by Matt Wallace
Scales and fins and other new, frightening appendages shred through tuxedos and gowns.
Human cries of panic and pain become hideous animalistic shrieks of desire.
It’s a nightmare.
And then the nightmare becomes a porno.
The creatures tear into each other, violently, but theirs is a lust-born violence, and the end result is hundreds of bipedal reptiles having an orgy in the middle of the New York Public Library.
And the ones who don’t immediately seek a partner of their own kind go after the goblins.
There’s a new round of panicked shrieks as celebrities bat at the creatures and attempt to flee.
Nikki also turns to flee back into the staging area.
She never sees the Oscar-winning actress who also does those glossy makeup commercials wildly swinging a bottle of nine-hundred-dollar champagne.
But her skull does feel the impact.
The rest is blessed darkness and equally blessed silence.
NOTHIN’ BUT A HOUND DOG
Lena pounds her fists against the sudden brick.
It’s as real as it appears to be.
With a frustrated yell, she steps back and turns to face Dorsky.
The lobby is dark now, despite the waning sun still hanging high over the brick building. The windows facing the street have also become patches of solid brick. The interior windows looking out onto the stone courtyard in the center of the complex haven’t been mystically bricked over, but the piece of the roof opening down onto the courtyard has.
“What the fuck is happening?” she yells over the cacophony of howling, psychotically amorous reptiles trying to break through the vending machine–reinforced lobby doors.
Dorsky only manages a bewildered, panicked half-shrug.
“I’m afraid the entire building has been sealed off, ma’am,” a pinched, nasal monotone voice informs them.
Both of them turn their heads and look down.
Standing in the center of the lobby is a three-foot-tall animated hound dog.
It’s a cartoon.
A three-dimensional, living cartoon.
Both Lena and Dorsky stare down at its drooping features. It’s wearing a collar with a wordless gold tag and its half-lidded, weary eyes seem to stare through them rather than at them.
“You . . . what?” Lena snaps at the image.
“Please be more specific with your question, ma’am.”
“What the hell is happening?” Lena says desperately, not really addressing the cartoon hound, but speaking in general helplessness.
“As I said, ma’am. An emergency enchantment has been activated by the detection of unauthorized level-nine magical creatures on the premises. The building has been completely sealed to prevent anyone or anything from exiting.”
Dorsky looks back at the vending machines propped against the lobby doors, the hinges of which are beginning to buckle under the force of the battering from the other side.
“Which means . . .”
“You’re trapped here, sir,” the toon informs him.
PART III
LOCKDOWN
THE OUTSIDERS
Ryland walks right into the patch of solid brick where Sin du Jour’s service entrance used to be before he notices there’s no longer a door there.
He’d just reached that point he often hits at fourteen hours of constant wine consumption, when he realizes if he doesn’t eat something he’ll begin vomiting liquid followed by a dry maelstrom of heaving. Emerging from his booted, disused RV forever parked behind Sin du Jour, half-smoked cigarette between two right fingers that also helped support a rapidly diminished glass of white wine, Ryland made the forty-seven-step trek to the back door.
He was mumbling something about spinach puffs when his nose dimly registered the pain of a sudden collision.
Now he’s staring blearily at the red brick, the slow rudders of his mind trying to steer the information toward some manner of recognition.
He reaches out with his free hand and tests the solidity of the barrier.
It holds.
This new piece of information helps drive home his initial encounter with the brick.
“Well,” he muses aloud. “That is certainly an odd thing that’s happening there.”
Ryland copes with the oddity of the situation by draining the remainder of his wineglass.
Staring into the golden residue of the glass’s otherwise empty bottom, Ryland thinks to himself that this is the moment a person with a mobile phone would utilize such an instrument.
Unfortunately he’s never owned one and doesn’t intend to remedy that.
So instead he retreats to one of the bird-eaten lawn chairs in front of his RV, reclines awkwardly on it, and pours himself another glass of wine from a nearby bottle.
He does, however, stare intently at the door as he drinks.
He’s still staring and drinking a half-hour later when Ritter comes bounding around the north side of the large brick-and-mortar edifice.
“It’s useless,” Ryland assures him from around his next cigarette as Ritter rushes past.
He watches the head of Sin du Jour’s stocking and receiving department push against the transformed entrance briefly and then back away from it, fists jammed against his hips.
“The main ingress is the same, I expect?” Ryland asks him.
“Yeah,” Ritter answers without turning around. “It’s a security enchantment. The building locks itself down when it detects a nonhuman threat.”
“Yes, well, that makes sense in a sort of lateral way, I suppose. Would you care for a drink?”
Ritter finally turns from the nondoor and walks over to him.
“Who’s in there right now?”
“Uh . . . Dorsky and a few of the cooks. The partially demonic sea hag. The elderly Navajo and his tauntingly attractive daughter. Oh, the new girl with the perpetually severe expression on her face—”
“Lena?”
“If you say so.”
Ritter stares back at the bricked-up entrance with renewed urgency in his eyes.
Even Ryland isn’t that oblivious.
“Are you and she carrying on something sordid, then? That was fast.”
Ritter ignores the question and the comment.
He takes out his phone and sends a group text to Cindy, Hara, and Moon.
It’s a simple message: “Code Red.”
As he types and sends: “Is it the booze that makes you this useless, Ryland, or is that just how you live with it?”
Ryland shrugs, thoroughly uninsulted.
“You’d have to ask me when I’m sober, I imagine.”
Ritter nods, lowering his phone and staring back at the sealed-off building.
“I won’t hold my breath or anything.”
SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS
“It’s Droopy Hound,” Dorsky says.
Lena looks up at him, then back at the living animation cell. “What?”
“From . . . the Banjo Bear Gang. You know. The cartoons. From back in the . . . day.”
Behind them a dripping talon breaks off the entire corner of one of the hallway doors.
“No way that holds,” Dorsky observes.
“What the hell are you?” Lena asks Droopy Hound.
“I’m bound to the enchantment protecting your domicile, ma’am. I’m its keeper.”
“What happened to my line?” Dorsky asks. “What are those things?”
“They appear to have been transformed by a rare magical herb, ma’am.”
“Into what?”
“Manifestations of pure lust.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“So you’re saying they don’t want to kill us, they want to fuck us?”
“At that level of desire the two acts are interchangeable, sir.”
“Great. So if they break through that shit they’re going to fuck us to death?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“Can you let us out of here?” Len
a asks.
“Of course I can, ma’am.”
They wait.
“Well?” Lena demands. “Let us out of here!”
The droopy hound continues to stare passively through them.
“What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to protect us! Let us the fuck out!”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why not?”
That’s when Droopy Hound’s eyes focus on them for the first time, intently. The toon smiles wide, and the abrupt change in such a classically mopey face makes the cartoon look suddenly, utterly terrifying.
“The spell binding me prescribes only that I keep anyone or anything from leaving the premises and forbids me from doing those premises and their natural occupants harm, ma’am. And I’ve been trapped in this security enchantment for a long time. I’m quite eager for entertainment. I’ll find your blood and guts most entertaining, I think. Yes, it’s been a very long time.”
Dorsky’s body becomes a cocktail of rage and shock. “What kind of fucking cartoon character are you, man?”
Lena thrusts a hand into his chest to silence him.
“Is there a way for us to stop them from getting to us? Can you at least tell us that?” A thought occurs to her, and she adds desperately, “It’ll make it more . . . whatever . . . sporting!”
The droopy hound hesitates.
“Yes,” he finally says, more relenting than affirming.
It’s his hesitation more than his tone that gives Lena pause.
“Will you tell us?” she asks tentatively.
“No,” he says, without hesitation this time.
Dorsky looks at her quizzically.
“What—”
She shakes her head, speaking over him. “Do you have to answer our questions? Is that part of this . . . program . . . enchantment . . . whatever?”
“Yes,” the droopy hound says, his already deflated voice sounding particularly defeated now.
“So you don’t have to let us out, but you have to give us information if we ask?”
“Yes.”
She points back at the rapidly failing barricade. “How do we stop them from breaking through that?”
“There are emergency measures embedded in the reception kiosk, ma’am.”
Lena and Dorsky both look over at the empty reception area.
“I always wondered why the hell that thing is there,” Dorsky says. “We haven’t had a secretary since I’ve been here.”
“Receptionist,” Lena corrects him before making a beeline for the desk.
Dorsky follows.
She leaps over the front of the tall crescent and stands over the empty desktop. “Where are they?” Lena asks Droopy Hound. “How do we use them?”
With both a literally and figuratively animated sigh the hound waves one of his anthropomorphic canine hands.
Before Lena a map of the entire building’s interior appears.
“Simply touch the area you wish to secure,” Droopy Hound instructs her.
Lena moves her finger over the map, locating the lobby.
She taps the archway between reception and the main hall.
Both she and Dorksy look to the steadily faltering plywood doors with their vending machine reinforcements.
The plywood instantly becomes the same solid brick filling all the exterior passages.
They both breathe a little easier.
“All right, now how do we change them back?” Lena immediately asks the droopy hound.
“There’s an herbal remedy in a small room of the east wing.”
“Boosha,” they say practically in unison.
“How do we get—” Dorsky begins.
“We’ll go through the courtyard,” Lena says, already picking up a heavy chair.
“Wait. What if—”
The next sound is the window behind the reception desk shattering.
Lena steps in front of it and begins chipping away the jagged teeth left in the bottom of the window frame with her sleeve-covered hand.
Dorsky watches her.
“Not for nothing, but this is the second time this window’s been broken since you showed up. Not to mention this is the second gig we’ve done to go fucking haywire.”
“So it’s my fault?”
Drosky shrugs.
“You are such a dick,” she says, climbing through the window.
“That’s me,” he mutters after her. “Dicksy, sous-chef to the stars.”
“You’re both going to die here, you know,” the dreary, nasal voice assures him.
Dorsky turns from the window to see Droopy Hound standing directly beneath him.
The toon’s normally passive eyes are now burning red and staring directly up at him.
Then the animated character fizzles and blinks out, as if someone has just changed the channel on an old television set.
HOLLOW VISITATION
“You blowing the smoke in her face, man.”
“Oh, my bad.”
The voices draw Nikki back to the waking world. The lights sting her fluttering eyes and it takes her several moments to adjust. She also smells acrid, slightly sweet smoke. When the vague shapes in her field of vision clarify themselves she finds she’s staring up at the concerned-yet-somehow-still-chill faces of Pacific and Mr. Mirabal as they lean over her prone form. Nikki quickly realizes she’s lying on the first immaculate tier of the thirty-foot pearl-and-diamond-crusted faux cake she helped design for the goblin prince’s wedding.
It’s horrifically uncomfortable.
“What . . . happened?”
“Like, half the guest list turned into these trippy reptilian things and they all started humping each other. It was some serious Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing–type shit.”
“Then they all come after us,” Mr. Mirabal adds.
“Yeah, Mo here had to crack Uncle Ted with his oxy tank to keep him from going all frat boy on you while you were out. It was not cool. But no one’s dead. Pretty sure, anyway. Most of the goblin celebs climbed up the stacks in the back of the library.”
Nikki sits up slowly, a small battalion riding unshod between her temples. She winces, but forces her eyes to stay open and scan the room.
They’re barricaded in the staging area. Shipping containers and kitchen equipment, and several large pieces of furniture, block the large doors through which the cake was to be rolled out and presented.
Across the room Prince Marek and Bianca (now Princess Bianca, Nikki thinks to herself) are kneeling over the carefully laid out bodies of the goblin king and queen.
“Oh, my god. What about Davi—. . . what about the king and queen?”
Pacific waves it off. “Oh, they’re cool. They just got dropped hard the same way you did herding the other—you know—nonmonstery guests back here.”
Nikki nods. “Can we get out through the windows?”
“Negative,” Pac says in the strained wake of a long toke on his joint. “There’s some kind of gnarly mystic field around the whole building.”
“What?”
“Yeah, we figure it’s some kind of emergency-type deal in case . . . well, shit like this happens. One of those things tried to take a powder outside after they all turned.”
“Smack right into it,” Mr. Mirabal informs her, driving a fist into the palm of his opposite hand.
“So at least they can’t get out. But neither can we, so.” Pacific shrugs.
“Then someone will be coming for us, right?” Nikki asks. “To help us?”
“Help will not come,” a matronly voice somehow speaking right beside Mr. Mirabal assures them.
They all turn to see Boosha standing in their midst.
“Boosh!” Pac exclaims, almost laughing. “You’re like a ninja, man. How did you get in here?”
“I am not here,” the ancient woman informs them. “I am back in my kitchen. What is happening here is happening there.”
Pacific’s brow furrows. “Wait . . . you mean . . . what’s happening
here, like where you actually are . . . or ‘here’ as in, like, where your body actually is?”
“Same thing!” Boosha snaps.
“Right. Sorry. So you’re, like, astral whatever?”
Pacific reaches out and passes a hand through Boosha’s illusory form.
“Swirly,” he says.
“Boosha, what the heck is happening?” Nikki asks.
The old woman looks more pensive and hesitant than Nikki has ever seen her, or at least the projection of Boosha does.
“Fault is mine,” she says. “I sprinkle human food with herbs by accident . . . meant for goblins . . . powerful love spell, to make everyone happy. In humans it is too strong . . . turns them into creatures of pure lust.”
Pacific nods. “Literally.”
“Hold on!”
It’s Prince Marek.
“Are you saying you people did this?” he demands. “You’re responsible for what’s happened to everyone in the whole world my wife knows or cares about?”
“Was mistake!” Boosha snaps, then holds up a finger and shakes it violently at Marek. “Mistake not happen if prince’s family not treat lovely human girl and family like outcast, like . . . like . . . less!”
“What . . .” Marek looks from the image of Boosha to his new bride.
“I didn’t ask for this, Marek,” Bianca says.
“She did not. As I said, is my mistake.”
“Boosha,” Nikki cuts in. “What do you mean no one is coming? What about Mister Allensworth and his people?”
She shrugs. “All they care is that these things are contained. They will wait, see how they work themselves out. Is their way.”
“Your people are just going to trap us in here and leave us to die?”
“Is price you all pay for fame and fortune of human world!” Boosha thunders right back at them.
Nikki shouts over them all: “Then how do we change the guests back, Boosha? Can we even do that?”
Boosha’s lips purse. “Herbs to reverse spell are here, with me. However . . . you have what you need in food there to make . . . what is word? Temporary? You make temporary cure. I show you. Make dust. Dust goes in face of lust creatures. Dust is absorbed through eyes and nose and mouth. Results should come quickly.”
