by D. M. Guay
“Help MEEEEE!”
DeeDee appeared at the end of the chip aisle. She looked at me, covered in angry dive-bombing corn chips, and said. “Well, shit.” Then she walked away. Walked away!
This was the second time she'd thrown me to the wolves. Hot chicks could get away with murder!
“Don't leave meeeeeeee!” I meant it as an order, but it sounded like the whine of a drunk lonely man getting dumped by his long-time, live-in girlfriend. Ask me how I know.
So I swatted. Fwap. Fwap. Fwap. The chip monsters dive bombed me, then broke apart and reformed again and again. I was flailing like a hippie Phish fan hopped up on too many shrooms.
Swap. Fwap. Ow! One of the bastards scratched me. Okay. Okay. Think. Where was my taser? The answer was on the floor by the chip rack where you dropped it in absolute fear when the first Frito mosquito hell beast formed. I tucked and rolled. Yes. Got it!
I aimed at the biggest cloud of Fritos, pressed the button and the wires shot out. A couple of wires must have hit invisible bodies, because they stuck there, in the air, between corn chips. Soon the critters were swarming all over me. I hit the button again. A low, aggressive chanting in some ancient language rippled through the wires. The creatures with wires stuck in them let go of me and tried to escape, looping and twisting in the air so hard the taser nearly shook right outta my hand, but I held on tight.
Vrrrr vrrrrr vrrr vrrrrr. A really strong vibration rattled my teeth. Plewp. Plewp. Pop!
Apparently, that was the sound of the taser working. The Frito mosquitoes that I'd speared exploded. Thick, yellow guts that looked like pus and honey mustard pulsed in a blender rained down on me.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhhh! Bleeeee.” Gurgle.
Yeah. I'm not proud of the sounds I made while all this was happening. It took me by surprise, okay? And yes, if you must know, I got some in my mouth, and no, I will never forget the taste. Let's just say it had heavier notes of pus than mustard, and definitely lacked a mellow, piquant after-dinner taste.
I immediately hunched over, spitting out hell guts, mouth watering like a barf sprinkler, when the creatures that weren't stuck on a taser wire descended on me again.
“Aaaaaah!” The bastards were scratching me!
That's when Bubby slugged up to the end of the chip aisle. The Frito mosquitoes backed off and turned to Bubby, hovering in the air as they sized him up. Bubby's belly rippled and undulated and he uurrrppped like he was either about to vomit or paint a toilet with epic diarrhea.
His spiky double mandibles opened wide, and the razor-lined circular mouth appeared. Only this time, his razor teeth were rotating like dueling miter saws. The Frito mosquitoes trembled, then ran. Right for the door. DeeDee jumped in front of the glass. She had a giant Pixie Stix in each hand. She started swirling them like they were nunchucks, busting apart the trembling Frito beasts, chips flying as they ducked and dodged and tried to reform.
Damn, that girl was fine. Capital F fine. And a badass. I watched her boobs jiggle as she fought off the beasts, striped sugar straws swirling. And I mean that in the most gentlemanly, I totally respect the hell out of this chick way possible. A straggling Frito beast hit me in the face, just to remind me that now was not the time to size up DeeDee's finer physical attributes no matter how much I secretly loved her.
By sheer dumb luck, I managed to grab it. By the invisible body. OMG. Woah boy. I wish I could take out my brain and rinse the memory of that sensation straight outta my synapses. It wasn't as bad as a mouth full of pus mustard, but it was pretty gross. The thing was solid. Invisible, yes. But solid, although it felt like one of those reach your hand into the mystery bucket gross-out games at a kids' Halloween party. The thing felt slippery, like oil, hard and crunchy like bug shells, and squishy like overcooked mushy rice all at once. Dear Lord in Heaven, please erase the memories of that feeling from my brain. Amen. And did I mention the thing was super strong and shaking? I held tight and my arms jerked left and right as it tried to get away.
Then my fingers started to go numb. And my nose. Because the temperature seemed to drop another fifty degrees, which was saying something considering Bubby already had the place dialed down to freeze pop.
“Anytime now, Bubby!” DeeDee yelled as she Pixie Stixed another Frito monster straight into next week.
Bubby's razor mouth whirred, and a low, rumbling sound reverberated out of him, so deep it shook me all the way down into my insides, like my very own personalized earthquake rattling apart my intestines. Then the air around me swished and whirled. Sucking. In. The wiggling hell mosquito slipped out of my hand, flapped its Frito wings desperately against the air, then twirled and whirled, somersaulting through the air right into Bubby's whirring saw mouth. Pus mustard exploded everywhere as Bubby sucked and slurped.
The other Frito mosquitoes whipped past me, one by one, smacking me in the face, trying to get a hold on my shirt, trying to avoid their date with Bubby the Gigantic Jello Jiggler centipede's whirring razor mouth of doom. As I swatted them off of me, one by one, they landed right in Bubby's mouth, squirting pus mustard like a cheap fast-food ketchup pack that'd been rolled over by a tank.
“Help me! Help!” A tiny voice flew right at my ear. Shit. It was Kevin, somersaulting through the air, right toward Bubby's razor teeth. “Help!”
I reached out and grabbed him. He wriggled in my hand. His legs tickling my palm like a wiggly giant roach. Ew gross. But I held tight. And he held tight to me, whimpering? “Don't let go, new kid. Please don't let go.”
I held on as tight as I could, which was harder than it sounded because whatever magic suction Bubby created was an inescapable vacuum. At least for the Frito mosquitoes, powerless in flight against it, and for Kevin, who was being tugged so hard toward the saw mouth that I had to dig in my heels and pull as hard as I could against the force to keep him in my hands.
Strange. The force wasn't pulling on me, or DeeDee or any of the food or other stuff in the store. Just Kevin and the Frito mosquitoes. Everything else seemed unaffected.
I didn't have to hold onto whimpering Kevin for long. Bubby ate every single one of the Frito mosquitoes in three minutes flat, pureeing their invisible slime horror bodies into oblivion with his rotating blender blade mouth like they were honey-barbecued boneless chicken wings. When the last one had popped, and Bubby had used a long blue tongue to lick the pus guts off his cheek, he urrrrrrrppppped. Then he rubbed his belly. As if to say “Delicious.”
Blech. I swallowed down the bile. So. Gross. But cycle of life, right? One man's disgusting, mustard pus nightmare was another man-centipede's finger-licking delicious appetizer.
I could feel Kevin trembling in my hand.
“Is it over yet?” His tiny voice squeaked through my fingers.
“Yeah. It's over.”
I opened my hand. Kevin was curled up in my palm. A roach tear dripped down his cheek? Wait. Did roach faces have cheeks? He looked around, wiped away his tears, then unrolled his body and straightened himself out, running his legs over his carapace like a ruffled stock broker would smooth out his designer blazer. “Okay, dipshit. Put me back on the counter.”
“You're welcome.”
Kevin side-eyed me. Great. A roach that was too butch to say thanks. Whatever.
Bubby gurgled and vibrated. Er, talking?
“Bubby says he's sorry,” DeeDee said, Pixie Stix hanging limp in her hands. “He'll be more careful next time.”
“This is his fault?” I said it, then wondered if I should just stop asking questions and focus on staying alive (and getting rich) until Thanksgiving, as per the plan.
Bubby did the sad shoulder hunch again.
“Well, Bubby, by some weird quirk of biology, alters the gate,” she said. “He can get through anytime, day or night, even if it's switched off and closed. The problem is the gate stays open behind him unless we manually close it. Yeah...about that. We forgot the closing part. And those things got out. And attacked you. So, oops. Sorry.”
Chapter 12
Oops. Sorry? That was hardly an apology, I thought as Bubby's ice-cold, blue prehensile tongue licked the last of the mustard pus guts off my shirt and my face. He freeze-hugged me when he was finished, and gurgled what I could only guess was another apology. I looked down. I had to give him props. He was a clean plater. My clothes looked virtually untouched, like they'd never been splashed with hell beast innards. Because I'd been spit-shined by a gigantic hell centipede. Gulp. Yeah. That's fine. Totally fine. Nothing to see here.
“We'll finish SummerSlam next Friday, okay? It's probably best if you head home tonight,” DeeDee said to Bubby, who shot DeeDee his biggest droopiest sad eyes. They hugged. Then he squeezed and blurped through the beer cave door and disappeared in a flash of blue light. DeeDee flipped what looked like a light switch, only red, by the beer cave door.
“This.” She pointed at it. “Is the manual override. Flip it up and down twice to close the gate when Bubby comes in or out. Don't forget he has to be all the way in or out. If any bit of him is in the gate, it won't close. In fact, the gate will get bigger, and we definitely don't want that. Got it?”
I nodded, but I'm not sure how much really sunk in. I couldn't stop thinking about the pus guts. “What the hell were those things, anyway?”
“What things?”
Really? Did I really need to spell it out? “The...things. You know, Fritos?”
“Oh those. They were gnats.” She shrugged.
“You're kidding.”
“I wish.”
“But gnats are tiny.”
“If you hadn't noticed, gate bugs are waaaay, way bigger,” she said. “And meaner. As a rule.”
Oh God. There were giant bugs in hell. Which meant there were probably giant hell spiders. Gulp. I can't even go there. “But...why were they invisible?”
“Well, some people up here call them No See Ems. Maybe that's literally true down there? I'm not sure, honestly.”
I closed my eyes and asked another question I probably didn't want answered. “What about Kevin?”
He wasn't a giant bug, but he was a talking bug, and he was nearly sucked into Bubby's mouth with the hell gnats. I had barely felt a tug, but Kevin was full-on wrapped up in Bubby's suction powers. Something was up.
“What about him?” She looked over at the counter.
Kevin was by the register, rocking back and forth in the roach equivalent of fetal position. (Would that be larval position? Ugh. So many questions!) He was clearly traumatized. Of course, I could hear the faint guitar licks of yet another Dio song pumping out of his speakers.
“Why did he almost get sucked into Bubby's mouth like those gnats, but we didn't?”
She snatched the meat of my arm and squeezed hard. “Don't talk about Kevin.” She was forcefully whispering now. That wasn't good.
“But—”
“Shhh. Zip it.” Then, in a voice so low you nearly had to be a T-Rex to hear it, she said. “He's unauthorized, okay? Illegal. So we can't talk about him, okay?”
“Wait. Illegal?”
She kicked me in the shin. “OW!”
“Shhhhh! Not so loud.”
“But how is that even possible?”
“You know that saying 'as above, so below?'”
“Well, yeah.” I guess?
“Think about that. We're border patrol. Border patrol here in the U.S. also comes with ICE. You know, enforcement? For the stragglers and the people who slip through? I've never personally met any, but I've seen enough to know that the other world.” She pointed inside the beer cave. “Has their own version. And somebody.” She pointed at Kevin. “Might be in trouble if he's found out.”
“But. He's...obvious.” Kevin didn't exactly act like a dude in hiding. I mean, come on, his metal albums nearly made my ears bleed every night, he regularly used the intercom and he never bothered to hide or even shuffle off the counter when customers were around.
“We can't ever talk about it again, do you understand? We've said too much already,” she looked around, as if waiting for SWAT to descend on us at any second. “I don't understand exactly how it works, but words have power. They manifest things, like celestial authorities, gate guardians. Words draw attention if spoken aloud, okay? Things can be overheard. And we don't want anybody...”
She looked at Kevin, and then back at me. “To get deported or ushered through any gates they don't want to go through, okay? He's one of us. We look out for each other. That's all you need to know. Got it?”
She dug her glitter-polished nails deeper into my arm. “Got it?”
“Ow! Yeah, I got it!”
“All right, then.” She let go. “Just relax. Roll with it. Don't ask questions.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You don't know how it all works either.”
“Nope. And I don't want to.” She winked.
Okay. Full disclosure. I wasn't one of those dudes who could read a girl like a book, but I understood enough to catch that wink meant DeeDee did know something. Something I probably deserved to know, too. I was about to call her out on it when something rammed into my foot. Gah. It was the damned eight ball. Facing up. Of course. Always an opinion.
“Know that song from Frozen?” It said.
What?
The triangle turned and floated up through the red liquid again. “Let it go! Let it go-o-ooo!”
“Fine.” I huffed.
“Listen to your friend.” DeeDee pointed at eight ball.
“Oh snap,” angel eight ball said. His triangle turned. “Better not tell you now.”
“Relax. I don't need you,” she told it.
She didn't buy the ruse. Who could blame her? Magic 8-Balls usually weren't so outspoken.
“You sure don't. You aren't a hopeless man baby who refuses to embrace adulthood,” eight ball said. “This one here is a full-time job.”
The triangle turned to show a hand, making the L for Loser sign, with an arrow pointing at me.
“What? Shut up!” I kicked it across the room, and I swear I could hear it cursing me out as it rolled, hard as a bowling ball, straight into the base of the hot dog station. “Jerk.”
“Don't worry,” DeeDee said. “Spirit guides don't last long around here.”
Spirit guide? What was that supposed to mean?
I didn't get the chance to ask. The front door chimed, and Bob the Doughnut Guy stepped in, carrying a large pink box. “Sorry I'm late. We had a little, uh...incident, at the bakery, but the line's up and running again. You wanna check me in, new guy?”
“Sure.” I went behind the counter. DeeDee went back to her stool at the beer cave door. And we were instantly back to normal, as if the Frito mosquitoes never happened. Jesus. Would I ever get used to this? This place was absolutely bonkers.
Bob the Doughnut Guy looked at his watch. “Where's Bubby? It's Friday night. I thought it was time to see what the Rock is cookin'.”
He smiled and elbowed me, as if waiting for me to be in on his joke. I just stared at him, wondering what he was talking about.
“Not a wrestling fan, huh?”
I shrugged.
“Well, no accounting for taste,” he said. “Let's get these doughnuts done. I'm behind schedule.”
As usual, the case was nothing but crumbs, sold out. Except for the untouched row of glazed doughnuts with the pink frosting and rainbow sprinkles. Those ones never sold, even though they were equally, if not more delicious looking than the others. The pink ones literally called out to me, broadcasting their deliciousness, every time I walked past the case. I shouldn't have given it a second thought, but of course I did, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the doughnut case—like the rest of the Demon Mart—didn't add up. It wasn't as it seemed.
Who was buying and eating these doughnuts? Someone, obviously, and not just the guy in the track suit.
“Hey. You okay, space cadet?” Bob the Doughnut Guy snapped his fingers. Huh. He was wearing thick pink rubber gloves. Li
ke industrial heavy duty gloves, when he opened the pink delivery box. Did he always wear those?
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Don't hurt yourself.”
“I like your gloves,” I said.
He looked at them and shrugged. “New policy. New guy was careless and had an accident. We all have to wear these now. Just in case.”
Bob the Doughnut Guy used his pink rubber-clad hands to load the doughnuts into the case, the same way he did every night. He took out the empty doughnut trays, shiny gold with lace-doily edges and littered with sprinkle shrapnel. He opened the pink box, lifted a fresh, full tray of doughnuts out of it and slid it into the case. Then, he lifted another tray of fresh, new doughnuts out of the box. And another. And another, until the case was filled with gleaming, steaming fresh-from-the-bakery fried and frosted deliciousness. More than could possibly fit into a normal, six-inch deep pink box.
A bottomless box. Every night.
And the steel beer cave wall was actually a doorway to hell.
And Kevin was a talking roach.
And a gigantic blue centipede came in every Friday to watch vintage wrestling.
And why was I still here?
Oh right. Money. Or, maybe I was in a coma. Maybe I had been hit by an SUV while riding my Huffy and I was actually in the hospital unconscious dreaming all of this. If only I were that lucky.
“Welp, all done.” Bob the Doughnut Guy smacked me on the shoulder with his giant hand and said the same thing he said to me every night. “See you tomorrow, if you live that long.”
He was out the door, squealing his pink truck out of the lot a few minutes later. Then, as if on cue, the desperate guy in the track suit jogged right on into the store, slid a devil's food chocolate doughnut with chocolate frosting into a bag, threw a couple crumpled up bills at me, and ran back out into the parking lot to chow down on his doughnut like he was a rabid, desperate squirrel.
Man. His timing! What, did he just jog behind the truck all night waiting for the deliveries? Track suit guy, as usual, was a serial litterer who left his doughnut bag in the lot and ran away, jubilant, crumbs still on his lips. Wherever he worked out, I was pretty sure doughnuts weren't on his officially-sanctioned diet, but it didn't seem to hurt him. He looked even buffer than the last time I saw him. He was starting to beef up like a Pumping Iron-era Schwarzenegger.
