by Vaughn Ashby
“So your God, Shiva, is going to be pooped into this world through that painting, and what I’m her post pooping snack?”
“Something like that, but with less poop talk and more sacrifice.”
“Ok,” Travers paused to consider the best way to say what he wanted in the most politically correct way possible. “Yeah, I really don’t fucking want that.”
Tomas clasped Travers on the shoulder. “Sorry, you don’t really have a choice. We’ve already used up our other sacrifice.”
Other sacrifice? What was he talking about? Had they done this before to other hikers? Let this be a lesson kids never go into the woods or you’ll end up being a snack for some god. Wait, Liz. He turned to quickly look at Tomas.
“Yes, your lady friend found herself in your very same position a couple hours ago. She woke up first so she was the first volunteer. You’ve been out for a while. We thought you might be brain dead, turns out not.”
Travers looked around for signs of Liz, there was no blood anywhere around him, no signs of her at all, nothing. “Is she dead?”
Tomas circled him, running his fingers along the tower, the man seemed incapable of standing still. “I’m going, to be frank with you, we don’t know. Something went wrong, the painting didn’t work and we accidentally opened a gateway to somewhere else. Something came through grabbed her and took off. But she is most probably dead.”
“What came through? Is she alright?”
“We don’t really know or honestly care. We admitted our mistake and we’ve moved on. So here we are.”
“All set here Tomas,” Samantha said putting her paint down and picking up what looked like bear spray to Travers.
“Oh no wait!” Travers’ brain was connecting all the dots. He remembered the story Shane had told him about him and Jason and the bear spray portal. “You’re the lady with the basement portal.”
A man with a large bushy beard ran over to Tomas, he also had a white hazmat suit on. “Tomas, the signal has stopped.”
“Oh come on, should we try anyway?” Tomas asked Samantha.
“No, we should wait. Kill him, we’ll get someone else for next time.”
“Yeah I really don’t like that idea, let’s give this a try,” Travers said. He always talked faster when he was about to be killed, it was actually surprising how often that had happened.
Tomas grabbed a bottle of something that was next to Samantha’s paint. “Here give him this, it’ll eat him from the inside, less mess for us.”
It should be pointed out that Travers’ has been part of his community theatre group for some time now. Every year he’s tried out for the led role and every year he is told to tone it down. In other words, stop over acting. He also liked to make up his own lines, claiming it’s what the characters were really thinking. His version of Romeo commanded Juliet to quote “get on her knees”. And his audition song for Guys and Dolls was from the Simpsons version of the play. So it’s really surprising that what happens next works. Anyways.
Travers closed his eyes and pretended to collapse, but the ropes held him up. The bushy beard man approached him with the bottle, “Is he dead Tom?”
“Don’t call me Tom, everyone calls me Tomas and no he’s not dead. Just…”
Travers eyes opened wide and made his body ridged. He slowly looked around at all of them, the bearded man backed away. What came out of his mouth can only be described as the evilest sounding voice ever, like the exorcist meets your worst school teacher, or as Travers’ like to refer to it as his Blanche DuBois voice. “I am SHIVA! Kneel before me, I am your god.”
Tomas dropped to his knees, everyone followed his led.
“Why have you woken me!” Traver’s struggle to hold in his laughs. This was Oscar worthily.
“Shiva, we ask for your forgiveness, we only…”
“You! Untie this body now!”
Tomas ran over and reached for the ropes.
“What the hell are you doing!” Samantha yelled. “This isn’t how Shiva manifests.”
“He’s our Shiva, this is Shiva, She’s come to led us.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, that’s not how this works. Have you even been paying attention?” Samantha walked over to Tomas and pulled him away from Travers. She smacked the side of his head. Tomas opened his mouth to speak but she smacked him again.
“The signal is back,” someone yelled.
Samantha smacked Tomas again, “Dip shit. Stop wasting time.” She pulled something from the back of her pants, looking back Travers was pretty sure it was a gun. Then everything went red and then faded to black.
Often movies show someone getting smacked in the head with something and waking up fine in the next scene. This isn’t true in real life, at best you’d wake up with a concussion and probably live with side effects for the rest of your life. I’m no doctor but I do know they exist. Let’s just assume Travers lives in the first reality were you can get hit in the head with a something and be mostly ok. I guess he’s technically been hit in the head twice, hasn’t he? Anyway…
Travers opened his eyes again, this time again he was surprised at what he found. The formally green grass was covered in red and other pieces of stuff that used to be people. His hands were freed and he was sitting on his ass using the post as a backrest. He could see Samantha’s head laying next to the table of paints that stood there perfectly untouched. Her head suffered from lack of body attached to it. He looked around for Tomas but didn’t see any part of him anywhere.
Slowly, he got up and tiptoed through the maze of people parts. He crossed the field and made it to the forest line. He turned and surveyed the field, from here he could totally tell that it had once been a drive-in theatre. With the exception of the giant tower in the middle and the gore covering everything, it looked like a nice hiking destination. This was going to make one fucking amazing post.
Shit, Liz. He’d forgotten about her. Was she one of the bodies out there, torn apart? “Liz!” he yelled, then followed it up with a couple coughs. His throat was dry and hurt like hell. “Liz,” he yelled again. His eyes burned, he could feel the tears building up. “Liz,” he said a final time as he collapsed against a tree. Tears streaming down his face, he sobbed in his hands. After a couple minutes, he got to his feet and flipped the middle finger to the dead bodies spread across the field. Then, he turned and headed into the woods. At this point, he realized he was still naked and cupped his junk. Traversing the forest naked was an interesting experience, he would have cuts and scrapes all over his body for weeks to come. He managed to make it to a highway where he flagged down a semi truck. He managed to convince the driver to let him use his cell to call Shane. The man agreed but Travers’ was sure he was expecting something that he was never going to get in exchange.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1982 Moe: Potentially Santa Claus
At some point during the night, the car just appeared there. I’m not certain of the exact time it arrived at, I only had my wristwatch. No fancy cell phones back then, and it was too dark to read my watch. I left Nicole in the tent and went over to the car. I rested my hand on the hood, it was cold. No one had driven this car here, no tire tracks either. So the car had somehow just appeared there.
I waited next to it for a while just expecting Smith to show up any minute, he didn’t and I was tired. So I went back to the tent and fell asleep quickly next to Nicole. When we got up the next day the car was still there, and still no Smith anywhere.
We left for home after a quick breakfast, I had to get back to the shop. I’d been taking a lot of days off lately because of all of this and quality had been slipping in my absence. So we left before the driver ever showed up. I figured we could always come back tonight since he appeared to be stuck living the same day over and over.
Before we left I went back over to the car, and with my keys, I scratched a tiny M next to where the trailer hitch would be attached later. Normally you see I treat cars like prize possessions, bu
t I badly wanted to know if this was the car that would show up at my shop later that day. I knew some version of it was going to show up, but I wanted to know if this one was going to be it.
I dropped Nicole off at home and went into work. There had been a break in at the shop that night. By the time I arrived, the police were already there. One of the guys showed up early for work and called it in. They’d broken the glass window and gone right for the cash. Unlucky for them we kept none in the store after hours, unlucky for me once they figured that out they grabbed my insurance policy from under the counter and used it to trash the place, the bat was also missing.
The police were there for most of the day, small towns often give this kind of treatment. Not a lot happened so they take their time. I knew the police chief well. We’d actually been buddies in school. Of course, like most, he didn’t really interact much after graduations, but we were cordial with each other. His name was Constable Parker, or Joshy as most of us knew him.
Joshy and I had spent most of the day chatting about this and that. It wasn’t until that Ford Taurus pulled into the parking lot that our conversation got interesting. He admitted that at first, he hadn’t believed the stories, but now after watching this car drive through town on so many occasions, he was a believer. But unlike most, he wasn’t comfortable just sitting back and letting it wash over him. He was like me, he wanted to know more. I filled in him on what Nicole and I had learned the night before. He hung on every word I said.
Then the man from the Taurus walked into the story. He walked right up to the till and made his normal purchase. Joshy watched in silence and seemed to be using whatever detective skills small town cops could have on him. His skills mostly involved just watching the guy, but I could tell he was doing his cop thing. The man paid and walked back out to his vehicle, ignoring the mess of the store, he didn’t even look around surprised. The second the man left the store I ran outside after him just as one of the new hires was attaching the bumper. So, I offered to assist him. Most of my crew knew that when I offered to help it wasn’t really an offer, it was something I wanted to do. This was passed along early in their training so the new guy knew to step aside. As I attached the trailer hitch I checked for the M mark I had made early that very morning. Sure enough there it was.
I finished, and let the man go. Joshy ran up to me after and asked me what I was doing. I told him about the M. Then he did something no one had ever offered before. He asked if it was ok if he followed the man in the Taurus. My first reaction was why the heck are you asking me for permission? But I guess people around town, and Joshy was among them, that though this was my mystery. I’d always had thought of it more as the towns, but I guess the town had a different idea. I told him yes, but only as long as he came back and told me what he found. He agreed and was off.
I spent the rest of the day dying to find out what had happened, where they had gone. It was like Christmas morning and every car that pulled into my garage was potentially Santa Claus. I wished that I would have gone with him. I regretted that almost right away. Nothing I could do now but wait, and I did. I stayed till the end of closing time, then I stayed later. I called Earla and told her not to wait up. I chatted with Nicole on the phone before bed. She insisted on being allowed to come visit right then and there, but I told her no and that I would rush home and tell her anything I found out.
Sometime after midnight, Joshy came back. I’d fallen asleep in my car waiting for him. The shop was still in the process of being fixed up so I wasn’t about to sleep there. He knocked on the window and asked for my license and registration. I told him to jump off a cliff and fill me in now.
He told me he followed him all the way to the county line and that he wasn’t supposed to take the town's cars past there, but he did anyway. He followed him all the way to a shed out in the middle of nowhere. Out in some farmer’s field, some where. He’d had to keep his distance, so he couldn’t see everything crystal clear. But he knew the man got out and hooked up some small metal trailer that had been in the shed. Then he took off again. He remarked that the trailer had no plates and if he’d been in our county he would have stopped him, but he wasn’t so he didn’t.
He said after that, things got a little weird. He’d followed him for a good hour after he’d gotten the trailer and by now it was getting dark. During that time the trailer had acted a little strange. He said at first the trailer seemed to not reflect the head lights of cars that followed it. The light seemed to be pulled into it, but couldn’t leave. He said he didn’t know how to describe it any other way. Then and he told me he hadn’t had a drink all day so this was gods’ honest truth. He said at times it seemed like the trailer wasn’t even there at all. I listened just expecting it all, this whole thing was strange, why should this part be any different. Then he said, and he was almost giddy, that the car turned down a road, that looked like it hadn’t been used much. A road you couldn’t really call a road he said. It was really more like two tire paths into a field.
He looked at me with excitement, then told me how the car had disappeared right in front of him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
2014 Shane: I’d Recognize That Junk Anywhere
The naked man waving his arms in the air was a sure sign they’d found the right place. Shane pulled the car over and unlocked the doors. Travers scampered to the passenger side.
“Yep, that’s him,” Pratt said from the back seat. “I’d recognize that junk anywhere.”
Shane gave him a dirty look, “Gross man I don’t even want to know.”
“What? You don’t know what all your friend's junk looks like? You’re gross.”
Travers opened the door and threw a leg in, Shane threw a pair of pants at him. “Pants first, I don’t want your balls touching my seats.”
“But…”
“Put the damn pants on or you are walking home, sir.”
Traver's grabbed the pants and started putting them on, “Fuck you by the way,” he said as he pulled them on. He quickly ducked into the car and Shane took off.
Pratt smacked Travers on the shoulder, “Good to see you, buddy. Aren’t these the same woods we were in last night with the whole rapey thing?”
Travers turned to look at him and was startled to see Anna sitting next to him. “Yep same woods, somewhat less rapey tonight. Hey, Anna how’s it going?”
She smiled, he stuck out a fist, she bumped it in return.
“So you want to fill us in on what happened out their Captain Underpants?” Shane asked as he turned back onto the main road. It was much darker out now then when they had left. He flipped the head lights on.
“I’m not totally sure,” Travers replied. “It’s all fuzzy now.”
“Oh, I know.” Pratt said smiling, “I read it already. Oh, and Liz is fine.”
Travers looked at him confused, “Liz? I was out there with Liz?”
“Liz? Like Liz from my work? Don’t dip your pen in my company ink please.”
“Wait let’s go back a second,” Travers undid his seat belt and turned around. “How did you know about Liz?” he asked Pratt.
Yada yada yada… the next couple minutes Shane and Pratt filled him in about the book. Anna mostly just looked out the window, and so did Pratt honestly. Anyways.
“And so you read it?” Travers asked Pratt.
“Not all of it but some, I can read crazy fast. But Shane doesn’t want to know anything.”
“Yeah, I agree with Shane I don’t want to know. If I know then I’ll feel like that is the only possible option. Self-fulfilling prophecy and shit.”
Anna yawned and leaned her head against Pratt's arm. “I’m tired, can I watch a movie?”
“Sure cutie”, Pratt pulled his iPad from his backpack and handed it to her. She pulled headphones from her bag and plugged them in. “Sorry Anna I only have one movie, but you’ll love it.”
“What is it?” Travers asked.
“Ghostbusters.”
“Nice,” th
e two fist pumped.
“Isn’t that a little scary for her?” Shane asked as he turned into his subdivision.
“It’s on the kid's list on Netflix Shane, I think they know what they are doing.”
Shane rolled his eyes, and his phone rang. He pulled his phone from his pocket, he was never one to care about driving while texting, the call display said it was Jason. He answered. "Hey, Ass Fu…”
"I..." It was Jason alright but his phone sounded terrible.
"You driving through a mountain or got your head up some guys ass?" Shane chuckled to himself, no one else in the car thought it was funny.
"...Jessica..."
"Seriously dude I can't hear you."
"...help..."
Shane pushed the speakerphone button so everyone could hear. "Say that one more time.”
They all leaned in to listen. There was only static. Shane clicked the volume up higher. It sounded like Jason was panting and out of breath, had he been running? Then there was a loud thumping sound as if the phone had been dropped, they could hear Jason talking to someone, he yelled at them to stop. Then he yelled and the phone went dead.
Shane looked around at the other guys. Thank god Anna was watching a movie.
"So yeah, fuck," Travers said uncomfortably.
"How the fuck do we find him?" Pratt asked half watching the movie with Anna.
"What about the book?" Travers replied looking unsure.
"We don't even know if that thing is right? What if it's made to fuck with you?" Shane sounded almost frustrated that the book existed.
“Sweet sexy rhino taint, I never thought of that. Like we show up somewhere and some big harry dude has his way with Pratt." Travers said.
