Bad Valentines: three twisted love stories (Stories To SERIOUSLY Creep You Out Book 7)

by Steve Vernon

  “What do you mean one squid?” Bucky asked, drawing a bead with his blunderbuss.

  I knew I could always count on Bucky. He was kind of like a seventh arm to me. I gave him a grin of appreciation.

  “This is a matter of Darktown security,” the pink g-man officiously said.

  Yeah right.

  “Blow me,” I replied. “Whatever was stolen, I didn’t take it.”

  “Finn is a pretty secure guy,” Bucky added.

  “You were talking to Kahuna Ghul,” the pink said.

  “I was exiting his office. That implies that I entered it. I generally talk to someone when I enter their office, unless they’re not there at the time of entry.”

  “He was,” Bucky added.

  “You were talking about Goldie Ghul,” the pink ignored my finely tuned logic. “We’re interested in what you had to say.”

  “I wasn’t,” I explained. “I don’t mess with family disputes. I suggested he call Dr. Phil. You four might do the same, right after you untangle yourself from the Maltese Monkey Love-knot that I’m about to tie you into.”

  I flexed, hard.

  The pink that was doing all of the talking didn’t blink but the three other gun-packers flinched.

  I figure my honor was satisfied.

  “Goldie Ghul is the spawn of Kahuna Ghul,” the head pink went on, ignoring his compatriot’s collective flinch. “And Kahuna Ghul runs anything that moves, swims or crawls up from the Wetside waterfront.”

  “And you must be the man who states the blatantly obvious,” Bucky said. “Can we have your autograph?”

  “If Goldie Ghul continues to fraternise with the unter-Kapitan of the Nazi Death Clan, there might be a breach in Darktown security.”

  Fraternise.

  It was a good word.

  I filed it away for future use.

  “Pillow talk is a bitch,” I said. “I’m sure that Goldie and his Nazi latex love toy will be too busy breaching other social bastions before they ever get around to discussing Darktown security. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a hot buttered sea bass.”

  The head-pink cocked his pistol.

  I expected he was getting ready to make a point.

  “Crossroad Studios,” he said.

  “Am I supposed to recognize that particular trademark infringement?” I asked.

  “Crossroad Studios has an interest in retrieving an assortment of Wermacht World War II paraphernalia that was made off from their Hollyweird studio lot.”

  “Meaning the Nazi zomboid’s death sub?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And that means?”

  “There may have been a reward mentioned.”

  “Aha.”

  “If you can manage to retrieve this paraphernalia there might be some financial compensation involved.”

  “A reward.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Aha.”

  Which is how Bucky and I and the FBI came to be involved in shooting it out with the Auf Wiedersehen Oom-pa-pa Zomboid Nazi Uberbottom Unterseeboot Deathclan.

  ♥♥♥

  “Can you see them out there?” the head FBI pink asked.

  “It’s about as pitch black as a slow crawl up the wrong end of King Kong’s fundament. How in the hell do you think I can see anything more than you can?”

  The pink shrugged. He didn’t have much in the way of shoulders, but I didn’t want to rub it in.

  “I thought all of you Darktown types had some kind of see-in-the-dark night vision.”

  Bucky laughed.

  I let him laugh.

  “The words “think” and “you” just don’t go together,” I commented.

  “I just figured…”

  “You figured because I’m a squid I’m different. Look, you take away the scaly skin, oily complexion, vestigial tentacles, preternatural strength, and innate sex appeal and squids aren’t all that different from pinks. Even FBI pinks.”

  “You’ve got a point,” the pink admitted.

  “Which he sharpens every chance he gets,” Bucky added.

  “Sweet talker,” I said.

  Then I looked back at the pink.

  “Does it bother you?” I asked. “Bucky and me? We ought to know this before we get into a firefight situation.”

  “Whoop, whoop,” Bucky shouted. “Homophobe in the house.”

  “I’m not homophobic, damn it,” the pink said.

  “What are you then?” I asked. “Presbyterian?”

  “Existentialist?” Bucky chimed in.

  “Crustaceaphobe?” I added, showing off some of my inner Latin.

  “They told me about your delusions of stand-up comedy,” the pink said. “It’s good to know that my channels of information run deep and true.”

  I gave him that but wouldn’t let up.

  “You’re still dodging the question,” I said. “Does it bother you to be out here with a couple of cephalopods who have a habit of sleeping with each other?”

  “Any chance we get,” Bucky added with a cheeky fluorescent grin.

  “I was told you could handle this sort of work,” the pink said. “How you two spend your free time is no concern of mine.”

  “So you say,” Bucky said.

  A little puddle of silence seeped in around the three of us. It was the pink that finally broke it.

  I guess he just had to ask.

  “So what’s it like being gay?” he asked.

  Bucky laughed.

  I couldn’t blame him.

  “It’s not so bad as being pink,” I said. “Can we end this encounter session now?”

  “I knew he was a homophobe,” Bucky said. “I knew it.”

  “You started it,” the pink said.

  “Sure I did, but my mother can beat your father with three arms tied behind her back. Besides, that death sub out there is heading straight at us.”

  The two of them looked.

  Sure enough, the Nazi Zomboid Death Sub was coming our way. I could it see it out there in the deep water, pointed straight at us. I caught the glint of binoculars being turned our way. Maybe Zomboid Nazis saw better in the dark than squids did.

  They loaded up an armored landing sloop, and were sailing it straight towards us. There were an awful lot of Auf Wiedersehen’s on board.

  “This would be a good time to come up with a plan,” I suggested.

  “What, we don’t have one yet?” Bucky asked.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I packed the plan last time. Tonight was supposed to be your turn.”

  The pink kept looking at the two of us and staring out at the death sub like a rabbit in the headlights. He was going to give his eyeballs a hernia if he wasn’t careful.

  “That’s not how I remember it,” Bucky argued. “I’m certain it’s your turn.”

  “That sloop is coming our way,” the pink said, trying his best to remain federally calm.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t we do something about it?”

  “I already did do something. I invited them. I sent a message this morning telling them that we’d be out here tonight waiting for them. I told them that a handful of three-fingered half-blind Boy Scouts could sink their rusty little tub with a potato gun and a corkscrew. Then I told them that I had a corkscrew. They took the whole thing very personally.”

  Both Bucky and the pink stared at me in a simultaneous display of mutual and unnatural disbelief.

  It was so worth it.

  “So what do we do?” Bucky said, hunkering down and aiming his blunderbuss in the general direction of the death sub. We were way out of range, you understand, but the aim was just something more like principle.

  “Put away the guns, for starters,” I said. “It isn’t seemly for prisoners of war to put up much of a firefight, and we’re about to surrender.”

  “We’re shooting it out with them, aren’t we?” the pink asked, pointing a pistol that looked as if it had delusions of future can
nonisation.

  “You can shoot if you want to,” I said, holding all six of my arms up in the air. “I’ll be busy surrendering.”

  Bucky grinned, poking his own arms up into the air. He knew what I was up to and I loved him for it.

  The pink still didn’t get it.

  “We work best close up,” I patiently explained. “By surrendering I’m guaranteeing a shot at proximity.”

  “Proximity means close,” Bucky explained. “First we get them to take us on board and then we take their Death Sub from them. Easy.”

  It sounded good when he said it fast. Bucky was with me and the pink seemed to be almost convinced. I looked up at the night sky. The stars didn’t look all that confident and neither was I, but it was the only plan in sight.

  ♥♥♥

  Damn, but he was a big one. The unter-Kapitan of the death sub was tall enough to give me a kink in the neck, even when I wasn’t looking straight at him.

  “You will tell me what you were doing on the waterfront?” he asked.

  What, were you expecting a gunfight?

  You’ve been watching too damn many pink movies. I had a lot more hair than Bruce Willis ever did, which is saying a lot given my kraken ancestry. I tried to think Buddha-thoughts rather than thinking with my budda-budda-budda burp gun. I was out here to resolve an issue, not start a war.

  Guns have their time and place but right now they were strictly props.

  We were standing on the deck of the death-sub, surrounded by more Zomboid Nazis than you could healthily shake a stick at. As near as I could tell they out-numbered us by about thirteen to one.

  I tried to appear confident.

  “Seashell hunting,” I suggested. “I’ve spent my life searching for the rare bivalve tricockled honey-dipper.”

  Strangely enough, he didn’t buy my cover story.

  “You will tell me,” the unter-Kapitan repeated, only he didn’t use a question mark this time.

  I smiled. It never hurt to say nothing.

  I practiced my mysterious grin daily.

  “We’re out beyond the city limits out here,” the unter-Kapitan pointed out. “Out here you’re not the Squid Warlord. Out here you’re just a passenger, cargo, or maybe even dead weight. The best you lot can aspire to is a possible collective anchordom. Let me ask you, have you ever seen an anchor swim?”

  It was a pretty good question as rhetoricals went.

  “I think if we were standing on the surface of Jupiter’s farthest haemorrhoid, there’s just no way that Finn would ever be “just” anything,” Bucky said.

  “Sweet talker,” I said.

  I could see Goldie standing behind the unter-Kapitan, leaning against his back, looking mildly interested in what was going on.

  “Hey Goldie,” I called over the unter-Kapitan’s shoulder. “Are you happy?”

  It took a minute for him to figure out what I was talking about. I guess when your daddy is king of all Darktown you don’t really have to grow much in the way of cognitive capabilities; either that or maybe his ear still hadn’t grown back.

  Goldie grinned and nodded, squeezing the unter-Kapitan’s undead torso, so I guessed he was happy.

  “Well that’s all that counts, isn’t it?” I said.

  And then I hit the unter-Kapitan with three simultaneous right crosses.

  Yes sir, it’s good to be a squid.

  “This is between the unter-Kapitan and me,” I shouted.

  The next thing I know there were about twelve guns pointed directly at my face and I could feel a thirteenth behind me, committing some sort of unmentionable proctological examination. If I farted it could be a damned unlucky moment in the history of unexpected firefight gas-passing.

  I should have known better. That “between you and me” schtick only works in the movies, I guess, and I didn’t look a thing like Bruce Willis.

  “Throw it Bucky,” I said.

  You see, while everybody was watching me getting busy handing the bad end of rowdy to the uberbottom unter-Kapitan, everybody forgot to watch as Bucky pulled a second dead mackerel out from his pants and lobbed it straight up over his head so that it fell back squarely onto the deck of the death sub, right next to where we were standing. He didn’t throw it high enough or hard enough for me to miss noticing the Bucky-sized teeth marks in the belly of the dead mackerel, but I decided to not mention it. Especially after Big Stinky rose up and grabbed the mackerel, death sub and all.

  Who said I forgot to bring the plan?

  ♥♥♥

  It took a Los Alamos team of international scientists and engineers several years to construct the world’s first nuclear weapon.

  It had taken me and Bucky about five minutes to come up with our brilliant plan of action, which in hindsight might not have been that amazing at all.

  In fact hindsight was about all we had going for us. It was goddamn dark in the belly of Big Stinky.

  “Bucky,” I said. “Smile.”

  Bucky grinned, and shed a little neon fluorescence on the situation.

  It helped a little bit.

  “What in the hell did you do to my boat?” I heard the unter-Kapitan ask.

  I stomped down hard on the deck.

  “The boat’s still here,” I said, “Right where we left it. I planned it this way.”

  “You planned it?” Bucky said pointedly.

  “Well, we planned it,” I admitted.

  “Planned it?” the FBI pink said. “You planned to get us swallowed by a goddamn sea monster?”

  I shrugged.

  The motion was lost in the darkness, but I felt it was important to get the gesture across.

  “We work best close up,” I explained.

  “Well you don’t get any closer than this,” the FBI pink said. “Now how in the hell am I supposed to get those zomboids back to Hollyweird?”

  “The zomboids? I thought you wanted the death sub?”

  “That old prop? To hell with that. I came here for the zomboids.”

  “What do you need a bunch of back-from-the-dead Auf Wiedersehen’s for?”

  “Extras.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stunt doubles. You can shoot a lot more realistically if you can shoot real bullets without worrying about killing your actors. These aren’t really Nazis. They’re just a band of renegade extras escaped from the remake director’s cut of Das Boot part XIII – Rambo Grows Gills. The geeks at Hollyweird hired Uncle Sam to bring the zomboids back.”

  “And you hired us.”

  The pink nodded.

  “Now you’ve got it. Only you went and fucked it up. Who in the hell told you that you were supposed to feed our zomboid extras to a goddamn sea monster you goddamn fucked up homosexual squid?”

  His voice went up at least twelve octaves in mid-rant. It was beautiful to listen to, but I decided it was time to shut him up.

  “I’m not homosexual,” I said.

  That did it. I felt both the FBI pink’s and Bucky’s silence, just as loud as a moonless asphyxiation.

  “You’re saying you’re heterosexual?” the FBI pink said.

  “I used to think that,” I said.

  “Huh,” the FBI pink said.

  “I used to think I was heterosexual. Then I met Bucky and things kind of fell together.”

  “You figured out you were homosexual.”

  “Too damn many syllables.”

  “Huh?”

  “I figured out I was sexual. And sexually speaking, I figured I was attracted to Bucky. There’s really no need to make any bigger deal of that than what’s there to begin with - simple animal attraction.”

  Bucky grinned even harder raising the illumination just enough to silhouette the entire death sub crew.

  “It was my natural sea-blue eyes, wasn’t it?” Bucky asked.

  “That and the fine tight curving arc of your dorsal fin.”

  “Please,” the FBI pink said. “I don’t want to go to my grave with that kind of an image.”r />
  “Holy shit. An FBI agent who doesn’t want too much information. That’s a first for you. Why don’t you take a look around you? Take a look at every face you see here. You’re an FBI agent, isn’t suspect identification a prerequisite?”

  “I can’t see a damn thing,” the pink said. “It’s too dark.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “We all look the same in the dark. Just warm bodies to hang to.”

  I give Bucky a cuddle.

  “I’m hanging onto my best friend, and I expect the unter-Kapitan is hanging onto his right now. Who are you hanging onto pink? Your gun?”

  Nobody spoke.

  The sound of silence sung about us sweetly.

  Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t have said it any better.

  “Besides, who said anything about dying?”

  “Huh?”

  “Wait for it,” Bucky and I harmonized.

  Which was right about the moment that Big Stinky went tsunami.

  ♥♥♥

  Holy mother of Regan, the Zomboid Death Sub chudded on out of that sea monster’s hurling gullet like an armor plate unter-chunk of upchuck uberbottomed projectile expulsed out and over the ocean water like a vomitous albatross of glory.

  Bucky grabbed onto me and the unter-Kapitan grabbed onto Goldie, and Goldie grabbed onto the FBI pink who was hanging onto me.

  And we kept on soaring.

  For just a half an instant I could see all of Darktown spread out below me. It was like a shot of pure god, smacked hard into my eyeballs. I could see a multitude of lives being lived out below me in the dirty concrete entrails of my city, and each of those lives were hanging onto other lives.

  It was beautiful and then it was over.

  We hit the beach, death sub and all, smacking hard against a sand castle. The belly of the sub crumpled up against the sand, accordionating itself. I felt my knees buckle and I grabbed onto the FBI pink harder than ever.

  “You see,” I shouted. “In the end all we’ve got to hang onto is each other.”

  And then I sat on him.

  “And just in case he hasn’t quite seen the light,” I said to the unter-Kapitan. “Why don’t you and your people make yourself scarce, while I sit here on this fellow, allowing him to contemplate my fine fog-hornish farts. I imagine you folks can lose yourselves quite nicely in the muddle of Middle Darktown.”