my bills made her think I dealt drugs, that book would induce full on satanic panic. Nope. Nope. And more nope.
Gruuuubbble ffffttt. Splurrrrrppppp.
Jesus. What was it doing in there?
I grabbed an old carnival toy off my dresser, one of those foot-long sticks with a bendable white hand on the end, bent into a middle finger. Because I was that kid. Hey. I won it when I was eleven. Cut me some slack. I slunk to the closet, steeling my nerves.
Gruuuubbble ffffttt. Splurrrrrppppp.
Seriously. What kind of book grunted like an animal? The kind no reasonable person would read, I'll tell you that. I carefully slid the closet door open. Clothes were piled up inside. Mostly stuff that had fallen off the hangers that I'd never bothered to put back. Plus the stray socks I threw in every time Mom told me to clean my room. Come on. Don't act surprised. We all know a clear floor and a closed door = good enough to fool Mom.
My pile of dirty socks and clothes moved up and down and side to side. The snuffling came from underneath. I poked the wiggling pile with my middle finger—the toy one—and the wiggling lump moved to the right.
Ruuuurh?
I poked it again, and it wiggled to the left.
Roh ruuuurh?
Jesus. The damned thing sounded like Scooby Doo under there.
It stopped moving. I mustered the nerve to lift up a corner of the pile and look underneath. My employee manual was near the bottom, in a hobo cave it had made out of my old winter coat and some cardboard game boxes. It had the corner of a long-abandoned Candy Land board in its mouth. It had nearly chewed the Licorice Lagoon down to shreds. A stray beam of sunlight hit the book, and it froze, confused, like it suddenly realized the closet door was open. I swear it looked up at me. I mean, I'm guessing. Books don't technica
lly have eyeballs, but it sure felt like it was looking at me.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Yep. It growled. “Uh, are you okay in there?”
Grrrrrrrrr. The pages opened, and it bit the rubber hand off the end of my stick.
“Nope.” I closed the door and walked away.
“Holy moly, it's gone feral,” Angel eight ball said. “I have never seen a book do that before, and I've been around since day two. THE day two. Tell you what. I'll give you a pass on cleaning the closet if you put the laundry away before this three-legged disaster pees all over it.”
Angel eight ball rolled out of the basket and plunked onto the floor.
“Fine.” I shooed Gertrude out of the basket. It didn't go well. She got her leg stump stuck in the basket mesh and was so fat her back legs couldn't get enough leverage to push her rotund body up and out. After a few minutes, I mercy lifted her onto the floor, lest she pee all over everything from the strain. She really did have a weak bladder.
I plopped her on the floor, and she waddled away. Turns out she'd been sleeping on my mail, which was an oversized postcard from my community college that said, “When are you coming back? We miss you!” Mom had stuck a Post-it note to the front with a question mark on it. Ugh. Under that was a book with a full-on handwritten note taped to the cover. It said, “You can always talk to us. No matter what. Make good choices, honey. We love you very much. Mom.”
What the...? I lifted the note. The book title was It's Brave to Say No. Drug Use and You.
“Called it,” angel eight ball said. “She thinks you're doing drugs.”
“Shut up!” I snipped. “She does not!”
But she totally did.
His triangle floated across the top edge of the plastic window, like he was rolling his eyes at me. “Silly me. You're right. I'm sure she buys that book for everyone.”
Chapter 13