"It's okay."
Hand in hand, we went up the stairs to the roof to stand in the green light.
The air was damp and heavy.
We looked out at the world, and what we witnessed was all wrong.
Fanny let go of my hand.
Thousands of green pancakes swarmed across the island. They shuffled toward the zucchini castle, drooling and moaning.
"What's happened to them?" Fanny said.
"They've been pickled," I said.
I tried to take Fanny's hand, but she pulled away.
The pancakes surrounded the castle. Out in the distance, the sea shimmered. It was as green as the sun. Right beneath us, leading the pancake mob, the door-obsessed pancake stood beside the flattened, rocket-humping pancake boy. The two stared at me with sad, accusing facial expressions. The door-obsessed pancake raised her right hand and pointed at me. "You," she shouted. "You put me in this state.” She was barely audible over the moaning crowd, but I heard her, and Fanny did as well.
"You've ruined happiness, Gaston Glew," Fanny said. "You've ruined happiness and you've lied to me."
She walked away. She left the roof. I made to follow her, but stopped short. There was nothing I could say or do. I'd pickled her planet and the last of her race. The prospect of a future together was bleak.
I stood on the ledge and peered down at the undead pancakes clawing and moaning at the zucchini door beneath. Fanny Fod was right. I had ruined happiness.
"Oh, Miss Door Lover, Mister Rocket Humper," I called. "I'm sorry for what I've done. I'm sorry. I truly am. Please accept my apology and turn back to your normal, happy selves. You're pancakes, remember? You can't remain dead forever."
But happiness was not eternal, or so the sun had said.
The dead green sun blaring down.
Every pancake in the front yard raised their flats heads to me at once. Their unmoving eyes fixed on me. Although green and sickly, the pancakes did not look depressed. They looked . . . hungry.
Pickle-shaped tongues lolled out of their mouths. The pancakes licked their lips and smacked their rotting gums. Together they moaned, "Haaaaappppiiiinnnessssss. . . ."
That was when they tore down the door.
I ran to the stairwell and skipped down the steps. The Cuddlywumpus was in danger. I'd infected it, and in turn infected the syrup ocean, ruining everything, but Fanny Fod and I still might escape. With a lot of luck and a little leftover happiness, we could start a new colony somewhere else in the universe. If the last happy place was dead, we were its only shot at harvesting another.
I heard them shuffling around before I reached the ground floor. I stumbled a few steps from the bottom and fell the rest of the way down. I sprang up, ready to defend myself against the pancakes, but they were not coming in my direction. Their pattering steps moved toward the kitchen. They'd broken down the front door in no time at all.
My arms trembled. They were almost too heavy to lift. I balled my hands into fists and tucked them beneath my chin. I felt so scared and alone, but if I didn't rescue Fanny and show these pancakes who was boss, the fright and aloneness would never go away.
I marched down the narrow hall that led from the stairwell to the kitchen. Three pancakes scuffled toward me. I swung my fists at them. Green syrup gushed from their bodies. I punched and punched, crushing them as if they were overgrown garlic spiders. But soon as I'd mowed down the first batch, another came. Simultaneously, a chorus of moans broke out behind me. I flailed my arms, hoping to fight my way into the kitchen and to the dungeon door before the pancakes surrounded me in the hall.
I took down pancake after pancake. Their soggy carcasses piled up as they came into punching range. Soon, I wasn't just punching the brains out of the living pancakes, I was also kicking at the dead ones. I had to in order to keep moving forward. The moaning from behind approached fast.
I thought of the faces. The faces. The faces that would smother. I turned and ran back in the direction of the stairs, because in that moment, my fear of the smothering faces overcame my fear of losing Fanny, and by the time I overcame my own impulsive action, I was already running up the stairs. Pancakes swallowed everything beneath me.
The flapping sea of pancakes continued to rise. I had a clear path to the rooftop, but no way down from there. I'd have to face the smothering. I'd have to face it for real this time. I couldn't let Fanny Fod down anymore. After all that I'd taken, all I'd destroyed, to come all the way from Pickled Planet to find true love and manifest a nightmare, it had to come to this.
The words of the dead sun returned.
It is like being subject and object all at once. The boundaries between your perceptions and the world disintegrate.
That was the way it happened with Fanny and I during our first night together, when our lips met and we shared a yummy dream. We expanded beyond ourselves and swallowed each other. It was the greatest feeling ever.
I dove into the swarm of pickled pancakes. I resisted the initial urge to struggle, to swing my fists. Don't fight, I told myself. Don't fight don't fight don't fight.
I closed my eyes and let the pancakes drag me under. I envisioned their bodies as the molecules of Fanny's peanut butter lips, and that she was swallowing me whole. I sank deeper into the phosphorescent green confusion of bodies. A living lake of syrup and brine.
The pickled pancakes carried me toward the door of the dungeon. I could not see for myself, for the crowd blinded me, but they also propelled me forth. I trusted them now. They did not want to eat me or seek revenge for pickling their island. Maybe they were pickled, but so was I.
Sucking in mouthfuls of maple syrup and pickle brine, I thought how peculiar Fanny's and my children would taste, if we were to ever surface from this mess and she forgave me and we settled down and WHAM!
I slammed right into the dungeon door. The pancakes cleared a space around me, in which I staggered. No longer buried in pancakes, I was still up to my waist in fluids.
"Haaaaappppiiiinnnessssss. . . ." the pancakes moaned.
I tried the door and found it locked. "Fanny, it's me," I called. "Everything is fine. We're safe. The pickled pancakes are our friends."
"Go away, Gaston. You're a disease," Fanny said.
"Haaaaappppiiiinnnessssss. . . ." the pancakes moaned, encroaching on the door.
"Everything is fine," I insisted. "How's the Cuddlywumpus?"
"Infected."
"I'm sorry."
"Just go away, and take the pancakes with you."
"Trust me, Fanny. I wouldn't lie to you."
"You already have."
"Well I'm not lying this time. I ruined happiness, I know. But listen, it's not as bad as you think. Trust me on this. I'm from the armpit of the universe. I know how bad things can be. Maybe these aren't the pancakes you're used to. Maybe they're not singing and dancing. Maybe they're less yummy than they used to be, but they're still pancakes. They just have a little of me in them, and don't you love me?"
"You remade my home, my life, everything I've ever known, in your own image."
"Isn't that what love's about?"
"You ruined everything."
"You keep saying that, but you're failing to see that it's not all bad. In fact, it may not be bad at all. These pancakes are spooky, but they're not evil. They're still your kin. Come on, give me a chance. Open the door. I want to see you. I want to hold you. Let me try to fix this."
"Go away, Gaston."
"I can fix the Cuddlywumpus."
The pancakes crowded close to me. I turned and batted them away. I gave them a look that said don't say a word. I hoped their infected brains understood.
On the other side of the door, I heard Fanny speak to the Cuddlywumpus, and the Cuddlywumpus speaking back. At least the damned thing was alive. I pressed the right side of my head to the door. I resolved to be silent and wait for their talk to end.
Nothing doing.
The pancakes around me began to mutter.
"I
feel so sad," said a pancake, muffled by the soggy crowd.
"I feel lonely," said another.
"I feel bad about the way I feel," a third said.
"Me too!" said the crowd.
I spun around and raised a finger to my lips. I shushed the pancakes. My hand shook and fell away from my lips when I saw what ailed them. They'd regressed further, into a pickled state so severe that the last of their happiness oozed from their porous flesh. Happiness turned to pus. Yellow and rancid.
"We're dying," they said.
"Be quiet. You're not dying," I said. I guessed the pickling had given them knowledge of a lot of grim stuff they'd been unaware of.
The kitchen and hall were clotted with their disintegrating bodies.
"Gaston, are you there?" Fanny said.
"Yes, I'm here."
"Thank you for your patience."
"Just open the door."
The pancakes were crying softly now.
"Open the door," I said.
The dungeon door swung open. I heard Fanny scuttle down the stairs. I stepped forward and stood on the top step. No glow emanated from the phantom machines. No ear-tipped tentacles writhed curlicues in the air.
"Fanny?" I said.
"Down here."
"Fanny?"
"Shut the door."
"I need a light."
"The Cuddlywumpus needs the dark."
"Can you turn on the syrup machines, just for a moment? When I'm down there, you can turn them off again."
"The machines are dead."
She wasn't going to reason with me. In the weak light coming through the crack of open doorway, I saw that the dungeon was filled with balloons.
The balloons obscured the hulking form of the Cuddlywumpus.
"Shut the door," Fanny said.
I gripped the railing in my left hand and turned to close the door with my right.
A pancake slipped in sideways before the door closed.
I stepped away from the door and tried to grab hold of the pancake before it scurried past, but the door swung open behind me. The door knocked me off balance. I teetered for a moment.
"Haaaaappppiiiinnnessssss. . . ." the pancakes moaned, as they surged into the dungeon.
I tumbled end over end.
Splayed out on the dungeon floor, I tried to stand, but the pancakes were coming down the stairs and they trampled me.
Fanny Fod screamed.
I threw wild punches. My fists tore through the groaning pancakes. Their syrupy guts piled up around me, forming a barricade that blocked the horde from trampling me any further.
I caught sight of Fanny. She stood beneath the Cuddlywumpus. The pancakes surrounded her on all sides. She spun circles, hitting the pancakes that came within range of her fists.
"Stay back!" she cried. "All of you, stay back."
"Fanny!"
She glanced at me as I struggled through the pancake guts and braced myself to break through into the circle of pancakes to help Fanny. But during her respite, the pancakes increased the pace of their onslaught by double. They shed their clumsy natures, moving now with a strength and agility they did not have before. They raised their heads, revealing rows of sharp, tiny, crystallized maple fangs, and they moaned, "Haaaaappppiiiinnnessssss. . . ."
Before I could reach her, Fanny was buried in pancakes. I struggled forward, more desperate now than ever.
It did not appear that the pancakes took her down intentionally, but more like she had stood in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were piling up now, right where she'd stood. They crawled over each other, straining their newfound teeth and claws to get at the Cuddlywumpus, whose features now came into painful detail. The Cuddlywumpus had lost its fur. It was bald now, and green.
I knew I had infected the Cuddlywumpus. I could accept that. Harder to accept was the severity of the pickling. The Cuddlywumpus was in far worse condition than the pancakes.
Pickles sprouted from its flesh, obscuring its original form. The Cuddlywumpus looked like a seaweed-wrapped coral reef with a monstrous acne problem.
A gash split its belly in two. Green balloons floated from the wound. That was where the green balloons were coming from. The Cuddlywumpus was filled with green balloons.
The pancakes piled on top of each other. They struggled their way into the belly of the Cuddlywumpus, where they made attempts to eat the balloons, but the balloons popped beneath the pressure of their teeth and claws. They fell to eating the flesh of the Cuddlywumpus.
The Cuddlywumpus mewled and whined. The pickled pancakes, in conjunction with the chains holding it down, rendered the beast totally helpless.
I knew the only way to save Fanny was to rescue the Cuddlywumpus, but if the beast was going to make it out alive, I needed Fanny’s help. There were simply too many pancakes in the dungeon.
I dove into the swarming mound.
I tore through soggy pancake flesh.
Pancakes bit into me, but they were only trying to get to the Cuddlywumpus.
As I searched for Fanny, I wondered about hump boy and the door-obsessed pancake. They had seemed intent on tracking me down when the pancakes first congregated outside the zucchini castle. The continuing pickled degradation must have torn apart their consciousness. They probably forgot all about me.
I called out to Fanny. She should've been screaming and she wasn't.
I clawed through pancakes faster and faster. I was almost buried in pancakes when I finally uncovered her.
The pancake pile had smothered her.
Fanny Fod was flattened, broken. I cradled her in my arms and brought my head to her chest. I detected a frail heartbeat.
I held her as close as possible without further ruining her body, warding off the pancakes swarming to eat the doomed and pickled Cuddlywumpus.
Pancakes crowded every available space in the dungeon. Syrup and brine sloshed up as high as my waist. Green balloons continued pouring forth from the gaping belly wound of the Cuddlywumpus. To reach the Cuddlywumpus now, the pancakes had to push through a balloon layer. The pancakes vanished as if the balloons were a low-hanging cloud strata. I heard them feasting. The Cuddlywumpus cried. At this point all I wanted was to carry Fanny Fod up the stairs, lock the dungeon door, leave the zucchini castle, and be rid of these pickled pancakes forever, but I feared that lifting her might kill her.
"Fanny, can you hear me? We must leave. We can't stay here. If you can hear me, I'm sorry about the Cuddlywumpus."
At the mention of the Cuddlywumpus, she twitched a little. Her bruised skin flickered a near-electric green before diminishing to a sick brown.
I thought she’d passed when a glimmer burst up in her eyes. “Gaston Glew, you’ve ruined happiness,” she said. She was smiling.
I shook my head. “We can still be happy. We only need each other. The world never meant much to us anyway.”
“Save the Cuddlywumpus,” she said, her voice gargled and scratchy like a broken machine. “The Cuddlywumpus is the source of all happiness.”
Her flesh glowed again. The name held a rejuvenating power over her. “My voice is decaying. My voice will be gone any moment. Whatever happens, know that I forgive you. I forgive you for ruining happiness. I forgive you for pickling my planet. I just hope that in your eternal plight, you find a way to forgive yourself for the terrible things you’ve done. I love you, Gaston Glew. May you always keep me alive in your heart.”
“I love you, Fanny Fod.”
I didn’t understand. She looked as bright and beautiful as the day I’d met her.
And yet, she was growing.
As I held her in my arms, she swelled up like a balloon. The Cuddlywumpus, pancakes, and balloons already filled up the entire dungeon, and now Fanny Fod swelled, putting pressure on an over-pressured room.
When I could no longer hold her, I scrambled to my feet and tore through the pancakes separating me from the stairs. Climbing the stairs was like walking through a steep, thick wall of pancakes, but eve
ntually I made it to the top. I turned around.
A pickled syrup sea was swelling in the dungeon.
Fanny Fod was almost as big as the Cuddlywumpus now. Each of her blueberry eyes was already larger than me. Whereas the pancakes smothered her before, now she smothered them. And green balloons clung to her body.
She kept expanding.
She grew as large as the Cuddlywumpus, and then larger.
She was an orb of pancake delight.
A macrocosm of her peanut butter lips opened up wide, giving the appearance that Fanny was splitting in half, and she swallowed the Cuddlywumpus.
An enormous tentacle-tongue curled out of her mouth. She licked her lips and the tongue furled back inside. Her peanut butter lips clamped into a smile. Somehow I knew they would never come apart again. Her mouth would never open up.
I tried to cry out to her in confusion, in mourning, but as my mouth opened and my cries pierced the air, she blew up. She exploded in gradient tremors of green and gold light.
Fanny Fod had achieved Yummy Decay.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FOD
She birthed a new universe.
Her golden flesh stretched ever onward, forming the background fabric. The explosion diced her eyes into a billion shrapnel pieces. They shimmered in the fabric. The blueberry stars.
The remains of pickled pancakes floated on, collecting together into meteors and asteroids. Someday they would get very old and collide. Some of those collisions would form planets.
Everything smelled and tasted beery and syrup-sweet. The pickled essence trailed it all like comet tails, but the essence tainted nothing.
Beneath me or above me, depending on which way you considered things, Fanny Fod’s peanut butter lips stretched for thousands of miles.
Her lips were a lonely island.
And on that island lay the Cuddlywumpus.
I traveled until I finally set my feet down on the surface of her lips. I stroked the hollow, half-eaten skull of the Cuddlywumpus.
I set to work burying all of its pickled tentacles in peanut butter so that someday it might take root and grow.
The Cuddlywumpus opened its eyes and blinked at me, then its eyelids drooped and it fell into a deep slumber.
The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island Page 6
