Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening

by Hunter Wiseman

  For miles, the ground cracks and then crumbles inward as the colossal body of the ancient beast rises from the depths below. Its skin is made of hardened lava rock.

  With all of the syrup drained down the throat of the Sharkano, sand begins to creep back in to where the lake used to be. The waffles spin into ready positions to leave, but it’s too late.

  The mouth of the Sharkano opens and spews thousands of sharks that begin to menace the surrounding dunes. Burnt waffle and his brothers rise into the air, only to be devoured by one of the many great whites of the sand.

  Blood, distant on the sand but fresh from slaughter, creeps into the dune-sharks nostrils. They swim at full speed in that direction.

  Chapter 10

  Everyone is dead. Jeac has killed them all and stacked them into a large pile. They are devoid of limbs or scalps. The scalps, he sews into his fake beard. The limbs, he eats. He does not mourn the loss of his A.M.M.D companion. He is too busy eating.

  He sits inside a cage of bones. Every last piece of flesh has been torn, chewed, and swallowed.

  “I’ve eaten too much,” he thinks and so he vomits. “But no.”

  He grabs hold of his beard and uses it to wipe the filth of his meal from his face and the blood from his axe.

  After all the bones are picked clean he gives an effort to search for clues in the pockets of the dead R.B.G.O.A.T.s. He finds the same note in most of their pockets:

  G.O.A.T.s

  We know you have a bomb and that you’re planning to attempt to bring down the tower. We assure you that what you’re planning will result in expulsion from the C.D.P.D and gives potential grounds for assassination.

  That being said, we also know that you have a drug trade going on with the Picassi on the floor above you. Provided you attempt no terrorist acts on the tower as a whole, we will overlook your seedier dealings with members of other departments.

  A&A

  Jeac can’t fathom most of what the note says and gives up on figuring out who A&A might be almost immediately. Instead he hones in on the one word that does mean something: Picassi.

  Another corrupt police force within the tower? Another possible food source and another possible step towards solving the case?

  “Oh, shit!” Jeac thinks. “I’m on a case!”

  The sand around him is cut by blue-gray fins like a knife through butter made of your mom. He quickly folds the note and tucks it into his belt. Axe in hand, he stands ready once again.

  Sharks come at him slowly at first. Testing his mettle. He swings his axe into the sand and cuts the fins off of two of the sand beasts, but a third grabs hold of his beard and begins dragging him through the desert and far, far away from his bone lair and what remains of Jeff and the shack.

  By the time the shark sees fit to release his beard, he’s been dragged so far that the sand has worn down and polished his armor. It’s now a gloriously clean masterpiece of metalwork.

  Jeac stands as the sand-sharks circle around him. He follows them with his eyes until he sees a monstrous shape blocking out the twelve suns. Its shadow makes it appear as though it might be a mountain, but as one of the suns works its way out from behind a cloud and bounces its warm light off a set of reflective teeth, Jeac realizes what it truly is.

  It doesn’t stop him from charging headlong at the pointed snout, even as it rises higher out of the sand before him. It might be miles away, but still he sprints. The sharks behind him follow, as if to escort him to the Sharkano.

  By the time he has gotten to it, the Sharkano has risen fully from the depths. With the head of a shark and body coursing with molten rock, it towers seven hundred feet high and has to lean down, almost to the point where its snout touches the sand, just to see Jeac careening towards it.

  “Blasted shark-man!” Jeac yells.

  The beast rears up and spews sharks from its gullet towards the dwarf. Jeac dodges, swings his beastly axe, and cuts them all down. The Sharkano sinks face first into the ground and causes a wave of sand to throw Jeac and everything around him several miles away. When Jeac returns to his feet the Sharkano is nowhere in sight.

  “Damn, where is my axe? Where is the shark!?”

  Jeac takes a step back in his heavy suit and feels a rumble below the surface. The Sharkano rises. Jeac stumbles and jams his fist into the sharks’ gills to hang on. The Sharkano jets across the wastes trying to throw Jeac off when a watery being floats up toward Jeac. He passes Jeac his axe from his watery hands. Jeac smiles when he realizes who it is.

  “Thank you again, friend.”

  He grips his axe tight and the water evaporates away.

  Sharkano spews more sharks and they fly back towards Jeac. He does his best to fight them off. He then wobbles to a stand, hanging on to the sharks fin. He makes his way up the face of the Sharkano who is roaring and jettisoning sharks from his face anus. Jeac slams his axe into the Sharkano’s eye. Blood spurts all over Jeac freshly polished armor.

  The Sharkano jumps high into the air, smaller sharks fall from above and attempt to grab Jeac’s long beard of mustaches.

  “Not my scalps!” he screams. He kicks the sharks until they let go, but his scalps are torn off and fall far out of his reach. Jeac grabs onto his axe with his other hand. The Sharkano who is apparently still airborne from that jump it took earlier plummets back toward Chandaka. Jeac’s axe loosens and he falls from the back of the beast.

  The Sharkano swims towards Jeac in the sky because that is a thing it can do. It catches the dwarf in its mouth. Jeac grazes one of the sharks many janky teeth. From deep within some far off chamber, Jeac hears a roar. Thousands of tiny sharks fly up the Sharkano’s throat, past Jeac, and out into the desert. Jeac bounces down the Sharkano’s esophagus and disappears into the blackness.

  The Sharkano returns beneath the surface and is gone. All is calm on the surface of Chandaka. As if nothing ever happened.

  Part X: Chandaka

  Chapter 11

  Back at the C.D.P.D Armando sits at his desk with Alfonzo. He smokes his giant pipe as the building rattles. Alfonzo jumps up and rushes towards the window, spraying foam from his mouth that layers the room like snow.

  “What the hell is that thing!?” he shouts.

  A colossal mushroom cloud can be seen on the horizon.

  Ring-a-ding-ring. Ring-a-ding-ring.

  Armando picks up his very annoying telephone.

  “Armando B. Nana speaking. Who dis?”

  Muffled voices come from over the phone.

  “Wait, Let me put you on speaker,” Armando says. “I have Alfonzo here with me.”

  Alfonzo, still gazing out the window, turns slightly.

  ‘This is Metal from the A.M.M.D,” the voice from the phone says. “You recently assigned one of our senior agents, Jeff ‘Low Rider’ Stevenson, to be partnered up with your new detective… Feac Jernando, correct?”

  Armando and Alfonzo lock eyes.

  “Yes, Metal. That is correct,” Alfonzo says. “Feac was becoming a hassle and we figured Jeff could handle him.”

  “Well up here on A.M.M.D we actually monitor our detectives. What they’re doing and when they’re doing it. Jeff has been with us for decades and as of a few coincidental moments ago, just as that cloud appeared off in the distance, his status went offline.”

  “Hmm. Well, we will look into it Metal.”

  “You better do more than that. I know what happened to my-“

  “Might I remind you who you’re speaking to, Metal?”

  “No need, sir. Sorry sir. Be quick.”

  Alfonzo turns off the phone.

  “You know we haven’t seen that dwarf in a long while,” says Armando.

  “I know. Not since we left him at his apartment. But you know we don’t have time for that bastard right now. We need to find out exactly what happened in chapter four.”

  “Righto, Let’s get at it,” Alfonzo screeches.

  Armando, after previously breaking his wall in chapter five and thr
owing his desk from the building, walks over and smashes out the glass in his windows. He rips up the telescopes from the ground to see the ruins of the theater in the near distance.

  “Hmmpff. Agh. There that should do it. Alright, Pa, just look through the telescope.”

  The Banana waddles over to the telescope and peers through. Armando kicks his feet up onto his desk, leans back and watches. Alfonzo turns back and says, “It’s not working, you fool.”

  Armando bursts out laughing. There is a think black circle around Alfonzo’s eye.

  “Ha-ha! You moron! I don’t even have the same desk anymore. Aha-ha-ha, stupid Banana.”

  “Quit wasting time, damn it. You said yourself we need to figure out what’s going on.”

  “Right… Ahem. Right.”

  Armando almost falls over backwards in his chair, but manages to catch himself and plants his feet on the ground. Like he actually digs holes and covers his feet in dirt.

  He reaches into his desk and pulls out all the files he has on chapter four.

  So, this is what we’re working with, Dad,” Armando says. “I’ve got this photo of Jeac standing naked in front of a hot dog stand terrorizing people and then this footage of him in the same place. At the end of the video, however, he is carried off by his old raptor companion, Ranch Dressing.”

  He puts the items down on the desk.

  Obviously,” he continues. “Our first priority should be finding the raptor and questioning him. Having Jeac outside the city should keep him out of the way long enough, but he is smarter than we give him credit for. He’ll be back sooner rather than later.”

  His bright yellow father looks angrily at the evidence before him and says, “It’s Wednesday. I should be slapping the shit out of him right now. I’ll help you find this raptor… so long as I get to slap the shit out of him instead.”

  “Deal,” says Armando.

  He strolls across the room and opens a cabinet. He pulls out two sawed-off shotguns from a rack within. He loads them and attempts to hand one to his father who slaps it away.

  “No,” Alfonzo says. “You know I only use Yellow Fury and Gold Justice. Their custom potassium bullets do more damage than whatever those things fire ever will.”

  Of course, the bullets fired from Alfonzo’s banana shaped guns do absolutely no damage, but he can’t be convinced of that and Armando shrugs and makes the decision to sling both short barreled weapons over his shoulder.

  Armando looks at Alfonzo and asks, “You got any leads, Potassinator?”

  He knows his father has a network of spies throughout the tower and that there might be a high chance someone saw the raptor if it was within any of the stacked cities above or below. These people, shady as they might be, have their uses. Even though Armando is the overall chief of the C.D.P.D, he refuses to have them brought in. No matter the allegations on hand.

  “As a matter of fact, son, I have heard some things,” his father replies. “Troubling things. Things regarding certain safe guards you and I have in place to keep the city and the planet itself safe. This… Ranch Dressing has been gathering intel for someone. Who? I don’t know. For what? That I also do not know. But what I do know is this: It’s bad and we have to stop it by any means necessary. Apparently, he’s been spotted in the Ronin’s jurisdiction numerous times. He may or may not be dealing under the table with those shady bastards.”

  Armando grabs a box of shells and puts it in his pocket and nods.

  “We should head up the tower as soon as possible,” he says. “We can’t afford to have the Ronin against us. Either we convince them to stay with the department or we take them all out. Either way I need to know what that dinosaur is up to. Let’s go.”

  They head out the door of his office and start the climb up the million stairs that will take them to the fourth city in the tower. The stairs, gold plates sitting atop ivory, are the result of twelve decades of constant slave labor and mammoth butchery.

  Alfonzo recalls a time before Armando was born, a time when Chandaka was lush, and thriving with life. He was but a plantain then. Hanging from atop a tree, staring into the beautiful green jungles and out across the rolling waves of the sea. He could smell the salt in his memory.

  “Aye, the oceans still existed then,” he thinks.

  He remembers growing large and ripe and plummeting from his treetop home. He’ll never see his family-bunch again. That was where Chandaka’s trouble started. Alfonzo witnessed it all: the rise of the towers and the construction of the small towns at their bases. The slaughtering of the great land whales and the purple mammoths, whose bones, would be used as a resource until there was nothing left.

  The invention of vehicles prior to bio-engineered raptor mounts was the cause of the great draining. All the fuel pulled from below the surface caused the emergence of great sink holes into which several towers fell. Trillions died.

  Intellectuals representing different towers, peoples, and beliefs came together claiming they could have fixed it all had more people been willing to listen. They addressed the Council of a Thousand Towers and told them they’d leave. The council laughed in their faces and told them they’d never raise the funds to be able to afford space travel, but they found the resources they needed and pulled them from the ground which ironically further damaged the planet for those still living there. Though, escape was a greater incentive than money. They built a colossal ship which they used to leave.

  Panic and blame engulfed the Council of a Thousand Towers as they began to argue amongst themselves. They couldn’t explain to their people why the builders, innovators, artists, and philosophers had left, but more importantly why they, the council, chose not to.

  Reproduction stopped and fear of extinction arose. With that fear began the creation of AI driven machines that the creators called their “sons and daughters.” Some assumed the jobs they so long avoided because they thought of them as roles for “weaker” individuals. Eventually, there was war.

  Maybe they should have listened to the ones who left.

  Alfonzo helped found the Council of the Whispering Waffles who overtook control of the Council of a Thousand Towers. The new council bio-engineered the great Sharkano which was to act as a failsafe should a second world ending occur. He was afraid back then, but not all hope for Chandaka and its residents was lost.

  Prior to their excursion, Alfonzo met the most beautiful woman on the planet. Together they conceived a son who grew to be the most successful policeman on Chandaka.

  He’s proud to see his son before him now. Proud of the mission they’re going on to save the planet once more.

  But he still can’t help but wonder if it isn’t too late.

  Chapter 12

  Tiring of the long trek up the stairs, father and son push their way into a crowded elevator. Both of them have severe dyscalculia so they begin violently smashing all of the buttons and hope that they’ll reach their destination. The other passengers in the lift let out surprised squeals and give wide-eyed expressions but keep quiet for the most part.

  Police brutality is not uncommon.

  The doors slide open and a sign, slanted and covered in graffiti, juts out of the ground in front of them. “Larston” it reads. Behind the sign, men with camels cram dead chickens into bazookas and smoke crayons. Multi-colored smoke fills the air.

  “Wrong floor, Alfonzo,” Armando says. “Let’s try again.”

  Some of the frightened passengers make a break for the open door and Armando fires off a warning shot with one of his shotguns… directly into the back of a fleeing citizen. A red paste erupts from where the man’s torso used to be and splatters all over the ground and walls surrounding the open door. His legs, still kicking out in a running motion, sprint out of the elevator and down the road. A pterodactyl swoops down and carries the legs off while its Picassi master, saddled on its back, blasts blue aerosol paint into the air behind them.

  “Anyone else want to get off in Picazzi town?” Armando asks
as he reloads and then holsters his shotgun. Everyone shakes their heads and the doors slide gently shut.

  The next time the doors open most of the civilians step off and head into the financial district. There is no money there. Nor any businesses to shop at. It’s just more of an appealing place to die compared to the other sections of the tower.

  “Stupid cattle,” Alfonzo says. “This planet was so much better before their arrival. Take no offense son, being half human. Apart from you and your mother, I hate every last one of those pink-skinned idiots. Especially Jeac. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to our world. He might not remember it… and he might be an excellent detective when he puts what little mind he has to it, but he’ll always be at fault.”

  His anger on the rise, Alfonzo draws Yellow Fury and Gold Justice and twirls them.

  “I’m getting anxious,” he says. “Just thinking about the idea that all we’ve built might collapse is aggravating.”

  “I know, dad,” Armando says. “I know it’s hard living with a monster like that on the planet, in our cities, sharing our food. That’s why I allow you to beat him down on a weekly basis. I know he deserves it as much as you say he does, but he’s not the one behind this current plot. He’s had too many head injuries to mastermind something as diabolical as dismantling an entire world.”

  The elevator stops moving and the doors chime and open. Armando steps out into the neon-lit Ronin district. His father hesitates.

  He sees his banana fingers twitch and before he can do anything about it Alfonzo is cramming both his banana guns down the throat of the last passenger and filling his lungs with potassium. The dead man inflates like a balloon and then pops. Chunks of white and yellow viscera cake the inside of the elevator. Alfonzo steps out of the elevator. He peels his guns and places two freshly chopped bananas inside.

  “I’m ready to go now.”

  Chapter 13

  In an instant, Jeac is swallowed half and plunges down to the inner depths of the Sharkano. His eyes flicker open as he sits up. With nothing but blackness around him, he rolls over onto all fours and crawls about. He feels for something to spark a light. Any light he can use to find his way out.