Red Herring

by Damon L. Wakes

  “You have to admit,” yawned Sleeping Beauty, “he is good at letting people see their full potential. I think he’ll make a fine mayor.”

  L’il Red was sad to see so many of her friends leave, so she didn’t do much in the way of campaigning herself. It wouldn’t have made sense anyway, she thought: everyone in town already knew her.

  Bo Peep was the next to go. “She’s decided to take all her sheep...” the Wolf paused to belch quietly, “to a big-city sheep-shearing business. Naturally...” another belch “she couldn’t have managed them all on her own.”

  The Wolf was positively rotund now. But then, Red had known all along that his half-cake tip was no good. The audience for the electoral speeches was smaller than expected.

  “A vote for me...” the Wolf wiped his forehead “is a vote for...mmph...progress.” Clear, concise, and delivered with dramatic pauses. All five spectators clapped.

  “L’il Red?” Sheriff Cutter turned to her.

  “Well,” said Red, “I ain’t no big city politician. I don’t know a lot of fancy words. But I do know that this town should be run by someone who knows it.” She stood, strode over to the corpulent Wolf, and prodded him with a finger. “And that’s. Not. You!”

  Unfortunately for the Wolf, Red’s sudden assault made him flinch, and his chair gave way with a crunch. Still more unfortunately, the town stage had been built at the top of a steep valley, and the Wolf’s roundness made him prone to rolling. But not all was bad: there were lots of cacti to slow his descent.

  Everyone watched as the Wolf dragged himself back up the slope.

  “Well,” said Rumplestiltskein, “he has taken it rather well.”

  But the Wolf had not. Finally scrambling back up on stage, he whipped a six-shooter out of his breast pocket and levelled it at Red.

  “Why I oughtta...” the Wolf began. But he stopped. “Ugh...” he mumbled. “Oogh...rolling...” Suddenly, he vomited several sheep ten feet off the stage, causing one of the Ugly Sisters to drop her cake in surprise. “Gruuuuuugh...” A couple of dozen sheep this time, followed by Bo Peep, then the Pigs, Billy Goats and Blind Mice. With some difficulty, he heaved out a Bear. Suddenly, almost the whole town was there in front of the stage, all looking quite bewildered and most very slimy.

  “Bluuuuurgh!” And that was it—the whole town—because Grandma had joined them.

  “So you wanted to see the mayor, did you?” she screeched, rushing to whack the Wolf with her parasol.

  But though still very queasy, the Wolf had one last trick up his somewhat-soiled sleeve. He hopped down off the back of the stage, cunningly trusting in the very spiky cacti to stave off pursuit.

  Grandma hurried back to L’il Red, grabbing her by the shoulders. “What have I told you about wolves!?”

  4

  (TM)

  “Do you think this is funny?” Big Harry leaned forward in his chair, pressing a sausage-like finger against the table. “Is this some kind of a joke to you?”

  “No, no!” Gus tried to lift his hands in a “No way!” gesture, but it was kind of hard with them duct-taped to the chair. “It’s not like that!”

  “Then what can I do but take it as an insult?” Leaning back again, he gestured to Elbows McCain to join them at the table.

  McCain slipped a hand into his suit pocket. When it came out again, it was wearing brass knuckles.

  “Okay!” Gus said, hastily, still not sure what he’d done. “Maybe...maybe I did think it’d be funny.”

  “Ah. Well, I like to think I got a sense of humour, and I’m sure Elbows here don’t want to waste his time with no funny guys.”

  McCain nodded, slinking back into the shadows. Gus breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Funny guys is more Vince’s for-tay. Vince!” He turned around in his chair and shouted to the man at the back of the room. “I hope you’s got your steel toe caps on today!”

  Vince began to clomp towards them, his lumpy face obscured by a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “Aaaaah!” Gus frantically hopped his whole chair back a few inches. “Wait, wait, wait! It wasn’t, like, a joke...as such. I just thought...maybe you...that I...you...”

  “Are you screwing with me?” He whipped a knife out of his pocket, the blade shooting from the handle with a crisp “snak!” He pointed it at Gus across the table. “Because when people start screwing with me, I deal with them personal, like.”

  “Aaaaaaaah...” Gus could feel his forehead prickling with sweat. “Aaah...ummm...” he couldn’t think straight. He just said the first thing that popped into his head. “I’m sorry. What were we talking about again?”

  “We was talking...” Big Harry heaved a suitcase up onto the table, letting it fall with a crash, “about this!”

  Gus didn’t like to say anything just then. Big Harry was angry. Real angry. Vein throbbing in forehead angry.

  “One of my associates passed you a note. A handwritten note. Handwritten by me. This note instructed you to fill the suitcase provided—by me—with four kilos of cocaine and leave it behind the nightclub bins at 2am. These instructions—written by me—were very simple, and very specific. And what do you do? You give me this!” He opened the suitcase. “Two bottles of nasty-looking brown water!”

  Again, Gus didn’t like to respond. His only hope now was that Big Harry’s epic forehead vein would develop into some kind of lethal aneurism.

  “Does that look like cocaine to you!?”

  Finally, an answer formed itself in Gus’s mind. “You uh...you asked for Coke.”

  “Of course I asked for coke!” Spittle flecked the bottles. “When Big Harry asks for coke, he gets coke! Do I make myself clear?”

  “No,” Gus insisted. “You asked for ‘Coke.’ With a capital ‘C.’ I’ve still got the note.”

  Vince stepped over.

  “It’s, uhhh, that pocket.” Gus nodded to his left, trying not to breathe as cigar-breath Vince stooped to retrieve the note.

  “He’s right, Boss.” Vince smoothed the paper out on the table. “‘Coke’ with a capital ‘C.’ That’s a registered trademark of the Coca-Cola Company.”

  Big Harry calmed down, but only a little. “Yeah? Well since when does Coke come in kilograms? Huh? Answer me that.”

  “Well...one litre weighs a kilogram, right?” answered Gus. “I gave you two two-litre bottles. That’s four kilograms.”

  “That’s true, Boss.” Elbows McCain put in. “I mean, technically it’s only true of distilled water at room temperature, but for our purposes it’s close enough.”

  Everyone stared at him.

  “What?” He stared back. “I knows my science.”

  “Alright.” Big Harry pushed the suitcase to one side, appraising its contents. “Let me get this straight. I, a crime lord, passed you a note asking for Coke, and you just immediately assumed I was talking about a soft drink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though I asked for it in kilograms?”

  “Yes.”

  “And not once did you think I might have actually wanted cocaine?”

  “I...uhhh...” Gus felt like he had about four kilograms of sweat clinging to his forehead.

  Big Harry laughed. “That’s hilarious!” Reaching out with his switchblade, he cut the duct tape holding Gus to the chair and peeled it away, leaving quite a bit of arm hair still clinging to it. “Didn’t I tell you I had a sense of humour?”

  Gus stood, nervously. “I...uhh...it is pretty funny.”

  Big Harry spread his big arms wide. “I guess I just been in the business so long, I forgot it meant anything else!” He unscrewed a bottle and lifted it. “To your continuing good health.”

  “Righto.” On shaky legs, Gus made his way to the door. He was just reaching for the handle when Big Harry spoke again.

  “Wait a minute...”

  Gus turned, and their eyes met.

  “...this is Pepsi.”

  5

  The Invocation

  *Challenge #3:
Write a story entirely in Pilish. That means the number of letters in each word has to correspond to the digits of Pi. In addition, you must use at least five examples of onomatopoeia. Also, your story must feature pie.

  Say I: Muse — a glory aesthetic in design — greet the words slinking viciously, highest sublunary foe to try. Vanquish them. Blanch at nought this bad day brazenly can do: clatter carefully ahead. O, in eloquent creation find a framework unfolds — a speech unveiling pie! Kersplotk! Banfsquik! Yae, kaboomo-crack, k? O words existing be! O cacophany crackle, boom! Splitting numb-loud words, outraging to ear. O Vogonic nonsense, a rhyme's fear! O number of geometry rotund, so! O terrible euclidean, monstrous cruncher figure of circlets! O now done, blissful so! Nasty-ass dare.

  6

  Come With Me if You Want to Live

  “Are you Sally Connal?”

  “Do I know you?”

  The musclebound gentleman stared through his sunglasses. “That is improbable.”

  “Because you look kind of familiar. Aren’t you the Governor of somewhere?”

  “This is not a productive area of discussion. Are you Sally Connal?”

  “Well, yes...”

  To Sally’s surprise, the man slowly drew a large handgun from his coat pocket. To her even greater surprise, a motorcycle crashed through the café window next to her, knocking him through a similar window on the opposite side of the building. The rider of the motorcycle did a tight lap of the room, brought the vehicle to a dramatic halt and stretched out an arm.

  “Come with me if you want to live!”

  Sally glanced over at the first guy who had spoken to her. He was already standing, the glass under his feet crunching dramatically, as it would under the feet of an implacable bad guy in an action movie.

  Sally set down her teacup. “Yeah, okay then.”

  As the two of them roared away on the motorbike, the other guy ran along behind, almost quickly enough to keep up. “Who is that guy?” asked Sally.

  “That’s not a guy,” replied the bike rider, screeching suddenly around a corner. “It’s a cybernetic organism: human flesh over a robotic endoskeleton. It’s from...” he left a somewhat hammy pause, “the future! In the future, machines are trying to terminate all humans. That particular model is specifically designed to terminate humans. Terminating humans is all these things do. We call them...‘murderbots.’”

  “How positively awful.” Sally didn’t like to engage in too much conversation. The motorbike was going really fast.

  Eventually—long after Sally was sure the murderbot had lost track of them—they stopped under a bridge. “My name’s Reece Kyle,” said the guy with the motorbike.

  “Well...” she extended a hand. “Thanks very much for getting me away from that nasty robot.”

  “Oh no,” said Reece. “We’re not free of it yet. That thing doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop...ever.” There was that hammy pause again. “But don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

  Suddenly, Sally thought of something. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “I come from the future too,” explained Reece. “It’s a terrible, irradiated wasteland swarming with murderbots, where human skulls litter the ground and flying robots control the sky. But we’re not without hope. One man has united the survivors. Under his leadership, we’ve managed to take back some of what was once ours. And soon, because of him, we’ll take it all. That’s why the murderbot was sent here to kill you. You see, in a few months...you invent a surprisingly durable snack food. In the future, that’s all that’s left to eat.”

  Sally put a hand to her forehead. “This is all so much to take in. ...but wait! In the future, you must have some sort of anti-robot laser gun. I’m assuming you brought one back?”

  Reece shook his head. “Time travel doesn’t work that way. Only organic material can pass through the distortion field.”

  “But the murderbot got through okay. You said it was...what was it? Human skin over a robot skeleton?”

  “Well, yeah...”

  “So why couldn’t you, say, wrap a laser gun in bacon and bring it back that way?”

  “Because...oh no.”

  The murderbot had picked that moment to turn up again.

  “Run!” shouted Reece. “I’ll hold it off for as long as I can!”

  Sally ran, but quickly (and seemingly inevitably) found herself in a narrow corridor, the murderbot striding close behind her. Stealing a glance, Sally saw that it was carrying a long cardboard box, which it opened to reveal a shotgun. Red roses tumbled out of the box and onto the floor, and the murderbot stepped on them without remorse or pity.

  But as Sally looked forward once again—trying to run as fast as possible—she saw a second murderbot, identical to the first. It spoke: “Get down.”

  Sally threw herself to the floor. There was a “pew” noise, followed by a blinding beam of light, which immediately melted the bad guy murderbot’s face.

  “Sally Connal,” said the remaining murderbot. “I am a robot from the future. I have been programmed to protect you.”

  “But why?” Sally placed a hand to her forehead again. “This is all so much to take in!”

  In its characteristic monotone, the murderbot explained: “Sally Connal. Two minutes ago you devised a way of carrying awesome sci-fi laser guns through time.” Hefting something that looked like an elastic band ball made of meat, it tore away a few strips of bacon, revealing a really rad-looking sci-fi laser gun, its muzzle still streaming coolant vapour. “Come with me if you want to live.”

  7

  Bring Your Own Blood

  “Blergh!” said Ben. “I am Count Dragula! I vant to suck your blahd!” He did a little dance, showing off his costume.

  Martin laughed. “Dude...that’s awesome. That’s...that’s just awesome.” As costumes went, it wasn’t terribly ambitious, but what it lacked in effort, it more than made up for in sheer hilarity.

  “I’m the transvestite from Transylvania, man!” He fished around in his purse for a moment before bringing out a bottle of vodka—though only a small one. “Oh. And I brought booze.”

  “Aaah, thanks, man!” Martin tried to forget that he’d brought an entire keg of beer to Ben’s birthday thing back in June. “Awesome.”

  “So how many people have you got coming to this thing, anyway?”

  “Aaah, loads! I put it out on Facebook as one of those ‘invite your friends’ things—open to everyone. Could be a crazy night! You never know who might turn up.”

  “Maybe even a vampire! Blergh! Hahaha.” Ben spread his cape out, doing much the same shuffling little dance as before. Martin wondered if he’d sewn the sequins onto the dress himself.

  The party was actually not as popular as Martin had hoped. “Invite everybody” parties were, he supposed, most likely to take off when people had nowhere better to be. In that respect, Halloween probably hadn’t been the best time to try one. Despite the costumes, he recognised everybody. There was James, wrapped in toilet paper as a mummy; Lauren, also wrapped in toilet paper (it was clearly a popular last-minute option); Richard, painted blue with a Smurf hat; and Becky, the obligatory sexy geek.

  Martin didn’t really know the other party guests, as such, but they were all casual acquaintances or friends of friends. It certainly wasn’t a huge turnout. On the upside, the small turn-out meant that he was the only werewolf. On the downside, he could see why: all the fur made it kind of an impractical costume. Even in October, the number of people crammed into the living room of the three-bedroom house made all that fake fur kind of sweaty.

  Just then, someone new turned up. Another vampire—there were quite a few of those. This one was different, though. He had a moustache, for one thing, and what looked like a pencilled-in monobrow. It would probably have confused most people, but Martin had taken that Gothic Literature module last year: he knew the original Dracula when he saw him. This guy matched the description in the book to a T.
>
  “Hey!” Martin met him at the door. “Awesome costume, man. Have a beer!”

  “Ah...no thank you. I have...as you say...‘brought my own beverage.’” He held up a bottle of red liquid.

  “Oh, right.” Martin gave him a knowing look. “Yeah, I get it.” This was like the complete opposite of Ben’s Count Dragula thing: not at all inventive, but between the “blood” and the accent, it was pretty ambitious. The cloak actually looked kind of expensive. Martin had a look out onto the street, then checked his watch. It was still early—maybe all the internet people were just turning up fashionably late.

  But no. Eleven O’clock rolled around, and only three more people had turned up—an alien, another vampire, and another of Martin’s casual acquaintances wrapped in toilet paper. Things weren’t exactly winding down, though. Ben was certainly keeping people entertained.

  “I’m the transvestite from Transylvania!” he said, way louder than was necessary. “I vant to suck your...” (the room let out a collective giggle) “blahd!” he finished eventually. “Woooo!” And there was the dance again. This got another laugh from everyone. Everyone, that was, except the guy in the Dracula costume, who simply stood there coldly, sipping his “blood.”

  Richard was wearing a lampshade on his head. Ben nabbed it and put it on himself. “Woooo!” he said again. “Look at me! I’m a vampire in a dress! Lah la la la la...”

  “Right!” said the Dracula lookalike, rolling the “R” impressively. He set his drink down with a sharp crack. “I have put up with this all night, sir, and I shall put up with it no more!” He snarled, and Martin noticed for the first time that he had some really realistic fake fangs.

  “Woah, man.” Richard stepped forward, placing a hand on the guest’s shoulder. “Come on. It’s just a costume, right? It’s just a bit of fun.” Clearly the guy was way too into his Bram Stoker.

  “Oh,” said the guest, twisting Richard’s hand away with a surprisingly strong grip. “For you, perhaps, it is only a costume. For you, it is just a bit of fun. But for me, it is my entire life!”

  The room suddenly went silent. Suddenly, Martin realised. He had said it himself. You never know who might turn up.