by D. Sutter
Megamouth wasn’t able to withhold and was vomiting onto the cobblestones. Green puke lined the rim of his loudspeaker mouth and chunks splattered everywhere. They were lucky to be alive, but Spike knew if they didn’t act quickly then more sentinels and possibly one (or two) of the Five could pose a formidable threat.
“C’mon, puke boy. We gotta’ move.”
He sprinted past his brother and towards the pyramidal formation. The battle ground for the Dictator’s Ball wasn’t much farther. Manservant Genesis also lived and maintained the stash of warrior children there. As a team the brothers endeavored there once, immediately preceding the latest years of suspension.
They fought through the surrounding wasteland, killing trolls and smiting centaurs, to get there and before the battle could commence the brothers attacked. They lacked a game plan and, thus, relied upon intuition. Megamouth should have known the final results.
They squared off with Porticus first since appearing behind his throne. However, the other Four were quick to rebuttal. Spike fended off Porticus, going hand to foot with the giant, but the enemy’s mind rays were too much for even him. He tried to stab the ten-foot-tall old man, but Spike’s actions were under control. His legs carried him to the middle of the coliseum, where children in battle armor beat the shit out of him with maces and battle axes.
Ignatius was fighting Carbie, but really just playing with him, teasing him every step of the way. Brimstone was blasting Megamouth with his flamethrower. Spike could still hear his brother’s pain filled screams, battering everyone’s eardrums. That’s when Manservant aimed his mechanical eye at the small of Megamouth’s back and shot the blue laser that caused Spike to lose his cool.
He came free of his hypnotism and began to slice through the children warriors, cutting off heads and disembodying limbs. When his anger subsided, he blasted Manservant with the shadow gun, capturing the bastard. Then, the realization of his actions stung. Despite how against harming children he was, Spike had done exactly the same thing for what the Five were so famously despised. Before he had time to try for retribution or to capture more of the Five, his body was numb and he was magically wrapped around the tree, abandoned to reflect on what he’d done. It was as if father was watching the entire time.
Megamouth brought him out of the reverie. “Is dad in there?” he yelled, pointing at the pyramid they were walking along.
“I’m not sure what is inside there, nor do I care to.”
Spike was awful tired. He was tired of questions, tired of looking. His patience was thin. He thought about piss wine and how it could possibly relieve some of the tension, make him forget his troubles. Beyond the square was the jungle, lined with grape vines.
“Do you have my can?” Spike asked. Megamouth offered to shrink it before, so they could travel lightly.
“Yes. One minutes.”
He hummed and dug inside of his suit. Rufus came crawling out of the chest pocket and sat on Megamouth’s shoulder.
“Hoo-eee!” the little guy said softly. “It’s hotter than the inside of a hooker’s anal cavity in there!”
He became silent again and Spike wondered his reason for speaking at all. For that to be the first thing he ever heard the thing say was absolutely ludicrous.
“Why didn’t you help us out back there?” Spike asked.
Rufus stared at him without saying a word. His lips curled to one side of his light brown face. Spike hadn’t noticed before, but the thing had two small horns on his hairline. Then, he whispered into Megamouth’s ear. The brother chuckled, but didn’t speak. Instead, he pulled out the tool and pressed a button on the side.
The air around the three started to move in suctioning circles and Spike could feel it pulling at his cheeks and arms. There was a deafening growl and his can was sent clanging over the stone walkways.
“Thanks, brother.” Spike forgot all about Rufus’s obvious snide comments about him and moved toward the jungle to relieve his urge. It was so bad he had to walk with a limp, holding his dangleberry in one hand and the can in the other. He picked as many grapes as possible, dropping them by the handful into the can. It was all he could do to hold back the piss while he stomped the grapes to mush. He needed the piss wine to keep him a level head.
With a sigh he relieved himself. The can filled quickly and he aimed at the crooked bamboo shoots. His head rolled towards his back in supplication as his stream slowed to a pitter-patter. Then, Megamouth started to scream.
Spike bent over and wrapped his dick around his waist. When he turned around eight hairy legs were crawling out the top of the pyramidal structure. They scraped shrilly across the stones, piercingly. Lady Moreover’s grey-haired head poked out of the hole and she pulled herself onto the top of the building. Two of the spider legs knit a fine quilt, wantonly weaving in and out of the fabric.
She looked over the crescents of her reading glasses. “Hello, dearies.”
Spike squinted and Megamouth cowered. Rufus disappeared into the chest pocket.
“Beautiful day to die, eh?” she asked, and then lunged for Megamouth.
CHAPTER 7
HIS BODY WAS dumped into a pit of sand. He could feel the water seeping out of his body, being absorbed by the grains underneath him. He lay there unattended until finally his arms felt light enough to move and his toes (made of match box pieces) began to wiggle. Carbie stood on wobbly legs. He walked through the sand, sinking from time to time, toward the nearby settlement.
Beyond the shield of bamboo the ancient stone buildings sat dormant, rows and rows of stone huts. They were quite enormous, possibly bigger than Brimstone’s elephants. Carbie started through the bamboo and heard a rustling overhead.
He looked skyward. Ignatius the Ape was manipulating his body through the trees. He swung one ape arm over the canopy and a tangle of leaves and sticks came crashing towards Carbie. They broke against his head and body, forcing him to the floor of the jungle. Before he could regain his composure, the ape was upon him, holding his arms close to his body so that they couldn’t move.
“I thought that was you.” Ignatius closed one eye and eyeballed Carbie from behind a silver rimmed monocle with the other.
“Quite a sorry sack of shit these days, eh?” he said. “Not much for me to worry over.”
Holding Carbie like his own personal action figure, Ignatius bounded toward the village. They reached the limits and passed into the open area. Ignatius began to pound the dirt with his free hand.
“People, People!” he yelled in his sophisticate tone. “Please… come and join me for a deliberation of fate. I cannot, and will not, do this by myself.”
The random masses started to pour out of their spectacularly built homes. There was a portly family, round and blob-like who barely possessed limbs. They moved in concert, like five jingle bells rolling side by side. A squat Gary ran out of his hut, his curly head of hair bouncing. Something supported by only one leg, which poked out of the center of its torso, sprung up and down towards them.
Ignatius turned in a semi-circle, waving at the motley crowd like a Prince. “Good afternoon, good afternoon.”
They formed a line in front of the ape. Carbie was embarrassed by his exposure. The ape held him out for all to see and stare they did. They watched with pleading eyes. He knew they were under control of the monkey-man, wanted Carbie’s help for release. They either did what he wished or fell to prosecution, possibly public execution.
“What shall we do with this… scum?” he asked the collective.
The people whispered and murmured about themselves. Carbie could almost feel their reluctance to answer. Then, someone shouted in a high-pitched voice. “Let him go!”
Carbie did not see the culprit and obviously Ignatius hadn’t either, for he screamed, “What? Who said that hogwash?”
When nobody opened up, the ape waded through the crowd. Carbie brushed against bodies and they moved away as if he was forged of poison. The ape sniffed the air. Its hot breath played
across the back of Carbie’s head, smelling of grapes and bananas, the only crops mandated to grow by the dictators.
“You!” One hairy finger pointed over Carbie’s shoulder, toward the fat blob father.
“No,” he responded. “I did not speak. It was…”
The blob swiveled and found an innocent bystander whose head was shaped like a cube. Initially, its face showed fright, then the head spun to a different side and it was red and angry. The wooden, wiry man attacked the blob without as much as a word. The blob retreated, barely visible feet covered in rolls of fat, carrying it through the dispersing crowd. As he passed, they closed together, making it difficult for the skinny and silent cube-headed man to make progress. However, he eventually freed himself and since the blob moved slowly, was upon his narc in moments. His long arms pounded away at the thing’s body. If the blob was able to curl into a ball, it would have.
Carbie was carried out of the crowd. Ignatius pushed the cube-headed attacker to the ground with one ape foot, holding him down. Without any indication of emotion——happiness, anger, mercy, or otherwise——he said “Decision made. Sentinels!”
A group of wolven men rushed out of the bamboo. Three pounced on the blob, who was striving to get up off his back. Two more rolled a bamboo cart out of the forest. One of the two wore a hat with a giant red feather. He lifted the door on the cage. “Place them inside!”
They dragged the blob, squealing and whining, and tossed him into the cage. Ignatius used his foot’s opposable finger to lift the cube man and toss him head over heels into the trap.
Then, Carbie was turned by the ape to face Ignatius. The ape’s large teeth formed a smile. “You, my friend…”
He winked behind his monocle. “I suppose I will add you to my sacrifices. Maybe you’ll be killed and I won’t have to worry about doing it myself!”
His head rolled back in the most fabricated laughter Carbie ever heard.
“Tough change,” Carbie responded, though his lunges felt compressed from the ape’s grip. His enemies round eyes came too close for comfort. The monocle pressed against his spandex suit. Then, the ape let out a series of chatters and pounded Carbie against the ground. His head flattened and his thoughts momentarily ceased. When his vision returned, skewed by hanging pieces of his own cardboard head, he could see the obvious leader of the sentinels. It screamed “Fall out!”, and the bamboo cart began to roll.
SHE SLAMMED INTO his bulbous body, knitting needles piercing his chest. The mean spider-grandmother pulled them out covered in white plastic, like a knife out of a cake not fully cooked.
Megamouth blasted her with his foghorn. A normal enemy would have been tossed yards away, either dead or unconscious, but Lady Moreover merely scuttled backwards on her eight legs. She jammed the needles into the dirt and steadied herself. Megamouth wobbled forward, but she threw the blanket she’d been knitting over his head.
Spike chugged the rest of his piss wine and dropped the can. As he powered forward, ready to join the fight (hey, who said anything about fair?), she started to knock Megamouth around with the two poles. The behemoth tore at the blanket, trying to rip it off, but it looked as though the fabric had stitched together, wrapping him in a cocoon. His screams were unable to dislodge the cloak.
Megamouth fell to the ground squirming in panic, and as Lady Moreover jumped in the air——needles poised to stab straight through his heart——Spike turned his hands into ruthless fighting weapons. His pointed fingers curled into claws and caught both of the needles. She pressed with all her insect might, but Spike held his ground.
Looking down at him with her teeth mashed in anger, she no longer resembled a sweet, old grandmother figure, but a murderous clown. She freed one of the needles and with uncompensated speed, swung it in a downward arc. Spike’s waist bent at a right angle.
He clawed her varicose vein-covered spider legs, splashing purple blood over the market. Another knitting needle came down on Spike’s thighs at an astronomical speed, twisting both of his feet together so that he was crumpled on the ground——just a coil of metal. As if in slow motion, she brought the needle hurtling toward his head. He watched helplessly as it swung downward, inch by inch, and closer by the second to his skull.
Megamouth rushed into his view. Apparently, the spell had worn off the quilt or he’d ripped through it. His plastic shoulder took the brunt of the impact. Something chipped off his neck and went flying. Mega did not voice his pain, but took it out on Lady Moreover, pounding her insect legs with his massive fists, flapping his shit wings until he was at her waist level and shoving one huge hand into her apron covered stomach.
Her arthritic spine cracked and she fell onto the cobblestones. Megamouth did not stop. As she lay there moaning, her knitting needles discarded on the ground, Megamouth mounted her abdomen. He shouted into her face with his megaphone and her head slammed into the stones. It bounced back and Megamouth delivered an onslaught of punches into her wrinkled mug.
Spike tried to shout for him to stop, that Father would punish him, force them both into a state of suspension, but instead felt a grin creep across his face as her legs wiggled in the air. Wrapped in a ball, he could only groan and smile.
Then, Megamouth was weeping and staring down at what he’d done. “Oh, no!” he sobbed. “Daddy’s gonna’ be so mad at me! A-huh-huh-huh...I done killt her! I killt her!”
His screams resonated through the market square. Spike wanted to shush him, but couldn’t muster the strength to speak. Some piss wine would have been divine, to bring him back to full power. If the sentinels awoke, he thought, they’d be screwed.
Rufus was returned to his shoulder, hugging Megamouth’s plastic head and trying to console him. Spike was waiting for the moment where father would catch a metaphysical drift of his brother’s miscalculation, the moment he would again be wrapped around the tree on the island (well, maybe somewhere else now that the island was in the middle of Brimstone’s forest). When the moment passed, he started to think that maybe Father Necrocious was dead. Perhaps, the Five had done the unimaginable and slain the greatest necromancer to have ever lived.
Megamouth sat on the ground and allowed his arm to hang limply at his side. He had committed the task that Spike yearned to accomplish. There would be no need to discuss it with their father (if he was alive) any longer. The motions were already begun. The Five were reduced to a meager Four.
Spike choked. His small cry finally elicited Megamouth’s attention.
“Oh, my brother...so hurt!” he said.
He stood clumsily and walked to where Spike was laying, picked him up into his arms. Though it was difficult to harm Spike, when Megamouth untangled his legs it stung. He nearly howled when his waist was bent into a straight line. Megamouth placed him upright on his feet.
Spike rolled his neck. His head felt like it was going to fall off, but his voice had returned to his throat. “Saved my life again. I really can’t believe this shit.”
Megamouth squeezed Spike to his breast. “I’m so glad you okay!”
He wiggled out of the hug, never very fond——or comfortable for that matter——with physical contact, unless during combat. Sometimes, he felt it was his only purpose. However, of late, not only was his patience paper thin, but his fighting tactics were inadequate at best.
“Me, too. But we really got to get out of here.”
Almost as if his proclamation woke the sentinels, they began to stir. Pieces of armor rose over the flat tabletops.
Megamouth sighed. “Awww…”
He tapped his chest pocket and the contents within shivered. After spreading the pocket away from his body, Megamouth let out a foghorn blast.
Seconds later his tiny, horned daemon, Rufus, crawled drunkenly onto his perch and took a seat.
“What gives?” the creature asked, wobbling as if fresh off an amusement park ride. He twisted one miniscule finger in his right ear.
Megamouth shook his head. “You sleep too much! Now your tur
n to fight, or else I put you backs in the tool.”
The sentinels had since begun their advance and were closing in swiftly. They snarled and shifted, constantly changing formation——first spread out, then in a tight knit group——never quite giving the two brothers or Rufus a point of focus.
The daemon glided off Megamouth’s shoulder in a flash of muddled grey. Before Spike could ready for battle, he was in the arms of his younger sibling, smelling those corn and peanut laced wings as they beat the air into his nostrils.
CHAPTER 8
ONWARD TO THE wasteland——the flat landscape covered in black volcanic rock, the flowing rivers of magma, and most worriedly the dancing minions. Some of them were pitch black as the land they protected, nearly blending in, while others were dark yellow and covered in gangrenous lesions. Though Spike told him to fly toward the battleground, his intuition urged him somewhere else entirely. It told him to aim for the western border of the jungle.
He could detect that his brother was mad, but was almost always right with his perceptions. Growing up, father had him place gambling bets at the Marchovie races, because his mind worked in puzzles and general logic. His numbers typically won.
As they flew over the village of stone huts, Megamouth had a fleeting feeling. The town looked deserted, left behind, and creeping through the jungle toward the village were Manservant’s wires. They slithered up the bamboo trees, most likely searching for a few final victims to add as pawns in the battle. He steered away from those, for with their proximity an awful cognition had arisen in his chest and tummy.
