Larry comes around from behind Tony and reveals his gun to the dwarf. The sweeping dwarf puts up his hands and freezes.
“We know what happened in chapter four and it is time you paid for what you did to our hot dog guy.”
Tony, walking slowly behind the scared dwarf, starts making elephant noises for some reason. The dwarf finally clears his throat and shakes his head.
“This is a big misunderstanding!” he says. “I have no idea what happened in chapter four. No one does! Please. You’re making a big mistake.”
The dwarf falls to his knees. Tony smacks him in the back of the head with the butt of his gun and then steps to the side just as Larry props his long barrel up against the pleading mans’ forehead. He splatters his brain into the dust and knocks over his broom.
“Well that was easy enough. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Tony puts his gun away and grabs the dwarfs’ legs. Larry puts his gun away and then alertly stops.
“Do you hear that?”
The big door at the back of the city is opening and the cheers are magnifying.
“Quick!”
The two goons grab the dwarf and tip-toe with the body back to the alleyway. They throw the dead weight down and then re-draw their weapons. Then they throw the pens and poorly drawn drawings of their weapons into a bin and pull out their guns.
“Shit. I got brain on me.” Tony swats at the chunks on his jacket in disgust.
“Shut your mouth, you moron.” Larry peers around the corner as his grip tightens around his Cobra and he sees an entire pack of ravaging dwarves stampeding from the coliseum in all directions.
“What’s happening?”
Tony tries to look but Larry pins him against the wall.
“Here’s the deal,” Larry says. “Those dwarves are hungry so we have to make a break for the door. Back up the stairs. Kill anyone that tries to stop us, ya hear?”
Tony’s eyes show how terrified he is, but he agrees to the plan and holds his pistol tight. Larry looks back around the corner to see if it’s clear. A bunch of dwarves have found the bloodstain on the ground and look furious.
One of the dwarves points to the open door at the top of the stairs and they see little droplets of blood leading into the alleyway where Larry and Tony are hiding.
“We have to go now, Tony.”
Without another word they take off around the corner. They make it up a few steps and turn to unload their guns towards the dwarves who are chasing them. Larry gets tackled. The dwarves tear at his flesh and gnaw at his bones. He accidentally shoots himself in the face. Tony screams and continues up the steps, but is stopped and eaten alive by the swarm.
Jeac, looking out the window, sees two men run up the steps and fire round after round into the crowd. In seconds his new family has consumed them.
“What the hell is happening down there?” he asks Ted Lincoln.
Ted Lincoln reclines in an old wooden chair.
“Hell if I know,” he says. “Join me, would you?”
Ted Lincoln gestures towards another chair by the fire.
“Smoke this,” he says. “We have much to discuss.”
Ted Lincoln offers Jeac a pipe filled with tobacco and Jeac willingly accepts it. He lights himself up and starts puffing away.
Part XV: Sensual Lovers & Mysterious Mystery
Chapter 21
Jeac sits by the fire, stuffing his face with food and smoking tobacco. His disgusting beard smells like death. Ted Lincoln talks for days about war, women, beards, food, and the ancestry of the giants and how they came to be on Chandaka. Jeac pays no attention to him because I don’t feel like writing dialogue. But imagine the coolest thing ever and this would be it.
Jeac is laden with bags of fancy meats and tobacco before he heads out. Ted Lincoln stops him at the door.
“Jeac, wait! I almost forgot. If you are ever in danger simply call out the dwarf call. ‘Help my dwarf brethren, I am in danger.’ Sure enough, we might be there.”
Ted Lincoln shakes Jeac’s meaty hands and sends him on his way.
“Thank you, Ted Lincoln,” Jeac says. “It has been an honor.”
He opens the door and waves goodbye to Ezekiel, his new best friend. Jeac smokes his pipe and walks as a born-again dwarf back down through the city where the dwarves all gather and give him goodbye kisses and hugs. He notices a few of them have shiny new weapons and jewelry. Some of the younger dwarves are even sucking on rather large bones, but he discards the thought and keeps walking.
As Jeac reaches the entrance his dwarf lover that has had no previous mentions in any of the other chapters approaches.
“Where are you off to, Jeac?” she asks. “I know you ain’t leavin’ without sayin’ goodbye, fool.”
Jeac drops everything and gets naked.
Esmeralda is a sexy dwarf with a big smile. She is gorgeous, sweating profusely with sausage-like fingers and a comb-over beard for hair and breasts made of pancakes. She could stop an entire fleet of galactic navy ships. The two dwarves lay down together and {REDACTED}.
Chapter 22
Ranch and Baby stand at the edge once more. They look out into the darkness of space. Bits and pieces of the planet drift about and crumble. On one of the floating pieces stands a random tyrannosaur for some reason. He waves a small stumpy arm at the two of them. Then he explodes.
“Well that was weird,” says Ranch Dressing.
“Yes, but not as weird as some of the other stuff we’ve seen on this planet,” says Water Baby.
“You know what I just realized, Baby?”
“What, Ranch?”
“Way the hell back in the first chapter, I sprouted wings and jumped from the top of the tower and flew!”
“Well that makes us look like idiots considering we walked all the way through the scorching desert and nearly died, but didn’t because I kept us hydrated.”
“I know, right?” says Ranch. “But that is behind us. Like my tail. The point is we can fly down under the planet to see what Go was talking about!”
“Who the hell is Go?” asks Water Baby.
“Oh, he’s the homeless janitor wizard who lives in the tower and probably projected that shadow.”
“Why are you explaining everything?”
“Because this story is dumb!”
Without saying another word, Ranch begins to look horribly constipated. His muscles tense and his knees bend a little. With a loud grunt and the dropping of a deuce, two wings explode in a fountain of flesh and blood from his back and begin flapping. Water Baby drips into a canteen.
Ranch focuses and flaps his wings until they are free of excess viscera. He takes off from the ground and flies in a loop until he is upside down and under the remaining Chandakan dome. It is a massive place. Millions of strands of rope span from the undersides of the planets old tectonic plates. They connect to a big ass bucket.
As they fly by the bucket they bear witness to a horrific sight: bodies falling from the blackness of a column in the center of the dome.
“What the hell is that?” Baby asks because she is stupid.
“Didn’t you read the book? That column above is the murder shaft. The cops drop bodies down it into that there bucket to keep weight on the ropes holding the planet together.”
“That doesn’t work within actual laws of physics but okay, I’ll take it.”
“I think, having read the book before, this is where I am supposed to be outraged! So. I am outraged!” says Ranch Dressing, outraged.
“I too am outraged!” Water Baby yells. “Let us fly up the shaft, dodging bodies and kill whoever is at the top dumping them!”
“Great idea, Baby! You’re so sexy right now.”
They swoop over the bucket and glance down long enough to see that it is half filled with blood and parts. They both vomit and it lands in the bucket, weighing it down a bit more. Ranch looks straight up the murder shaft and starts flying up and dodging the fresh corpses of citizens killed in
the name of preserving the planet. A single dot of light at the top of the vast shaft occasionally blinks in and out of existence as the dead blot it out and fall past.
As they speed towards the top the shaft narrows and they violently ejaculate out and past two confused looking Sky-Cops.
“Hey! What the hell!” One of the cops yells and jumps backwards using his jetpack because he is lazy and fat.
He pulls his gun out of his crotch mounted holster and tries to level it for a shot at the velociraptor but misses. Ranch spirals through the air and swoops towards the cop big claw toe foot thingy first. The large talon-like toe rips through the cops’ armor and drags up through his chest, neck, and skull. He is left in an awkward position on the ground, not unlike the empty shell of a pod of peas.
His partner, standing next to a vast mountain of dead Chandakan people, is in shock and soils himself. He drops to the ground quivering. Before he can do or say anything, Water Baby flies down his throat and starts expanding him. He explodes and the water within cleans him away instantly.
With the killing done, the two turn and look at the mountain of the dead in sadness. Neither knows what to do. They sit there for a good hour thinking and talking and planning. Suddenly a door at the far end of the roof bursts open. They ready themselves for another fight but quickly calm as they see Go the janitor approach.
“Don’ worry ‘bout the corpses. I got it under control,” he says. “You two go down the tower and get some people for the thing with the stuff.”
“What’s going on? Why is Go here?” Water Baby asks.
“I think the authors want to wrap this damn thing up,” Go replies. “So I came here to help. You’re probably confused as hell. There are a few factions in the tower who know the truth because I told them because I’m awesome. Unfortunately, two of the factions are dead and the last faction is just you two guys. I’ll join you after I’m done being awesome here on the roof.”
Raptor and Baby head towards the exit, but stop and turn back around when they hear the sound of magic. You know, waffles popping from a toaster. That fresh baked smell. The anticipation of tasting them on your tongue. That’s what magic sounds like.
Go is standing next to the corpse pile and waving his hands above his head and doing all kinds of crazy drugs. A rumbling starts and the pile warps together. It forms a column in which features, sharp and lifelike, begin to emerge.
“Go, what are you doing!?” Ranch dressing shouts.
“I’m makin’ a gat dang blood golem, because why the hell not?”
Sky-Cops kick in the door and knock Ranch backwards. He runs and jumps off the side of the building because he can still fly and taking the stairs would be a complete waste of time. He makes the assumption that the blood golem was designed to distract the Sky-Cops, but no, Go is just insane.
As he gently touches down at the base of the tower he looks up and sees both blood and people flying off the sides. He steps laterally to avoid being crushed by the upper torso of a particularly beefy sky cop.
Part XVI: Atop the Murder Floor
Chapter 23
Go is laughing maniacally and has pulled off one of his own arms. A Sky-Cop is lying on the ground in front of him; arm up to defend from the mad wizards’ blows. The janitor-wizard utters an incantation and the arm becomes enchanted. Now spiked, it breaks the arm of the Sky-Cop right off. The screaming man tries to use his bloody arm stump to protect himself, but it is futile. His head is caved in and explodes into a thousand pieces. Go picks up his body and hurls it at the blood golem who assimilates the parts and grows in size.
The golem flails and punches with its skull-knuckled fists. Sky cops either fly from the top of the tower or are split into pieces and promptly absorbed into the ever growing flesh mound.
After joining with forty Sky-Cops the golem’s weight is too great for the roof. It drops through and as it does, Go jumps onto its back and slams his arm back into his socket.
“Down with the tower!” he yells, wide eyed. “Down with the C.D.P.D!”
Three floors of the tower collapse beneath the weight of the bleeding beast. The cities around the holes swarm with curious people wanting to know what is going on. You know, because they’re curious.
Intestine-like tentacles shoot forth from the top of the blood golem’s arms and shoulders and grab those too close to the edge. Rubble, blood, and bone drop from everywhere.
Hovering down from the opening above, the sky cops open fire with their sub-machine guns. Go shields himself and his evil creation with a palm-generated magic barrier. The bullets stop mid-air and Go launches them in all directions. They kill indiscriminately.
More bodies. Bigger golem. Go uses his mind to levitate all of the nearby jetpacks to the golem’s leg. They bind there and slow the beasts’ descent.
Through an opening created by a wild punch, a group of Ronin stare at the golem. Their hands grip the hilts of their katana. Mu stands among them. He spots Go riding on the golem’s shoulders.
“Brother!” he yells. “Why do you do this insane thing!?”
“Brother?” Go asks. “We stopped being brothers the moment I was expelled from the Ronin for being so awesome.”
“Magic, unguided and uncontrolled, is not awesome, Go! It’s evil!”
“What’s evil is what this tower stands for! What it literally upholds!”
He clenches his teeth and his fists and angles his arms up at the opening the Ronin watch him from. Two columns of white light spiral towards the opening, but before it hits Mu yells, “Go!”
It causes some confusion. His men don’t know if he’s telling them to attack or if he’s addressing his brother. Most of the Ronin jump anyway. They bounce off the walls and towards the golem. Swords drawn, they stab and climb and hack at the beast. Mu has landed right on the back of its head.
Go faces him and pulls what was once a Sky-Cop rib from beneath his feet. He runs his hand over it and it becomes sharp as hell. It could probably do really well on the SATs.
Mu rushes forward with his katana above his head, poised to strike. When Go swings his rib-blade sideways, Mu lunges to the right and past, avoiding it. Three of Go’s fingers fall to the ground and become part of the golem. Mu’s katana swings downward again at Go, who is just turning around. He drops the rib-blade and catches the sword between his hands. He catches it late and the edge of the weapon brushes the top of his head.
Blood trickles down off the tip of his nose. His arms start shaking violently and a sound, high-pitched like the whistling of a tea kettle, accompanies the destruction of Mu’s blade. Its shards fly in all directions, lacerating the brothers’ faces. They jump back away from each other.
Sky-Cops drift down and attempt to engage both the golem and the Ronin.
“You see?” asks Go. “They don’t care about the factions or the people. They care about defending their horrible secret!”
He lunges forward and snot-rockets a fireball from his nostrils.
Mu puts his palms together and water sprays out, hydrating his skin. The flames extinguish.
“You don’t think they care about stopping a maniacal wizard and his flesh-born hell spawn!?”
“That is beside the point, Mu,” Go says. “You’re helping them defend a lie!”
He punches Mu in the stomach with a now rock-covered fist.
“The planet has been dead for centuries. How many more people must die to keep the ruse in place?”
“You’re a hypocrite!” Mu spits out, wincing. “You’re killing just as many people as they are!”
He grabs Go by the wrist and sends pulses of electricity into his veins. Go’s blood boils and he drops to the ground and rolls away.
“No,” Go says as he pushes himself up. “No. They kill just enough to keep the planet from drifting apart. I’m killing everyone. No people. No lie!”
They both shoot a continuous stream of generic looking roto-scoped movie effect lightning at each other. It collides and cracks and whips ab
out. A Sky-Cop wrestling with a Ronin mid-air has the misfortune of crossing the streams and both he and his rival are vaporized.
As they push their magic to its limit, a ball of light forms in the center of the crackling waves of electricity. It grows in size until everyone is consumed.
Chapter 24
Jeac prances gleefully through the desert and towards the tower.
“Damn. Those pancakes were scrumptious.”
Jeac looks at the imaginary book camera of your mind and shrugs.
“What? You thought redacted meant something else?”
The camera that is your mind pans around behind Jeac, who is now looking at the tower and sees the ball of light that did that thing at the end of the previous chapter.
“I didn’t know the suns could set on the tower,” he says to no one in particular.
The ball of light collapses in on itself and erupts outward. It creates a shockwave and destroys the upper third of the tower. Various colored lights bounce around atop a colossal beast that swings its arms relentlessly.
A Ronin flies from the explosion and lands at Jeac’s meaty feet. Flabbergasted, Jeac jumps back and screams.
“What the hell!?” he screams as he jumps backwards, flabbergasted.
The man is mangled and his katana has pierced his skull and only slightly missed his brain.
“Wizard fight, fool!” the dying man yells.
“No way, bro,” Jeac says. “I’ve got to get up there!”
Jeac lights the man a fatty tobacco stick and shoves it into his face.
“Yeah, man,” the Ronin puffs. “Shits pretty nuts. Good luck.”
Jeac runs towards the tower in a quickly motion. The closer he gets to the tower, the more people and body parts along with gallons of blood are flying down around him. Dodging the mutilated corpses as he makes his way into the front doors of the tower, Jeac rushes to Armando’s office, and struggles as he opens the door because of all the garbage that has built up.
Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening Page 8
