by J. J. Lorden
They were hanging vertically, on edge and with a slight tilt to one side, as if they’d been leaned against a wall. Matty stood behind the counter, gawking at them.
Eyes wide open and body on full alert, Austin stepped into the oh-so familiar parlor. Rich aromas of fresh dough, melted cheese, and spices calmed his nerves with the many fond memories they elicited.
Matty turned at the sound, seeing Austin a look of panic-tinged curiosity passed between them, silently asking, ‘do we run or not?’. Austin thumbed his beetle stone in his pocket, decided to leave it there for now, and his expression firmed behind a tiny head shake–no running, not yet.
“Uhh... what’s going on, man?” Austin asked quietly, his eyes now glued on the pans.
“I.. I.. have no idea, bro,” Matty stammered. “This isn’t one of your high-tech pranks, is it?”
“Ahh… nope. This is definitely not a prank.”
Austin stared at the floating metal discs, his innate curiosity pulling him to investigate, and he began to pick his way through the debris.
“What the fu..uu..ckk is this, then?” warbled Matty.
Fixated, Austin replied, “Yeahhh, I–” His foot kicked a chunk of shattered glass. It spun away and dinged off the metal base of a table that was still right-side up. The floating pans jumped. Which, in turn, made Matty jump.
“Dude! Watch the noise!” Matty hissed in a harsh whisper.
Yeah, good idea. Austin thought, and he froze. The pans had gone utterly still, no longer swaying back-and-forth ever so slightly as they had been.
With narrowed eyes, Austin noticed tiny dust or perhaps flour particles hanging motionless in the space beside the pans. There was something else in close proximity to the floating stack. Tilting his head, he observed it causing a minor prismatic disturbance, bending the light just a little.
Faint rainbows of color were painted on both the counter beneath it and stacks of white pizza boxes behind it, along the back wall. It was barely perceivable, but it was there.
Austin stage whispered, “Do you see something near the pans? Like a distortion in the air. It’s splitting the light, putting rainbows on the counter and empty boxes.”
Matty squinted, glancing at the rainbow effects with wide eyes, then he took a couple tentative steps back, moving his head side-to-side. Something in his perspective seemed to shift.
His head halted, and his expression went flat, mouth gaping. “What the…” he breathed, then snapped a glance at Austin and back. “There’s ahh–” Matty’s voice wavered. “The–” He cringed back. “The dust isn’t moving.”
“Rigghttt…” Austin replied breathily, hushed.
“Ahh, that’s creepy. Alright. Yeah. I think we should go.” Matty nodded to himself. “Yeah, let’s go.” He started slowly back-stepping away.
Still intrigued, Austin took another step forward. “What is that?” he whispered.
Without warning, a pan separated slightly from the stack and sped right at him. Austin had just enough time to realize he was being attacked, then the pan hit his head–and stuck, hanging horizontally.
Austin stumbled back, dazed. The pan flopped down over his face. What the...? He reeled, trying to understand. But his head was getting heavy, he heard Matty curse. Grabbing the pan, it pulled free easily.
Things started spinning, and he was falling. On the way down, as his world slowly tilted, Austin saw a second pan fly for Matty.
Then everything was sideways, his cheek pressed into something cold, and he was looking at the underside of an overturned table. His vision tunneled in on a misshapen lump of pink gum smashed into the table bottom, and blackness took him.
5
Hospital
St. Stephen Medical Center
North Windham, Maine
May 13, 2064—World Seed plus 6 days, 22 hours, 23 minutes
Austin groaned. Who sucked all the moisture out of his mouth? “Unghhgh.” Why was it so hard to rollover? It felt like he was waking up after a whiskey bender. Did I drink? I don’t remember drinking. His whole body felt stiff and sluggish, like he hadn’t moved in a week. His back was sweat-soaked, and his head was fuzzy. The rhythmic swish of blood pumping echoed in his ears.
He reached a hand to his head, and something gently pulled back on it, a line of some type? Huh? What the hell’s that? Cracking his eyes revealed a tube protruding from the back of his hand. “I have an IV?” His voice rasped and he smacked his mouth to try and get some spit flowing again.
“Unnnnghhh.” He followed the tube to a fluids bag hanging on a pole. The bed had rails, and the walls were lime green. “A hospital? Why am I…” His muttering trailed off as memories started to come back.
He remembered the chaos at Matty’s pizza shop. “Oh shit, I got attacked by a pizza pan.” His voice only sounded like a pack-a-day guy, instead of a carton-smoking die-hard.
He remembered being hit, the pan somehow sticking and falling; oddly enough, he remembered gum stuck to a table bottom. He pushed on the memory, testing it for veracity. The details sharpened. Yep, that shit happened.
He remembered Matty getting hit by a pan at point-blank range. He also recalled the register being open, not all the way, but just enough to see coins.
There were also a couple stacks of red plastic cups at the end of the counter, their white rims stood out with an odd brilliance. Why did he remember those things? Austin didn’t even remember considering them. The oddest details felt so vivid.
He pushed himself up in the bed. His head hammered in protest, but the cool air on his sweaty back felt heavenly.
Why did his head hurt so bad? It was just a normal aluminum pan–well, maybe not. No type of baking sheet, at least none that he knew of, could defy the laws of physics. And at the very least, the pan’s non-Newtonian reaction when it stuck to his head qualified it as minimally suspect.
The throbbing settled as he sat still, eyes closed again. He stopped dredging up details and realized he should look for his friend. Matty must be here somewhere too.
“Unnnnghhhh, sheettttt…” The noises, muffled by lips glued together with dry saliva, came from beyond a privacy curtain on his left. Austin recognized that groaning.
“That you, Matty?”
“Aus-din?” came the semi-intelligible reply followed by lots of mouth smacking. “What happened?” Matty croaked, then groaned an unintelligible curse followed by more smacking. “Jesus, I feel like I got hip-checked by Sevoriski.”
Mikial Sevoriski played hockey for the Bruins. He was big, fast, and hit like a truck. Matty loved the team and Mikial was a fan favorite. Austin chuckled and immediately regretted it as pain flared again.
“Are we… in a hospital?” Matty mumbled. Before Austin could muster a response, his friend sat up and flung back the separation curtain. “Ohhhh, dude! My pie pans friggin’ attacked us!”
Austin nodded in response to Matty’s sudden recollection. His friend swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Austin wanted to piece together a better picture of the events. “What do you remember?” he asked Matty.
“Well, there was this crazy wommb sound. I felt it in my chest; disorienting as hell. Made my legs feel weak too. I swear it was like an implosion or something… wait is that a thing? Can things implode? I mean, that’s stupid, right? What would stop an implosion? That would basically be a tiny black hole, right? Do black holes ever stop being black holes?”
Matty pondered for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he continued. “Once a star goes black hole, that’s it. It just keeps sucking stuff in forever. If the universe wasn’t so damn big, we’d all get sucked up.” Matty’s gaze had wandered to the ceiling and now he looked questioningly at Austin. “It’s like that event horizon thing, right?”
“No. Well… kind of? Hey, look…” Austin looked aside and shook his head. “Stop, I need you to focus. You heard a flash of yellow light, then what?”
“Oh right, yeah. So, I had my head down taking an order, when the wommb hit and t
here was this insane flash of light with it–the reflection off the screen nearly blinded me. The customer ordering stopped talking midsentence. When I looked up, the guy was wide-eyed, gawking over my shoulder. I turned to see what he was staring at, and a stack of my pans was floating out of the rack toward me.”
Matty squinted toward the floor between the cots. “I stepped back, and the pans floated over the counter, which was really damn creepy. For a minute or so, we just stared at them, then one shot out and crashed into the wall. It just went”–Matty flicked a hand out–“like that.”
His eyes returned to Austin, wide again. “Then another whizzed over Lindsey Kelly’s two-year-old daughter, and a third one clipped some guy’s trucker cap, knocked it right off his head. After that, everyone freaked out.”
Austin interrupted him, “Yeah, I saw that. Everyone came out of your place like rats off a sinking ship. Hell, if the place had been full, somebody might have been trampled. That lady with the little girl, what’d you say her name was? Lindsey?”
“Yeah. She’s cute–her kids are a nightmare, though.” Matty said.
“Ha. Well, she totally dragged your kid’s seat right down the sidewalk, didn’t even unbuckle the little girl.”
“No shit? Wonder how I missed that.” They were quiet for a minute, letting their memories trickle back.
“Dude, do you remember the frozen dust cloud and the rainbows?” Matty asked.
“Yep, I was just thinking about it.” Austin nodded. “Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, and right next to the pans. Definitely seemed like it was involved.”
“I didn’t even see it at first.” Matty sounded puzzled. “I only caught it after you pointed it out, kind of like one of those pictures–you know, the ones that look random until your brain finally sees the hidden image.”
They were both sitting up in bed now, legs hanging over the sides, facing each other. Matty suddenly looked up at Austin, his face drawn out in a look of disbelief and decidedly pale. “Oh, fuck.”
“What? What’s wrong? You see something?!” Adrenaline kicked Austin’s body into motion as fear of another attack crowded out rational thought.
He jumped out of the cot, spinning to look behind him for scary, floating things. Unfortunately, the IV bag was hanging on the other side of the bed, and when he jumped, it jerked back, nearly pulling the stand over and ripping the tape and needle partially off his arm.
“Argghh, fuck! Dammit, that stings.”
Matty went from looking scared to looking confused. “Dude, you losing it? What the hell are you doing?”
Austin cradled his arm. The needle was partially pulled out, blood was pooling under the remaining tape, and running down his arm. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long groan.
“Man, from the look on your face just then, I thought it was going to be damn pizza pans again, except, well… we’re in a hospital, and that just seemed a lot worse, you know? There’s dangerous stuff in hospitals. Plus, this room is so small…” Austin trailed off, feeling a bit foolish and angry at himself for being so jumpy. “Okay, so I gather that’s not the case. Why’d you get that look?”
Matty laughed at him. “Yeah, I guess I can understand you being a bit jumpy. But chill, man, I just remembered something.”
Blood began to drip from Austin’s hand onto the floor. “Fuck. I’m bleeding all over the place.” He indicated the tape as he pressed the IV down to keep it secure. “Can you give me some help here.”
“Want me to yank it off?” Matty asked.
“Yeah, hold on though, let me pinch the needle down. Okay, go ahead.”
Matty jerked the tape off. It took a couple pulls, but Austin managed to mostly keep the needle from tearing up his arm anymore. With the adhesive removed, he pulled out the IV and pressed his hand over the wound. On the side table he found some gauze and a band aid, which he took a moment to apply.
Matty watched for a moment then sat back down. “It’s nothing to do with this.” He indicated the room with a wave of his hand. “I just remembered something else from… there… at MP2.” He paused and his face grew taut. “I swear I saw a thumb and some fingers fling that pan at you.”
Austin looked up, his expression now going pale.
Silence was his only response for a long moment as he stared at Matty, waiting for the joke. His friend, however, was stone-faced, not showing even the hint of a smile. “Fuck, you’re serious. You saw a disembodied hand throw it? Are you sure?”
Matty looked up and then back at him. “Yep, pretty sure, bro.” He closed his eyes as if visualizing the scene. “Yeah, I’m sure. It was bluish and smoky, or maybe only semi-formed. I only got a glimpse though, cause suddenly there was a pan covering my face and then I hit the ground.” His brow furrowed then pinched with anger. “What the ever-living fuck!”
Austin’s mouth pulled tight as he nodded. “Yeah that about covers it.” The whole episode was incredibly strange. And somehow the fact there was a semi-corporeal hand involved made it magnitudes worse.
Why the animated pie pans alone weren’t enough to terrify, he wasn’t clear, but they didn’t. The floating pans were curious. Floating pans thrown by a ghostly hand was another zip code. Yeah, that’s right on the line of Pissmypantsville, Austin thought.
Another realization hit him. This would definitely pull press attention. He was actually surprised some blogger wasn’t waiting on him to wake up. For certain the people who’d fled must have told their family and friends and posted on social media by now. He made a mental note to call his attorney before logging into Kuora. Dave could head off any inquiries from the media or police.
“I saw the pan hit you as I was falling.” Austin told Matty. “And it was probably covering your face because it didn’t bounce off. The one that hit me didn’t. It stuck and stayed straight out for a second, and then flopped down over my face.”
He shook his head then looked at the ceiling and sighed. “Yeeaaah. That was seriously freaky. What the hell’s going on?”
Matty’s mouth hung and his brow furrowed in genuine concern. “That…”
“Yeah.” Austin’s head shook slowly. “I know. Impossible right? Completely defies the laws of physics.”
Then they both sat there, heads down, struggling to make sense of it all. Austin broke the silence. “You didn’t imagine the golden flash either. I saw it as I was getting out of my car–nearly caused me to fall face first on the ground. I also have some bizarre memories of your cash register, stacks of red Dixie cups at the end of the bar, and that guy in the truckers cap. But…” he trailed off in confusion. That last memory was from an impossible perspective. It wasn’t his memory.
“But what, bro?” Matty urged.
“Well, my memory of that guy... it’s, it’s from the perspective as if, I threw the pan. I ahh...” His eyes found Matty’s. “I don’t think it’s my memory.”
Matty covered his face with both hands then pulled them down slowly, stretching his features and forming his mouth into an oblong O. “Whaaat?” The word was drawn and distorted. “Damn dude,” he whispered, then dropped his hands, closed his eyes, and exhaled.
After a moment, in a quiet near whisper, as if scared by his own words, Matty said, “Austin, man… this sounds an awful lot like magic, bro.”
Austin had to agree and was already nodding his head. “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? That or extra-planar travel by a partially corporeal manifestation for the purpose of a non-lethal, natural-law-defying assault.” His face clouded. “On just us.”
“Fuck bro. Can’t we just say magic? What you just said is wayyy freakier. And, I so don’t need any more freak factor right now.”
A female voice broke in. “I saw it too–the flash, the attack, the sticky pans that didn’t act right.”
Stunned they weren’t alone, both of the men spun toward the overstuffed lounger in the corner. Matty edged away from the voice.
The figure was well-concealed in complete darkness and Austin suddenly r
ealized it was nighttime. How long were we out? Something about it being night sparked a new concern he couldn’t quite pin down. He ignored it and focused on the girl. “Racheal, that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She leaned forward in the chair, moonlight casting her face in blues and whites, and chuckled. “Did I scare you little boy?” she said looking at Matty.
“Jesus, Racheal. Fuck yeah you scared me.” He went on grumbling to himself. “Freaky witch hiding in the corner.” Racheal just smiled.
She was wearing a sky-blue, mesh-backed truckers cap with a braided white cord that curved around where the bill met the front panel. The panel had vintage stripes of yellow, red, and orange below an FS Racing logo.
With a start, Austin realized it was the same cap he recalled from the pizzeria. He noted that it looked much better on Racheal than the guy in the flannel.
“I was in the pizzeria when everything went crazy,” she said. “So, I hid under one of the tables instead of running out.”
“Wait, what? You did what?!” Matty interrupted.
She paused, considering the disbelief in his voice. “Yeah, when everyone started running out, I was just too curious to run away. Crazy, magical floating shit doesn’t come along every day, and they hadn’t hit anyone yet. Still, I didn’t want to get pegged by one, so I hid.”
The men looked from Racheal to each other, mouths slightly ajar. After a moment of reflection, their looks changed to nods of respect. If they were honest, neither one could fault her.
That curious instinct was precisely the reason Matty hadn’t run out, and at least part of the reason–despite the rampaging herd of customers–Austin had walked in. An instinct to lean into all things strange and mysterious was something the three of them shared.
“You can’t really blame her, bud, you know we’d both have done the same,” Austin said.
Matty agreed. “Yeah… You’re right. I guess I’m only shocked now because the cool floating pizza pans ended up being evil floating pizza pans.”
