Unidentified funny objec.., p.13
Unidentified Funny Objects 7, page 13
“Do you know who I am?” the Fat Guy asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say Porno DuSgusto, the crime boss from Ceti Alpha IV,” I replied, lighting a cigarette and trying to appear cool and collected.
“I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to recognize me.”
Holy crap, I thought as I lit a cigarette, It's really Porno DuSgusto. This guy buys and sells fifty-credit PI's like me for funsies.
“Never heard of you,” I said out loud, lighting a cigarette.
“Do I make you nervous, Mr. Loathing?” asked DuSgusto.
I laughed as I lit a cigarette. “The day you make me nervous is the day I quit smoking.”
“You have four cigarettes burning at the moment,” he noted.
I mashed out all four, burning my thumb in the process. “And I just quit. Now let’s talk Eggs.”
“Indeed,” said DuSgusto. “Can you locate the artifact?”
“It might take me a couple days and a couple hundred thousand domars in advance,” I said.
“Less the twenty grand you owe us,” said Vinnie.
“Plus interest,” added Uma, reminding me why I hate people who are good at math.
Porno snapped his claws and one of the goons held out a wad of scrip taller than I’d ever seen. Even after Uma and Vinnie had peeled off their nut plus the vig.
I pocketed the cash alongside DeKnight’s down payment. “I’ll be in touch.”
“See to it that you are,” said DuSgusto. “I am not an entity who deals well with disappointment.”
I took a cab back to my office, feeling pretty good about the day so far: my partner had been snuffed before he could do the same to me for (not) sleeping with his wife; I’d paid off what I owed to Cruel and Unusual; and I had more money in my pocket than I’d ever seen in my life.
All I had to do was find an artifact that had been lost for centuries and sell it to the highest bidder (or maybe all the bidders) without getting myself killed.
Challenge accepted.
I checked my ComDex: no message yet from Lefty. I’d queued up the dominoes; now I had to wait for the pieces to start falling. I tossed the cushions back onto the couch and took a nap.
I awoke to find the barrel of a 2 cm slug thrower shoved inside my left nostril, and not in the good way. “Snerf?” I wheezed, trying to get my eyes to focus.
“You make me sad, Mr. Ampersand Loathing,” purred DeKnight.
“You’re the first dame to ever tell me that.” Today. “Care to be more specific?”
“Double-crossing me and selling yourself to that slimeball DuSgusto,” said DeKnight, taking out a half-meter-long cigarette holder with one of her tentacles. “Got a light?”
I flicked my Zappo; she blew a cloud of smoke into my nostril not stuffed with the barrel of a snub-nose.
I began, “I haven’t double-crossed you . . .”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” I agreed. “But it’s still early.”
“I paid you to get me the Ebony Egg.”
“You underpaid me to find the Egg. Less than half what you gave my partner, and he got killed just looking for it.”
She cocked my pistol, the click reverberating against my nasal cartilage and into my skull. “You’re alive . . . but as you noted, it’s still early.”
“Doll, you’ve got me all wrong,” I lied. “I only cozied up to DuSgusto to find out what he knows, which is bupkes. Nobody knows where the Egg is now—except for me.”
“And me,” said Lefty from the doorway.
Mila removed the pistol from my nostril and hid it behind her skirt so fast I felt pretty sure a couple nose hairs and possibly a booger went with it.
Lefty was too big to easily squeeze through the door, so from the hallway he continued, “John, you were right—a more detailed examination revealed that Fear had swallowed the Egg, right before he got killed. Fortunately, he swallowed it with his uglier head, so the Egg wasn’t damaged when he bought it.”
Trying not to think about the details of that “more detailed” exam, I said, “Lefty, you’re one in a million.”
Suddenly, a ripple washed through Lefty. “John!” he gasped. “I never thought you would double-cross me!”
“Say what?” I sputtered. “I’d never double-cross you!”
Before my eyes, Lefty lost cohesion, jiggling and shifting in ways I’d never seen before. My best friend was dissolving.
Something oozed out of Lefty: a set of keys, followed by his ComDex. Then twenty gold pieces. Next came his trombone, a package of embalming Jell-O, his favorite deck of Majik the Garnering cards, Queen’s Greatest Hits, an expense voucher for 2,038,739.19 domars, a stereostethoscope, a black forest cake, a Holy Grail, his towel, a vial marked HEALING POTION, Lefty’s Notary Public seal, my late partner’s wallet, a yellowed and pitted skeleton still wearing a suit of battered chainmail, and a frequent flyer card from Cuppa Joe’s Coffee Shoppe with 9 of 10 holes punched.
Finally, as Lefty subsided into a puddle of goo, a black Egg the size of a rugby ball rolled across the floor.
Before I could get to it, DeKnight scooped up the Egg with a tentacle and shoved it into her purse.
Patsy sloshed through the doorway, kicking bits of my best friend off his patent-plastic loafers. He tossed aside a jumbo-sized box marked SALT–DOES NOT CONTAIN IODIDE, A NECESSARY NUTRIENT FOR PUNY HUMANS. DuSgusto and the Nerd followed Patsy into my office.
DuSgusto said, “Mr. Loathing, you disappoint me, double-crossing me to deliver the egg to DeKnight!”
“I haven’t double-crossed anyone,” I pointed out. “There hasn’t been time.”
“Nonetheless, pencil me in to be disappointed,” DuSgusto replied. “Your friend, the late medical examiner, confirmed that you knew what happened to the Egg just before over-eager Patsy a-salted him. So tell me, Mr. Loathing, where is the Egg now?”
Before I could sell DeKnight up the nebula, Uma spoke from behind DuSgusto: “Jonathan, I can’t believe you’re attempting to double-cross me and Vinnie!” Cruel and Unusual entered the room, followed by several of their hired thugs.
“Ibid?” I offered.
“Freeze!” shouted Lotta Payne, sliding into the room from the back office with her service blaster poking out of her iridescent pink shell. I had to assume she’d been hiding in there the whole time, because teleportation is just a cheap plot device used in cheesy science fiction stories.
“You tipped off the cops, you dirty double-crosser!” said Patsy.
“I HAVEN’T DOUBLE-CROSSED ANYBODY!” I shouted. “All of you are double-crossing each other with no help from me!”
Payne leveled her gun at me. “I said ‘Freeze,’” she repeated.
The second “Freeze” worked for a second. Then everybody went for their pieces.
Patsy’s hand shot inside his jacket for his shoulder holster but came up empty (since I still had his needler in my pocket). Payne spotted the move and fired. Patsy’s elbow disappeared in a blast of coherent light.
I dove behind the safe. If it had been a little larger, I would have climbed inside and locked the door behind me.
Patsy took two heavy, slow-moving 2 cm rounds as DeKnight fired at me and missed.
“DeKnight has the Egg!” I shouted, figuring my chances of scoring a date with Mila had been somewhat reduced when she opened fire on me.
Vinnie Cruel and two of his goons fired at Detective Payne, but the plasma bolts hit Patsy as he reeled back from DeKnight’s poor marksentityship.
Payne ducked back into the rear office, calling for backup on her ComDex. All the other guns in the room swiveled to cover Mila DeKnight; she dropped her gun and raised her tentacles. “Look, people, we can talk about this! The Egg is worth so much it can make all of us rich!” Slowly, she reached into her purse and held up the Ebony Egg.
Silence reigned for a moment. Then the Nerd said, “That’s not the real Egg. It’s a fake. The stuff of dreams.”
“Are you sure?” said Uma.
“Of course I’m sure!” the Nerd replied. “I’ve spent my entire career researching this artifact! The real Quetzalcoatl Egg is almost two centimeters longer. This one is a decoy, not the egg created by Cooter Fabergé.”
“Well, poop,” said DeKnight, dropping the egg. It hit the floor and shattered, scattering pieces of black enamel and (formerly) priceless artwork egg across the floor.
“I guess it’s a Fabergé omelet now,” I observed, standing up from behind the safe.
Tears in all four eyes, the Nerd stuttered, “D-d-destroyed. W-w-worthless . . .”
For a moment, no one moved. Then everyone but me, the mortally wounded Patsy, and the Nerd dove onto the shattered remains, scrabbling for precious gems and platinum filigree like children snatching candy beaten from a reluctant piñata.
I took this as my cue to scram, before Payne’s backup could arrive. I’d delivered the egg to both my clients; what happened to the McGuffin after that was on them. I figured I’d earned both retainers. Check that: I scooped up Fear’s wallet and shook leftover Lefty off it. Fear’s 25k was still inside. Make that all three retainers.
Lefty had a wife and four blobs at home. I figured half the take should go to them. It was the least I could do, and I generally do the least I can do.
Patsy weakly reached for the vial of healing potion which had rolled out of Lefty. I kicked the vial hard. It shattered against the wall. “That’s for Lefty,” I muttered as Patsy expired.
I walked out the door, wondering what Fear’s widow Gretchen might be up to.
Or up for.
As long as it wasn’t sleeping.
I checked my ComDex: it was 3 A.M.
David Vierling is no one of importance. He’s published more than 120 nonfiction articles and essays in places like the Washington Post and SEXLife Magazine. But he’s only sold ten or fifteen science fiction or fantasy short stories (including pieces in UFO 6, Witch Way to the Mall, and Chicks in Chainmail); let’s face it, that’s what you really care about. One of his stories is cited in The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference; that and $4.75 is almost guaranteed to get Dave a latte in most coffee shops in the Infiniverse.
When the opportunity came to submit a piece to UFO 7, Dave leaned toward writing a tech noir story, then found a note in his idea file which read, “Fabergé Omelet” and the idea took off.
The Day After Halloween
Greg Sisco
“Treat!” screamed the little goblin monster that up until recently was two-year-old Jackson Wilkes. “Treat! Treat! Treat!”
He was pounding on the door with something metallic, maybe a piece of pipe or a gardening tool. Roger and Mary had managed to hurl him down the stairs to the basement and lock the door, but it didn’t sound like it would hold him.
“Treat!”
The sound of scratching on the other side of the door, first low and then high. Was he climbing it? Could he be climbing the door?
“Treat! Treat!”
The little hellion was well past the point of “Trick.”
“No more treats, sweetie,” Mary called through the door, doing her best to sound calm as she gagged at the blood coming from the scratch-wounds in her abdomen. “You had all your treats. There are no more.”
“Treat!”
Roger paced the living room, stepping on tens, maybe hundreds of candy wrappers that should have lasted for weeks with still plenty left to be thrown out. His hands shaking and his phone tight to his ear, he spoke in a voice barely above a whisper.
“He turned into a monster. He ate all of his Halloween candy this morning, before we woke up, and he’s . . . he’s . . . It turned him into some kind of . . . monster.”
“That’s what happens to kids on Halloween,” said Roger’s father. “You were the same way.”
“No, this is something else. He keeps screaming for more treats. He . . . he’s climbing on everything. He scratched Mary and he tried to bite me. It’s like his nails got longer and his teeth are sharper. He’s . . . I’m not sure he’s Jackson anymore. He’s turned into, like . . . a gremlin or something.”
His father laughed. “One year we told you no more candy for the day and you threw a dinner plate at me. He’s just a kid, Rog. They go a little crazy, but you love them.”
“Dad, you’re not understanding me. He literally transformed into a nightmare creature from hell!”
“Treat! Treat! Treat!”
“Do you hear that? Can you hear him? He keeps screaming the word ‘Treat!’ That’s not his voice he’s talking in. That’s a monster voice. We had to lock him in the basement to stop him from attacking us or tearing the house apart.”
“You locked your son in the basement?!”
“I locked the goblin thing that used to be my son in the basement.”
“Roger, for heaven’s sake. Let your son out of the basement.”
“I will not!”
A crash at the door spun Roger’s head. One of the lower corners of the door slid across the carpet, broken off in a jagged triangle. Jackson’s hand reached through, his claws longer than ever.
“Treat!”
“We have to do something!” shouted Mary.
“Find him a treat!” shouted Roger.
“Don’t give him a treat,” said Morris on the phone as Mary rushed to the kitchen. “Let me talk to him.”
“He won’t talk! He’s going to attack us! I have to call the cops!”
“Don’t call the cops. They’ll shoot him and say they thought his Milky Way was a grenade. Just give him the phone.”
More pounding at the door. Another shard broke off the bottom. Jackson’s arm slipped through again, but this time the hole was big enough for his head to follow. He squirmed his way through the splintered wood, staring up at his father with glowing, red eyes.
“Treat!”
“Here!” shouted Mary, rushing in from the kitchen. She threw an apple to him, the closest thing she could find to a treat in her panicked state.
Jackson looked down at the apple and then back to his mother with a growl and a glare of disdain.
“Hey buddy,” said Roger, holding out the phone with a cheesy smile and feigned excitement. “Grandpa wants to talk to you.”
From his end of the line, Morris Wilkes heard only screams. Then, after an unbearable silence, there were light footsteps and a voice that moaned, “Treat.”
Five-year-old Mason Garland hadn’t looked out the window yet, thank God. He hadn’t seen the things, the swarm of things that were smashing car windows, climbing houses, tearing off shutters and storm drains, screaming for treats. And even though Bill was pretty sure they were both about to be mauled by gremlins, it seemed right that Mason be blissfully unaware until as close as possible to his inevitable transition into an adorable corpse.
“He-ey, you know what I haven’t gotten out in a little while?” said Bill with feigned excitement, rushing past his son to the safe. “My shotgun!”
Most of the monsters were still across the street, ripping apart Roger’s and Mary’s house. They were toilet papering the tree in their yard with what Bill thought was possibly a large intestine, and even Roger and Mary didn’t deserve that, especially if the intestine had come out of one of them.
“Dad, it’s too loud!” shouted Mason over the TV. A cartoon cat was speaking at a volume of one hundred, but it was a better sound than the screams outside.
“It’s just how loud you like it! Just pretend Daddy’s sleeping!” Bill shouted into the master bedroom. He cocked the shotgun and aimed it at the front door from his post at the top of the stairs.
Mason burst out laughing. “Daddy, isn’t Blotchy the Cat funny?”
“Friggin’ hilarious,” said Bill.
“What?”
“Just eat your candy and watch cartoons, buddy. Daddy’s playing with his shotgun.”
“Why are you playing with your shotgun?”
“Because it’s super fun, all right!?”
The corners of Mason’s lips turned down and shook. His head dropped slightly.
“Aw, hey. Buddy.”
The tears started. Mason sobbed.
“Oh, come on,” Bill muttered to himself. He turned his head back to the front door, then back to Mason. Kill the gremlins or comfort the doomed? Why was it always like this? How did other single parents do it?
He dropped the gun to his side and ran to his son, taking a seat next to him on the floor. He hugged Mason tight with one arm as he aimed the shotgun at the door with the other.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to yell. I just got excited about my gun.”
Mason wiped tears and snot on his dad’s shirt.
“Come on. Have a piece of candy.”
By the time Blotchy the Cat had ended and Chub-Chub and Squeaky had started, Mason was back in good spirits and Bill could hardly lift the gun.
“What’s better?” asked Mason. “Charleston Chew or Crunch?”
“Charleston Chew.”
Mason popped a chocolate into his father’s mouth.
“Daddy, are you almost done playing with your gun?”
“God, I hope so.”
Mason laughed at the violence on the TV and Bill pretended to laugh with him. Mason went back to digging in his candy.
“What’s an I of Newt?”
“A what, sweetheart?”
“I of Newt?” Mason held a spherical candy in a plastic wrapper up to Bill.
“I don’t know, hun. Why don’t you give it a try.”
There was a crash from downstairs and Bill jumped to his feet.
“What is it, Daddy?”
“I don’t know. I think the Wilkes’s cat got in again. Just stay in here.”
