Wipeout of the Wireless Weenies

by David Lubar

  My stomach rippled at the word assassins.

  But I was seeking wealth, not murder. And I would be more careful than Grungy.

  I read some more: Once summoned into a proper receptacle, the salamander will remain in the glass until released. Care must be taken that the innocent or unwary do not drink from the glass. As assassins have learned, this salamander does fatal damage once inside the body.

  I looked at the glass. It was empty. I hadn’t realized I’d drunk the whole thing. I pushed the book away and sprang up from the chair. An instant later, a slashing pain in my gut doubled me over.

  I fell to my knees as the searing pain traveled from my stomach up to my throat, and then out my mouth.

  Something fell to the ground in front of me. My eyes couldn’t focus. The pain swelled and wrapped around me. The salamander wriggled toward the puddled water on the ground. It stopped short. I reached out and pushed it forward, into the water.

  It disappeared in smoke, leaving me behind to die alone.

  CHOOSE YOUR OWN MISADVENTURE

  You stand at the front steps of an abandoned house. The paint has flaked off, leaving the outer walls the color of dead rodents. Several boards are missing from the porch, and the door itself is covered with a spiderweb dotted with the fragile husks of lifeless flies and moths. Will you enter the house or will you walk away? If you wish to enter the house, skip to the next paragraph. If you wish to leave, keep reading. You leave the house and go home. You lead an unexciting life and eventually, thanks to your reluctance to take risks, die of boredom. The end.

  The door is warped, but you manage to force it open with your shoulder. You step into an old-fashioned parlor with a couch, several chairs, and a small table. Dust fills your nose and lungs, stealing your breath. The floor sags beneath your weight, threatening to break and send you plummeting into the basement. You hear music drifting in from the next room. If you decide to come to your senses and leave, skip over the next paragraph. If you decide to investigate the music, read on.

  You find a player piano in the next room. It is playing the first four notes of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” over and over. There is a pause at the end of the fourth note. If you feel an irresistible urge to play the fifth and final note of the phrase, skip over the next paragraph. If you come to your senses and leave, keep reading.

  You leave, but in your haste to flee, you forget about the missing boards on the porch. You break your leg, losing your starting spot on the team and giving up your starring role in the school play, which goes to your former best friend. You grow sullen and bitter, and eventually become one of those adults who shouts at kids to stay off their lawns. The end.

  As you play the missing fifth note, the piano slides away from the wall, revealing hidden stairs that rise out of sight. Do you climb the stairs or do you leave? If you wish to leave, go to the previous paragraph. Otherwise, read on.

  You climb the stairs and find yourself in a room with no furniture except a small table, a single chair, and a lamp. There is a book on the table. Do you start to read it or do you leave the room? If you start to read the book, skip over the next paragraph. Otherwise, keep reading.

  Your lack of curiosity about the book also keeps you from wondering about the noises you hear behind you as you turn away from the table and descend the stairs. This allows the rats that were lurking there to swarm over you before you can reach the door. You do not live happily ever after, but you made it a good day for the rats.

  You pick up the book and start to read a story called “Choose Your Own Misadventure.” If you have no interest in reading the whole story, go to the previous paragraph. Otherwise, go back to the first paragraph.

  KILLER ID

  “I’m going to the store. We’re out of milk,” Carlie’s mom said. “I’ll be right back. Don’t answer the door for strangers.”

  “I know,” Carlie said. “I’m not a little kid.” She could recite all the safety rules from memory. She’d heard them far more often than necessary. It was okay to open the door for someone she recognized. But not for a stranger, no matter how unthreatening the person looked. The same rule held for the phone. She could answer the call if a friend or neighbor was on the other end. But if she saw an unfamiliar name on the caller ID, or if it said UNKNOWN CALLER, she wasn’t supposed to pick up the phone.

  At least they had caller ID now. Last month, her parents had bought a set of three cordless phones. Finally. The whole time she was growing up, Carlie had to deal with these stupid ancient phones her parents had owned since way back when they first got married. The old phones didn’t have a display or anything. No speed dial. No menu. Nothing useful at all.

  Worse, they had these twisted cords that were always getting knotted up and tangled. There was one old phone left, on the wall in the kitchen, but the rest were gone.

  After begging and pleading for new phones for years, Carlie had finally found a way to get what she wanted. This one kid in her biology class, Luca Raskolni, was good with electronics. He wasn’t her friend or anything, but Carlie had discovered that the nerdy, awkward boys in her class were always eager to do what she asked if she smiled at them.

  Luca had certainly come through. He’d messed up three of the old phones so it seemed like they were going bad. They’d still worked when he was finished, but a crackle of static made it difficult to understand what people were saying. Luca hadn’t had a chance to ruin the phone in the kitchen. He’d had to scoot out the back door when Carlie heard her parents’ car in the driveway. But at least, with three phones going bad, Carlie’s parents had finally bought replacements that didn’t belong in an antique shop.

  As soon as her mom left for the store, Carlie went back to watching television. A moment later, the phone rang. There was a handset right next to her on the table by the couch, sitting in a charging cradle. Carlie looked at the caller ID display, hoping one of her friends was on the other end.

  UNKNOWN KILLER.

  “What?” It took her a second to realize it hadn’t said UNKNOWN CALLER.

  As the second ring scraped against her nerves, Carlie read the words again. No mistake. And no way she was going to pick up the phone. She inched away from the handset, but kept her eyes on the display and wondered why the room suddenly felt ten degrees colder.

  After the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up. Carlie held her breath as she listened to the outgoing message.

  “Hi. You’ve reached the Embersons,” her dad’s voice said. “We can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message after the beep.”

  There was a click, followed by the hollow silence of a dead connection. No message. Carlie shuddered, but she figured it was some kind of glitch in the phone lines.

  Five minutes later, the phone rang again. Carlie was afraid to look at the display, but even more afraid not to look.

  KILL WAITING.

  “That does it!” Carlie grabbed the phone, slid open the back compartment, and ripped out the battery. The loss of power silenced the phone. But the other phones in the house rang three more times, until the answering machine picked up. Again, there was no message.

  All was quiet for the next five minutes. Then the phones rang. Carlie ran to her parents’ bedroom and pulled the battery from that phone. The display, before fading, read KILLER APP.

  The last cordless phone was in the basement. As Carlie passed through the kitchen, she glanced at the phone on the wall. Suddenly, old-fashioned electronics didn’t seem all that stupid or annoying. There was something solid and reliable about the wall phone.

  She opened the door to the basement and raced down. The instant her foot hit the bottom step, the phone rang. She grabbed the phone before the second ring. As she struggled to remove the battery cover—a task that turned out to be nearly impossible with trembling hands—she read the message: PHONE KILLER.

  “No!” Carlie hurled the phone against the wall and ran back to the kitchen. She stopped at the top of the steps to catch her breath. />
  The wall phone rang.

  Carlie yanked it from the hook and shouted into the mouthpiece, “Stop it! Stop calling!”

  There was no answer, but Carlie could tell the line was open. Someone was on the other end.

  Just as she was about to hang up, she heard a whisper in the handset. “Carlie?…”

  “What?” Even that came out as a scream. Carlie tried to stop her hand from shaking, but the tremors resisted her efforts and grew stronger.

  “I’m right behind you,” the voice whispered.

  Carlie spun around and stepped back. The long, twisted phone cord wrapped around her. She grabbed at it with her free hand as she took another step backwards. It tangled around her like a plastic eel.

  “Here I come!” This time, the words were shouted.

  Carlie staggered farther back. There was nobody in front of her. Unfortunately, there was also nothing beneath her feet. She’d backed through the door to the basement.

  Carlie lost her balance. She tumbled and spun down the stairs, until she was jerked to a halt by the cord around her neck. The phone fell from her fingers.

  The three cordless phones, despite being dead themselves, all briefly flashed one last message: TOLD YOU SO.

  As for the kitchen phone—the line went dead.

  A WORD OR TWO ABOUT THESE STORIES

  If you’ve read the other Weenies collections, you know I like to take a little space in the back of the book to talk about where I got the ideas for the stories. (And if you haven’t read the other collections, I hope you will feel inspired to do so.)

  After the Apocalypse

  You know those great birthday parties kids have? They can cause a lot of stress for parents. One year, when our daughter was young, my wife and I offered her a choice of a party or a trip to Disney World. So the idea of parents trying to avoid a party comes from real life. Add to that the huge popularity, right now, of zombies and zombie apocalypses, and the story fell together nicely.

  Dead Meat

  I like writing the occasional story where a kid gets trapped someplace unpleasant. (See “The Short Cut” in Invasion of the Road Weenies for a really scary example of this.) When I started out, all I knew was that I wanted to lock a kid in a butcher shop. Various things could have happened at that point. For example, the kid could have encountered the ghosts of animals. Or he could have had an unpleasant encounter with some of the butcher’s tools. But when I was thinking about the meat case, it hit me that all those slabs of muscle and bone were a perfect monster kit.

  My New Hat

  I was probably in seventh grade when I made the nearly fatal mistake, during a trip with my mom to the B. Altman department store in Short Hills, New Jersey, of selecting a hugely dorky hat. My next appearance at the school bus stop was not pleasant. No aliens appeared in a deus ex machina manner (look it up) to save my hide. The good thing about the traumas of youth is that they can inspire stories. Even better, I can let aliens disintegrate bullies.

  Fabrications

  I am a science nerd at heart, so it isn’t surprising that I came up with “What if a girl created a fabric-eating bacteria to get revenge on a bully?” That might seem like a pretty complex idea to have sprung fully formed from my head. But I can trace its roots back to an earlier idea. When I was in high school, one of my classmates had his blue jeans start to disintegrate. (Not the whole thing—just an area on one leg.) He realized he’d gotten battery acid on them when he was working on his car. So the idea of disintegrating clothing was in the back of my mind, waiting to emerge at the right time.

  Plague Your Eyes

  Because it is so easy to cut and paste text from the Internet, accidental or intentional plagiarism is a problem in schools. I was reading a discussion of this on a Listserv for librarians when I realized that if a kid stole an author’s words, it would be nice payback if the author showed up and stole the kid’s words.

  Control Issues

  I did pick up a wireless controller for my PS2, many years ago. (I actually own a wireless Atari joystick, too.) It does have two parts, one of which plugs into the controller port. I’d toyed with ideas in the past about a kid who finds a controller that actually controls people. Good ideas often come when you combine things. In this case, the wireless idea fit nicely with the control-someone idea.

  Mr. Chompywomp

  I’ve seen so many little kids clutching a favorite stuffed animal, it wasn’t surprising I’d start to think about what would happen if there was more to the animal than met the eye. After all, just because something is stuffed doesn’t mean it’s filled with nothing more than stuffing.

  Flesh Drive

  I started out thinking about a kid who discovers a USB port in his body. (I guess I had flash drives on my mind. I carry my school presentation on one, so I’m always very careful about how I remove it.) At first, I was going to explore various ways he could fill himself with information. But, as I wrote the opening, this less-pleasant ending came to mind. I know I took a chance by ending it in the middle of a sentence, but I trust my readers to understand what I’m doing. And I loved the idea allowing them to enjoy an extra spark of pleasure as they made the connection and realized it wasn’t a printing error.

  Gothic Horrors

  This story began with the idea of black-painted nails turning into insects. I like it when I start out with the idea for the ending. It’s a lot easier to think in terms of “How did this come about?” and build toward the existing ending than to take an opening and ask, “What happens next?” while working toward the ending. But both approaches can produce good stories.

  In a Class by Himself

  Sometimes, a what-if idea is intriguing (what if a kid was the only one in his class), but feels like it might be hard to turn into a story. All the character had to do was ask why he was the only kid in the class. But I liked the potential for absurdity. (I feel that true absurdity is best enjoyed in small doses, which makes it perfect for short stories.) And I liked the idea of the student and teacher both trying to act as if they were in a regular classroom. (You’ll notice that what-if plays a large part in my creative process. I actually write a what-if question at the start of each writing day. The file has grown quite large.)

  The Dumpster Doll

  Not only do I like trapping kids in scary places, I also like trapping them with scary objects. And dolls, along with clowns, are at the top of the list of things that are a lot scarier than they should be. (Hey, I think I need to write a story about a clown doll.)

  M.U.B.

  One thing I love about writing Weenies collections is that I can write all sorts of different stories, using whatever style or technique I want to explore. In The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies, the story “Yakity-Yak” is written as a monologue. All we see are the words of the main character. I wanted to write a story using nothing but dialogue. A conversation with the Monster Under the Bed (I trust you may have already figured out what M.U.B. stood for) seemed a perfect platform for this technique.

  Sympathy Pains

  I had the idea of a kid making a voodoo doll and unknowingly connecting it not to her victim but to herself. I have to confess that it wasn’t until I was revising the story (a process I find even more rewarding and creative than writing the first draft) that I realized the irony of having the girl misread the instructions when her intended victim was the reading teacher. Not everything you find in stories and novels is intentional.

  Rough Road

  When I talk with students about what-ifs, I tell them that some of the best stories happen when you turn the idea around, and make something that seems great (what if I won a million dollars?) turn out to be terrible, or something that seems to be terrible (what if I got hit by a car?) turn out to be wonderful. Having heard so many kids come up with “what if there was no school?” I eventually twisted it into “what if there was a land where kids had to battle their way to school every day?”

  No Thanks

  I like the idea
of aggregating misdeeds. (I like big words sometimes, too.) My first thought for this story was merely that after a kid had failed to send a note a certain number of times, his relatives would take back all the gifts they’d given him. This took a darker twist as I contemplated the full ramifications (oops—sorry, there I go again) of this.

  Coffin Fits

  This is hard for me to admit, because it shows how dark my thoughts can be, but the story sprang from my idea of a kid actually chewing his way out of a very horrifying situation. I realized there are some stories that are better left unwritten. But one idea led to another, and I decided I could write a story where the character only thinks he’s in that situation. It also seemed like a good idea to keep the chewing to a minimum.

  Walnuts

  Nut allergies are a serious problem. There’s nothing funny about having an allergy. So I wasn’t sure whether it would be okay to write a story about that issue. But the twist was so delicious, I couldn’t resist. Still, I was a bit worried. My first thought was that I could balance things out by having the teacher in the story talk about what a serious problem it is. But we have a word for stories like that. They are didactic. A didactic story can come off sounding preachy. In the end, I decided to take a chance. If you are allergic to nuts, I hope you still enjoyed the story. If you aren’t allergic to nuts, I hope you realize that those who are allergic have to deal with a serious problem. Be nice to them, or I’m sending the walnuts your way for a visit.

  A Litter Bit of Trouble

  It’s hard to look at a litter box and not think up some sort of monstrous or unpleasant idea. I also tend to be the sort who puts off chores, so I guess I am my own inspiration for this story. At least I didn’t put off the task of writing it. And, once the idea of a litter monster hit me, there was no way I could resist bringing it to life.