by Eirik Gumeny
“Well, the loneliness and despair really add an extra layer to the meal.”
“I thought I tasted desperation,” said Amber.
“You two are monsters,” stated Carissa.
“Monsters?” scoffed the waitress. “Really, if you think about, it’s more humane to eat orphans only, isn’t it? You’re doing them a favor, yeah? They actually almost look happy to see you when you start coming at them with the hammer.”
“We need to leave.”
“So you want the check then, yeah?”
“You said I could have dessert!” Amber whined.
“No, in fact, I said the exact opposite,” replied Carissa.
“Of course you did,” griped Amber. “God. I don’t know what I get out of this relationship sometimes.”
“You? You don’t know?”
“It does seem like you’re being a bit judgy,” added the not-a-Spice Girl. “And a little controlling, maybe.”
“Controlling?! If it wasn’t for me she’d – I’m just – I –” Carissa looked at her wife and the waitress, looking at the looks they were looking at her. She suddenly felt very guilty.
“You know what? Fine.” Carissa put up her hands and leaned back in her seat. “If that’s how things are done here then, just, fine. You want to eat orphans, fucking eat orphans.”
“So we’re staying for dessert?”
“Apparently ...” Carissa’s sigh was as heavy as a Sumo wrestler with a glandular disorder.
“How’s the cheesecake?” asked Amber, pulling the dessert card from the condiment rack.
“It’s made with real orphan’s milk,” replied the waitress.
“Human?”
“Baboon.”
“Oh my God, that sounds delicious.”
“I’ll just have a coffee,” said Carissa, quickly adding, “Black.” Less quickly, she added, “God knows you can’t go putting orphan parts in there.”
“Well, not orphan parts,” mumbled the genetically-replicated Spice Girl.
“What did you say?”
“Look,” replied the clone of Mel B. “I’ll just put you down for tea, yeah?”
Amber’s insides growled like a grizzled greyhound staring at his own reflection in a sliding door. “Can you make that two slices?” she asked.
“We have really got to get you to a doctor, honey,” said Carissa.
“Yeah,” added the waitress, “that is a not a normal sound for a stomach to make.”
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE
a Charlie & Thor misadventure
“Hello?”
“Hey, you’re one of those guys we’re supposed to call when there’s some crazy shit going down and we don’t know what to do, right?”
“That’s us.”
“OK, good. There’s some crazy shit going down and we don’t know what to do.”
“Can you clarify that at all?”
“No. If I could do that I would’ve called Jesus.”
“Jesus is godding-for-hire now?”
“Yeah, but he’s absurdly expensive and won’t get involved without a thorough run-down of his opponent and a large Hawaiian pizza. Which I can’t do because I have no idea what the fuck I’m looking at and it destroyed the only pizzeria for miles.”
“Can you at least vaguely describe whatever this calamity is? I need to know what to bring.”
“It’s really big.”
“Does it appear to be an animal? A vegetable? Mineral?”
“Alchemical element? It’s mostly just flames.”
“Are you sure it’s not a wildfire?”
“I’m sure. It’s moving and roaring and setting anyone on fire that looks at it angry. Which is a lot of people, because it keeps exploding our trucks and then laughing at us.”
“OK.”
“Seriously, man, we need help. There’s some crazy shit going down and we don’t know what to do.”
“Right, you said that. Just to clarify, you’re not talking about a giant, sentient turd that someone set on fire, are you?”
“No.”
“OK, good. We are not getting involved with one of those again.”
“Look, are you coming to save our asses or what? ‘cause if you’re not, I got other calls I need to make.”
“Are you paying with dollars or were you going to attempt some kind of barter?”
“Dollars.”
“Then, yes, we’ll help you out.”
After getting the man’s location and bank account information, Chester A. Arthur XVII hung up the phone. Then he grabbed his bag of axes from under his bed. He exited into the hallway and grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall.
“Thor!” he shouted. “We’ve got a job!”
There had been twenty-four apocalypses to date. Scientists were granting sentience to any and every inanimate object they could find – originally in an effort to transfer human consciousness into less frail casings and save humanity from a mummy’s curse that was causing everyone everywhere to sweat blood and eat their own bones, but now mostly for fun. Anything the neuroscientists missed was taken care of by nature herself. Entire forests would occasionally wake up in the morning, scratch their trunks, and go “What the fuck? How are we awake?” Then they’d go to war with a colony of bunnies because it turns out trees are assholes.
Most of these artificially intelligent animals and plants and vacuum cleaners were surprisingly adaptable to a lifetime of thought thrust upon them in a single moment. They’d shrug consciousness off, go get breakfast, and continue on with their lives, completely ignoring their uninformed yet incredibly strong opinions on politics and celebrity fashion. Others were so overwhelmed by sentience that they’d throw themselves off cliffs or tall buildings, desperate to retreat back to the peace of not knowing how stupid everyone else was. Unless they were birds, of course. That didn’t work for birds.
Still others did the correct thing and, upon learning that they were gifted with an entire new branch on their skill tree, immediately began fighting crime in funny-looking outfits. Which was good because there was yet another small set of artificially sentient stuff that took it upon themselves to use their newfound intelligence for evil. Or, at the very least, rampant douchebaggery.
“So, what is it we’re fighting?” asked Thor from the passenger seat of Chester A. Arthur XVII’s armored Volkswagen Beetle.
“I don’t know yet,” answered Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Something that’s impervious to flames, though. It’s apparently entirely engulfed by fire.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Are you being sarcastic? That didn’t sound sarcastic.”
“I’m really excited about fighting fire. With fists.”
“That’s not how the saying goes, Thor.”
“What saying?” asked the former thunder god. “We’re sure this isn’t flaming poop again, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That turd thought he was such hot sh–”
“Finish that sentence and I will pull this car over and put an axe in your head.”
“You’re no fun sometimes, Charlie.”
***
The Volkswagen Beetle rolled slowly across the cracked and occasionally boiling asphalt lot, past hundreds of melted truck cabs and exploded semitrailers. Chester A. Arthur XVII and Thor stared through the windshield at the flaming figure towering over the truck stop.
“That thing is fucking huge,” said Thor. “And it’s got three legs.”
“I don’t think that’s a leg, Thor.”
“What’re you – No way. That’s not even fair! How does nature let something like that even –”
“We’re clearly looking at some kind of artificially-constructed manifestation of fire, remotely-controlled by an unknown source, for the express purpose of terrorizing truck drivers.”
“OK, sure, but that still doesn’t explain the giant fire-wang.”
“Yeah, I don’t ... I don’t know, Thor.”
“Maybe he wants to make the truck drivers
feel bad about themselves.”
“Maybe.”
“What a dick.”
“Right, well, if you’re done, let’s figure out how to take care of this.” Chester A. Arthur XVII pulled the Volkswagen into an empty spot near a Denny’s and threw the gearshift into Park. They were about fifty yards from the feet of the fire monster. It was standing in the center of the largest truck stop in New York State, fire-hands on its fire-hips, seemingly examining the conflagration. The expansive parking lot was an ocean of flame and smoke, though all the buildings appeared to be undamaged.
The cloned president looked out the window again, craning his neck to see the top of the giant fire man.
“I don’t think I brought enough extinguishers.”
“Whatever, man,” said Thor. “I got this.”
Thunder cracked and a colossal charge of white light came tearing down from the darkening sky.
The lightning bolt went right through the fire monster.
“You can’t electrocute fire, Thor.”
“And now I know that.”
The monolithic pyre turned, finding the Beetle, the one unexploded car in the truck stop. The fire-man began stalking towards it.
“Can you make it rain?”
“I guess so,” said the thunder god, “but I didn’t bring an umbrella.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” said Thor. “It’s supposed to be sunny all week.”
A giant, incendiary foot came crashing down in front of the Volkswagen, detonating the Denny’s and burying everything nearby in a spray of flaming splinters and silverware and shitty eggs.
“We should probably get out of the car,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Yeah ...”
The Norseman and the homunculus dove from the car, just as the monster slammed his fire-wang down onto the Volkswagen Beetle with terrific fanfare. Then, just as quickly, the man-fire turned and walked away, seemingly oblivious, or at least uninterested, in the cloned president and the thunder god sprawled on the ground near the car.
Thor watched as the anthropomorphic flames left, then turned his attention to Chester A. Arthur XVII and the perfectly-fine Volkswagen.
He made a face. “Why is the car OK, Charlie?”
“I fireproofed it a while ago.”
“Then why did we jump out of it?”
“The interior gets incredibly hot when the exterior is engulfed in flames. We would’ve been baked alive.”
“You, maybe,” huffed the thunder god.
“You wanted to stay in the car? Why? It would have served no purpose. We were going to have to get out sooner or later to fight this fire anyway.”
“I really liked the song on the radio,” said Thor sheepishly, before nodding toward the conflagration approaching them again. “Looks like the flame dude’s coming back.”
“Is it carrying a tanker full of acid?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII.
It was carrying a tanker full of acid. A tanker from the fleet of Caravaggio’s Chemical Carry-Away containing a shitload of sodium hydroxide to be exact.
“I can lightning that, right?”
“As long as you are very, very thorough. I don’t want to lose any skin.”
“Then you might want to take a few steps back.”
Black clouds roiled overhead again and a tremendous bolt of electrical energy ripped through the air, exploding the tanker very, very thoroughly and evaporating most of the raining acid.
The inferno stared for a moment at the empty space between its hands, then appeared to grimace with annoyance. It turned its gaze to the Volkswagen. Roaring, the fire monster began jumping up and down on the vehicle with both feet.
“What does that thing have against your car?” asked Thor.
“That’s a good question,” replied Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’m gonna go punch it now.”
“That’s not going to be beneficial in any way.”
“Well, that’s good, ‘cause I’m trying to hurt it.”
Thor walked over to the hissy-fitting fire-man, rotated his neck, and then threw a mighty fist into the four feet of flame serving as the creature’s big toe. The fist went right through it. The rest of Thor, carried by his inertia, did the same. His clothes, and most of his hair, ignited immediately.
“Well, shit,” he said. He stepped back out of the fire foot, smacking himself in the head to put out his hair. “I appear to be on fire.”
“Roll, Thor!” shouted Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“I’m not hungry!”
“Roll around on the ground to suffocate the flames!” clarified the cloned president.
“Ohhh,” said the thunder god, before doing as he was told. The fire subsided, but not before he lost his shirt and most of his pants in the process. His sneakers were fine, though. Adidas manufactured them to survive soccer riots, after all.
It was at this point that the fire monster began laughing.
“There’s no way that’s good,” said Thor.
Immediately, the anthropomorphic inferno stomped toward Chester A. Arthur XVII, chasing him as he fled across the parking lot, the cloned president zig-zagging between burning trucks to avoid both other burning trucks and the huge fire-wang of the monster that flopped down with every step the creature took. It was proving to be more difficult than Charlie had imagined. He was losing most of the hair on his arms.
“Remember that rain thing we talked about?” shouted Chester A. Arthur XVII as he darted past Thor, a flame foot crashing down behind him. “Can you do that now?”
“You’re gonna get wet,” said Thor, crouched and picking up a slab of ham from the wreckage of the exploded Denny’s.
“I’m OK with that.”
“If you say so.” Thor shrugged as he chewed.
The clouds grew darker and, with a symphony of thunder, a torrential rain was unleashed. Smoke began pouring upward as hundreds of car fires were extinguished simultaneously. The thunder god and the president watched as the fire monster turned frantically, looking for a place to hide, steam curling from its shoulders. Within seconds, though, the downpour was too heavy, and Chester A. Arthur XVII started having problems seeing more than two feet in front of his face.
He walked straight into a flatbed full of concrete.
Maybe it was less than two feet.
“OK, you can make it stop now,” yelled the president, running a finger beneath his bleeding nose.
“That wasn’t part of the deal!” Thor shouted over the din of the now horizontal rain.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m the God of Thunder! Not the God of Making Thunder Go Away!”
“They shouldn’t be mutually exclusive things!”
“I don’t know what that means!”
“Did you at least put the flame manifestation out?”
“Yes?”
The president sighed. “How long is this going to last?”
“A couple minutes. Half-hour at most.”
Chester A. Arthur XVII began walking toward the sound of Thor’s voice. The ground was giving a not insignificant amount of resistance. It was also a lot heavier and wetter than he remembered.
“The truck stop is flooding, Thor!”
“Yeah, that’ll happen,” said the thunder god. “It’s OK, though. I know how to swim.”
***
Thirty minutes later, as the torrential downpour eased off into a light drizzle, Chester A. Arthur XVII and Thor saw a figure sitting cross-legged in a cloud of steam not far from where the flame monster had been standing.
“I think that’s ... a kid,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Do you think he was the fire-thing?”
“Seeing as how the rain seems to be boiling off of him, yes.”
The steam began to thin as the rain tapered off altogether. A scrawny, naked, and very white fifteen-year-old glared at the thunder god and the cloned president.
“You sure? His dick’s not very
big.”
“I don’t think it was proportional, Thor.”
The teenager flipped them off with both hands.
“What the hell is his problem?” asked Thor, before shouting towards the teenager, “What the hell is your problem?!”
“My problem?” barked the fifteen-year-old, standing up. “My problem? My problem is your guys’s stupid asses, that’s what. Why you two bitty bitches gotta be gettin’ all up in my burnin’ shit down and shit? Your hoopty ain’t even broke, yo, why you gots ta go and shit in my cereal like you on some kinda comic book trip or somethin’?”
“Did you understand a word of that?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII, raising an eyebrow.
“He asked why we stopped his arson spree,” Thor translated. “He also implied that your car was a piece of crap.”
“That impudent little ...” mumbled the cloned president. Raising his voice, he said to the teenager: “You’re putting lives at risk and causing gratuitous damage to both personal property and the livelihood of a shipping business that was already precarious at best. This truck stop is one of the last strongholds for cross-country drivers; a city – and a way of life – unto itself. You’ve caused irreparable harm to them today, for seemingly no reason. That is why we’re requesting you cease your reckless and wanton actions.”
“What?” said the teenager.
“You’re being a dickhead,” clarified Thor. “Knock it off.”
“That is some new jack bullcrap, yo! If I can’t drive, ain’t no one gonna can drive!”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” said the president. “Said in the single dumbest manner possible.”
“That ain’t what yo’ momma said.”
“I don’t have a mother. I was created in a vat by a team of German scientists.”
“Yo’ momma was in a vat by a team of German scientists!”
“You’re making less and less sense by the second,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII shaking his head like a disappointed algebra teacher. “Voluntarily end your pyromania and we’ll let you vacate these premises without injury. Antagonize us again, though, and grievous bodily harm will likely befall you.”
The teenager tilted his head and looked to Thor.
