by D. M. Guay
Chef groaned. And swayed. And aggressively sniffed the air all around him.
I sniffed, too. Hmmm. Only the smell of steaks. He must have super sonic smell. He was always sniffing something, but I only ever smelled food. I shrugged. “Man of few words. I get it. But thanks.”
I slid back into the booth, mood a thousand miles high, and dug in. Oh my God. Best steak I'd ever had. Buttery, with just a little bit of blood dribbling down my chin as I shoveled it in.
“Take it easy there, fatty,” eight ball said. “Ditch the sides and the drink. You eat too many carbs. That's why you're fat.”
I tried to ignore him, but he rolled into my arm so hard I dropped my fork. Yep. Guardian angel eight ball was officially ruining my dinner.
“Keep it up and that little pouch of yours will go full gut.”
Gah. Shut up! But he didn't.
“Look. I have a job to do. I can't save your ass if you're too fat and out of shape to run from danger.”
I kept eating, trying to ignore the damned ball as it rolled around, throwing shade all over me. The triangle would flatten, and I'd look away. Nope. Not interested in your opinion. So of course it bumped the fork out of my hand again, and I saw “You know a free gym membership comes with this job, right?”
Then he hit my arm again and said, “Did you see Zombieland? Rule No. 1: Cardio. Sage advice.”
Halfway through my second steak, a fat envelope with “Lloyd's weekly pay” written on the front magically materialized on the table. I opened it, and my heart skipped. A wad of cash was inside. I counted it. Twenty five hundred bucks. For one week? I counted it three more times. I couldn't believe it. This was like, Silicon Valley money, not Columbus, Ohio, corner store community-college dropout money. Woot! I definitely pumped my fist up and down a few times.
The movement must have caught Chef's attention because he stepped closer to me, still silently sniffing. I sniffed my arm pit. Was it me he kept sniffing? I smelled like Old Spice. Oh well.
Who cared? Time to celebrate. Finally, sticking around was paying off. This batch of cash was gonna loosen the debt noose. I could pay off the late cable bill and kill the collection calls. Get my car up and running again. And if there was any money left, I was gonna get a shiny new, working smartphone.
“Smartphones are a waste of $$$,” eight ball said.
Who asked you?
“Seriously. Y'all are like, glued to those things. Do you know how many idiots end up here because they fell off a cliff taking selfies? We got a guy in here last week who fell into a dam of rabid beavers while he was playing Pokemon Go. Literally rabid beavers. He certainly caught 'em all. All the rabies virion, that is. You ask me, we shouldn't have let him in. We need to charge a dumbass penalty.”
Jesus Christ, shut up.
“It's not His fault y'all are stupid. Well, okay, maybe it's a little bit His fault. God thought you'd be more fun to watch if we sprinkled a bit of dumb into the species, and that's totally true. But seriously, if you walk in front of an eighteen wheeler while tweeting, you kinda need to be punished for that.”
I can't deal. I'm going to work. Can you please shut up until morning?
“Can you not do something stupid until morning?”
Okay then. You leave me no choice. I took one last bite of steak and put my money and the eight ball in my locker and bolted it shut—even though I knew the angel would find his way outta there somehow.
I waddled out of the employee lounge. Don't judge. Let's see how fast you walk with two twelve-ounce ribeyes in your belly. And despite the constant rabble of angel, for the first time in a long time, I felt deep down that maybe it was all gonna work out. Maybe it was the two delicious steaks. Or, maybe it was the wad of fat cash in my locker. Okay, yeah it was the money. People say money doesn't bring happiness, but that fat envelope sure did make me feel like my life might be on the upswing. That maybe DeeDee was right: This was my chance to make right and do good. This was my chance to matter. And get out of debt. It was one thing to know Demon Mart paid well, but it was an entirely different thing to actually see it all in cash.
Unfortunately, my high didn't last. I stepped out into the store and nearly froze into a Lloydcicle. Brrrr. It was so cold, it felt like the thermostat was set on Arctic Circle. My breath formed an icy white cloud as I exhaled. And there was a...Oh. Shit. We're doomed. A gigantic icy blue centipede was perusing the chip aisle. And I mean giant. He was twenty feet long at least, and hunching nearly in half so he could fit in the building, bumping up the acoustic ceiling tiles as he moved. He looked like he was made of solid blue raspberry gelatin. My knees turned to noodles. He was in the book. What was his name? Bongo? No. Bongala. Wait. “Bobura!” I yelled, emboldened by steaks and fat cash. “Stop right there!”
The blob undulated and blurped around to face me, moving like a behemoth Jello jiggler. “Get back in the cave, jerk!”
Well, that was a mistake. He didn't move.
“Uh, all right then.” I tried to save face, faking brave. “You give me no choice but to kick your butt straight back to hell!”
“Hi. Ya!” It sounded way cooler when DeeDee said it, but I was committed now. So, I did my best Bruce Lee kick, to show it I was serious. He hissed at me, and his four huge insect mandible things with sharp spikes on the ends opened up to reveal a circular, razor-lined mouth. His belly rolled and rumbled, then he spit something that looked like gelled water at me.
“Duck! It's poison!” DeeDee flew threw the air. Thank God. She's saving me!
Well, kind of. She karate chopped me right in the leg, and I dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the pyramid of two-liter pop bottles behind me. The clear gooey poison water splatted the wall.
Gah. My leg. Ouch. Focus, Lloyd, Focus. Blue centipede monster. I nabbed the closest thing to me and prepared to strike. Unfortunately, that was a two-liter of Mountain Dew Code Red. Welp. It'd have to do. I shook it, fast and hard, and popped the top. The cap shot off, hitting Bobura smack between his eyes. Four. White. Eyes.
“Raaaahr.” He grumbled and the building shook. The red stream of pressurized soda arched through the air and right into his open mouth.
Glug. Glug. Glug. He drank it all down. “Uuuuuuurrrrrpppppp.”
Yep. He burped. Hard enough that his burp rattled the slushy machines. Welp. Guess I wasn't going to save the day with food this time. Plan B. His belly rumbled, his mandibles spread wide. Crap. He was gonna poison glob me again. I was scrambling around for another weapon when DeeDee jumped between us.
“Okay you two, cut it out.” DeeDee had her arms out as if to hold us both back.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” She snapped.
“Putting him back,” I said. “He's not allowed. Look at him.”
His razor mouth frowned. (Razor-lined death sadness? Huh. Interesting.) His four beady white eyes with little hairs around them drooped at the edges like they belonged to the biggest, saddest, ugliest Golden Retriever.
“He's not a threat, Lloyd,” DeeDee said. “Look at him.”
“I am. He's a giant gummy centipede!”
DeeDee huffed. “Look closer.”
He had six bags of Smart Pop popcorn dangling from three pairs of centipede arms. And a red Netflix DVD-by-mail envelope in another...could I call it a hand? No. Grabber spiky thing. Dude looked like he'd just smoked weed and needed some munchies. And he looked sad. Maybe. Harmless? No way. He did spit poison at me a minute ago.
“You said they can't come out unless they look like people.” I pointed at blob guy and his—could you call them shoulders?—seemed to slump even more, like I'd hurt his feelings. He blooped the top part of his blob so he could look over at DeeDee and give her the full-on sad eyes.
“It's okay, Bubby,” DeeDee said. “He doesn't know. He's new.”
Wow. This dude was really pulling her strings.
“Lloyd, Bubby has never once tried to hurt anyone. He comes up every Friday to watch a DVD a
nd eat popcorn.”
“Why doesn't he do that at...home?” Yeah, so it sounded weird to call hell “home” out loud.
“Netflix doesn't stream or deliver to hell,” she said. “Besides, his roommate is a TV hog, so I've got a set up for him here, see?”
She pulled me to the end of the row and pointed to a giant flat screen TV bolted high on the wall in the back right corner of the store. A black leather Barcalounger the size of a Honda minivan sat in front of it.
“Has that been there the whole time?” I asked.
“Yeah, but the TV's not usually on.”
Showed you how much I paid attention to my surroundings.
“The chair isn't usually here, though. He brings that with him. I let him watch here because he doesn't bother anyone, and I feel bad for him because he can't open the DVD envelopes. He doesn't have any fingers.” She wiggled hers for effect.
Bubby had slugged up behind us so silently I didn't know he was there until his ice breath nearly frostbit the top of my head. He put a centipede claw arm around my shoulder and hugged me? Oh Jesus.
He urrrrrrp blooped and squeaked, and the noises rumbled my insides and rattled the glass beer bottles inside of the reach-in cooler.
“Bubby says he's sorry,” DeeDee said. She grabbed the Netflix envelope out of his hand. “So, Bubby, what are we watching tonight?”
She opened it and slid out the disc. “Woah. Rock Versus Brock SummerSlam 2002? Classic! Excellent choice.”
She high fived one of Bubby's centipede...arms? Hands? Spikes? Whatever. He jiggled in excitement. “He's a big Dwayne Johnson fan,” DeeDee said to me. “Huge. But aren't we all?”
Oh. Hell. No.
Not about Dwayne Johnson, what's not to love? Hell no on the iceberg centipede part. I brushed his spiky arm bit off my shoulder. I was not comfortable watching wrestling with a twenty-foot tall, six-foot wide see-through gelatinous blue centipede from hell, okay? Did I mention that he, and all the air around him, was Antarctica-level freezing cold, too? “Can't he just pay-per-view that at home?”
“Uh, no. He likes The Rock, so that was back when WWE was WWF. That was pay-per-view, like, two decades ago. DVD is the easiest way to get it now.”
Bubby slugged past me and settled into his Barcalounger. DeeDee followed him, put the disc into the DVD player then fiddled with the remote. “Lloyd, can you man the beer cave until I get Bubby set up?”
“Fine,” I sighed. Yep. I'd lost this round. The giant freezing see-through jelly centipede was staying. I plopped down on the wood stool by the beer cave door. I could see a flicker of blue light reflected on the steel cooler wall. Great. Something was coming through. Where was that scanner thing?
I turned to the black cabinet behind me. (You know, the one DeeDee pulled a flaming sword out of to slay tentacle dude on the night I shoulda run on outta here and never looked back? Yeah, that one.) It was more like a black safe. The door was heavy, thick, some sort of indestructible metal with a large silver handle. I pressed it down, and the door opened. It was unlocked. And Hole. Eee. Crap. The stuff that was in there. So weird.
The once-flaming sword hung on its own mount. It was bigger than I remembered, at least a yard long, shimmering and gold. Real gold. But not on fire. Hmmm. Did you have to press a button to turn on the fire, kinda like a propane grill? There was a sharp gold dagger, with a curved blade like a bowie knife. There were rows and rows of sparkling gold knives, spears and arrows, many with gemstones embedded in the handles. Wow. The stuff in this case had to be worth millions.
I heard the sound of a stadium crowd roaring behind me. Rock vs Brock. So this was my life now. Friday date night with a giant Jello centipede from hell. Think about the fat wad of cash in your locker, Lloyd. Think about the money! Okay. Okay. I will.
The sword wasn't the only weird thing in the cabinet. A swirly purple, red and gold gourd, with a long thin neck and a big round bottom, sat in a glass case next to a glazed doughnut with pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. The case was marked “Break glass in case of emergency.” What was up with those damned doughnuts?
The cabinet held an odd assortment of CDs, too, like a grandma and a middle-aged metal head had combined their record collections. Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas 1969. Black Sabbath, The Dio Years. Definitely Kevin's. Zebra. Michael Bolton. I wondered if mullet ballad white guy knew his music could ensnare demons? Maybe I should write him a fan letter to let him know.
And, there was the angel eight ball. It rolled over. “Hey, stupid. When's it gonna sink in? You can't ditch me. Just for that, I'm not gonna tell you something snuck out of the gate. Oh wait...oops. I told you, didn't I?”
The triangle turned again. “Well, good luck. Try not to die. I need this job.”
Oh God. Snuck out? My instant panic button dialed up to eleven.
There was a row of tasers and scanner thingies in the safe. Allrighty then. I grabbed a taser and waited by the beer cave door, once again in my best imitation Bruce Lee fighting stance. Well, okay if Bruce Lee were a six-foot tall white dude with shaggy hair and a little gut.
“Ha! A little gut?” Eight ball said. “Keep telling yourself that, buddy.”
Jerk. Anyway, the blue light inside the cave still faintly flickered. But nobody. No thing? Had come out. Huh. Was that gate supposed to stay open like that?
I cracked the door and stuck my head in. The swirly vortex was tiny. Maybe a foot across. The whole wall had opened up when Morty popped through in his leisure suit. I didn't see any shadow forming to get through it either. I scanned the beer stacks. Nothing moved. Not so much as a shadow. No roaches. No hot demon strippers. No giant red devil hands. Maybe the angel was dicking me around.
That's when I heard...crinkling? A noise like someone squeezing potato chip bags. I could see the entire chip row from the beer cave door. Nothing looked weird. Just a row of Doritos, Conn's, Cheetos, Tostitos. You know, chips.
Crinkle. Crinkle. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
What the...The shiny plastic fronts of a few bags of chips dented in slightly, as if someone was casually running their hand across them. Their invisible hand. Gulp.
Crunch. Crunch. Crinkle.
I steeled myself and tiptoed over to the rack to investigate.
Crinkle. Crinkle. Crinkle.
I followed the rumpling chip bags. My pulse was pumping oh, about a zillion times a minute by this point. I still held onto a thin string of hope that angel eight ball was lying. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe a heat vent turned on and the air was hitting the bags. Yeah. That's it. DeeDee and the book didn't say anything about invisible creatures. They all had bodies, right?
That's when a bag of Fritos floated up into the air.
“Uh, DeeDee?” My voice cracked. Way to be manly in the face of danger, Lloyd.
“Yeah?” She called. The TV crowd erupted in applause. “Woah! Take that!”
“DeeDee?”
A second Fritos bag levitated in front of me. And a third. Gulp. Stay calm, Lloyd. Maybe whatever it was just wanted to make walking tacos. I reached out to the bag, a stupid move in retrospect, to see if it was an actual thing with an invisible body or just a haunted bag of floating ghost Fritos. You can probably guess what happened next. Yep. My hand ran smack into a squiggly nothing. Okay, a something. Something invisible. And squiggly, holding up the bag. “Oh crap.”
Thwap. A party-sized bag of Fritos smacked me square in the face.
The next thing I knew, something had knocked my legs out from under me. I landed flat on my back on the floor, and all the air went out of my lungs. A dozen party-sized bag of Fritos rose into the air and then began to smack me across the face and body, and man it hurt! Dude, there were some sharp pointy edges on those bags!
Great. There was an invisible creature loose in the store, and it was a total jerk. Then the bags ripped open one by one, and to be frank, I opened my mouth hoping to catch at least one Frito as it fell. They're salty and delicious. Plus, you know, demon fighting fuel.
/> But no. The Fritos, like the bags, defied gravity, hovering for a moment in the air, before they began to swirl in a circle. The chip rack shook and all of the Frito bags popped into the air, splitting open, each Frito joining the ones already floating above me. I'll give this critter props. It knew what its favorite snack food was, and it was sticking with it. Now if that wasn't brand loyalty, I didn't know what was.
The Fritos kept on swirling, slowly gathering into distinct clumps. A line of Fritos formed what looked like a leg. An oval that looked like a wing. Oh. No. It was making a body. Out of Fritos. Welp. I'd never be able to eat one of those ever again.
“DeeDee,” I yelled as I scrambled to my feet.
“What?” she snipped. “Wait? Triple H unsanctioned street fight? Bubby, this episode is gold!”
“Uh, DeeDee.” Dude. Was she seriously still talking about wrestling? “How do we fight off a monster made of Fritos?”
“Wait. What?”
“Something came through the gate and it's making a body out of Fritos.” Hold up. “Make that bodies, plural.”
A half dozen flying things, with long legs, wings, and oh crap, long bitey-looking snouts were forming out of Fritos in the air above me. And they were nipping at each other, eating Fritos off of each others' wings and legs. Okay. They really did like salty snacks. Wait. Was I a salty snack?
“You're kidding,” DeeDee said.
“I wish.” My voice got louder and more forceful. I slowly backed away from the growing army of winged Frito mosquitoes from hell. “Hurry up, there's more than one!”
Unfortunately, my snipping at DeeDee got their attention. They stopped nibbling on each other and all turned their Frito muzzles in my direction, hovering there for a second as if sizing me up. The biggest one swooped at me. I lunged. The other Frito mosquitoes followed the leader, dive bombing me. I smacked one and the Fritos broke apart, only to reform into a foot-long mosquito hell beast just out of my reach. Another one jumped onto my shirt and jabbed its Frito beak into my neck. Gah! I punched it away, and it reformed again. In a split second, they were all on me and I was fwapping Frito beasts left and right.
