They were painful. Insanely painful, in fact. As his blood oozed down the insides of his thighs, Tobey Maguire felt his earlier rush of confidence ebb out with it. He gripped one of the colorful handles and tried pulling the blade free, but hot sparks of agony lit up the wound, forcing him to let go.
“Having problems, Mr Maguire?”
Tobey Maguire looked up just as Morgan Freeman materialized as a flickering blue ghost a few feet ahead of him.
“Hold onto your wallet!” the squirrel warned, but everyone ignored him.
“It hurts!” Tobey sobbed.
“Does it?” asked Morgan Freeman’s ghost, raising one eyebrow. “Does it really?”
“Yes.”
“But does it really?”
“Yes! It hurts like fonk.”
“Oh. I see,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost. He shuffled awkwardly for a moment, then made a grabbing motion with one hand. All the knives were wrenched from Tobey Maguire’s legs at once, reducing him to a incomprehensible babbling mess of snot and tears.
“W-what d-did you do that f-for?” he eventually managed to sob.
Morgan Freeman’s ghost made another gesture with his hands, and the knives vanished. “You might say that because I had the great power to do it, I also had the great responsibility,” he said. He smiled when he saw the look of surprise on Tobey Maguire’s face. “I lied earlier, Mr Maguire. I did see your Spider-Man movie.”
“Really? Cool.”
“The third one, at least,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost. He wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t much care for it.”
“Zing!” said the squirrel.
Tobey Maguire launched into what was now a well-rehearsed rant about studio interference, but before he could get very far the wagon behind him was wrenched away and sent tumbling into a howling vortex of darkness that had opened up at the end of the street. Happily, it had taken that fonking squirrel with it.
Most of the buildings were now gone. Only the saloon remained, looking surprisingly unaffected by the Apocalypse raging around it. Tobey Maguire tried to stick his feet to the ground, Spider-Man style, but as the ground was made of sand this was a complete waste of time on his part.
“What do I do, Morgan Freeman?” he yelled.
“You’re the hero, son,” said Morgan Freeman’s ghost, fading away into nothing. “Figure it out.”
Tobey Maguire gritted his teeth. “I’m the hero. He’s right. I’m the hero!”
Roaring, Tobey Maguire fired two strands of webbing at the vortex. Like the feet thing, this was also a complete waste of time on his part. The webbing flapped like streamers on the wind, then it was wrenched into the spinning hole.
Morgan Freeman’s ghost reappeared, looking disappointed. “No, don’t do the web thing, son. How’s that supposed to work? Your mind. Use your mind. It’s all in your head, like you said earlier. OK?”
Tobey Maguire nodded. “OK. It’s in my head.” He gasped, as the full enormity of those words finally sunk in. “It’s in my head. I’m just as powerful as anything else in here.”
“You got it this time?” asked Morgan Freeman’s ghost. “Because I’m going to go again.”
“Got it.”
“And I don’t really want to come back.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it,” said Tobey Maguire. He turned to the vortex and raised a hand. “Stop.”
The wind dropped in an instant.
Morgan Freeman’s ghost’s face lit up in a smile. “You know, I think you probably have,” he whispered as he faded away again.
The spinning black hole was still at the end of the street, but it had stopped dragging the landscape inside. Tobey Maguire marched towards it, rolling up the sleeves of his polo neck, and feeling more confident – more alive - than he’d done since the 2003 MTV Awards.
He was halfway to the hole when Cal Carver hit the ground beside him.
“Fonk. When am I going to learn to stick that landing?” Cal muttered. Standing, he dusted himself down, then waved. “Tobey Maguire!”
Cal placed his hands on his lower back and cricked his spine. As he did, he looked around them. “This is new,” he observed. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the Mindraper,” said Tobey Maguire. “I think it’s taken the form of your sister, or it’s maybe controlling her or something. Anyway, it killed Morgan Freeman. It killed your brother, too, and then sucked most of Carverville into its hole.”
Cal clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Riiight,” he said, drawing the word out. “That is… I’ll be honest, Tobey Maguire, that is a lot of information right there. A lot of information.”
“It must be hard to hear,” said Tobey Maguire. He placed a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” said Cal. “But, see, I don’t have a brother. Or a sister.”
“You had an imaginary conjoined twin. Colt. He was a head on a foot.”
Nothing about Cal’s expression suggested he knew what Tobey Maguire was talking about.
“And… and your sister. Val. She was a mutant who lived in the attic.”
“Uh… nope,” said Cal. “You’ve lost me.”
Tobey Maguire staggered. “It’s eaten the memories. The Mindraper has eaten your memories of them.”
“The Mindraper?” said Cal, looking confused for a moment. “Oh! Wait, that guy? That was weeks ago. Turned out to be just some dude in a mask.”
“Weeks ago? But you were just here an hour ago.”
“Huh,” said Cal. “Time must pass differently in here. That’s interesting. You know, kind of.”
Tobey Maguire looked Cal up and down. “You’re not still fighting the Mindraper?”
“No. Again, there was no Mindraper. He was just trying to scare us.”
“Then… Then why are you here?”
“Would you believe I bumped my head on the fridge?” Cal said. “I know, right? Cross dimensions, battle space bears, save the universe, and you get KO’d by your own kitchen appliance. What are the chances of–?”
Cal popped like a bubble as he woke up back in the real world, leaving Tobey Maguire alone once more.
No Mindraper? But that didn’t make sense. If there was no Mindraper, then who had killed the others? And why?
He was so focused on the mystery that he didn’t hear the music at first. It tinkled out from inside the saloon, that same slow ballad as earlier.
Tobey Maguire saw the pieces of the puzzle spread out like a jigsaw inside his mind. The clues were there, he just had to piece them together.
Cal had given him advice a while back. What had it been? Find the corner pieces first, then the flat edges, and build inwards towards the middle.
Tobey Maguire gave this some thought, before deciding the whole jigsaw puzzle metaphor didn’t really extend to his current situation, after all.
There was nothing else for it – if he wanted to figure out what was going on, there was only one place he could go.
His legs lurched him towards the saloon. The piano grew louder and more insistent as he reached for the doors.
THUNK.
Fonk. Pull.
He pulled the handles. The music was all around him now, simultaneously drawing him in and pushing him away. That tune. He knew that tune, but what was it? It was the final puzzle piece. The one missing…
Oh.
Oh God.
Richie. That was what Morgan Freeman had called him. Richie.
“Hello,” said the man at the piano, his voice a whispering giggle that made something twist deep in Tobey Maguire’s gut. “Is it me you’re looking for?”
7.
“Lionel Richie,” said Tobey Maguire. “Of course. I should have guessed.”
Alabama-born singer songwriter, Lionel Richie, slammed his hands on the piano keys, ejecting a chord so malignantly unpleasant it made Tobey Maguire throw up a little in his mouth.
“You really should have,” agreed Lionel Richie. “I’ve been givi
ng you clues All Night Long.” He grinned. “See what I did there?”
“It isn’t night time,” Tobey Maguire pointed out.
“Oh, isn’t it?” said the former singer and saxophonist with the Commodores. He gestured around them. The saloon was gone, replaced by a sky filled with stars. “Then what do you call this?”
Tobey Maguire scrambled for a witty retort. “I don’t know. What do you call it?” was the best he could do, which barely even qualified as a retort, let alone a witty one.
“Touché,” said Grammy Award winning Lionel Richie, whose performance at the closing ceremony at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles won him international acclaim.
“You killed Morgan Freeman,” said Tobey Maguire.
“Of course I did,” laughed Lionel Richie. “Just like I regularly supported The Jackson Five back in the 1970s.”
“But… But why?”
Lionel Richie shrugged. “We’d just signed to Motown Records. The Jacksons were really starting to hit the big time, so—”
“No, I mean why did you kill Morgan Freeman?”
“Oh. Why do you think?”
Tobey Maguire reached for another punchy comeback, but came up short. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why do you think?”
“Because he told me to stop playing,” hissed Lionel Richie who, in 2008, received the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award, becoming only the twenty-first person to do so. His eyes darkened. “And so did you.”
“No, I didn’t!” Tobey Maguire protested. “I just said it was an unusual choice for a Wild West saloon!”
Lionel Richie, who has two grandchildren and is wildly popular in the Middle East, frowned. “What?”
“I just said the song – ‘Hello’ – it’s a bit of an odd choice for a saloon. I mean, it’s great. I really like it – who doesn’t? It’s just… It’s not what I expected.”
“Huh,” said Lionel Richie, who once considered becoming an Episcopalian preacher rather than take up a career in music. “I mean… haha. I guess you’re right. It is an unusual choice.”
“That’s all I was saying,” said Tobey Maguire.
Lionel Richie, whose grandmother lived to be 103 years old despite being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 80s, puffed out his cheeks and scratched his head. “Well… this is embarrassing. I kind of regret killing Morgan Freeman now.”
“And the others,” said Tobey Maguire.
“The others?”
“Yeah. Colt and the guy upstairs.”
Twice-married Lionel Richie frowned. “What are you talking about?” he asked, then his throat erupted outwards as the serrated blade of a knife stabbed through it from behind. His eyes bulged. His legs gave way beneath him, and as his weight fell on the knife blade it sliced straight up through the top of Lionel Richie’s skull, cleaving the multi-platinum recording artist’s head in half neatly up the middle.
And there, revealed behind him, was the squirrel.
“Surprised to see me, Bingo-Bongo?” the fluffy-tailed rodent sneered.
“You?” said Tobey Maguire. “But… that doesn’t even make sense. How could…?”
“Shut the fonk up, Cheese Nip!” the squirrel retorted. “You asked me my name earlier. Still want to know?”
Tobey Maguire didn’t really have any opinion on it. “Not that fussed.”
The squirrel bristled a little. “Well… I’m going to tell you, anyway, so listen up.”
He dragged the flat of the knife across his fur, smearing himself in Lionel Richie’s blood (B Negative).
Tobey Maguire frowned. “So… are you going to tell me, or…?”
“I was pausing dramatically, you Chinkerbell fonk!” the squirrel snapped. “You can call me… the Mindraper.”
“N-no,” whispered Tobey Maguire. “No, you’re not real. Cal told me. You’re not real.”
“Ah yes,” said the squirrel, holding up a finger or whatever the squirrel equivalent is. He vanished with a pop, then Cal Carver appeared just a few feet in front of Tobey Maguire.
“There’s no such thing as the Mindraper,” said Cal, but the last word came out in the squirrel’s drawl. As Tobey Maguire watched, Cal sprouted a fluffy tail, then his whole body twisted as it became an unusually large tree-dwelling rodent once more.
“Impressive, huh?” said the Mindraper. “I’ve been playing you this whole time, Tobey Maguire, and you didn’t even know it.”
He gestured up at the stars. They were winking out, one by one. “And now that I’m in here, now that I’ve taken hold, I’ll spread and spread and—”
A God-Almighty kick to the balls lifted the Mindraper off the ground. His breath left him in a single gulping sob and he crumpled to the ground clutching at his groin and groaning. “Urf. Jesus.”
Snatching up the knife, Tobey Maguire stabbed the squirrel repeatedly in the head and neck.
“Christ!”
Tossing away the knife, Tobey Maguire stamped on the Mindraper twice, then picked it up and threw it as far as he could. This was actually quite a short distance, though, so it wasn’t as effective as he’d hoped.
The black hole was still out on the street, although it wasn’t easy to see against the dark night sky. Tobey Maguire lined himself up and kicked the Mindraper into it. Albeit after several attempts.
“How did you enjoy them nuts?” he quipped, much too late for it to be any use.
He clapped his hands together, wiping some imagined dust off them. “I well and truly squirreled him away,” he said, which wasn’t quite as good as the nuts one, and the timing was even more off.
“Tobey Maguire?”
Tobey Maguire sat up sharply. A blinding white light forced his eyes closed, but not before he caught a glimpse of a figure kneeling beside him.
“Hey buddy, you OK?”
It was Cal’s voice. Tobey Maguire forced open his eyes and kicked backwards in panic. He collided with a table, knocking it over and spilling jigsaw puzzle pieces all over the featureless white floor.
“Hey, easy, buddy,” said Cal, smiling warmly. “Sorry, were you sleeping? I thought you’d died or something.”
Tobey Maguire’s eyes darted in all directions. “What? N-no.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” said Cal. “Hell, I sleep on the job all the time. There’s this, like, weapons headset thing on the ship. Sometimes I pretend to be practicing just so I can grab forty winks.”
“You were a squirrel!” Tobey Maguire whispered.
Cal blinked. “Uh… I was? When?”
“Now. A minute ago. Just then.”
Cal raised his eyebrows. “OK. Well…” he said, but he didn’t really have anything to add, so it fell away there. He jabbed a thumb vaguely behind him. “Anyway, I’m just in and out. I’m drowning on some ocean planet, but Loren’s pulling me out. With a bit of luck we’ll see some mouth-to-mouth action. Know what I’m saying?”
He held a hand out to Tobey Maguire and helped him back to his feet.
“Th-thanks.”
“Any time, buddy,” said Cal. He looked down at his hands. His fingertips had started to fade. “Looks like I’m about to head back. You take care of yourself, OK?”
Tobey Maguire nodded. “You, too,” he said, forcing a smile. “Don’t get Mindraped.”
Cal hesitated. “Uh. OK. I mean, I had no plans to but… I’ll keep it in mind.”
He stood to attention and closed his eyes, then tutted and opened them again. “Are you OK, Tobey Maguire? You look kind of freaked out.”
“I think I had a dream,” said Tobey Maguire. “You were in it. And Morgan Freeman. And Lionel Richie.”
“Co-writer of the 1985 charity single, ‘We Are the World’ Lionel Richie?” said Cal.
“That one, yes,” said Tobey Maguire. “We were in this town and…”
“I’m going to stop you there, Tobey Maguire,” said Cal. “Much as I’d love to listen, I have to go.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And, if I�
�m honest, I fonking hate hearing about people’s dreams.”
“OK. Got it,” said Tobey Maguire.
“But write it down,” Cal suggested. “While it’s still fresh.”
“Write it down?” said Tobey Maguire. He smiled. “Yes. Yes, I’ll go write it down right now!”
Cal vanished, but Tobey Maguire barely noticed. He rushed to the table and stood it upright. As he picked up his chair, he found an old manual typewriter sitting on the desk in front of him, a clean sheet of paper loaded up and ready to go.
The keys clacked beneath his trembling fingers as he began to type.
DEATH COMES TO CARVERVILLE
He moved down a couple of lines, thought for a moment, then added:
A TOBEY MAGUIRE MYSTERY
Tobey Maguire nodded his approval.
“I like that,” he said.
Then, all alone in his featureless white void, Tobey Maguire wrote down his dream.
All Night Long.
(Which reached number 3 on the US Billboard charts in 1983.)
(But was kept off the top spot in the UK charts by Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’.)
Afterword
So there you have it. You’ve reached the end of the short story collection. I hope you’ve been suitably entertained and amused, and that you now know more about Lionel Richie than you previously did. Possibly more than you ever wanted to, I don’t know.
There are no more stories left in this collection, but there are still plenty of Space Team Universe stories waiting out there to be explored. A bit like space itself, in fact, except you don’t have to wear a helmet to read them.
You can if you want, of course. What you do in the comfort of your own home is your business, not mine, and if you want to read the books in full astronaut gear, then far be it from me to stop you.
If you enjoyed the book, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave me a review. When you turn the page it should prompt you to leave one, but if not you can always click over to Amazon and leave one that way. It’ll just take a minute or two, and will make me a very happy man indeed.
Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories Page 23
