Jenny lets him share the table with her. There’s a table in the far corner, but she hates to be rude.

Someone behind her bumps her elbow. She looks, but then they’re gone. Just another body in the throng.

The man – golden hair, a dimpled chin, a white button-down shirt with the fabric pilling on the collar – licks his teeth and lifts a finger for a waitress.

“What are you drinking?” he asks over the noise.

Jenny holds aloft her own glass – a mostly drained Merlot. She says it aloud, just in case.

Waitress comes. Takes the orders. He asks for a gin-and-tonic. All around, the crowds thicken and tighten like a belt, like a pair of hands. She hates this place. Airports smell like airplanes. Ozone and cleaning spray and old perfume and coffee stains. Here, the added bonus of the tang of wine and gin and slushie nuclear neon margaritas (which she knows aren’t margaritas, but she loves them just the same).

“Where you flying?” he asks.

“Dallas,” she says.

He nods, like he knows. “Me too, me too.”

He’s got a dark blot on his blue tie. Looks purple.

“You’re very handsome,” he says, an odd choice of words, but there it is. “Pretty eyes.”

The waitress brings their drinks, hurries off. Jenny hoists the glass and takes a sip, and decides right away to stick the needle in his balloon. “I’m married.”

“No kidding.” He says it like he knew it. He already saw her ring, she figures. Just in case, she waggles that finger around her glass. The ring tinks against it.

She shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He waves it off. “I’m married, too.”

“Oh. Oh, good. I just thought — congrats.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jenny. Jenny Slater.”

The man’s mouth opens, agape. “Hey, Jenny Slater. That’s crazy. My name’s Paul Slater.”

“That’s my husband’s name.” Something feels off, now. Something she can’t identify. Like a knick-knack on a shelf moved away from the others, like a painting replaced in the night.

“I know,” he says, and smiles, and licks his teeth again. “I’m your husband, silly girl.”

“That’s not funny.” Already she’s looking around. Is this a joke? Where’s Paul? Is he here? She looks for police. An air marshal. Somebody. Anybody.

He raises his voice to match the volume of the crowd. “I don’t mean it to be funny, babe.”

The man slides across the table a driver’s license, and taps it against the bottom of her glass. It’s her husband’s license. She’d know it anywhere, because the corner was chewed up – teeth marks from their unruly terrier.

But two things, two things were different.

First, the picture. It wasn’t her husband. It was this man. With the golden hair and the dimple chin.

Second, on the corner opposite of the teeth marks – a rusty spot. A dried circle of weathered red.

Jenny feels dizzy. Her world, whirling. Her guts drop, like she’s already on the flight taking off, ascending, leaving an old place and going to a new one. A destination she didn’t choose. She’s motion sick. Again she looks around, she raises a hand, but nobody sees it. The ground is gone beneath her.

“We’re going to Dallas together,” the man says, chuckling. “A couple’s time away. From the kids! From little Becky and littler Melissa. It sounds so nice.”

He puts his hand over hers. His fingers are callused. The nails, chewed and ragged.

“The kids,” she says, the words barely loud enough. “My children.”

“They’re fine.” He tightens his hand. The calluses bite. Hangnails scratch. “And they’ll continue to be fine, because Daddy loves them very much, and Mommy loves Daddy. And that makes it all okay.”

Outside the bar, the announcement: flight’s boarding. Her flight. Their flight. To Dallas.

“Ready?” he asks.

“I don’t – what’s happening –“ She feels tears moving down her cheeks.

“Time to fly, babe.”

She’s taken away. She leaves the table, leaves the airport bar. With him. Her mouth is dry. Her nose filled with the airport stink. Everything feels loose, unmoored, flying high and getting higher.

The man winks. Smiles. Licks his teeth. And pulls her toward the gate, ticket in hand.

…

For the Crash And Burn Steve Weddle Memorial Airport Flash Fiction.

“Dirty animals, those cats,” he said, pressing a .308 round into the Winchester rifle.

“I think that’s Grandma’s cat,” I said, but I didn’t think so, I knew so. She called it Monkeyface because its dark, mottled tortoiseshell head gave it a chimpy look.

“I know who’s cat that is.” He jacked the bolt forward. He rested the gun on the kitchen windowsill, handling the weapon gently like it was a carton of eggs. He peered through the scope. I could hear his beard stubble scratch against the texture of the rifle butt. “My mother has to learn that she should keep her filthy little shits to herself. They bring in parasites. What do I always say?”

I swallowed hard. “We don’t abide trespassers.”

“Goddamn right. You’re a good boy, Raymond.”

“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Pop sucked a little air in between his teeth, sniffed a snot back up into his nose, then pulled the trigger.

He wouldn’t let me wear ear-muffs whenever we went out shooting, said it was queer or stupid to wear those things. Of course, he was mostly deaf in one ear. When the shot rang out, I smelled the nose-burning sting of spent powder and my ears were left ringing. (Though I don’t know why they call it ringing, it was more like one of those tones they play to test your hearing in elementary school, except it doesn’t stop for hours.)

The shot missed the cat, but must’ve hit close by. The cat jumped like it had just been bitten on the ass by a little rat, and then lost its footing. Its legs went akimbo and it slid down the tin roof, claws on metal, making a vvviiiiiiip sound.

Followed by a thud.

Monkeyface hit the ground, and contrary to legend, the feline’s internal gyroscope didn’t allow it to land on all its feet. Well. It landed on its feet, I guess. It just didn’t land successfully.

“Scope needs adjusting,” Pop said. “Go get the cat.”

I just nodded, and did what I was told.

* * *

Three of the cat’s legs were broken. It wasn’t hard to tell, because they were bent at funny angles. The cat panted like a dog would, and made this low keening sound in the back of its throat.

“That is an ugly cat,” Pop said, chewing on a thumbnail.

He was right, but I wasn’t going to say so. I felt guilty just thinking it, because here this cat was cradled in my arms, crying and suffering. “What’re we going to do?”

“Set it up for target practice, probably. Nail it to a fence, maybe put up some Ginger Ale cans or beer bottles alongside it.” He scratched the bald spot at the back of his head. “You could go get your .22, I’ll bring the .308, maybe call your uncle see if he wants in.”

“I feel bad.”

“For the cat?” he asked, incredulous. He barely stifled a bitter laugh. “That’s your mother talking, God rest her soul forever and ever. I hear her voice come out of your mouth sometimes. She was a good woman, but you’re not a woman, remember that always.”

“Okay.”

“Still,” he said, pausing. “We could give it to Whats-His-Name, the salesman. See what he does with it.”

“Mr. Carlson,” I said, reminding Pop of his name.

“Right. Carlson. Sure. Take Monkeyface to Carlson.”

I looked down at the cat, who was moving his one good leg as if trying to set an example for the others.

“Okay,” I said.

* * *

Mr. Carlson didn’t look so good. His face was the color of paste, and his lips were chapped like they’d been rubbed with sand. He didn’t even seem to notice me coming at first, but when I got closer and flicked on the cellar light, he jerked his head up, eyes wide. He pulled at the shackle around his right wrist, almost like he forgot it was chaining him there.

“Little Raymond,” he mumbled. His lips pulled back in a mean smile, showing off yellow teeth. “Want to buy some encyclopedias?”

It was his joke, and I never laughed. That’s what he came to our house to do, sell his encyclopedias. Nobody bought those anymore, I said. What with the Internet and all. Pop said we didn’t need them (Pop said we didn’t need the Internet, either), and that the man was trespassing, and you know what he says about trespassers.

“No, sir,” I told him. “I have something for you.”

“What is it? Tell me.” He strained to see what I had in my arms. The smile vanished, and for a second he looked feral, worse than the meanest cat, even one that’s been shot at a bunch of times.

“It’s a cat named Monkeyface.”

“Why would I want a cat?

“I dunno. My Dad wanted me to give it to you, I guess to keep you company.” I shifted nervously from foot to foot.

Mr. Carlson hissed: “Did they get to have pets?” He jerked his head to indicate the other three bodies sitting against the wall. Two of them were all bones, by now, but the third still had a little meat on the skeleton. One of them was real estate agent. The other two were a Jehovah’s Witness and a UPS man that Pop said was trying to steal stuff from our garden. The room smelled bad, but I was used to it by now.

“No,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

“Please let me go,” he mewled.

“Can’t. Pop says trespassers have to learn their lesson. Maybe you want some water?”

“Water’ll just make me have to piss again.”

“I’m going to put the cat down now,” I said. “But don’t grab at me or anything, or Pop will have to take off your other foot.”

I think Mr. Carlson started crying, then.

I laid the broken cat down next to the salesman, and it tried to run away but just plopped down onto its three shattered legs and cried out.

“You two play nice,” I said, and I meant it. I felt bad for what they were going through, but Pop liked things a certain way around here, and I wasn’t going to argue with him.

I turned off the cellar light and went back upstairs. Hopefully, Pop wouldn’t be mad anymore. You just never knew. But I didn’t worry too badly. I was a good boy, and I didn’t abide trespassers either.

1. The Pirate Ship

The pounding, drumming pulse-beat of battle.

Grebok’s knuckles – raw, red, swollen – throbbed. Blood matted his locks.

The once shiny luster of Lord Chuckles’ blade was bedimmed by gore and bits of hair.

Violence for these two men – nay, these two heroes – was a thing of purity, a gleaming, crystalline moment in time. A thrown elbow shattered a jawbone. A broken chair leg became a skull-cracker, a teeth-breaker, a sternum-smasher. The two moved in tandem as they always did, one a desert sirocco from the south, the other a biting mistral from the north; whenever and wherever they met, death ensued, enemies fell, justice prevailed. The Storyverse would once more be protected against those who would undo its magic.

Today was no different. The pair of heroes crossed a sea of green. They boarded the pirate vessel. They defeated the captain’s guards. They left broken wreckage in their wake, a scene of righteous carnage sung to sleep by the gurgling moans of the defeated.

Together, the two stood at the door to the pirate captain’s quarters.

Lord Chuckles: blonde, close-cropped hair; steely gaze; blade held fast in tight grip.

Grebok: dark, tangled dreadlocks; eyes painted in iron filings; fists dripping red.

They shared a look. Grebok winked a black eye. Chuckles tightened his square jaw.

Together, they booted down the door. Wood splintered. Hinges hit the ground with a clatter.

Then–

Pop music. Bright walls. A poster of a slinky, scantily-clad 16-year-old girl riding a white leopard.

A scrawny kid with a mop-top of red hair and limbs like a tangle of broomsticks sat at a small computer. He yelped as they kicked open the door, and the keyboard in his lap spun to the floor.

Grebok, rarely one to examine his immediate surroundings, marched over to the teen and socked him in the jaw.

The gawky teen cried out.

“Suck fist, pirate captain!” Grebok said, then turned to Chuckles and gave the thumbs-up.

Chuckles, the smart one by only a scant few micrometers of smartness, paused. He tapped his pinky finger against the pommel of his sword.

“I’m confused,” Chuckles said.

Grebok narrowed his gaze. “Not me, brother. What’s to be confused about? We found the pirate ship. We beat the pirate’s crew into a bloody pudding. Now, pirate captain plus justice equals a day’s work.”

“Does that kid look like a pirate captain?”

“Sure?” Grebok lied.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m lying,” Grebok said, not lying.

“Who are you guys?” the teen croaked, rubbing his jaw. “What’s going on out there? Is that blood? Where are my parents? What about my sister?” He called out: “Sis! Mom! Dad!”

Grebok slapped him. “Stop yelling. I’m like, right next to you. I have sensitive ears. Now, stop your whimpering. We’re heroes. Retained by cosmic forces to make sure all is right with the natural order. You’re a pirate. You take a crap on the natural order.”

The teen whimpered.

“Hold up. I’m going to try to feel this out,” Chuckles explained, holding up a finger. “Okay. I got this. The pirates were keeping your family hostage. And the pirate captain put you here as a proxy – a dupe – so that we’d come in and slaughter an innocent, and he’d be all laughing and grog-bellied, and he’d say something like, Oh, you should see your faces, you shitheaded… hero… jerkfaces…“

“Don’t forget the Arr, matey,” Grebok added. “Or something about I cornholed me parrot for a bucket of rum. Pirates say shit like that all the time.”

“Right, what Grebok said. Have I nailed it? Speak up, kid, we ain’t got all day.”

The teen sobbed. “Puh-please don’t hurt me. Did you kill my fuh-fuh-family?”

“Does he mean those people outside?” Grebok asked as an aside. “The captain’s guard?”

Chuckles shrugged. “Who’s your family again, kid?”

“They were in the kuh-kitchen. Mom was making cookies. Dad was—“

“—smoking a pipe?” Lord Chuckles interrupted, wincing.

“My sister was doing her homework.”

“Sister,” Chuckles said, letting the word roll around his mouth. “Boy, this is really going south.”

“Are they okay?” the teen blubbered.

“They’re… not dead,” Chuckles said. It was true.

Grebok shook his head, chortling. “Though I sure wouldn’t call them ‘okay.’ Unless you consider comas and sucking chest wounds—“

Chuckles gave him a panicked shake of the head.

“I mean,” Grebok corrected himself, “they’re totally great. This stuff in my hair is just… jelly. Blood-flavored jelly.” He swirled a finger in his gory dreads, and popped the tip in his mouth. He almost threw up, but managed an awkward smile.

The teen howled, a wounded, pimply banshee.

“Yawn,” Grebok said instead of actually yawning, and then pulled a revolver whose fat cylinder sat pregnant with hot photon rounds. He pressed the gun’s gaping, deadly mouth against the teen’s temple. “Let’s finish this and go get a smoothie.”

“Whoa, whoa, Bucky the Bronco,” Lord Chuckles said, hurrying over and steadying his heroic pal. He eased the gun away from the boy’s head. “Relax for a minute. Our victory over smoothies will have its hour. Okay, kid. Forget your parents for a minute and stop with the cry-making. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was duh-duh-downloading music off the Infi-Net.”

Grebok whispered to Chuckles: “I don’t know what that means.”

Lord Chuckles whispered back: “I have no idea. Some kind of voodoo spell, so be wary.”

Volume back to normal, Chuckles continued: “Right, sure, you were, ahhh, loading clown music off the infinity tubes, fine, fine. That sounds pretty above board to me. Right? Totally legit. Nothing illicit about clowns, or the loading of clowns. Or even their music, which I imagine is a sort of creepy, jaunty pipe organ thing.” He paused, staring off at nothing. “Man, clowns are really terrifying. You just know that one would try to kiss you, and you’d turn away, but he’d still get his face makeup all over your cheek or chin, and somewhere you’d hear this distant sound: a clown-nose just honking in the night.”

Grebok took a step away from Chuckles. “If you say so.”

“Sorry. Right. Yeah. Okay, kid, you got your clown music—“

“It’s not clown muh-muh-music,” the gawky teen corrected. He stared up at the poster of the nubile girl on the slinking leopard. His mouth slackened. His face alighted with awe. “It’s from the yet-to-be-released Kendra Shields album. She’s a goddess. A pop goddess who probably smells of appletinis and angel tears.”

“I give a shit,” Grebok announced. “Can we hurry this up? Smoothies. Smoothies.”

Chuckles rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yes. Whatever, kid. You bought your music fair and square, we must have the wrong pirate ship or something.”

“It’s not a ship,” the kid said, “it’s a house in the suburbs.”

Grebok mumbled, “Tom-ay­­-toe, tom-ah­-toe, nerd.”

“And I didn’t buy the music. The album isn’t out yet. It drops next week. I downloaded it early.”

“Stop jabbering at me and speak plain!” Chuckles barked.

“I found a site on the Infi-Net, and I—“

The teen’s lips moved to form the word, and the realization only dawned on him as the word squeezed from his lips like a squirming space-slug.

“—pirated it.”

“Wait,” Chuckles said, chewing on his lip. “So you are a pirate?”

The kid’s eyes went wide. “No?”

“That’s a really boring form of piracy. I mean, no grog. No buckled swashes. It’s just… it’s just weird to me.”

Grebok pointed the revolver once more at the teen’s head. But then he noticed something.

“No, what’s weird is what’s on the kid’s hand.”

Chuckles followed Grebok’s finger as he pointed.

A small black spot had formed between the boy’s thumb and forefinger. A little suppurating flesh pit, a slowly whirling black pool of skin that seemed to be… turning to puckered sludge. Like hot road tar, wrinkled and bubbling.

“Space AIDS, maybe?” Grebok winced. “Or the Star-Clap. Have you been making love to Nebula Ponies? Because, I assure you, that will earn you the Star-Clap. But bad.”

The black spot started to spread. The ooze enveloped the boy’s thumb.

“It’s cold,” the boy said, a tremor in his voice. He shook his hand like a dog’s head with an ear infection. “Get it off. Get it off!”

The black bubbling tar started to spread up his arm, toward the shoulder. In the shadowy ooze, the two heroes saw a winking, twinkling infinity of stars – a thousand fireflies, a million eyes.

It began to grow tendrils.

“Shit,” Grebok said.

“Double-shit,” Chuckles added.

The tendrils reached for them. Fast, like lashing whips!

2. The Celestial Chorus

Welcome to the Storyverse.

It is a vast expanse of raw potential where all stories happen, have happened or are yet to happen. You could say it’s a… happening place. (See what I did there…? Wow. Tough crowd, moving on.) Any story, myth, fable, embellishment, lie or interpretive dance you’ve ever read, heard or seen has made its home here within the ever-expanding spiral arms of millions and billions of narrative universes.

Looking at the ginormous hugeosity of it all, you find yourself asking: “Who runs this place?” Certainly the Storyverse had gods–in fact, it had too many. Enough that it was impossible for them to be effective beyond whatever small sphere of influence they’d scratched out for themselves. Better to be the undisputed God of Used Matchsticks than throw your hat into the God of the Sea arena. For instance, no less than 204,349,768 entities claimed to be the One True God. They contented themselves by ignoring the other 204,349,767.

“Still, someone had to be in charge!” you scream. “Arbiters? Accountants? Someone balancing the books?”

It’s true, agencies were in place to keep track of the goings-on within this infinitude of fatiloquence (and we ask you to please not scream in here). Several such individuals charged themselves with watching over the place of stories, actually.

They are the Celestial Chorus.

Were you to cast your gaze in a certain direction at a certain time (quickly, over here!), you might’ve born witness to a rare meeting of their membership on the star-speckled shores of the Galax Sea.

The most prominent of them was the Bastard Sun (baritone), primary light source of the Storyverse and mysterious benefactor to the chosen few who called themselves Shadowstories. (No really, he was a giant sun with a face. If you would’ve looked when I told you, you couldn’t have missed him.) He didn’t much care for his brothers and sisters or meetings in which he was expected to pay attention. Unfortunately, he ran out of excuses to push off this portentous confab.

Also present was his sister and opposite number, Honey Moon (alto), her pitted and shadowy moon-face studying him uncomfortably. She was in gibbous which probably meant she was going to be a total bitch about this whole thing. Beyond her was the sparkling yet unemotive Soul Sis-Star (mezzo-soprano), the flaming chunk of ice identified as Meteor Ike (tenor), the crocodilian constellation called Navi-Gator (bass) complete with small plover bird made of a tiny star on its nose, and lastly the roiling void who had no name for himself. They called him The Singularity, or The Darkness, or simply The Void, plus another dozen or so names which did nothing to put anyone at ease when he showed up for functions. He—or it—didn’t speak or sing. Rather, it’s possible he did and no one knew it. No sound escaped his dark gravities. Regardless, he gave them the shivering shits and they were all too happy to pretend he wasn’t there.

Oh, yeah, Sub-orbital Object Stan (soprano emeritus) was here but he’d been recently demoted and no one was all that keen to talk to him either. Bastard Sun found himself hoping Stan would be consumed by The Void and be done with it. At the least, it would break up the monotony of these little meetings.

“You are not troubled by these events?” Honey Moon probed, bringing this meeting back to task after a lengthy third-person introduction.

It took the Bastard Sun a second to realize she was talking to him. “What? No. It’s fine. It’s all fine.” He returned to his grim imaginings of Stan being unceremoniously sucked—shrilly screaming—into the yawning maw of his black hole brother.

“Isn’t it true your heroes have gone missing?” Soul Sis-Star tried again.

His fiery lips lowered themselves from grimace to frown. Strange. They never expressed any interest in the Shadowstories, he thought.

They preferred to sit ignorant on the sidelines, handing out orange wedges and punch as he did all the heavy lifting to keep the Storyverse safe. Now that some new gewgaw or doodad came along, everyone was a Nosey Nelly.

“Only some of them. They’re fine. I have other heroes. They’re on it,” he totally lied. He did have other heroes, none as good per se nor were any of them currently speaking to him… or each other. But he technically knew where they were and that was a good start. He’d gather them up and dispatch them to look for Grebok, Chuckles and R.T. when he was damn good and ready.

“This Infi-Net is a larger problem than any have foreseen,” Meteor Ike said, the dire words emitting from his frozen lips. “Information has become increasingly free. It’ll be anarchy, mark my words.” Meteor Ike was certain the Storyverse was a stone’s skip from anarchy any day of the week. He watched too many news programs.

Honey Moon pursed her lips. “Our economy is crashing down around us. The Storyverse has stopped expanding. No one is creating new stories. Instead they co-opt existing ones, mashing them together or telling some variety of story where the so-called creators are the main characters, splitting off slimmer and slimmer shards of the same idea.”

“With considerably more boy-kissing!” The plover atop Navi-Gator hopped back and forth restlessly. The gator itself simply groaned like the sounds mountains make when they awaken. The rest of the group nodded at this: a marked increase in quasi-fictional boy-kissing abounded.

Soul Sis-Star nodded as best an anthropomorphic star can and added, “What new ideas do come about are torn to shreds by a mad cacophony of circling harpies and knee-jerk critics before those beautiful, glimmering angels can take their maiden’s flight. It is the harshest, coldest arena I have ever seen. It makes me tinkle a little every time.”

The Bastard Sun waved an accusatory phalange of fire around the assembly. “You all said the same thing about syndicated television and comic books. Seriously, every time a new medium comes along Meteor Ike calls it anarchy and the bird accuses it of leading to more boy-kissing. Just stop it. This Infi-Net is no more or less the enemy than they were.” His gaze swept over his fellows and they suddenly found other things to look at with varying levels of embarrassment. Except The Void. The Void’s yawning darkness met his gaze. The Sun felt himself being drawn in as if at any moment he could be sucked into that abyss from where no light escaped and find cold, eternal comfort. He blinked twice and shook it off. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have nothing more important to do.”

With that, the Bastard Sun was no longer there on the far shores of the Galax Sea.

(They could do that sort of thing. You’re just going to have to take that on board.)

The remaining members of their sidereal fraternity frowned at each other.

The plover bird broke their silence. “It’s seriously a lot of boy-kissing this time.”

They nodded, and one by one they then dispersed. First Honey Moon, then Meteor Ike excused himself, then Sub-orbital Stan and Navi-Gator. Lastly, Soul Sis-Star gave one last nervous look to her dark brother before willing herself away.

The Void floated alone.

•••

The Bastard Sun returned to his own private corner of the Storyverse aflurry with an array of special new curses he was inventing by the second. Those other nincompoops were a reactionary sort; anything new meant the end of the world by their estimation. Still, his best heroes had gone missing.  The Storyverse had stopped expanding. A lot of boy-kissing was arising in otherwise boy-kissingless settings. They weren’t wrong.

He had other problems. Problems with his band of heroes who patrol the borders between stories, the Shadowstories.

First R.T.P., their starcraft, went off the grid.

Subsequently, while he was sorting out that mystery, the heroes somehow ended up getting separated.

Now Lord Chuckles and Grebok had gone missing. Their last transmission involved boarding some kind of… grass-faring Pirate vessel.

He was too invested in this batch to let them go so easily. It was time to make some phone calls.  He needed to get the others into the game. The Weasel. The Geek. Even the Weirdo with all the lemmings. All the stops had to be pulled out.

Would they be enough? Could he even find his prized Shadowstories?

Only time would tell.

3. The Weasel and the Geek

“I made a push-pin pig,” Gunther P.Washington said. He wasn’t lying. A wide pink eraser with five judiciously placed thumbtacks (four legs, one snout!) created something akin to a pig. He marched the pig around the desk, intimating little snorting noises. Mysteriously, he had the pig then climb the faint gray fuzz of the cubicle wall. “He’s got a sticky substance on his feet. Like a gecko.”

The sticky substance was actually fruit punch Gunther spilled earlier from his juice box. (But don’t tell him that. He thought he still had juice left.)

The man with whom Gunther shared a cubicle for the last week ignored him, as he had every day.

“Anyway,” Gunther continued, rarely comfortable with more than ten seconds of unworded silence, “as I was saying: once, we fought these lizard people. They smelled like salmonella, but I don’t know what salmonella smells like, not really, but I figure it smells like pee and eggs. They hooked us up to these machines that drained some kind of magical energy out of us. That was cool. Yeah. And then one time! One time, I learned this ancient martial art from this eternal master named Wily Cheung, and I think I was a wandering monk, and that was really fun, but don’t ask me to do any of my crazy moves, because I’m pretty sure I forget them.”

Above their heads, fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered. It gave the impression they’d been imprisoned in a giant, bleak bug zapper. Gunther loved it. Corporate life fit him snugly, as snug as his short-sleeve, perfect-white button-down, or his smooth and featureless khakis.

His officemate—whose name was Dan, maybe, or Don—mumbled “shut up,” and hunched closer to his computer, his trembling hand hovering above a grungy mouse on a grungier mouse pad.

“What are you doin’?” Gunther asked.

“I’m watching a video on the Infi-Net,” Dan-Don said without ripping his gaze from the monitor. Gunther couldn’t see what was on-screen, because Dan-Don’s head filled the space. “I love this. I don’t know how we got anything done before. I feel so… productive.”

“Can you move so I can see the video, too?” Gunther asked.

Dan-Don shot Gunther a feral stare—a sickly lion warding away awkward hyenas. Dan-Don didn’t look so hot. Gray goo between bared teeth. Eyes so tired they looked bruised. A crusty, dried spitfoam on lips. But then, some semblance of humanity snapped back into Dan-Don’s bleary pink eyes, and he grunted, waving Gunther over.

“Sure, sure, come check this out, kid. It’s the sequel to Pillow Cat. You ever see Pillow Cat?”

Gunther shook his head. “No, but I sure want to!”

He wheeled himself over on his office chair, waddling as the chair casters squeaked.

Dan-Don—or was it Don-Dan?—closed some windows and opened some new ones, making mouse-clickies and keyboard-tappies so fast, Gunther almost passed out trying to follow the intense action.

“This is Pillow Cat,” Dan-Don muttered.

A grainy video opened upon the CRT monitor. In the small window, a yellow tabby darted into a pillowcase, freaked out because he couldn’t get out of the pillowcase, and then tumbled down the steps while still imprisoned within the pillowcase. Dan-Don replayed it three times.

“Man,” Dan-Don said, “that’s just so fantastic. It’s got a great story. It’s freakin’ epic.”

Gunther sat, horrified as the epileptic pussy-pillow toppled down the stairs again and again and again.

“Does the kitty… die?” Gunther asked, his voice barely above a terrified whisper.

“No, I guess not,” Dan-Don murmured, licking his dry lips. “Because they made the sequel, which is even better than Pillow Cat. Here, check this out. It’s like, Shakespearean.”

Gunther didn’t know what Shakespearean meant, but he nodded like he got it, even gave a little thumbs-up just to verify.

Dan-Don performed more clicky-tap-typey-clicks.

Pillow Cat closed.

A new video opened: Urinal Cat.

In this video, Gunther never actually saw the cat, exactly. He only saw a writhing, hissing, mrowling pillow thrashing around in a wet urinal. The deodorizing piss-cake hopped out of the urinal like an errant hockey puck, and went careening off-camera. Aaaaand… that was it.

Dan-Don replayed this one a half-dozen times.

“It just, it just says a lot about the human condition. You know? It’s like, asking us about our place in the cosmos. The third act is the freakin’ best. I can’t get enough of it.”

“I feel queasy,” Gunther explained.

“Me, too, man, me too.” Dan-Don itched at a black sore on his elbow. “Queasy with freakin’ delight. I’m getting so much work done over here. The Infi-Net has opened my eyes. I’m a real multi-tasker now. Shit, I can multi-task the Urinal Cat video, and I can write a blog post about Urinal Cat—“

“Blog? Did you just belch? Are you okay? Do you need an antacid?” Gunther was genuinely concerned, but Dan-Don kept on mumbling and babbling.

“—then I’m all sending e-mails to my buddies, and I’m like, LOL, and they’re like, ROTFLMAO—“

“What are you saying? Is this some kind of moon language?”

“—then I go sexting with my hot girlfriend who I met on Sexy-Storyverse-Bride-Finder-dot-com, and I’m like, IWSN, and she texts, FMLTWIA, and together we hunt up some goat pr0n, and—“

Gunther pressed his hands to his temples. “Oh, Heavens to Beantown, your moon language is in my head! Like bees! Like bees building shelter for their bee children!”

Dan-Don itched the scab on his arm. It opened.

Black fluid—inky, like shadow, a deeper dark than night itself—bubbled up, and out.

Dan-Don’s words turned to a slurry of incomprehensible gibbering. He pivoted his jaundiced face toward Gunther, and croaked out a few comprehensible words within the mish-mash of nonsense:

“Are… you… Pillow Cat?”

Dan-Don’s eyes went dead. Black ooze snaked down from crusty nostril, and from corner of eye.

“Are you Urinal Cat?” came another guttural moan, this time not from Dan-Don, but from Betsy, the secretary. She stood in the doorframe of the cubicle, then threw up on herself the way a baby does (no fanfare at all, just open mouth, spew foam—but this foam was black as night, and speckled with glittering stars).

“No!” Gunther yelled. “I’m not a cat! I’m no kind of cat!”

“Are you Binoculars Cat?” another voice—Pete, from accounting—asked. Pete clambered up over the cubicle wall, and crashed down onto the printer table. He got back up again, his head cracked open and spilling dark star-spangled tar.

“Are you Ham Sandwich Cat?” bellowed Cindy-from-marketing—she was just a prodigious upper torso, round and massive but with no legs, and she dragged herself into the small space. Gunther screamed. He was trapped. They continued to lurch toward him, arms outstretched, sores and orifices suppurating with the glittery, wet shadow-fluid.

“For the love of toner cartridges, no!” Gunther shrieked.

His shriek was deafening. Shrill. Like a girl scout being mauled by a Kodiak bear.

But it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the bark of a shotgun blast.

Dan-Don’s head blasted off the shoulder at the neck, and swung down to his chest (still hanging by a thread of yellowed skin). Black goo spattered the office cubicle. His mouth kept working, and gurgled: “Are—you—Coconut—Cat?”

A giant weasel—no, really, we’re talking over six-feet tall, and with hands (albeit fuzzy ones) featuring nimble digits and working opposable thumbs—shouldered his way into the cubicle, smoke exhaling from the twin-barrels of a sawed-off shotgun in his grip.

Truth be told, he wasn’t just a regular ol’ giant weasel.

No such thing existed.

But a Wonder Weasel?

That’s real.

“Sparky!” Gunther cried out in sweet relief. “I’m not a cat!” He insisted.

“What?” Sparky the Wonder Weasel asked, confused. He shook it off. “Never mind. Later, geek.”

He plugged two more shells into the shotgun. Cindy-from-marketing pawed at Sparky’s leg. The Wonder Weasel evaporated her skull with birdshot. Black jelly clotted on the carpet in its wake.

The Weasel reached up and pulled down one of the cubicle walls. It crushed Pete and Betsy.

Gunther hurried over and grabbed a fistful of the Wonder Weasel’s chest fur.

“Moon language!” he cried.

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Sparky said. “What are you even doing here? We’re heroes—well, I mean, you’re sort of accidentally maybe almost a hero. Did you get another office job?”

“I love office jobs.”

“You’re an asshole. Let’s roll. We have to find the other two dick-hats—Chuckles and Grebok went off the grid fighting some kind of suburban pirate crew.”

“Okay.”

Sparky grabbed Gunther by the head, and dragged him out of the cubicle. They headed for the elevator.

“Uh-oh,” Gunther said.

Sparky sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Shit.”

The elevators were blocked.

By a squirming hallway clot of office zombies.

Each oozing the black ooze.

Each mumbling about that damn cat.

Sparky reloaded.

Slow night. Snow and sleet came down like slushy piss. The bar was empty but for him and her. But this is where Jonny Stoops found himself, night after night, no matter the weather.

It wasn’t for the drinks. It was for her.

“It’s on the house,” Miranda said.

She slid a highball glass toward him. The liquid within was brown, but not the amber-brown of a good scotch. This was mud brown. Grossly turbid. Like stirred-up pondwater.

Though, it did smell sweet.

“That doesn’t look so good,” he said.

She giggled. “Jon –“

“Jonny.”

“Jonny, listen, you come in here every night, all by your little lonesome, and you sit across the bar and you talk to me. If I’m off pouring drinks, you watch me. I’ve been here for three months, and I’ve seen you here every night. You like me. I know you like me.”

“No, c’mon, I’m just a drunk –“

“You’re not a drunk. You barely touch your drinks.”

She was right, but what was he supposed to say? He couldn’t tell her that he was just passing by outside, saw her inside pouring beer from the tap, when something clicked inside of him. His heart thumped like jungle drums, his blood shrieked in his ears, a wild sound. He had to come inside, had to talk to her, had to be near her.

“You’re a sweet guy,” she said. “I like sweet guys. There’s something between us. Something animal.”

“I do like you.”

“So drink the drink, do me that favor. Maybe if you drink it, I’ll give you a little kiss.”

“A little one?”

“Just drink it.”

He narrowed his eyes to slits, imagined kissing her.

His mouth was wet. His pulse stuttered.

“What’s in it?” he asked. It smelled like bananas and something else.

“Not telling. I call it a Radioactive Monkey.”

“Cute.”

“I know.”

Hand curled around the glass, he pictured her naked. Feeding him the drink. Licking his ear. Hot breath. Rough tongue.

He shuddered, then slugged back the drink.

It tasted like cold, runny dogshit mixed with a mouthful of blood.

With a hint of banana.

She reached in and kissed him on his forehead (the lips, the lips! some small part of him shrieked), and then–

•••

He awoke, tied to a bed that was not his own. He was naked, a tangle of sheets cast haphazardly across his thighs.

His erection stood strong and sore. It throbbed; a hammer-struck thumb.

He couldn’t remember a thing.

In the half-darkness, he saw Miranda sitting in the corner on a rocking chair. He heard something move off to his right, but his neck and head hurt. What felt like a hangover hung from his brain like a swaying boat anchor.

Miranda was stroking her belly.

“Your seed took,” she said. She sounded… satisfied.

“Okay,” he said, his voice groggy and slurred. He tried to concentrate, tried to remember, but things just weren’t coming together.

“I’m going to have your baby.”

“I’m not ready to be a father,” was the only thing he could think to say. Did her arms look different? Darker? Her breasts, too, seemed cast in the same shadow. A shadow with lines, with texture.

“No worries, I don’t need you. They don’t need you.”

“Good.” His head was swimming.

“But my other babies do.”

Babies?

Something shuffled, off to his left.

She cooed: “My little monkey babies.”

Shapes began moving, converging at the foot of the bed. At first he saw only two, but more moved out of the periphery and into sight.

Children.

No—his mind railed. Chimpanzees. Or something like them. Chimpanzees weren’t monkeys, were they?

He couldn’t believe he was thinking about this.

Primates, he thought. They’re all primates.

They came into the meager light.

One’s eye hung from the socket on a glistening tendon.

Another had a long tongue, forked; it flicked the air beneath a piggish, thuggish nose and a pair of human eyes.

One climbed onto the bed, using the rope around his foot as a hand-hold. He saw its teeth, sharp and pointed. Lips curled back over yellow fangs.

“They’re hungry,” she said, just as the toothy one clamped its mouth on the inside of Jonny’s thigh. He felt little pain, only numbness, but could feel the warm splash of blood running down and wetting the sheets.

More clambered atop him. Broken monkeys: wild eyes and many limbs.

One bit off his ear.

Then some fingers.

A third–or fifth, or seventh–took a mouthful of his pectoral, sucking the man-breast into its mouth like a whole scoop of ice-cream, the nipple as the cherry.

“Feed, my little radioactive monkeys,” Miranda hissed from across the room. “Feed.”

And as she moved closer, he saw her chest and arms were covered with a dense hair. She grunted something, and in her eyes he saw something wild, something primitive. Something animal.

Then they ate his eyes, and that was the end of that.

“Please,” his daughter said, pushing the hospital tray full of photos toward him, “you need to remember.”

In one photo, the old man’s father — their grandfather — sat in the cab of a gleaming John Deere tractor in the middle of a bright, broad cornfield, the tractor eclipsed by a giant, fat-necked Rhode Island Red hen with a rose comb on top. The hen was caught mid-gobble, her beak snapping up whole corn cobs right off their stalks.

In the photo after, the old man as a boy sat on his father’s lap as the man handed over his farm ledgers to a goat-legged fellow wearing suspenders and a pair of mud-caked boots. Everybody wore smiles.

In the third and fourth photos, the old man as a teenager was gunning a 1952 Chevy Bel Air hard-top across beach sands the color of custard. A mermaid sat on the hood, black ravens-wing hair cascading behind her, her eyes wild, her red mouth laughing.

“Pop,” the son said, “they’ve seen the hen down off of Route Nine, and godsamnit if she hasn’t torn the top from the Walsatch’s silo. You need to think on how you get that chicken to leave this town again, ‘cause this world isn’t made for that kind of thing anymore. Think, Pop, think. We need you to remember.”

“This can’t go on,” the daughter says. “Eleanor Walsatch says they might sue. We can’t handle another lawsuit.”

“Is it a word?” the son asked. “Is that what sends the hen away? Is there something you used to scratch in the dirt?”

The old man looked at the photos one more time, but the truth was, the stroke had left his brain a mess, and no matter how long he stared, he remembered none of it.

Ingersoll does not touch them. His own fingertip floats above them, as if following along with the text of a children’s book or a Bible page. He nods and mumbles something in the affirmative. To everyone else, it’s inscrutable, but to him, it’s something as plain as day, no less clear than a highway billboard.

“Good,” he says, obviously satisfied. He scoops the bones back up, and places them in the pouch once more. He kisses the pouch the way one might kiss his mother.

He stands again, and looks in Randy’s red, raw eyes.

“You stopped buying from us,” Ingersoll says. He licks his lips, shaking his head. “That is a shame. I like to think we offer a solid product for reasonable prices. But you can save yourself here, you know. You will whisper in my ear what it is I want to know. You will tell me all you can of your new supplier. If I am satisfied, if you tell me what I need, then I will spare your life, and instead only take one of your hands for its bones. Are we clear?”

Whimpering behind his own blood-caked sock, Randy nods.

Ingersoll smiles, and presses his own ear to Randy’s mouth before plucking out the sock.

“Speak,” Ingersoll commands, and Randy spills it all.

• • •

Outside the meat locker, Ingersoll towels off.

The white towels, handed to him by Harriet, grow swiftly red with each wipe.

Ingersoll hands over a plastic snack-sized baggie to Harriet. Contained within are the mostly-meatless bones of not one hand, but two.

“Bleach them,” Ingersoll says. “Purify them with sage smoke. Then give them to me, I will choose which ones if any belong in my satchel.”

Harriet nods, takes the bag. She shows no signs of disgust. Frankie, on the other hand, has a look like he might throw up in his mouth.

“You,” Ingersoll says, thrusting his finger against Frankie’s sternum. The finger itself is thin, delicate, like an insect’s leg, but it still feels to Frankie like it might punch through his breastbone and puncture his heart. “Dispose of the body.”

Swallowing a hard knot of what might be puke, Frankie nods.

On my way to work I drive down past Ashbrook Lane. I go past that little yellow real estate office with the guy out front dressed like a dollar sign. I pass by the party supply store and the Pet Palace.

Somewhere along the way, every day, I see this guy. Something isn’t right with this guy. He’s maybe sick or got some other problem. He wears a pair of jeans all torn up and fringy at the bottom. Even now, with that October cold coming in, he wears a flannel shirt, unbuttoned, a gray-belly paunch sticking out.

Every day, I catch him before he makes it to the China Skillet, that little fast-foody, can’t-sit-down joint with the greasy Tso’s chicken. I wait in the alley between China Skillet and the Kinko’s clone. The guy passes by me, and I drag him into the alleyway, and I beat him with a tire iron. Sometimes, I stab him with a kitchen knife.

I do this every day.

I think it’s starting to affect me.

2.

It was two Tuesdays ago that Mary asked me if I was doing okay. I told her I was.

“You don’t look so good,” she said.

“I feel fine.”

“I had to wash your pants again.” She sounded a little annoyed. Sometimes, when I destroy the guy, he gets stuff on me. Yellow stuff. Kind of like butterscotch pudding, but with veins of red in it.

“I know. I tried to wipe it off, but…”

“And it’s just mud?”

“Just mud,” I said. “The parking lot at work is falling apart, and they won’t pay to fix it. It’s muddy. I step in mud.”

And she left it at that, but I caught her looking at me strange a few times before bed.

3.

It’s maybe like that movie with Bill Murray and the groundhog. Not the golf one. The other one.

He’s out there again.

I catch him at the mouth of the alley and drag him in. The dumpster smells like rotten garlic and ginger.

“Guh!” he says to me. He can’t talk. He opens his fishy mouth and clacks those moldy chompers at me.

I kick him in the knee and the cap pops like rotten wood. The leg folds backward and he topples. I hit him in the head with the tire iron. It’s easier than squashing a pumpkin.

4.

I watch TV every night – Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, and the news. I always wait for the news to say something about this guy. But nobody ever does. I don’t think people can even see what I’m doing. He passes them by and they don’t look at him. They walk right by the alley as I beat him or cut him into pieces and leave him there. The first few times, I moved the parts. But that was too messy. Plus, they’re usually gone by the next day anyway.

Nobody cares.

“What’s this?” Mary asks.

I look up and find her holding a sandwich baggy. In it is a sandwich. My sandwich.

“Oh,” I say.

“You didn’t eat it?”

“Guess not.”

“It’s ham and swiss. Why didn’t you eat it?”

“Wasn’t hungry.”

I wonder if the guy would eat the sandwich. I consider trying to feed it to him the next day, but I just end up cutting his head off with a camper hatchet.

5.

I decide not to drag him into the alley. Instead, I beat him into a paste right out on the sidewalk. I step on his hand, and it doesn’t crunch as hard as it should. Bones should crunch. This just feels like Styrofoam peanuts in a sock full of jelly.

People move around us, like we’re doing construction work or something.

6.

“You missed work,” Mary says.

“No, I went,” I say. I can’t really remember going. But I know I went. It was part of my routine. Work was part of me.

“They called looking for you. Where’d you go today?”

“I don’t know.” Shit. This wasn’t good.

“This isn’t good,” she says, echoing my brain.

“I’ll go tomorrow.”

7.

I don’t go to work the next day.

It’s weird. I do my business with the guy. I just use my hands this time and it’s not really that effective. It works, but it’s too much trouble to pull him apart like that. He just keeps wanting to move away from me, even when I’m grabbing handfuls of gut flesh and just pulling it away from him like it was moist pot roast.

And then I stay in the alley.

I don’t go to my car.

I don’t go to work.

An hour later, the guy shows up again. He looks the same. Purpled tongue jutting from gray lips. Sores all over. Same drunken stagger, same throat-buried grunts and groans.

And I slam his head in the dumpster. It pops off and lands on a bed of rancid bok choy.

8.

Mary cries when I get home. The sun is coming up. She’s weeping and beating my chest, then she’s hugging me and asking me where I’ve been. I just move past her and get out the set of golf clubs from the bedroom closet.

She says something about me being gone for days, but I know that’s not possible. Mary is maybe a little crazy sometimes.

9.

I sit in the driver’s side, and I think about the guy for a little while. Who is he? Why does he do this every day? He’s fallen into such an awful routine. How did he get this way? How does he keep coming back?

For a little while, I think maybe about asking him these questions. It’s rare that I give him any chance to say anything at all. Maybe I should, I think. Maybe I need to give him the opportunity to explain himself. I look over at the passenger side and see several baggies of sandwiches sitting there. On half of them, the bread is green. Could be the guy is hungry. I itch a sore on my hand and lick it. It tastes funky, but it isn’t the worst. Mary’s right. I don’t look so good.

This time, I decide I’m going to ask him what’s up. I’m going to talk to this guy, find out everything I need to know. And I’m going to give him a sandwich.

As I think this, I go to my trunk and get out a nine-iron. I leave the sandwiches behind.

© Chuck Wendig 2009

“Breakfast,” he reminded himself, and focused his eyes on the treats inside the box.

His bleary gaze scanned over the options. Captain’s Wafer crackers? Probably a good idea given the pulsing hangover that lived in his brain and gut, but the idea of dry carbs just wasn’t doing it for him. Pretzels? Meh. He’d rather eat a handful of sand.

Wait. Oh yeah, there it was. Chocolate.

Damn yeah.

A yellow wrapper caught his attention. Top right corner of the machine.

Flix Bar.

He’d never had one. Never heard of one, actually.

Blinking, he popped his quarters into the slot, and punched the code. The metal coil uncoiled, sending the bar plummeting to the bottom with a bang.

<*>

Donnie watched the farm report – well, the farm report was on, but who really watches the farm report? – and examined the Flix Bar.

Yellow wrapper, as noted. “Flix Bar” written in blue letters bordered by pink. A little green thing, some kind of alien by the look of it, held up a pair of delighted jazz-hands next to the logo. Big smile, too, on that alien. Purple teeth grinning.

He tore the bar open.

Inside, a dark chocolate brick.

He smelled it. Strong cocoa smell. Or cacao. Or whatever.

Using his front teeth like a rabbit, he bit the end off the candy bar. The taste of honey hit his tongue. Some kind of sweet syrup – not quite caramel, definitely not nougat – connected with the roof of his mouth and he had to lick it off.

“Oh, man,” he mumbled through the sweetness, “that’s good.”

The texture was just right, too. Soft chocolate, wet honey-goo, crunchy flake wafer. He picked a gobbet of candy from a back molar, savoring it, then glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed. Donnie had to move a half-empty bottle of tequila and a pair of dirty socks to see it.

“Ah, crap.”

He was going to be late for work. Again.

<*>

That didn’t stop him from grabbing two more Flix Bars from the machine on the way out, of course.

<*>

Bob Horkin, with his smashed-flat nose and puckered butthole eyes, came over and dropped a stack of pink forms in front of Donnie.

“Late again,” Horkin said, sniffing, snorting, gloating.

Donnie rubbed his temples with his thumbs. His head throbbed.

“Mm,” he answered, squinting.

“Tie one on last night?”

Donnie mustered a nod.

“How long’s it been now?” Horkin asked.

“How’s long’s it been since what, Bob?”

“C’mon, Donnie. Since Tracy left you.”

“Week. And one day. Thanks for your sensitivity, by the way.”

Horkin shrugged. “You really knock her up? That why she left?”

“Bug off, Horkin.”

“You gonna get those forms filled out today?”

Donnie gritted his teeth. The guy’s voice was like sandpaper on his frontal lobe. “Didn’t I just say to bug off? Bug off. Shoo.”

“Gimme one of those Flix Bars, and I’ll leave.”

Next to the mountain of pink forms, and only a few inches from the leaning tower of blue forms, sat the two Flix Bars he’d purchased earlier.

“You like Flix Bars?” Donnie asked.

“Always have.”

“Then, no, you can’t have one. Go away.”

Horkin made some exhalation of disgust – a pfah! sound – and marched off. Donnie didn’t need him as a friend. Denying that man pleasure was the only measure of satisfaction he could muster. To bring up Tracy? Low. His heart hurt just thinking about her. Like someone had tied a boat anchor to it, and the weight was dragging it into his guts. He didn’t deserve this. Maybe he deserved the hangover, sure. But not the heartache.

“One of those candy bars for me, man?”

Donnie looked behind him, found Tabor bringing the mail cart with the one squeaky, epileptic wheel. Tabor was huge, hunkered over that cart like Godzilla playing pinball. The fact that the cart was painted white and Tabor was about the darkest shade of black outside of a midnight sky during a lunar eclipse, it only enhanced the visual.

“As a matter of fact,” Donnie said, “it is.” And it was, too, no lie. He tossed a Flix Bar back, and Tabor caught it in the palm of one tennis racket hand.

Tabor pulled up an empty chair.

“How you holding up, brother?” he asked.

“Yeah, let’s not talk about that.”

The big dude’s lips formed a surprised ‘o.’

“What?” Donnie asked.

“It’s your breath, man. You don’t need to tell me how you’re doing, because your breath tell the whole damn story. Smells like someone poured tequila on a dead possum and shoved it in your mouth to pickle for a couple days, maybe weeks.”

“I drank some.”

“Some?”

“Most. All. Just eat your Flix Bar.”

Tabor crumpled the wrapper, shot it at a wastebasket and missed. Shrugging, he bit his candy bar in half. It formed a swollen lump in his cheek as he chewed.

“Like it?” Donnie said. “I figured you might wanna try one.”

“Try one? I love these things.”

“Oh, you had one before? This was my first.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Yeah, right what? I’ve never had a Flix Bar before.”

“Who hasn’t had a Flix Bar? That’s like someone saying they’ve never had a can of Coke or a Big Mac. You living in a cave in Afghanistan or something?”

“Shut up, I’ve never even seen one of these before.”

Tabor pitched the second half of the Flix Bar into his maw and chomped away. He waved a dismissive hand at Donnie. “Whatever, man. You’re still drunk, that’s what I’m hearing you say.” He stood up, swung the chair back under an empty cubicle desk. “Never had a Flix Bar before, my ass. I’ll see you later, Donnie. Stay sane, brother.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

“Fine. Uh-huh.”

<*>

It was a curious thing, how alcohol cured a hangover. It’d be like if getting punched in the face a second time helped the pain of the first.

He couldn’t do tequila, though, so tonight it was cheap wine. Tasted like fake strawberry. Came in a box. Perfect.

“I’m going to rot my teeth out of my head,” he said to himself as he unwrapped another Flix Bar.

He started to crumple the wrapper, but then uncrumpled it.

On the back, he read: “Made by Perigree!”

Never heard of them, either. Must be a new company, he figured.

As he licked smears of chocolate from the corners of his mouth and the flats of his front teeth, Donnie thought about Tracy. It was hard not to, which was what the wine was for – to smother those thoughts beneath pillows (of rock salt and sackcloth). Drowning was probably the better metaphor, but Donnie didn’t much care.

He wondered aloud what she was going to name the kid.

“Boy or a girl?” he asked nobody. Appropriately, nobody answered.

Stupid kid. Stupid Tracy, wanting to have a kid.

“I’m not stupid.” He licked his lips and reached for the remote. “I’m smart.”

<*>

The fruity wine, now half-empty, was starting to gross Donnie out. The sweet candy treats – four Flix Bars by this point, he was going to have the worst case of acne – weren’t helping. He wanted something salty. Maybe pretzels, even though, you know, blah, yuck. Instead, he just sat propped up against the headboard of the bed, flicking through channels, feeling queasy.

Buzzing past a channel, he caught a glimpse of something.

Green alien. Purple teeth.

Waggling jazz-hands.

He flicked back.

“—proud to announce the 50^th Anniversary Flix Bar! Inside every special edition Flix Bar is a secret code! Text message the code to this number –“

Sure enough, a number flashed on the screen below the dancing alien.

“—and Flixy the Moon Alien might call you back to tell you you’re a winner!”

“What do I win?” Donnie asked the television. Being half-drunk and three-quarters queasy, he believed that the television could probably hear him. He was not disappointed. The screen erupted in colors. The alien put a few new moves into his dancing: a little disco spice, a dash of Travolta, a pinch of roller rink panache. It made Donnie dizzy just watching it.

“You win a lifetime supply of Flix Bars!”

“Ugh.” His stomach roiled at the thought.

Wait.

The 50^th Anniversary?

“I call bullshit!” Donnie stammered.

No way this stupid candy bar had been around for fifty years. It couldn’t have been around for five years, much less fifty.

“Screw you, Flixy! Moon Alien bastard!”

Donnie pitched the remote at the television. It caught the corner, and spun upwards in an erratic mid-air pirouette. It hit the wall and exploded into many pieces.

“Serves you right, remote control.”

Sometime soon after, Donnie found himself in the bathroom, throwing up.

Sometime soon after that, Donnie passed out in the tub.

<*>

His head was ringing.

No. Wait. Phone.

A phone was ringing.

Somehow, he managed to crawl out of the tub and slug himself to the nightstand by the bed. The alarm clock told him it was just past two in the morning.

He answered the phone.

“Guh,” he said.

“Donnie.”

“Tracy,” he said, surprised. His mouth turned to cotton. He felt suddenly very awake, very sober. “How’d you –?”

“Find you? Tabor gave me the motel name.”

“Oh.” She sounded like she’d been crying. “Have you been crying?”

She sniffed. “I did it.”

“What? Did what?”

“I had an abortion.”

Silence. Crickets. Tumbleweeds.

“Well, that’s good, right?” he asked, finally.

She didn’t say anything. Just another sniff.

“Now we can get back together,” he said. It was true. Wasn’t it? Couldn’t they? No baby to drag them down? No sudden pressure to get married, raise a litter?

She said nothing. Nada. Just her, breathing. Just transmissible grief.

“Babe –“ he tried.

“It’s over,” she said. “We’re done. I just wanted – I just needed you to know.”

“Trace –“

Click.

He tried calling her back.

Went straight to voicemail.

“Guh,” he said, and curled up in a ball.

<*>

At work, everything hurt. The fluorescent light pried open his eyes like a demon with hands of white fire. The demon tore open his eyelids and kicked him in the pupil repeatedly. His mouth tasted of brine-soaked gym socks. His lips were dry like balsa wood.

Everyone was looking at him. Eyes peered over cubicle walls. Whispers and murmurs drifted around; he caught his name, periodically.

Even Horkin seemed suddenly sensitive.

The pig-faced jerk brought by another ream of forms to add to the still-existing pile resting on Donnie’s desk.

His beady stare drifted up and down Donnie, then he laughed, all nervous-like.

“You probably don’t need these, right now,” Horkin said. He picked the forms back up.

“Your voice sounds like hammers,” Donnie said.

“I’ll bring these back later,” Bob said, retreating.

Sometime later, Tabor came up behind him, rested one of those hamhock hands on Donnie’s shoulders (though in his defense, it was as gentle a touch as Donnie had felt, almost as if Donnie would break into little fragments if he wasn’t handled with the uttermost gingerness).

“Lunch time, man,” Tabor said.

“Not hungry,” Donnie managed.

“I think we need to go out somewhere. Right now.”

“Can’t. Work to do.” Not that he was doing it. Stupid work.

“Donnie?”

“Tabor.”

“You know you’re wearing sweatpants? And a robe? No shirt?”

It was news to him. He looked down. Sure enough, gray pair of sweatpants (with a few chocolate stains on the thighs, thankfully upfront and not behind him), ratty hotel robe, and – whoops – no shirt. Sweat beaded in his meager chest hairs.

“Huh,” Donnie said. “Uh-oh.”

<*>

It was a gray day outside, bleak and bleary and with clouds that looked like hairballs bobbing across the steely expanse. Tabor drove – a hatchback Honda far too small for his hulking musculature – and Donnie sat in the passenger side, lying against the seatbelt strap, moaning.

Tabor wanted to talk. He was friends with both Donnie and Tracy, he said. Wanted to help everybody.

“Then help us get back together,” Donnie said.

“Don’t work like that, dude. Abortion’s some rough stuff.”

“So she told you.”

Tabor paused. “Yeah. She told me.”

“She regrets it,” Donnie said. “I heard it in her voice.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.” Lie. Big lie. Gigantor lie with crushing feet. “Yes. I don’t know.”

“I’m hungry,” Tabor said.

“Super. I’m sitting here, my head feeling like a rotten pumpkin filled with bees, and I’m pouring my heart out – in a conversation you started, by the by – and now you don’t care and just want to eat.” Donnie closed his eyes and breathed loudly. “Fee Fie Fo Fum, Tabor smells the blood of an English-mun.”

Tabor rolled his eyes. “Man, don’t be that way. Listen, you want to keep talking, then we need to eat. It’s lunch time. I got blood sugar issues.”

“Fine. Fine.”

“Where you wanna go?”

“Not hungry. Don’t care.”

Tabor waved a hand. “You gotta eat something. When’s the last time you ate?”

“Last night. Flix bars and boxed wine.”

“Oh, you a health nut, now.”

“Don’t mock me.”

Tabor started rattling off restaurants – local joints, chain places, fast food.

“Fast food,” Donnie said. He needed some grease to hold his body together.

“Where?”

“Burger King. I think I want Burger King.”

“The hell is Burger King?”

“What?”

“You deaf?” Tabor enunciated every word: “What. Is. Burger. King?”

Donnie felt his pulse quicken. He didn’t need this kind of nonsense. His head was fragile already, a Faberge egg held together with spit and masking tape. Tabor, his best friend – and without Tracy, his only friend – was turning against him, toying with his tender brainmeats.

“Shut up!” Donnie barked. “You damn well know what a, a, a Burger King is! It’s the place! Where the – the King of Burgers lives! Golden crown? Kind of a gay beard? Big smile? The BK Broiler? Jesus!” He pounded the dashboard with the flat of his hand to enunciate how little he wished to be messed with right now.

“You need to settle down, man. I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about, I am not making this up. Tell me. Is there a Burger King nearby?”

Teeth clenched. He was thisclose to screeching like an attacking raptor and pouncing on Tabor with beak and talon (or at least unbrushed teeth and sweaty palms). He sucked in a deep breath. “Burger King. Corner of Redstone and Spring Market. By the entrance ramp to the bypass.”

Tabor frowned. Waited. “Oooookay.”

“Okay what? What’s the frown for?”

“That’s not a Burger King.”

“It’s not a – well, then, what is it?”

“Man, that’s the Burrito Hut.”

<*>

“The Burrito Hut,” Donnie read the sign.

It’s what the sign said. A slim burrito arch – the giant tortilla dripping fake hot sauce, beans, meat chunks, and for some goddamn reason the giant tortilla had big googly eyes – framed the words.

It wasn’t new, either. The Hut looked weathered. Its purple walls were fading, pocked; someone had sprayed graffiti on the back dumpster. Place was busy, though. Cars lined up in the drive-thru. Parking lot at least half full, and through the glare on the outside window Donnie could see people agglomerating at the counter.

“This used to be a Burger King,” Donnie said. “Like, yesterday.”

Tabor blinked. Eyes narrowed to concerned slits.

“It’s been here forever, you say?” Donnie asked.

Tabor nodded. “Yeah, dude. I eat here all the time. Their Shimmy-Chimi is pretty much the best damn thing since cable television.”

“And you love Flix Bars.”

“You know it.”

“And you’ve never heard of a Burger King.”

Tabor held up his hands like a Vegas dealer, slapped them together as if to show that he wasn’t cheating. “Never, not once.”

“I gotta go,” Donnie said, suddenly.

“I gotta eat,” Tabor countered.

Abruptly, Donnie left the idling car and ran. Somewhere behind him, Tabor’s voice called after him, but it was lost, forgotten. He didn’t know where he was running, or even why, but there was the distinct feeling that something was both chasing him, and he was chasing something.

<*>

That night, Donnie found himself back at the motel room. His legs burned and itched from all the running. He hadn’t stopped running since he took off out of Tabor’s car, which was easily six hours ago. His robe was soaked with sweat. His sweat pants were soaked with sweat, too, though arguably that was their purpose, you know, hence the name.

He looked in the mirror of the bathroom, barely recognized himself.

Bloodshot eyes. Gaunt face. Mouth frozen in a slightly-horrified rictus.

He was seeing things, too. All during the run, he felt a presence behind him. His peripheral vision caught sight of something, too, like a shape running alongside of him, watching him from behind hedgerows and trashcans. The shadow wasn’t a big thing, no larger than a dog or a dwarf. A midget, maybe. Maybe he was being chased by a midget. A ninja midget. Shit. That didn’t make any sense.

His stomach growled.

“Shut up,” he told it.

He considered going back and filling his gut with more booze. A bottle of whiskey sat atop the television. He decided it would be a bad idea. A profoundly bad idea. He did it anyway.

Lips on bottle, hot Irish fire charbroiling his esophagus.

He pulled away from the bottle such a sucking foomp, and set it back atop the TV.

Then he noticed.

Jack Kenny Whiskey. Blue Label, it said.

Donnie blinked.

There was no such thing as Jack Kenny Whiskey.

And yet, here it was. He’d just had some. It wasn’t far from a trashcan filled with Flix Bar wrappers, and Flix Bar didn’t exist, either. And Burrito Hut, about five miles away. Goddamn Burrito Hut.

That’s where he’d go. Burrito Hut.

“But I just came from there,” Donnie explained to himself.

Didn’t matter. Here, he couldn’t ask any questions of a pile of Flix Bar wrappers or a neck-empty bottle of so-called Jack Kenny Whiskey. At Burrito Hut, though, he could get to the bottom of things. He could ask some questions. Find what they did with Burger King. Was it drugs? In the water supply? A conspiracy was afoot.

He took a few quick deep breaths, slapped his legs to get the blood moving, then broke into another crazy marathoner run out the door, back to Burrito Hut.

<*>

Public drunkenness, they called it.

Which wasn’t fair, not really. Donnie wasn’t drunk. Any of the lingering buzz from the not-really-real Jack Kenny Whiskey had long since faded when he ran through the front doors of the Burrito Hut.

The bars of the holding cell were surprisingly warm. The whole place, with its cement walls painted banana-colored, and its metal toilet, was actually pretty damn humid. Moisture glistened on the walls. When they threw him in here, alone, the one lady cop told him that the air conditioning was busted.

He took a deep breath. What he’d seen in the Burrito Hut, what he’d glimpsed –

Everything seemed normal, at first. Late lunchers, lining up at the counter. A pair of Hispanics in front of him, and in front of them, a little girl in a side-sprouting pony-tail with her mother busily thumbing numbers into her Blackberry (probably text messaging Flixy the Moon Alien, Donnie thought at the time, a thought that would later become alarming relevant). Manning the single-register counter was a rubicund, fat-cheeked teen with a purple paper hat.

Donnie didn’t know what he was expecting. He had no script. He felt sick inside. The fast food joint had felt constraining, like it was closing in on him.

He got to the counter, and let fly.

What he said, he didn’t precisely remember. Something about Flix Bars. Something about conspiracies. Maybe even something about Tracy. The smell that drifted from the kitchen was a mix of sharp spices and potted meat, a tangy (too tangy, really, to be appetizing) conglomeration of the two.

In mid-rant, that’s when he’d seen it.

Behind some kind of massive pressure-cooker – some stainless steel thing with a line of dried refried beans crusted to its side – Donnie saw movement.

It was a shimmering shape, unreal, a specter. Like those blurry shots of Bigfoot or any lake monster, the details were imperfect, almost incomprehensible. A swath of green flashed against a half-moon slice of purple. Movement like fly-wings buzzing, too fast, too strange. And then it was gone again, blinking out of existence. The cooker continued to bubble and steam.

Donnie freaked.

By his recollection, he did a lot of wild gesticulating.

Maaaaybe some yelling.

Not impossible that he said something about aliens, and then spit on the register.

Mistakes were made.

Worst of all, he hadn’t noticed the police officer that had come in soon after he did and was waiting two people behind him.

And now, here. Jail. Holding cell. Shit.

<*>

His one phone call, made to Tracy.

It was probably a mistake. He should’ve called Tabor. But while it was irrational, it felt like Tabor was part of whatever was happening. Tabor loved Flix Bars. Tabor couldn’t get enough of Burrito Hut. Tabor probably bathed in a swimming pool filled with warm Jack Kenny Whiskey.

Donnie asked Tracy to post bail.

“I don’t know, Donnie. It’s a lot of money.”

“You only need part of it. You could sell my old Monkees LPs. They’re worth something. The comic books, too. Even the toys! I’ve got a lot of toys.”

“I can’t see you right now, Donnie.”

“Tracy, please, I’m in jail.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Desperate gambit time. “I love you.”

“I know,” she said.

“That’s it? You know?”

“I have to go.”

“But – wait! Tell Tabor! He’ll help! Send Tabor!”

It was too late. She’d already hung up.

Behind the sound of the dial tone, Donnie thought he heard a baby crying.

And then they were pulling him away from the phone, and the sound was gone.

<*>

Things got weird around midnight.

Donnie was half-asleep on the cot in the cell’s corner, trying to shut out the light (the cops informed him that the lights never shut off, not even at night). He was caught in the throes of half-dreams to go with his half-sleep. Shadows of Tracy visited him, but every time she went to talk he heard a baby squalling somewhere and her words were lost. Something about how it was too late, too late, if only. Tabor the Giant came along with his squeaky white cart, except he was easily twice his normal size, and in these partial dreams he kept picking Donnie up and shoving him in the cart, murmuring something about a “mail call.” Sometimes, Donnie felt the taste of a Flix Bar in his mouth, or the burn of Jack Kenny Whiskey down his throat, or the sickly sweet scent of Grade-E-but-Edible Tex-Mex fiesta meat from the diabolical Burrito Hut. Other sensations visited him, too, ones he couldn’t explain: the nasal tang of an unknown perfume, tinny electro-pop music like which he’d never heard, the mysterious taste of a falafel (he was certain it was a falafel, though he’d never eaten, or frankly seen, a falafel before).

And then he saw them.

Moon Aliens, like Flixy.

Seven of them.

Except they weren’t cartoons – he caught a glimpse of pinched reptilian flesh, and white fangs stained with grape-colored smears – and they came at him, hands reaching, stubby fingers wagging in the humid jail cell heat, and they shimmered as if seen behind a gauzy haze of heat rising off a blistering highway–

And Donnie wondered when this dream would move on and give way toward something even stranger.

But the dream did not move on.

Green hands that smelled of metal and chocolate covered his face.

He tried to cry out.

The lights went out.

And that’s when things got really weird.

<*>

Lights coruscated all around him. Each flash felt like it cut straight to his cerebral cortex, burning an image into his brain.

He saw flying babies zip past him. Cherubic grins. Fat faces. Curious hands reaching for him as they zoomed by.

His guts felt like taffy.

And it felt like someone was trying to pull that gut-taffy out of his body through his mouth, ears, and anus.

Then – a pop sound, preceded by a faint sucking noise, like the one Donnie’s lips made when he pried them free of the Jack Kenny bottle.

All was dark, at least for a little while.

<*>

“Some people do not react well to change.”

Donnie lurched upright. His head swam, vision dipped.

The room was long, narrow, with walls of steel and a faint blue light suffused throughout. At the margins of the room, Donnie saw several of the Moon Aliens shuffling back and forth, grunting like piglets with slop in their mouths and noses. The Flixies chattered back and forth, sometimes clacking their empurpled teeth.

At the far end of the room – the end Donnie sat facing – was a pull-down screen. At the other end of the room blinked the winking eye of a projector.

Projected on the screen was an image Donnie couldn’t quite parse.

It seemed to be a generic gray and black 9-Volt battery with a pair of googly eyes, like the ones glued to a cheap arts-and-crafts doll. The fake eyes looked this way, and that.

“I’m on drugs,” Donnie whispered.

“You’re not on drugs,” the battery said. He knew the battery said it because with each word – each syllable, really – the battery pulsed with white light.

“You’re a battery.”

“I am merely an image you would understand. Were I to show you my true form, your human mind would explode into a thousand personalities and leave you wailing in a pile of your own fetid mess.”
Gently, Donnie stood.

“I’ve lost my mind,” he said.

“You’ve not lost your mind,” the battery asserted.

The Flixies chuffed and snorted in what might have been agreement.

One of them casually ate what appeared to be a chimichanga. Another displayed its beckoning jazz hands.

“That’s a chimichanga,” Donnie said, wide-eyed.

“Yes,” the battery confirmed.

The room was silent for a little while, except for the snorfling breathing of the two dozen or so Flixies shifting from one stubby green foot to another.

Swallowing hard, Donnie said: “A little help here? If I’m not high, and I’m not crazy, then –?”

“As I said, some people do not react well to change. These people – like you — are the ones who cannot properly compute the dimensional shifts.”

“Dimensional shifts.”

“Yes,” the battery said. “The subtle alterations to the fabric of your reality are performed through delicate dimensional shifts. Ninety-nine percent of people accept these changes without thought or concern.”

“And I’m part of the one percent?”

“Yes.”

Silence again as Donnie regarded the googly-eyed battery. The battery may have regarded him in return, but it was hard to tell, what with the googly-eyes and all.

Suddenly, Donnie snapped his fingers. “Flix Bars! I bet they’re part of the subtle alterations of dimensional, you know, whatever. Right?”

“Yes. Flix Bars, Burrito Hut, Jack Kenny Whiskey, Ganymede Electronics, Vaginex Creams, Lung Sui-Wu Cookery Sets, Cowboy Tom’s Microwave Falaf –“

“Okay, okay, you can stop. All those products are now in our dimension? And they weren’t before?”

“Yes, but not just your dimension. We established a product roll-out covering four hundred Earth-based dimensions, as pioneered by the Perigree Corporation, which is owned by the Jimza Conglomerate, which is owned by the Meiner-Schiften People, which is owned by –“

“All right!” Donnie barked. “This is a little much for me to handle.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Why are these products now in our dimension?”

“Money. More dimensions means more sales. More sales, higher stock.”

“I’d like to just go home, now,” Donnie said, and it was true. He didn’t feel well. He was dressed in a robe in some alien ship or dimensional box, and he really didn’t belong here. He said as much to the battery.

“No,” the battery pulsed. “I’m afraid we have to destroy you.”

“But –!”

“What we’re doing goes against the Quantum Code as established by Earth Seven in the Year of the Dragon, 1976. We cannot have you blowing the whistle.”

Movement to his left and right. The Flixies shuffled cautiously toward him, purple-smear teeth glowing weirdly in the bluish light. Some of them held knives that could’ve doubled as Satanic gynecological equipment.

“But – why? Why did you even bother to bring me here?”

“All sentient creatures deserve knowledge.”

“But by telling me this, that means you have to kill me!”

“Yes. Knowledge has its price.”

The Flixies pounced. Hands grabbed at him and dragged him down. Teeth clacked and chomped at one another; some kind of mad language. He saw the glint of a blade moving toward his heart.

“Wait!” he cried. “Let’s make a deal! Please!”

The Flixies stopped, as if hearing an unspoken cue.

“You can offer us nothing,” the battery declared.

“No,” Donnie stammered, “but you can offer me something.”

“I do not understand.”

“If you grant me a favor, then you’ve got me on the hook. Suddenly, I’m in your pocket! I won’t tell anybody anything if I’m in your pocket! That way, you don’t have to destroy me! Killing me is probably illegal, too, right? Some, uh, Quantum Code violation?”

The battery seemed to think about this.

The googly-eyes narrowed.

“Yes. It is a violation.”

“It can be a mutual pact. A deal. I’ll keep quiet. Just help me with one thing.”

“Tell me this thing,” the battery demanded.

So Donnie told him.

<*>

The baby cried. The sound was joyous.

Slick with goo and red as a sliced beet, the little tow-head wriggled and sobbed and clenched his corn-sized toes.

Tracy looked spent, utterly so, but her face was beaming nevertheless. A nurse swabbed sweat from her glistening brow. Outside the window of the hospital room, Tabor’s big shape and shadow could be seen dutifully pacing, the task of a good friend.

The presence of his new son was going to be a big change. It’d require real responsibility. Donnie knew he was wearing the Big Boy Pants – the Daddy Pants – now, and that nothing would ever be the same.

But he was ready for the change.

The talking battery be damned.

Of course, the deal had some complications. Tracy had already had an abortion in this dimension, the battery explained. The baby was gone. To comply with Donnie’s request, they had to pluck another Tracy – the most similar Tracy they could find – from another Earth and, well, trade the two of them. It was fine. The battery told him that neither Tracy would know. Both would be happy in both continuums, whatever a ‘continuum’ was.

The nurse gave Tracy the baby. The doctor handed off the umbilicus.

Once in Tracy’s embrace, their son stopped crying and seemed to settle into a kind of happy gurgling.

Donnie leaned in and stroked her brow.

“What do you want to name him?” he asked Tracy.

She thought about it for a moment as a single happy tear rolled down her cheek.

“Flixy,” she said, finally.

Donnie started to laugh, it was funny, though uncomfortable-funny, but then he saw a faint shimmer around his new son, and the pink babyflesh became for a moment a strange hue of Iguana green, and he saw a flash of purple teeth reaching for Tracy’s breast beneath the sheet. Then the shimmer extended upwards to Tracy, too, and he saw her smeared teeth and green skin as she smiled.

Then it was gone. The haze dissipated, and his wife and son were back again.

A little voice in his head told him to run, run. Break into a hard run and never come back.

But he suppressed it.

“I like change,” he croaked. He shuddered. “Change is good.”

At least they gave him that lifetime supply of Flix Bars.

Drawing a deep breath, he reached toward Tracy and their new son, Flixy.

© Chuck Wendig 2009

If you’re one of my freelancers — and, I’m sorry if you are, I’m probably an asshole to deal with — then you’re familiar with one of my pet peeves in writing. You’ve seen it, and you know what I’m talking about because it elicits a certain response, a response not unlike what would happen if I were trying to pass a living human baby through the length of my intestinal tract.

That pet peeve is the construction, “There is.”

As in, “There is only one reason to go to the zoo, and it is to get high off bat guano.”

Or, “There are four men at my front door, and none of them are wearing pants.”

Now, first, let me say that this is a pet peeve because it’s something I used to do. Most of the things that rub me the wrong way in people’s writings are pitfalls into which I’ve tumbled many-a-time, dig? The only reason I’m jumping up and down, flapping my arms like an imbecile, is so you don’t fall in the same hole again and again. I’m marking the path is all. I’m the yellow sign on the bathroom floor: Cuidado! Verboten! Slippery When Wet! I broke my neck for you, so you don’t have to.

So. “There is.” What the hell is wrong with that? Nothing, right? Bzzt. No. Here’s what’s wrong with it: it’s goddamn lazy. You don’t know it’s lazy, but half the stuff we do, we do because it’s easy, not because it’s correct — it’s like coasting gently through a stop sign. You do it because you’re too lazy to expend the effort to, y’know, stop the car with that ever-so-tiring tap of your foot. It’s not right. But you do it. I do it. We all do it. Lazy.

“There is” as a construction is just like that. Outside of “there is” being a generally bland way to communicate, what’s the issue? The issue is, you can always say it better. You can always say it more clearly, more evocatively, more actively.

“There is a human baby in my intestinal tract.” Can we write that in a more interesting, more direct way? Sure we can. Let’s try:

“A human baby is in my intestinal tract.”

Or, “My intestinal tract is home to a human baby.”

Or, “I’ve got a human baby crawling around in my guts, and he’s a grabby little fucker, and — oh, oh no, I think he just threw up in there. This is really awkward.”

Of course, exceptions to the rule exist (or, put more weakly, “There are exceptions to the rule” — see what I did there? See?). Dialogue, for one. People do speak this way, and they say the “there is” construction fairly frequently, so it’s not odd to slap it into dialogue. Also, if you’re going for a very conversational tone, it can work there, too. But if you want flavor, action, drama, or poetic intensity, don’t rely on the “there is” construction.

I mean, hey, if I’ve yelled at you about it, don’t feel bad. Some professional, even popular, writers use it. Frequently. Joe R. Lansdale is one of my Writing Heroes (I’ll have to do a post on this at some point), and his latest book (Leather Maiden, buy it) uses “there is” frequently. All the time, actually. And I love his books regardless. But understand, every time I read those two words paired together, Baby Jesus loses a feather from his wings. Er, I think that’s how it works? Right? Anybody? High-fives?