The Brothers Crunk

by William Pauley III

  He pulls the van over to the side of the road and climbs into the back to find Reynold asleep, facedown on the stove. His left forearm is resting on a glowing orange heating coil. He apparently does not realize this, as he seems to be resting comfortably.

  “Christ, Rey, get up!” Divey shouts. “Your arm, it’s facking cooking!”

  Reynold jerks into consciousness and quickly grabs the metal spatula hanging above the stove. “Oh, no you don’t, wanker! Get your own facking arm to snack on . . .” Reynold shoves the spatula underneath his arm and wriggles it around vigorously, trying to separate his flesh from the burner.

  “I’ve been waiting for this TOO LONG, Divey . . . TOO FACKING LONG! I’m starving . . . too long . . .” Reynold slips back into unconsciousness, his arm falls limply at his side, the spatula still held tight in his fist.

  “Christ’s sake, Rey, I told you not to get obliterated! How are we supposed to make it to Terratown now? Shit! You really facked this up for us, man.”

  “Don’t get your facking panties in a wad. Shit. I can still drive.” Reynold’s eye involuntarily begins to roll back in its socket.

  “Reynold, you just tried to eat your facking arm. There is no way in hell I’m going to let you drive us anywhere.”

  “I don’t need your goddamn permission, Divey. You’re not me mum. Are you, Divey? Are you?”

  Divey exhales audibly.

  “No, you’re not me facking mum. That’s the facking answer . . . when it comes down to it . . . wanker. Yeah, you . . . you are the wanker, Divey. I’m calling YOU a wanker.”

  “Rey, I’m not in the mood for this. I’m spent, man. I need some rest. Do whatever the fack you want to do. I don’t care. But remember, if you wreck this facking van, then we’re finished. This is all we’ve got, man. Don’t fack this up.” Divey tosses a pillow on the floor of the van and grabs a blanket from the cabinet. “I’m going to sleep.” Divey tosses the keys to him.

  ● ● ●

  In an attempt to sober himself up, Reynold hops out of the van and takes a deep breath of cool fresh air. He begins to shift his body weight, alternating between the left and right foot, and throwing punches in the air like Rocky in training. He bounces up and down to better his circulation and then does three jumping jacks before falling to his knees and vomiting violently all over the pavement.

  “Shit!” Reynold says as he spits tiny chunks of his Pete and bean burrito out from between his teeth. “Shit, shit, shit . . .”

  He climbs to his feet and hops into the driver’s seat. Vomiting has actually made him feel much better, more sober. As he turns the key in the ignition, he feels a new confidence in his ability to drive the rest of the way to Terratown.

  Everything is going to be all right.

  FOUR

  TAKING THE HEAT

  Divey wakes the next day covered with sweat. The heat inside the van is tremendous. The engine is making a strange churning and knocking sound and smoke is billowing out from underneath the hood. Reynold is asleep at the wheel.

  “Fack, Rey!”

  He quickly opens the back doors of the van and looks out. They are in the middle of a dry golden desert. Devil’s Country.

  He jumps out of the van to find that it has been buried deep in the sand, engine-first. The tail end is angled more toward the sky than it is even with the horizon. He pulls Reynold out through the window and onto the hot desert sand, immediately waking him from his slumber.

  “What the fack, bro?” Reynold yells, feeling excruciating pain in his left arm. He looks down and sees his blistered flesh in the pattern of the stovetop coil. “Jeezus, Divey, what the fack did you do to me arm?!”

  “Oh, shut your goddamn mouth, Rey. Last night, you got bloody wasted off your arse, cooked your arm and then wrecked our van . . . OUR HOME . . . out here in god-the-fack-knows desert!”

  “No, that can’t be right. That doesn’t sound like me,” Reynold mutters, examining his wound.

  “Well, how else can you facking explain it then? Huh? Please, I’d love to hear your interpretation of the events.”

  Reynold begins squeezing his arm at the elbow. “Look, Divey, I’d love to chat and all, but I’ve got a facking skull-squeezer of a migraine and me arm seems to be burnt really facking badly. I think we may need to ring an ambulance.”

  Divey looks around in disbelief. “An ambulance? Ring an ambulance? Reynold, look the fack around you! We’re in the facking wastelands! Ambulances don’t come out to these parts! Don’t be such a twit.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever asked them?”

  “You can’t be serious! Where the fack would you tell them to come to? Besides, there aren’t any payphones in the desert, so how are you going to make that call—REGARDLESS of the fact that they wouldn’t come out here anyway?”

  “You know, Divey, you should be trying to help me, rather than standing ’ere scolding me. I’m a facking injured person!” Reynold blows on his scorched flesh.

  “No, what I should be doing is walloping you for getting our arses stranded out here in the desert! THAT’S what I should be doing!”

  “Okay, okay . . . so I facked up! I apologize! Jeezus, why can’t we just get past this?”

  Divey grips the sides of his skull in his hands and brings them down slowly over his face, exhaling. “Nevermind, Rey . . . nevermind. No use in crying over it now.” He looks up at the blazing sun. “It must be about noon. Get in the back of the van and tie a slab of meat around your arm. That should make the pain a little more bearable, plus it will protect it from the sun.”

  “Good thinking, Div. Thanks,” Reynold says as he hops in the back of the van.

  “While you’re at it, go ahead and tie on all the meat you can to your body. We’ll have to walk from here. We need to try and take as much as possible. I’ll do the same.”

  Reynold peeks his head out of the van and says, “What would I do without you, Div?” smiles, and then dips back into the van.

  “You’d probably be dead, you facking twit,” Divey mutters under his breath, in the most lovingly brotherly way possible.

  FIVE

  THE DISTANCE TO IT

  The burrito brothers are making their way across the desert with no real destination in mind, just any sign of civilization. The land they are trekking across is long, wide, flat, and dusty. They can see for miles in any direction. There is nothing. Even their van, which they had left two hours before, seems to have been swallowed by the horizon.

  Droplets of blood drip off the meat, run down along their skin in streams, and splatter below—leaving a long trail of blood spiders behind to dry and die in the sand. The meat is slowly cooking on their backs, causing them to salivate slightly, which is helpful in rationing their liquids. Two Cherry Coke Big Gulps are duct taped to the sides of each of their heads with a long straw [actually several regular-sized straws attached to one another] leading into their mouths.

  Reynold peels back the slab of meat covering the wound on his forearm. The pain is still tremendous, but has eased up a bit. His skin looks like burnt mozzarella cheese. He presses the meat back down against his arm firmly.

  “Hey, uh, Divey . . . look, I want to apologize . . . for everything. I’ve been a facking dick, man. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk. I shouldn’t have driven, either. And I for damn sure shouldn’t have cooked my arm,” Reynold says, out of breath.

  Divey laughs. “Yeah, you facked up big time, bro, but hell . . . it happens. At least we’re still alive.” Divey stops walking, tilts his head back, and tries to catch his breath. “Let’s take a breather, hey Rey?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you to say that for an hour now.” They toss their supply packs down on the sand and sit down on them, breathing heavily.

  A flicker of light catches Reynold’s eye just as the coin had in the parking lot the night before.

  “What the fack is that, Div . . . you see it?”

  Divey turns around and the glare nearly blinds him
. But instead of shielding his eyes, he opens them wider. Instead of his pupils contracting, they dilate. A surge of energy radiates throughout his entire body. He stands.

  “We should check it out ’ere in a bit. Might be something useful, you think?” Reynold asks, still slightly out of breath.

  Divey doesn’t respond. Instead, he begins to sprint toward the object.

  “What the . . . HEY! DIVEY! WHAT THE FACK, MAN?!” Reynold snatches up the two packs. “Wait up! Christ, man! SHIT!”

  SIX

  ELECTROSUPERCOMA

  Divey runs for two miles before finally reaching the object. It is a body. Some sort of metal skeleton—well, part of one at least. The torso has been separated from the legs and the legs are nowhere in sight.

  He kneels in the sand before the corpse and hovers his palms over it. The heat radiating off its body immediately coats his palms with sweat.

  Never before has he seen anything quite as magnificent or complex. The machine looks exactly like a human skeleton, but more advanced. Instead of fragile bones, there are thick steel rods and solid ball joints, hydraulic pumps instead of muscle, and copper wire veins.

  “Every day we perfect God’s design. Every day is stranger than the last,” he mutters.

  Divey rips the duct tape from his forehead, loosens the Big Gulps, and pours the Cherry Coke over the corpse. It hisses like an angry snake and then Pop! Crack! Pop! The drastic temperature change causes the metal to snap and burst open. The ribcage blooms like some rare desert rose, exposing its electrical innards. Divey’s eyes are drawn to a glowing orb located in the center of its chest. The orb is made of glass and smoke swirls about inside of it in such a perfectly fluidic motion that it appears as if it could actually be milk.

  He reaches down to touch the orb. Upon contact, every muscle in his body contracts. The orb twitches and loosens itself from its nest, rolls up Divey’s arm, and continues to travel up his body until finally roosting deep inside his mouth.

  His muscles go limp. He falls unconscious to the sand.

  ● ● ●

  Reynold, nearing complete exhaustion, gets a sudden second wind once he sees Divey’s body disappear behind a massive cloud of smoke. He throws down all the supplies and begins sprinting toward him.

  “Holy shit, man! Divey! Divey!” For the first time, he realizes voices do not echo in the desert. There is nothing for the sound waves to bounce off of.

  As he approaches the steaming robo-corpse, he is able to make out the faint silhouette of his brother’s body lying flat on the sand.

  “Divey, you okay, bro?” Reynold chokes on the smoke and worries about why Divey isn’t. Has he stopped breathing? Was he . . .? Could he be . . .?

  He grabs both of Divey’s arms and pulls him away from the corpse and out of the smoke cloud. He kneels down beside him, puts an ear to his face, and listens for breathing sounds. He is still breathing, still alive. The feeling of panic drains from Reynold at this discovery. He collapses beside his brother from fatigue and then he too slips into unconsciousness.

  SEVEN

  THE RED RAIN

  Everything’s white. Same place, same desert, only white. Divey’s body is still lying beside me, but he too is white. A facking mannequin resting in a sea of salt. White. Everything. White.

  And then there is me—in color.

  And then there is the rain—in red.

  And then there is IT. IT is purple. But once IT has finished, IT too will be red.

  IT is waiting.

  EIGHT

  THE CONSTANT HUM

  When Reynold awakens it is daylight again, but he only knows this because of the bright orange glow caused by the sunlight as it shines through his eyelid. He cannot open his one good eye. It is glued shut.

  He frantically spreads his eyelid apart with his fingers, peeling away red-colored crust hardened like a scab over his left eye. His vision returns, but not fully. It’s as if he is looking through a fogged window. Objects are now only shadowy masses with little detail. The moisture in his eye has become thick like gelatin. A red substance oozes from the corner of his eye. He wipes it away with the back of his forearm.

  “Fack, Divey. Wake up! Something’s wrong with me eye.” Divey doesn’t answer. Reynold looks down at the dark figure lying beside him. He is not moving. He shakes him. “Div . . . hey, I facking need you, man. Wake up!” His chest heaves in and out as he breathes, but does not respond to Reynold’s calls.

  There is a constant hum buzzing in his ear, faint, but still distracting. He looks around for its source, seeing nothing.

  The sun is just starting to rise. He decides to get a move on and get as much land traveled as he possibly can before the temperature becomes too unbearable. He removes a bed sheet from his pack and rolls Divey over onto it. He grabs the end of the sheet, dragging his brother and their supplies across the desert.

  ● ● ●

  As the day grows older, Reynold’s eyesight nearly returns to normal. He still notices the gelatin feeling in his eye and the leaking red fluid, but everything looks so much clearer than before.

  He’s not exactly sure how far he’s traveled, but he knows that he has been walking for several hours. The sun is directly overhead. It is the hottest time of the day. Reynold decides to stop and rest. He pulls the sheet out from Divey’s pack and builds a little makeshift tent to keep direct sunlight off them for a couple of hours.

  He removes the lid to one of his Big Gulps and takes a swig. He kneels down beside Divey and tries to open his mouth, but it seems to be clamped shut. The muscles of his jaw are contracted and rock hard. He squeezes his cheeks, his lips part, but his teeth are still fastened together as if his mandible has been welded to his skull. He pours the Cherry Coke into his mouth. Most of it runs down the sides of his cheeks, but some of it leaks through the crevices between his teeth and into his mouth. Reynold replaces the lid and sets the cup down next to his pack.

  He notices something peculiar about Divey’s face—his skin looks tighter. The lines in his face have disappeared. He examines him further, noticing an inexplicable gash from the top of his left arm down to his wrist. The gash is not bleeding, instead it is exposing a layer beneath—an odd rubbery purple layer.

  Someone shouting in the distance interrupts his examination. A female voice. Reynold stands, cups his hands like a visor over his eye, and looks for the source of the scream. He sees a large feral creature about ten feet tall chasing a woman dressed head-to-toe in yellow and black spandex. She is much faster than the creature, but whenever she gets a good lead, she stops, removes a stone from a satchel tied around her waist and heaves it at its head. But all that does is make the thing run even faster toward her.

  Reynold unfastens the Nintendo Super Scope strapped to his pack. He digs inside the pocket and fishes out a wireless jack and plugs it directly into the port located on the left side of his neck. He hoists the Super Scope onto his shoulders and places the sight over his eye. He follows the beast for nearly a full minute, timing the shot precisely. He squeezes the trigger. He hits the sensor directly—first shot. The beast explodes as though microwaved, showering the sand with meat soup.

  “Fack yeah! I still got it!” Rey mutters to himself, lowering the Scope.

  The woman stops and looks around, confused, before finally spotting him. She points and yells something, but Reynold can’t quite make it out. He lifts the scope back up to his eye to get a better look. He notices she is not wearing a jumpsuit at all. She is naked. Her skin is bright yellow with thick black stripes stretched across her torso. Her eyes are like a giant insect’s. A Wasp Woman.

  The Super Scope is swiftly kicked out of his hands. Reynold looks back just in time to see the sole of another Wasp Woman whizzing toward his face. He falls over into the hot sand. The woman wraps her arms and legs around him and pulls him close to her body, ripping the wireless Scope sensor out of his neck port. She spreads her wings and lifts him off of the ground.

  A swarm of Wasp Women
gather up Divey and the supplies. It takes five of them to lift Divey off the ground and even then they still seem to be struggling.

  He feels a tiny pinch in his lower back as the Wasp Woman penetrates him with her stinger. She pushes it in so fast and with so much force that it pierces clear through his abdomen. The venom numbs him instantly.