by D. M. Guay
A flash of movement outside caught my eye. I looked out through the jagged remains of the front window. Tristan was running straight at the store, full speed. Oh. My. God. Did he want to get eaten?
Morty, once again in human form, was chasing him. He struggled to catch up without the use of his now-hidden wings. I glanced back at the gate. Fish guy—uh, girl—still had enough mouth out of the gate to eat a balled-up Tristan like he was a honey barbecue boneless chicken wing if she wanted to badly enough.
“Kevin! Loverboy's coming back!”
Kevin's roach head swiveled back to look at me. “You're kidding.”
“I'm serious!”
Kevin let go of Bizo and moved toward the door, ready to block it with his butt like he had before, but he was too late. Tristan slid right back in through the front door like a bacon-wrapped scallop served on a silver tray at a fancy cocktail party.
Morty ran in soon after, leaning on the door frame, panting. “Sorry y'all. I tried. But this one's real stupid.”
“I am not stupid! I'm saving my one true love from an earthquake!” Tristan grabbed DeeDee, who was tiptoeing up to Bizo, unnoticed until now.
“You seemed to forget all about her when you were up to your eyeballs in titties,” Morty said.
“Yeah, well, then I saw a pair that looked like hers,” Tristan said.
Gah! I hated him!
Bizo's face went all smug. He shot octopus guy a look and pumped one tentacle up and down as if to say “Oh yeah. Back in business!”
While Bizo was distracted, DeeDee pushed Tristan aside, then sunk her hand right into Bizo's lime Jello gut. After some serious yanking, she managed to get her arm back out. It was dark, so it was hard to see, but I swear I saw a pack of Pyramid 20s and something yellow next to the sword in his gut. DeeDee straightened her name tag and said, “Have a nice day.” Then she backed away from him, nervously looking up at the hole in the ceiling.
Tristan whirled around and tried to grab DeeDee again. “Come on, honey. It's not safe here.”
“Trist. Run,” she said.
The floor was undulating. The octopus was closing in on Tristan. She pushed him toward the exit. “I'll be right behind you. Go. Go!”
“Okay, babe.” Smugly confident, he took a step toward the door, but it was too late. A tentacle wound around his leg and whipped him up through the air. He screamed. “Aaaaaaaahhhhh! Another tremor! Aftershocks! Aaaaaaaahhhhh!”
Lagopex turned to face the tragically hip, screaming morsel careening toward her mouth. Her teeth parted, just enough, straining against the gate.
“If he'd stayed at the titty bar this never would have happened,” Morty snapped. “I'm out. I'm getting my three-way before all the hot human broads are gone forever.”
With that, Morty stomped next door to the Temptations Tavern.
Chapter 20
All right. So where were we? Oh yes, Morty went next door to get laid before the hell beasts destroyed the world as we know it and all the hot chicks in it. Chef was standing in the rubble, either totally unbothered or so afraid he couldn't move. Bubby was fading in and out of consciousness. He'd been webbed back into his magical corner, which had flipped on the green laser light of doom, which held the angler fish chick from beyond just far enough out of the gate to eat Tristan. Tristan was hurtling toward her like the world's dumbest, yet most fashionable, chicken nugget. The spider guy ran a couple of legs along the wall, looking for the manual override switch that would reopen the gate. And DeeDee and Kevin were staring nervously up through the hole in the roof over Bizo.
Uh, wasn't anyone going to try to stop Tristan from getting eaten and sealing the deal on the end of the world? Anyone? No? Just me? I had to do something. I went after him, but in full-on Lloyd loser mode, took two steps then tripped over the stupid eight ball. “Duck,” it said. “Now!”
Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.
Huh. What was that noise? I didn't like it, not one bit. Even the hell beasts stopped what they were doing and looked around.
Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.
The air vibrated. I ducked down behind the counter, but not so far that I couldn't keep my eye on the action. Two thin, craggy shadows, darker than night and blacker than the gothest goth girl's wardrobe, shot straight down out of the hole in the roof and sunk into Bizo's single yellow eye. He wailed, so loud and high I thought my eardrums would explode. He thrashed. DeeDee and Kevin tucked and rolled out of there, dodging barbed tentacles as Bizo punctured the slushy machines, splurping icy frozen syrupy goodness all over the floor.
Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.
Bizo lifted off the floor. The dark things that came in through the ceiling came into focus. They were talons, and they were attached to the giant demon bird with the gold eye who ate robbers like crackers. The cigarettes. The gold coin. The 'stolen' sword in Bizo's belly. DeeDee was officially a genius. She'd conned a hell beast into ridding us of another hell beast! Boss fight. Pro move. Level up.
The demon bird pulled Bizo up and out of the hole in the roof. It cawed.
Whoop. Whoop. Whoop.
Then Crash. Clunk. Thump. Thump. Crack. They were fighting up there, on the roof. A green barbed tentacle crashed back down through the hole. Oh no. Birdman lost! The tentacle landed in the puddle of spent. melting slushy on the floor, completely detached from a body. The magical green laser beam flickered.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhh!” Tristan screamed.
Lagopex opened her mouth. Then the green light went dead. Completely dead. In the exact moment when Tristan was about to hit fish chick's pointy incisor, a voice boomed from Bubby's television.
“Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?”
Tristan and fish chick made contact. Fish chicks mouth dropped down, and Tristan skidded over the top of her slimy head. He careened right into a stack of hip, locally brewed artisan-flavored hard seltzer stacked against the freezing steel wall of the beer cave.
Bubby stood in front of his television, covered in broken webs, watching Dwayne Johnson smack talk some bald buff guy I later found out was Stone Cold Steve Austin. I had to hand it to Bubby. He was a real fan. He loved Dwayne Johnson so much, he'd freed himself again, despite being badly wounded. With that move, he'd closed the gate completely, slicing fish chick in half. Her detached head fell dead to the floor the second Tristan should have been lunch.
Bizo was gone, carried off, out of alignment. The spell was broken. The gate was closed. Hell. Yeah.
Kevin and DeeDee high fived. I had the satisfaction of watching Tristan get knocked out cold, then get bopped in the face as loose beer cans cascaded out of their boxes and right onto his head. That was gonna leave a mark. Ha!
The eight ball hit my foot again. “Press play, remember?”
“What? It's over. We won!”
“Really? Because I still see two very angry monsters, and you've got no gate to send them through.”
Oh, crap. The spider, no longer constrained by his ceremonial spot, was stalking toward DeeDee and Kevin. The octopus guy gave me a thousand nasty side-eyes as he wrapped one tentacle around an unconscious Tristan, and the other plucked one of fish chick's unholy eggs sacs off of her corpse.
“Guys! I don't think they're giving up!” I yelled.
But they seemed to know that. Kevin cracked several sets of knuckles and shook out his arms and legs, gearing up for another fight. Chef had wandered into the middle of the store and was digging through the upturned candy aisle looking for something. He was right in the line of fire.
“Chef! Move!” He tilted his head in my direction but kept digging. Was he deaf?
DeeDee ran straight at the spider, hopping over octopus tentacles and melting slushy sugar like she did this kind of thing for fun every damn day. “Press PLAY!” she screamed.
“Do it now, or I'm never talking to you again.” Angel eight ball said from the floor.
“Okay, okay!” I picked up one of the speakers and pressed it against the store intercom, turned that on, and then pre
ssed play on Kevin's Zune.
“Ye-aaaaaaaw!” It was DeeDee's battle cry. I turned to look. She was jumping up at the spider. It reared back, opened its fangs and prepared to eat her, to plunge venom and death and awfulness right into her. It went at her fast and hard. She was a goner.
“DeeDee no!” I jumped over the counter and landed right on one of its legs. “Die!”
I opened wide and bit right into his disgusting arachnid leg. Oh, my God. So disgusting. But no one was going to eat the love of my life without a fight!
Suddenly, music crackled across the intercom. The guitar pulsed, the drums kicked, synthesizers synthed as Dio's “Rock 'N' Roll Children” ripped across every speaker that hadn't been torn out of the wall.
The fangs made contact with DeeDee's body.
“Noooo!” I screamed.
But the fangs bounced right off of her. Wait. What?
She smiled. “It's the music, Lloyd. Kevin's rocks. They're a protection spell. Just like the bullet! Now's our chance!”
Wait. So these guys couldn't hurt us as long as the music was on? No way.
Kevin was karate chopping octopus tentacles, but that slippery leviathan of doom was hard to stop. He was a multi-tasker. He had Tristan in one tentacle, an egg sac in another, and had just thwapped Bubby against the wall, knocking him unconscious, with yet another tentacle. Bubby lay motionless in octopus guy's grip.
DeeDee, clearly emboldened and feeling indestructible, was on the spider's back, riding it like a rodeo bull, hanging onto its hair for dear life as it tried to buck her off. She was stabbing it with something. It started spinning in circles, trying to fling her off. She held on, but I couldn't. I lost my grip and flew off, through the air and right into the stereo. Ow.
The music flicked off for a second. I must have accidentally hit shuffle, and it was searching for another song. Spider landed a hit on DeeDee, and she went flying. That's when spider dude got smart about the music and set its sights on the speakers.
Shit. Weren't the rocks supposed to save us? Why are the monsters still here?
Angel eight ball rolled right on up next to me. “Henrietta said three rocks, not two!”
There were only two rocks hooked up to the stereo. I didn't have long before spider dude nabbed me, so I grabbed a thin whitish rock off the rack, and started twining the copper around it fast and tight, linking it to the other rocks. “Henrietta didn't say which three rocks, did she? Eight ball?” I looked around. Where was he? Priceless. The one time I actually need an opinion, he was a ghost.
The Zune finished shuffling, and “Rainbow in the Dark” crackled across the speakers. The store lit up bright as daylight for a split second. It was so fast, my brain didn't really have time to register what happened, but I swear I saw colored lights. Blue, orange, red, and yellow slice down next to Bubby, cutting a few fat octopus tentacles right in half.
“Did you guys see that? Tell me you guys saw that! I knew it!” Kevin screamed and pumped a couple of legs up and down. “That's what I'm talking about. Dio forever, man. Rock on, Ronnie!”
The Octopus screeched, waving its bleeding stumps.
The spider reared up, aimed its front legs at the stereo, and stomped down. It didn't hit me. It couldn't, at least not while the music was playing, but that didn't mean it couldn't do any damage. I fell to the floor. The register and the doughnut case landed on top of me. I was pinned.
Angel eight ball rolled up next to me.
“Why didn't that work?” I yelled.
“She said three rocks might save you. Might!”
“Might isn't very helpful then, is it?”
“It did cut the octopus, so that's a win.”
“Not good enough!”
That's when the spider used another leg to pull the speaker wires clean out of the electrical outlet. The music fizzled off. The spider angled itself over me, moving in for the kill. Well, this was it. I was doomed. Eaten by a giant spider. Figures. It's always the stuff you're afraid of the most that gets you in the end. It clicked its fangs and came for me.
“Remember, true victory will be sweet!” Angel eight ball's triangle flashed in front of my face. It had somehow become airborne, flying like a fast-pitch baseball, right at the spider. Angel eight ball squirted a short strong burst of red liquid into the spider's eyes. It tried to roll for cover, but was quickly scooped up in the spider's fangs, shoveled directly into its mouth, and swallowed.
Holy shit. That spider just ate my guardian angel!
Then it came for me. I wriggled but was trapped. The register was heavy, and the doughnut case even heavier. I struggled to breathe. Well, this was it then. Goodbye world. I closed my eyes. I didn't need a close-up view of the mouth that was about to eat me. I held my breath.
And nothing happened. Come on, spider. Get it over with. Why aren't you eating me already? I could feel the cold emanating off of its big hell body, feel it quivering above me. Great. He was a sadistic hell spider who liked to drag it out, make his lunch suffer. Just my luck.
I opened one eye. The spider's eyes were wide open, two inches from my face, staring...blankly? I mean, spider eyes aren't exactly emotive, but this one was zoned out like he was high as a kite. I knew stoned eyes when I saw them. What the hell?
Huh. His fangs were right above my heart. He'd tried to eat me, for sure. But his fangs had pierced the doughnut case and were stuck inside of it. He had one glazed doughnut with frosted pink icing and sprinkles speared on each fang, and he was lapping the other ones up, shoveling them into his mouth full speed. His spider mouth was ringed with pink frosting. A handful of sprinkles clung for dear life to his, uh, let's just say lips. When it'd eaten all the pink-frosted doughnuts in the case, it sucked the doughnut off of one fang, then the other. And groaned. “Aaaahh.”
Seriously, it made the same noise a fat dude makes after devouring a whole pie at Thanksgiving dinner. I should know, I've made that sound.
Then, its spaced-out eyes rolled back in their sockets. Its body began to shake.
Crunch. Crack. Crunch. Crack.
Holy. Crap. Its body snapped violently in half, right in the middle. The creature gyrated and rattled as a tiny weird yellow circle opened in the air above us, no bigger than a quarter. The tiny thing was a vortex, kinda like the one Kevin's roommate's arm was always coming out of. The spider's body and legs, chunk by chunk, bent and broke and cracked at unholy angles, then was quickly, painfully sucked into the tiny vortex. That teensy yellow hole crunched that spider down like it was a bag of potato chips in a garbage truck compactor. And it didn't even fight back.
Man. As much as I wanted this awful thing to die, this was hard to watch. It squealed. Bits exploded, raining down blue blood and bile all over me. (Note to self. Always keep your mouth closed when hell beasts hover over you.) Until the vortex had crunched and crunched, and the final tip of the final leg disappeared into that yellow vortex. Then the yellow thing spun, zipped closed, and disappeared, dropping something small and hard onto the floor next to me. Chink.
I managed to push the register over, off of my chest, just enough to squeeze out from under it. The empty doughnut case clunked to the floor. True defeat will be sweet, indeed. Wait. Henrietta was a genius. True defeat is literally sweet. The pink doughnuts! I stumbled up to warn the others. Here I go, Lloyd's totes gonna save the day! I knew how to kill the monsters. Hazzah!
But my joy was short-lived. The scene before me didn't scream “Hey, we've got this!” I was too late.
Octopus guy was in the middle of the store, tentacles splayed in all directions. He had DeeDee wrapped up in one tentacle, an unconscious Bubby in another. Kevin was suction cupped to the wall. Tristan dangled upside down by one leg. The octopus was peeling open fish chick's egg sac. And, poor Chef. He was all wrapped up in tentacle, an inch from the octopus' open, hungry beak. Chef held tight to that weird purple gourd, even though he was about to be chomped by a nihilistic cephalopod.
“Chef!” I screamed. “Fight him off!”
Chef didn't respond. He didn't seem ruffled or concerned at all. He didn't speak, didn't scream. Just stood there silently, sniffing the air, holding onto his pumpkin as cazh as if he were serving our dinner. He didn't look like a man about to be eaten. He was staring certain death straight in the beak and didn't give two fucks.
I couldn't just stand there and let him get eaten. His steaks were perfect! And no one deserved to end up in the gut of giant mean-spirited hell octopus. There was still one pink frosted doughnut left, behind the emergency glass in the weapons safe. I looked at Chef, at the beak about to crunch him in half like a gummy bear, and made a mad dash for that last precious doughnut. Across slimy tentacle-covered floors, melted slushy sugary syrup, oozing spider blood, and the upturned remains of every neatly stacked rack and every glass reach-in beer cooler door.
I could make it. Yes. I crunched. I jumped. I panted. A. Lot. Because I was out of shape. There, I said it. Happy now? If I lived through this, I was definitely doing more cardio. I swear!
I was knee-deep in Doritos, halfway there, when octopus dude snuck up on me. He grabbed me by the leg, lifted me up, and smacked me face-first into the linoleum. Eo. Ow. Next thing I knew, the room was upside down and spinning, going out of focus. Had. To. Get. Pink. Doughnut.
The octopus opened wide and stuffed Chef right into his beak. It snapped closed, bending Chef in half. Backward. Crunch. Gulp. And just like that, he'd eaten Chef.
“Noooooooo!!!!!!” I screamed. The octopus raised me higher, then thwacked me down hard against the floor. The room went black.
Chapter 21
Blurple. Blup. Ppppsssslurp. Blurple. Blup. Pppssssslurp.
The noise sounded like a vat of hot boiling pus.
Blurple. Blup. Ppppsssslurp. Blurple. Blup. Pppssssslurp.
Huh. So this was what it sounded like to be digested. I must be in the octopus' gut. That's why it was warm, and holy cow did it stink. Like festering dog turds doused in skunk juice and chili sauce, but on fire.
