Gosh-golly gee, what a wonderful day!
I sit up in bed and stretch with a yawn and a contented sigh, much to the laughter and applause of the studio audience. I give my customary wave, stand up, puff my chest out, and take in a few deep breaths. “Such a wonderful day!” I announce, swinging my arms gaily as I head to the bathroom. I brush my teeth vigorously, and of course, floss. After a refreshing shower, I pull on a pleated vest and dress shirt with slacks, tying on my shoes with a big grin.
“Welp, time to see what the Missus has for us this morning!” I chortle along with the canned laughter, swinging my arms as I head down to the kitchen, the delicious smell of pancakes wafting towards me.
“Honey, I’m up!” I announce, poking my head in through the door.
My lovely wife stands there in her pink-frilled, “KISS THE CHEF” apron, smiling over at me. “Well, it’s about time, you!” She proclaims, putting her hooves on her hips as the audience laughs and applauds. “The pancakes were getting lonely without a stomach to put them in!”
“Always with the wisecracks, dear,” I chuckle as I dig into my pancakes and coffee, shoveling the food down with little ceremony.
After washing everything down with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, I give Chittery a kiss on the cheek and grab my briefcase. “Off to work, dear! Don’t stress yourself too much!”
“Oh you,” she scoffs, waving a hoof goodbye. “How could I be stressed when I have everything I need…right…here…not like a woman could…hold a job…”
Her eyebrows furrow, as if the words were being coerced out of her mouth, as if she’d said them on autopilot…something…something is…
I look down at the briefcase in my hand. What is…going on? This isn’t what’s…
“Well, howdy neighbors!”
I grin, instantly looking up at the friendly old face at the window, an aging man with an excellent handlebar mustache grinning back at me. “Well, hey there, Mr. Wilkins! How’s Barbara doing?”
“Oh, just fine, just fine, the arthritis is acting up, but it’s nothing a little work in the garden can’t solve!” He replies, handing a large basket of tomatoes through the door. “Speaking of, she’s picked some extra tomatoes for you!”
“Well, isn’t that just thoughtful!” Chittery enthuses, scooping up the basket in her fangs and carrying it back to the kitchen. “These will definitely come in handy when I make dinner!”
“My stomach is already rumbling in anticipation, dear!” I shout, patting my belly.
“Oh, you!”
Just then, a horn honks in the street. I peer over Wilkins’ shoulder, and sure enough, there’s my carpool in the street behind him. “Welp, that’s my ride! Bye, dear!” I call over my shoulder, waving as I stride down the path, past the immaculately-kept lawn and through the white picket gate. Around me, the birds are tweeting, the sun is shining, and the paperboy is doing his rounds.
“Hiya, Mr. Kildeez!” He waves as he shoots by on his bicycle. “Jeepers, you look ready to take on the day!”
“Thanks, Timmy! I feel like I could!” I raise my hand, catching the paper he throws like a baseball and tucking it into my suitcoat. “See ya around!”
He waves as he shoots off, and I finally climb into the passenger seat, where my long time coworker and friend is waiting with one hoof on the clutch and the other on the steering wheel. “Cypher, old boy! How are you this fine day?”
He looks to me and flashes a fang-filled grin from beneath his dapper fedora, a cigar protruding from his mouth, waiting to be lit. “Just fine, Deezy, just fine. You wouldn’t happen t’have a light on you, wouldja? Can’t get the lighter in here goin’.”
I smile and pull out a paper matchbook, striking a match and holding the flame to the end of his cigar. “Sure thing, pal!”
“That’s awful swell of ya!” He smiles and puffs, filling the car with that sweet, sweet secondhand smoke.
“Still, that might be a sign the old girl’s goin’,” I smile as I wave the match out. “Thinkin’ you should trade ‘er in? I hear the new Chryslers can get almost ten miles to the gallon!”
“Ten miles, eh?” Cypher smiles around his cigar. “Maybe, but I figure I can get a few more years out of the ol’ girl before then.”
“Just a thought, old chum,” I roll down the window to toss the match in the gutter, where a sudden breeze blasts us both full in the face. I…
I turn to him, my heart rising into my throat. Cypher looks around in a panic. “Wh-what is this?” He asks timidly. “Where are we!?”
“I don’t…know…” I grimace. Something’s not right. Something’s wrong. What is it what is it what is it…
“Howdy-doo, fellers!” A familiar voice calls behind me.
I grin, turning in my seat to face a deep, bushy mustache and a familiar blue uniform. “Why, Officer Friendly! What a surprise! We aren’t getting pulled over before we even get goin’, are we?” I ask, earning another round of canned laughter.
“Oh no, of course not! Just wondering if two of my favorite citizens had time for a chocolate malted at the soda shop,” the cop hooks a thumb over his shoulder at the small café down the road.
Cypher grins and starts up the aging car, which bellows a cough of lead-filled smoke. “Sounds peachie-keen, Jim!” He smiles.
“Splendid, wonderful!” Friendly insists. “I’ll meetcha there!” He turns to walk away, and for a second, the sun catches his eyes and I see…I see…
Hate.
He is a creature of hate. A creature of the Nightmare Collective. He has you now and if you so much as flinch in his presence he’ll gouge out your eyeballs and gnaw your penis off just to hear your screams, and that’s just…
The car starts moving, and my thoughts are jarred again as Cypher drives us on down to Schmitty’s Ice Cream Parlor. I smile, my mind switching to steady anticipation for the chocolate malted that will soon be cooling my throat. Cypher pulls into a spot right by the curb and we head inside, me holding the door for him and Friendly. Schmitty himself looks up as the bells over the door jingle, and he smiles…it is thin and pale…that is not a smile, not by any definition of a smile…
“Well, hey there gang!” Schmitty enthuses. “Didn’t expect to see y’all in here so soon!”
“What can we say? Hard to stay away from your chocolate malted for long,” Cypher replies as he slides into a stool at the countertop.
“That it is, that it is!” Schmitty smiles contentedly and turns away to start up the machine. “How’ve you boys been doing, anyhow? Still living the bachelor life, Cyph?”
“You know it!” Cypher grins. “Don’t worry though, haven’t totally given up on finding a pretty little thing to hand a ring to!”
“Or guy, amirite Cyph?” I chortle, swatting him on the side.
Instead of laughing me off, his eyes widen, his massive jaw dropping. “I…uh…sure…sure…” he whispers.
My smile fades. I blink once or twice. I look up to see Officer Friendly grinning back…no…not grinning, he’s gritting his teeth. He’s gritting his teeth so hard little purple cords are standing out on his neck. Jesus, I might have just killed a puppy in front of him with that look.
“How’s the missus, Deez?”
I turn, a smile that’s starting to feel far too fake for its own good now stretching my lips. “Just fine, just fine, cooked me the most wonderful breakfast you could ever imagine!”
“Well, goodness, we should all be so lucky!” Schmitty laughs. “What’d you do to get that?”
“Oh, nothing, just something she likes to do for me, y’know?” I wave my hand dismissively. “Just a treat for every now and again.”
“Every now and again?” Friendly gasps. “A man who works like you do deserves a meal like that every day, dontcha think?”
My smile strains under the weight I place it under. “I…I guess I might deserve to see it more often…but…it’s up to her to…”
“Bah, leaving it up to the woman!” Schmitty chortles as he grabs a couple paper cups from the stack by his machine. “That’s just askin’ for trouble! Gotta make sure she knows who wears the pants in the family, dontcha?”
My smile is long gone now, my eyebrows hunched in confusion. “Never…never thought of it that way…isn’t marriage…supposed to be…an equal…equal partnersh…”
“Well, if those are the ideas she’s fillin’ your head with, maybe it’s about time you assert yourself,” Friendly circles around to look me right in the eye, that grin now so large it looks like something the Joker would wear after a dose of his own gas. “After all, a man’s house is his castle, innit? Ain’t you the king of your castle, Deezy?”
“A lazy wife ain’t no good to any man, I say!” Schmitty says, having finished filling one of the cups and expertly switching to the next with hardly an interruption in the stream from the machine. “Won’t say she’d be as bad as those negras down the way, but won’t say she’d be a whole lot better!”
“Oh, now Schmitty, don’t go insulting Deezy’s wife like that!” Friendly chortles, but I’m lost in thought, swaying on my feet. “She might just need a good wallop or two, dontcha think? Hardly as bad as the niggers.”
I can barely stand. This isn’t right. I stumble to the side, my hand flying out to find something to keep my balance. It lands on Cypher’s shoulder, only for it to give under my weight and send us both tumbling to the checker-tiled floor.
“Woah there, now!” Friendly says, kneeling beside us.
“You two alright?” Schmitty puts in. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
It sounds like he said it from a mile away. I’m lost in my thoughts, in how wrong this felt, all the words being said, about wives and niggers and love and hate and about that look in Friendly’s eyes when I said something he didn’t like and that look on Chittery’s face this morning and how stupid that fedora looks on Cypher and…
“This is wrong,” Cypher whispers beside me. “All of it.”
You got that right, buddy.
“Need a hand, there?” Friendly asks, offering his. I take it, and that’s when it all hits me. The cold artificiality of his skin, the way it moves under my hand like a squirming pulsing thing, like grappling with the tail end of a giant fly larva. I almost let go in shock as he hoists me to my feet, and even then I still sway, still rock back and forth, still drinking in the sheer wrongness and listening to all the sirens and warning bells screaming in my head and…and…
“Alright now, Deezy?” Schmitty asks, a malted in each hand.
I look at Officer Friendly, and the sheer wrongness in what I see: the way those cords on his neck look more like worms draped over his shoulders and the way that moustache looks glued on and the way his eyes dart over me like a couple cameras on a robot in a cheap sci-fi movie, it all screams for me to do something.
So I uppercut him in the face.
“Get fucked, niggggggaaaaaaaaaa!” I scream, and let it be noted that as a half-changeling, I myself am black in my natural state, and therefore have every right to that word.
Friendly goes down, his head bucking back unnaturally. He crashes to the floor like a mannequin, all stiff with his legs splaying out, his heels bucking into the air for a second before slamming to the floor.
“Holy shit…” Cypher gasps, and barely has time to raise his hooves in defense as Schmitty leaps over the counter, the ice cream in his hands hitting the floor and spilling all over the spotless tile. Cypher dodges enough to have the bastard bounce off his shoulder, and Schmitty tucks and rolls like an Olympic athlete, but can’t quite keep himself from crashing into one of the tables against the far wall. In a flash, he’s back on his feet, wrenching the table up in his hands and swinging it over his head in a way too strong and too natural to ever be pulled off by a semi-retired ice cream man. He hoists it up in his old, wrinkly hands and brings it down in an arc aimed for Cypher’s face. But I’ve already reacted, scooping up one of the chairs and bringing it around wide and low with everything I got, smashing it into Schmitty’s face. He slams face-first into the growing puddle of ice cream on the ground and lies still.
“Deezy?” Cypher asks tentatively, swallowing as he shivers in place. “Wh-wh-what…what…”
I turn, look around at the retro diner and the gas-guzzling 50’s cars still bellowing lead fumes outside and the unconscious cop-thing on the ground and the butt-ugly slacks with two-tone socks I’m wearing and I finish his question: “What in the sam-hill goddamn shit piss fuck cocksucking cinnamon-flavored assholes is going on!?”
He shrinks back. “Y-yeah…yeah, that…”
I look down at him, glaring, my muscles tensing as my shoulders rise and fall with each breath. “Jesus Cypher, take that hat off, wouldja? You look like something a fanartist cooked up trying to make a really bad noir comic.”
He looks up and takes the fedora off, setting it gently on the floor. “Okay…okay…Deezy? W-where are we?”
I look around. “The 1950s, apparently, or someone’s idea of it after a marathon of Leave it to Beaver,” I shrug. “I dunno, either way, I look ridiculous, you look ridiculous, and apparently our knowing this is a big no-no if the ice cream-asshole’s reactions are anything to go off of.”
“O-okay…what do we do?”
“Well, if this is some simulation, .hack//sign, forced dream bullshit we’re going through, then I say we should probably start running before everyone in this town realizes we’re awake and comes here to rip our arms off.”
He nods shakily. “I-I say that sounds like a good idea.”
Nodding to each other, we take off for the door, dancing around the semiconscious man-things on the floor before I elbow my way through into fresh air and sunshine. Already, I can see we’re too late to avoid notice. The street is filling with people: housewives in tasteful sundresses and men wearing old-timey casual suits, some still carrying briefcases, marching out of their homes alongside kids in propeller hats and jean overalls, most of them unbuttoned. I even spot a baby among the marchers, keeping step with mechanical precision despite looking too young to hold his head upright, much less take off the onesie he’s wearing all by himself. As they near the street, each person falls into a line like a damned army on the march, five abreast, standing shoulder to shoulder as they glare at us, thundering our way with the sort of goose-stepping precision that would make Hitler shed a tear from inside that shithole the Russkies threw him in.
“Cypher, get in the car,” I whisper, the sound of leather shoes, tennies, and high heels hitting the pavement in perfect time nearly drowning me out.
“Y-yeah…” he closes the last few feet to the car, wrenches the driver’s side door open, and dives right over the driver’s seat and into the passenger’s. I’m right behind, yanking the door shut behind me as I settle in behind the wheel and twist the ignition.
I turn to put her into drive, when I realize something: I can’t tell what half the symbols on the gearshift are for. Hell, some of that shit looks Greek.
Waitaminute…
This has to all be from my head. It’s the only way this all makes sense, it’s not like Equestria had a time when father came home to smoke a pipe and read up on the Commies’ latest plans to destroy mom, dad, and apple pie. And I don’t know how to drive stick. Which means, of course, that neither does the simulation. Cypher could only do it because that was his role here. And now, we’re playing outside our roles, meaning no weird nightmare magic juice letting us do the things we were allowed to do when we were happily filling our roles.
“Aww, fuck,” I grumble.
“Deeezzyyyy…” Cypher whimpers. “Th-they’re getting closerrrr…”
“Just…hang on, okay!?” I yell, fumbling with the misshapen wooden handle in my grip. Okay…okayokayokay…this is all from my head, right? Everything here came from my memories. All fucked-up and twisted around and based on stupid stereotypes I’ll admit I had, but still, all me. So, does that mean even if I can’t drive stick, I can make up how?
I close my eyes and tighten my hold on the gearshift. The wood moves, stiff at first, then clunks to the side in my hand, followed by a slide back with a grinding of gears. The engine grinds, makes a few complaints, but then I feel the car inch forward.
“Haha!” I scream. “In your face, 1950s technology! In your ugly, over-industrialized face!”
A low thud shakes the car from the rear. I whip around in my seat to find a pretty little blonde mother in a tasteful plaid dress, her hands braced against the rear window. Suddenly, she snaps her head back and rams it into the glass with another low thud, gaining a few cracks and an ugly, purple bruise right in the middle of her forehead.
“Aww, shit,” I manage just as a few more thuds sound to my side. Cypher looks past me, jaw dropping to its usual low, eyes widening in utter terror. I don’t need to look to know that behind me, a man in a fedora and casual business wear or a kid in a propeller cap has their hands braced against my window, just like the woman’s, and is skull-bashing the fucker for all its worth.
“Deeezzzzzyyyyy…”
“I know, Cypher! I know!” I slam my foot on the accelerator, pressing the pedal to the floor as hard as I can. Still, I only get a few inches forward, followed by a leisurely coast that might be able to outrun my grandpa back home: the one who has a few pins in his hip courtesy of a Japanese hand grenade, and who was certainly old enough to actually be one of these men in their non-descript business suits at one point. Needless to say, the mob keeps pace with us, and another thud booms to my side.
“Shitshitshitshit…” I mutter, fumbling with the gear shift again. Only in first gear, gotta shift up, gotta figure that out. I close my eyes again, figuring basic traffic safety is kind of a moot point once you have a mob of nondescript white people making like you just set fire to an orphanage and then pissed on an American flag. The gearshift stiffens against me, still fighting me, I have to put a bit more muscle into it now. I bite my lip with the effort, but with a triumphant grinding from the gearbox, I manage a bit more motion. The car picks up speed.
“Victory!” I cry, slamming the accelerator again. Something scratches against the glass by my head, and I turn just in time to see a hand twisted into a gnarled claw, scrabbling at the glass as it trails away. A couple more assholes up front are quick to realize what’s happening, one tall and lanky and moving like the wind as we gain on them, the other so fat he has to waddle, but nonetheless keeping pace with us. Tubs goes for a sideways dive that gets him clear of the car just as we outrun the mob. The Slenderman wannabe at his side isn’t so lucky, and his legs don’t quite make it clear. There’s a couple quick thumps as he goes down. I catch him rolling into the gutter in the sideview mirror, his knees bent in opposite directions.
“Jesus,” I grumble, shaking my head. “We’re in the shit now, Cyph.”
“No kidding,” he slumps back in his seat, breathing more easily now. “Do you mind telling me where we are? A-and why we were acting like that just now?”
“Forced dream, Cypher,” I grimace, the memories of falling asleep in Sift’s living room coming back to me. “Odds are this is exactly what happened to that pony we were sent to track down. Now we’re all stuck in this mess together.”
“A…d-dream?” He looks around, taking in the identical green lawns and ranch-style cookie-cutter houses drifting by, with the occasional gas station and mom & pop shop. “What kinda dream?”
“Mine,” I reply. “This is taken from my memories of 1950’s America. Or, what I always imagined it was like. Everything, even the stupid clothes, matches up pretty good.”
“O-okay,” he scrunches up his eyebrows. “S-so how do we get out?”
“Still working on that part,” I grumble, eyes scanning side-to-side. On occasion, a kid on the lawn will drop his toys to try and chase down the car, or an old man will suddenly spring from his rocker and sprint after us like he’s trying to beat the 100-yard dash, but other than that, looks like we left the majority of these…dream…things behind us. “Cypher? Can you transform?”
“Umm…hold on…” he sits back and closes his eyes. A few sparks trail from his horn, but that’s all. After a few minutes, he opens his eyes again, looks himself over, and shakes his head. “N-nope…”
“Let me,” I grumble, focusing, trying to tug at that old fire first shown to me by Chrysalis just a few years ago. I grimace, keeping an eye on my hands over the steering wheel at the bottom of my vision. After a few seconds, I realize it’s not gonna happen. I don’t even get a spark of changeling magic.
“Great, just perfect,” I moan as Cypher slumps in his seat. “We’ve got jack shit.”
“Oh…oh gosh,” Cypher whimpers.
I look over at him, seeing how his ears fold down and his tentacles droop. I paste on a little, cocky grin and reach over to pat his head. “No worries, Cyph, we just gotta get creative.”
“O-okay,” he says, though he still looks uncertain, his brow furrowing up. “H-hey, D-Deezy?”
“Yeah?”
“Wh-what about Chittery?”
…
“SHIT!” I scream, slamming on the brakes and forcing us into a complete one-eighty that takes us up on two wheels for a second. When we’re pointed the right way, I slam on the gas again, the engine roaring and the gearbox squealing with pain, but the car leaps ahead, back towards the cul-de-sac we just left.
“O-oh…” Cypher slumps in his seat. “Oh…n-no…”
“You fucking know it,” I growl, pressing the cigarette lighter in as a thought occurs to me. “Look around and see if you can find anything we might be able to use as a weapon. Anything sharp or heavy should do the trick.”
He nods, sliding out of the seat to rummage around in the back. I thumb the cigarette lighter again. God willing, it won’t come to that. If we’re desperate enough to be using a damned cigarette lighter as a weapon, that means we’re really and officially deep in it. “Cypher! You find anything?”
“Umm…a map filled with weird squiggly lines…some blue stuff…oh, oh that seems really insensitive.” He holds up a magazine advertising soap on the back cover, the brand name only a faint pile of distorted squiggles. In the picture, some little white kid is holding a bar of soap while a little racist caricature of a baboon that might represent a little black kid sits in a tub of suds, bawling its eyes out. A word balloon over the white kid announces: “Gee whiz ma, I tried scrubbin’ all I could but I couldn’t get the dirt off!”
I grimace. “The good ol’ days, indeed,” I snarl, snatching up the magazine and rolling it into a tube in one hand while the other stays on the steering wheel. If nothing else, the stuff isn’t that plastic laminate they make magazines out of back in the U-S-of-A of my time, it’s that cheap paper mulch they used to print them on, meaning it’d make great kindling. But for what?
“Cypher, hand me that blue stuff,” I say, holding my hand out behind me. He obliges by sliding the bottle into my grip. I pull it out and hold the plastic jug in front of me, reading the label in quick glances from off the road. Antifreeze. “Fuck.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Was hoping for something more blowy-uppy,” I sigh, dropping the bottle in the passenger’s leg area. We can’t take on a horde of middle-class Americans turned Waffen SS like this! I droop back into my seat, figuring we might just be heading into a suicide charge. Then, we pass by a gas station, the old kind that need a trained operator just to handle.
Grinning, I spin the wheel, charging right over the curb and bouncing into the parking lot. Cypher goes jumping all around in the back. “Kildeez!” He cries. “What’re you doing!?”
“Making a quick pit stop,” I reply. I slam the car into park just as the gas station attendant, a portly man that looks barely old enough to have a mid-life crisis (and why not, he’s middle-aged and working at a gas station), comes rumbling out of the convenience store, his pressed white shirt dangling out over his gut, his hand grasping a box cutter. “Welp, looks like we found one of the last gas stations in America where the clerks ain’t packin’, good for us.”
I nab the bottle of washer fluid before climbing out, circling around the car, my chest thrust out and a mean glare in my eye. The clerk pauses in place, maybe three-quarters of the way across the parking lot. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting someone willing to fight back, which might just mean these things aren’t all networked together, since Officer Friendly back in the cul-de-sac would probably have been more than happy to enlighten him.
Taking the moment, I reach back into the car for the cigarette lighter, why not? “Alright, big guy,” I growl, holding a match in one hand and the open bottle of antifreeze in the other. “Let’s work off some of that beer belly.”
Snarling, a bit of spittle bursting out of the corner of his mouth, the attendant circles the car, again moving way faster than an overweight, middle-aged dude who works at a gas station has any right to be. Growling right back, I easily side-step his first attack, darting just out of reach as the box cutter comes around in a rapid arc from side to side. My foot comes up in a kick, hoping to knock the weapon out of the clerk’s hand, but he manages to divert, arching his grip back away in time to make a downward slash at my leg. I push off, my extended foot pressing against the bulk of the thing’s belly while my hand comes up with the antifreeze. A gush of the stuff splashes across its face, and it darts back, howling as if it’s been burnt, a hand reaching for its forehead. I grin. Probably got a good gush of the stuff in its eye. Seizing my chance, I dart forward, trying to jam the cigarette lighter into the knife hand. Nothing happens, no sizzling of skin or telltale smell of burning flesh. I finally remember Cypher telling me the lighter was fucked up, hence why he needed my matches for his morning cigar.
Fuck.
Howling, I whip the useless lighter at the thing’s head, which amazingly earns me enough of a distraction to yank his arm into a hold and wrench the box cutter free. His arm still in my hold, I start hacking away at it, the thing screaming and jabbering like a demon while landing some ineffective punches on my back in a desperate attempt to get free. I whip around and go to fucking town on the clerk, hacking and slashing at its arms and neck, getting every good hit in that I can. Instead of blood, each of my slashes earns a line of grey goo that sticks in place like syrup or rubber cement. In the end, I practically have to hack the arm off to get the clerk to stop howling and lay still. When it’s all said and done, my body aches and my breath comes in quick pants, not to mention the goo now coating my sweater vest and slacks.
A loud thump takes me by surprise, and I turn, the box cutter raised, only to find Cypher collapsed on the pavement, his tendrils tangled up in the seatbelt. “Oh,” I say, pocketing the knife. “Was wondering where you were.”
“S-sorry,” he smiles sheepishly up at me. “C-couldn’t fine the catch to open the door, and when I did, I-I got stuck in this…uh…thing.”
“Seatbelt,” I correct him, kneeling to gently untangle his tendrils. He flops to the ground and looks up at me, smiling gratefully. I smile back, then point to the convenience store. “Let’s find every sharp and pointy thing we can and stick it all together. With duct tape. Lots of duct tape.”
His brow arches in confusion, but he nods, and we boot our way through the front doors and into the store, pushing through aisles that reek of motor oil and gasoline. Immediately, I grab a few thick road almanacs off the front counter and wrap one around my arm, making sure it fits all the way around. Curious, I crack one open and start reading:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec ut est mi. Phasellus mattis mollis efficitur. Vestibulum efficitur tincidunt ullamcorper…
Eh, guess I should’ve figured.
“Deez! I-I think I found that ‘duck-tape’ you wanted!” Cypher exclaims from a back aisle, triumphantly holding up a silver-gray roll.
I grin. “Awesome, toss that good stuff over here!”
He does, and I catch it and tear off the wrapping, ripping off a strip in my teeth and wrapping it around one of the almanacs, which I hold in place around my arm. As far as armor goes, it doesn’t get more ghetto-tech than this, but it’s better than nothing. Besides, saved Ben Affleck in World War Z.
Read the book, don’t see the movie, kids.
“Cyph, while you’re at it, see how many wine bottles and cheapo t-shirts you can scrounge up,” I shout. Might as well put my matches to use.
“O-okay,” he shivers. “Wh-what for?”
“A little something the Russkies cooked up back in World War Two, I toldja about that one, didn’t I?” I ask, setting to work on literary armor for my legs.
“Y-yeah.”
“Well see, in that war, things didn’t get much more desperate than they did on the Eastern Front,” I reply, wrapping tape in multiple bands around my legs while I stuff a few more almanacs down my shirt. “The Axis were better trained and way better equipped. The Russians had numbers, but they just didn’t have enough grenades or ammo to go around. Hell, during the winter counteroffensive, their leader ordered a massive, front-wide counteroffensive even though some of their units only got one artillery shell a day! Can you imagine that? Rushing forward into battle against armored giants and men screaming and blasting with superior weapons, with just one round in your main weapon?”
“Uhhh…I-I don’t think I can, no,” he says, looking visibly more confused by the moment.
“Nobody these days really can imagine that kind of desperation, but throughout history, desperation has bred one thing: ingenuity.” Without another word, a few wine bottles hover up to the counter in Cypher’s magic. Nodding my thanks, I uncork one, take a sniff, and grimace. “Ahh, 1999. A vintage year.”
“Hmm?”
“Nothing,” I reply, finding a drain beneath the counter and upending a couple bottles down it. When I stand up, a couple shirts have joined the bottles on the counter. I nod again and start tearing them into strips.
“Okay, fine, desperation breeds ingenuity,” Cypher says, watching me as I round the counter and start making him some armor-nac. Almanarmor? Yeah, almanarmor’s a good name. “What’s that got to do with bottles and strips of cloth?”
I only smile at him, which earns me an eye roll. He’s learning what this smile means only too well, and he can’t help but sigh with exasperation, even as I wrap more books around his legs and barrel. With that done, I pull out my belt, run it through the middle of the duct tape roll, and reclip the whole shebang together. Can never have too much duct tape.
Smiling at my handiwork, I grab the bottles in one hand and start looking around, thankfully finding a crow bar right near the front of the store, between a row of spark plugs the size of my fist and bottles of oil that looks so unrefined it might have been pulled right out of the ground. I scoop a bar up, pulling off the price tag and taking a few practice swings. “Alright good,” I say, turning towards the storefront. “Cyph, you grab one too. Looks like it’s the best we got.”
As I look up, I catch my reflection in the plate glass. I see myself, a man with a deep brown goatee and short cropped hair, wearing thick-framed glasses, holding up a crowbar. I cock my head. Something about this seems familiar…
Shaking my head, I motion towards the door. “Alright, time to get going.”
“Roger,” Cypher says stoically, appearing around a corner with a gray stocking cap pulled down tight over his head-fin.
I hunch my eyebrows at him. “What’s that hat for?”
“Oh, this?” He asks, prodding the cap with the tip of one tendril. “I-I just thought it felt…r-right, y’know?”
“O-kay,” I reply, making for the door, grabbing the bottles and strips of cloth off the counter. “I’m gonna finish up our special cocktails.”
“Wait! I’ll come with you!” He announces, chasing after me as we head across the parking lot.
I make a quick stop at the gas pumps, filling up the wine bottles and upending them to soak the rags through, coating everything in gasoline. Cypher looks at me like I’ve just shit in his hoof and called it a salad. I just wink and give that smile again. I can only guess at the hatred he now holds for that smile.
Gathering up the bottles and piling them into the backseat, I can only hope we’re not too late to save Chittery from a fate worse than death. Be it an eternity in this weird alternate-fifties hell or a marathon of Uwe Boll movies, I pray we will never find out what this thing has in store for us.
Once again, I slide into the driver’s seat and start the engine. Cypher slides in next to me. He nods. I nod. I drop her into gear and coast along down the street, slowly picking up speed. We’re not too far from the cul-de-sac, I can almost feel the thumping of those feet in unison rattling the car’s frame. My teeth clench, I shift into a higher gear. Alright princess, for better or worse, we're coming.