© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Fourteen: Et Tu, Barney?
It
was Barney’s face, this monstrous swollen visage before him, except the pocked
and pitted surface was enormous and stretched out of all proportion, the eyes
popping and rolling, like some insane doll, and the teeth were blocks more
appropriately sized for the mouth of a hippopotamus. One bite and Rodney would
lose half himself down that garbage-disposal gullet. And the face puckered its
rubbery lips and squealed and screamed and shrieked and gibbered.
“This is all your fault! All your fault!” the
giant Barney bellowed and blubbered, a bizarre infantile Barney, half
inconsolable child and half monster escaped from hell.
Rodney barely managed to get a thought
launched. His brain must have detached from the inside of his skull. His chest
felt caved in, but all he could think was: Barney, Barney, this is Barney.
On and off through the years, they had been
friends—somewhat. Barney was one of
the nastiest, most negative, and downright creepiest guy he had ever known, but
hey, they’d had some good times, drinking beer, playing video games, going to
sports bars and rock concerts, Barney always drinking and driving, so very
proud of his loud, rancid farts, and even louder and more rancid belches.
“Knock it off!” Rodney roared, yelling square
into the giant’s face, surprising even himself.
The giant Barney stopped shaking him and
stood stupidly, staring into Rodney’s face, looking as if he had been caught in
a degrading act.
“Put me down, now!” Rodney roared, completely
beside himself. How dare this big dummy shake him like a rag doll. Stupid
Barney.
After a second, Barney did just that, he
obeyed Rodney’s command, and gingerly placed Rodney upon the forest floor.
“What is wrong with you!” Rodney hollered up
at the blank-faced giant, who didn’t look so much like Barney now, but more
like a gag-gift Barney balloon, overinflated and ready to burst.
“You gotta help me Rod! Please, you gotta
help me! I keep eating them, all of them, but I just get more and more hongry!” Barney said, and it was
definitely Barney, because no one else ever called him Rod (and to tell the truth, Rodney kind of liked that, Rod, because
although stupid, the foreshortening of his name was kind of tough, and kind of cool), and he had never heard
another person pronounce hungry that
way.
He always said, “Come on, we’re off to Hooters, cuz me so hongry!” Then, after an
hour at Hooters, Barney would always
bellow, sharing with all: “Me so horny!” They had been kicked out of three
different Hooters.
Weird, staring up at Barney, and suddenly the
giant didn’t seem quite so...giant. Yes, even as Rodney watched, the hot air
seemed to be leaking out of the monster. His head didn’t seem quite so much
like Humpty Dumpty.
“Ow, Rod, this really hurts,” Barney
whimpered, massaging his hands and arms, groaning. “Did you know those beauty
contest girls ended up being—dudes? They
were beautiful girls, in all the right ways, except when I really got down to
it, you know? Why do they keep doing this to me? I think I’m in hell.”
Rodney wanted to tell him: “Actually, I think
you are a brain floating around in an aquarium, pretty much like an exotic
fish.”
It might be fun to tell him that, but Rodney
didn’t.
“Have you been into the ruins?” Rodney asked,
because he still felt compelled to go into those ancient-looking temples he had
seen above the tree line. Plus, he wanted to get away from this Barney—ghost,
or whatever it was. The thing smelled bad. And it kept snorfling and whining.
Rodney wanted to escape before it began farting, because with Barney, there was
always farting.
“I actually got to drive the General Lee, if you can believe it, it
was wonderful,” the Barney creature gurgled, yipping. “It was my dream come
true, you know? Rod, they did it again, I couldn’t get it above fifty-five,
that’s just so...not fair! Cheaters,
Looters, Liars, all of them! Beautiful girls that ain’t quite girls, and hot
cars that don’t go fast, what could be worse than that? Why are they doing this
to me? I wasn’t such a bad guy, you know, when I was alive? Why did they have
to send me to hell?”
And the creature began weeping, burying its
meaty face in its big, square hands. It was down to about seven feet in height,
and while it no longer seemed so monstrous and huge, the creature still towered
above Rodney.
“Barney,” Rodney said, putting some snap into
his voice. This thing seemed to respond best to aggression. “Tell me about the
ruins, in the forest.”
“Oh don’t go in there,” Barney said in a
rush, glancing about the forest furtively. “There are lizards in there. Stay away
from the lizards, Rod, them dudes...oh, them dudes is bad, real bad.”
Lizards, that was somewhat
sad—funny—but still sad. Because that was something they had in common, the
reptiles. They both had kept lizards as pets. Rodney mainly kept different
kinds of geckos through the years, little guys, but Barney had been into the
most exotic lizards, bearded dragons, and brutes that liked to nip your fingers
when you weren’t paying attention. Rodney liked the cute little buggers, the
kind that might try and sell you some insurance. But Barney liked the slightly
scary creatures, including boa constrictors, tarantulas, and baby crocodiles.
Especially if they were illegal, Barney loved them. True, they generally died
in his...care, but he did love them.
“You like
lizards, Barney,” Rodney said, trying to calm the thing, because this Barney
monster was all about sweating, and wheezing, and blubbering, and growling.
“Oh not these lizards, Rod my man, oh no, not
these lizards,” Barney said, now only about six feet tall, which was still far
taller than his usual height, and he still looked like he could weigh in the
neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and more. Although decidedly not a giant
any longer, this was still a seriously huge Barney. But now Barney did
something that was truly hideous: he grinned.
“These lizards? Rod? These are lizards with—attitude.”
Well, Rodney sighed, the best thing to do was
press forward. Just continue. Get on with it. Soldier on. He reached up and
straightened his kippah. And with that, he strode off past the blubbering
Barney. He figured that going this direction was the best way, because he was
heading into the deeper forest where he still saw pale faces peeking from the
foliage.
“Where ya goin’ Rod? Where ya goin’ Rod?”
Barney chittered, sounding like an overgrown and insane squirrel on GMO feed.
The best thing to do, Rodney decided, was
flat-out ignore Barney. Just continue with what he was meant to do—and he didn’t
know what or why he was doing what he was doing, but he felt progression was
his only option. He still felt that this all might turn out to be a dream, but
that idea grew fainter with each step he took into the deep forest. There was
no longer any path to follow, and the trees were thicker, closer together, and
the canopy above blocked most of the light.
He thought he caught glimpses of monkeys up
high in the trees. Monkeys, in the forest? Was this a jungle or a forest, or
perhaps a little of both? That didn’t make sense, But then again, did a
twelve-foot tall Barney make sense?
Where was Rodney, right now? He thought he
almost remembered, something, something what, something about curling up to
take a nap beneath an ornamental tree with one weird-looking fruit suspended
from the lowest branch. And a mirror, what was that about a mirror? The little
boy in the mirror had escaped and was even now pillaging his room, no, wait,
that didn’t make any sense.
“Pfft!” Rodney mock-spat. Sense, what did it
matter? He was here, and he was alive, and it didn’t get much better than this.
Forget college students and Rand World. This was real, here and now, and the
forest was lush and beautiful. Life was an adventure, and he was striding
forward into that adventure, finally alive, finally brave, a little bit,
perhaps, like Joss Chen. Who cared about how dark this forest was? Dark, yeah,
but still, what a nice hike through the trees, yeah, that’s the way to see it,
he was just going on a nice and leisurely hike in this life, the adventure, the
great adventure.
“Rod! Rod, no, wait Rod, not that way Rod,
wait,” blubbered Barney, sounding far behind.
Rodney walked faster. The sooner he got away
from Barney, the better. He heard him back there now thrashing and crashing,
tripping over roots, blubbering and begging.
There were a lot of roots here in the forest.
That seemed odd. The big roots splayed about the forest floor like meaty
cables, discarded fire hoses packed with hardened molasses, or dead anacondas.
He proceeded, squeezing between trees,
climbing over fallen logs that seemed too massive—must be remnants of a much
older forest. Some of the logs were too tall to climb and Rodney worked his way
about them, sometimes following the five-foot-tall logs twenty yards to find
passage, either over or under.
He must have been at it for more than hour,
and his breath puffed. Great, no asthma inhaler. Breathing heavily, and
sweating, he found a smaller log to sit on and rest. A warm beam of light was
shining through the canopy. He straddled the log and looked about him, enjoying
the cheery light.
Up high in the trees he saw something misty
white, like ratty blankets stretched between branches. Did people go up there?
Funny, it almost looked like spider webs, but that would have to be some
humungous spider to spin webs that big. Well, if those were spider webs, they
looked old, weather-beaten cobwebs, old and dusty. Nothing to worry about.
He hadn’t seen a face peering at him in a
long time, and he figured he must be at least a couple of miles deep into the
forest. Barney’s noises had vanished a long time ago.
Rodney yawned. He felt incredibly tired. He
wasn’t used to this much physical exertion. Walking, climbing. His neck still
hurt from the shaking the giant-sized Barney had administered.
Barney, the putz. He yawned again. Still,
really, maybe he shouldn’t have deserted him back there. Maybe he could have
helped Barney. Didn’t seem likely, especially if Barney was really floating
around in a tank, dreaming all of this. What a thought, to be trapped in one of
Barney’s dreams.
Rodney looked about at the forest. No, this
wasn’t anyone’s dream. This was an actual place. And at the moment, it seemed
pretty cozy. The light felt good, that same golden light at the city.
He scooted down and put his back to the log,
resting his head against the old bark, which felt fuzzy and warm. At least the
ground was spongey and warm here. Rodney sighed, and closed his eyes, and
released one last, long yawn, before dipping down into sleep.
He stood up and understood that he was
dreaming. He was back under the ornamental tree in Sky Valley. He snatched at
the fruit, but his hand passed through it without feeling anything. Great, this
dream within a dream was the airy kind. He glanced down and did a comical
double-take—that was him, curled up around the little tree, fast asleep. His
body, lying right there! But he didn’t find the sleeping Rodney very
interesting. As a concept? Sure, very interesting. He didn’t want to puzzle
through it—the whole, you know, was he really still a little boy, reading Jaws in his bedroom while the other
little boy watched him from the mirror, dreaming he passed the mirror, and
found his way out behind the studio stage into a vast valley, to fall asleep
here in the grass, and dream he found himself right into a golden city of
golden people and golden light, to stride away from that obvious goodness into a
dark and scary forest, where he propped himself against a log and fell asleep
to dream he was here standing over his dreaming body—and he realized with a
grin that he had just done what he had intended not to do, to puzzle through
these dreams within dreams within dreams—was he really an adult, who learned he
was not a real person, dreaming that he was a boy again, reading Jaws, when
that spider...
...he told himself to stop thinking about it,
and looked about, at everything, which was gray here, like an old
black-and-white movie. The sky was gray, the mountains, and even the grasses—there
was absolutely no color here. Was it twilight? He didn’t feel sleepy. Far away
he saw something moving in the tall grasses. He tracked the passage with his
eyes, standing still, and imagined a vast serpent was slithering lazily through
the grasses.
He felt something poking into his nose and
brushed at it. There was nothing there. Odd sensation. He felt it again, and he
started, pinching his nose—no, there was nothing there, but why did it feel
like something was pushing up into his nose, like a fat finger? Again, that
grotesque sensation, like a worm was pushing up into his nostril, and he
slapped himself in the nose, and finally...
...woke up.
He gagged, trying to cry out, but something
was choking him, from the inside. He reached up to his nose and seized the fat
and slimy thing that was pushing up into his nose, and he wrenched at it, and
searing pain arced through his head, hurting his throat and nose and eyes, and
he had his hands on what had to be a snake, only it was lumpy and oozy-soft,
like sponge, and there was a lot of the thing coiled in his lap, moving and
surging.
He was fully awake now and actually had his
hands wrapped around some kind of creature that was pushing up into his nose,
and as he pulled it free of his face, handhold after handhold, he saw that it
was some kind of worm, like an earthworm, but as big around as his hands could
clasp, and it was—up into his face!
Rodney squealed and ripped more and more of
the worm free from his face, moving his hands like a stage magician pulling
scarves from his mouth, hand-over-hand pulling it out, feeling it down in his
throat, possibly even in his chest! He screamed, choking on the worm, as it
writhed in his fingers, sticky and cold. It was resisting him, trying to fight
its extraction, and he felt it slithering around down from his nose into his
throat.
With a wet plunk the thing finally came free
of his face, and he barked a cough and pushed himself to a semi-upright
position, doing a little tap dance with his feet, pushing the coils of writhing
worm away from him, as the nasty cold thing flopped and slithered upon the
ground. The end that he had pulled free from his nose was coated a sickly red,
deep and bloody. Rodney vomited, spilling a truly acid wash over the worm,
which reacted, actually squealing and flopping away, but Rodney threw up, over
and over again, and distantly he seemed to watch himself, as the bile and blood
surged out of him. How much blood? How much blood? Had it been eating him, down
deep?
He started awake. Rodney opened his eyes and
sat up. He was in the warm spotlight of golden sunshine, and somebody was
sitting on the log beside him.
“Sorry, sheesh, Rod, don’t be a baby,” Barney
said, pulling his finger abruptly away from Rodney’s nose. “It was just a joke!
Calm down already.”
“Damn it Barney!” Rodney bleated, jerking
away from the man. And then he thought about it. He slapped himself across the
face, hard. He slapped himself again. It really hurt, his face tingling from
the slaps.
“Sounded like you were having a real doozy. You
shouldn’t sleep out here like this, you’re lucky a worm didn’t crawl up your
nose, I’ve seen it happen,” Barney laughed, seeming very much his old self, almost
normal. As normal as Barney could be.
Rodney stared at him. In fact, Barney looked
kind of thin, skinny really, haggard and bleary, but he looked like he must
have lost fifty pounds, his skin hanging loose and flapping. He looked like a
loose, floppy bag with Barney’s face stenciled in the hide.
“I was just checking to make sure there was
nothing up there, and I reached all the way inside your skull, and nope,
nothing, not even brains, sorry,” Barney guffawed, his old meaty chuckle, the
kind of laugh he made when he’d pulled some nasty prank on someone, like
shaving off their eyebrows while they napped on the couch.
Rodney slapped himself again. He had to make
sure he wasn’t asleep inside his dream inside his dream inside his dream. Damn
it, he was lost in the mirrors, and unsure how deep he was plunged inside the
reflections. His entire existence was a dream.
“You were a giant,” Rodney said, blinking
away the horror of his dream. “You were shaking me.”
“Was I?” Barney said, slapping his knees. “Maybe.
Weird things happen when you fall asleep here in the forest. I am literally
always dreaming about eating people!”
“What is this place?” Rodney asked.
“You don’t know?” Barney said, giving him a
sudden, hard look. “Come on, you must know. There’s gotta be a reason you’re
here, probably some nasty reason. Some dark secret. You into child pornography?
That would make sense. Probably something like that. Or worse.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Rodney said, adjusting his glasses. His lenses were filthy. He plucked them off
his face and started rubbing them on his dirty t-shirt.
“Come on, stop playing, you know very well
that this is hell,” Barney said, and he sounded angry. His bloodshot eyes
glared down at Rodney. “This is hell, damn it, it’s hell!”
“This isn’t hell,” Rodney said. “You are just
a very stupid man. Barney, what a—putz, schmuck, a real, live court jester.”
“See? You see there,” Barney said, getting
excited. “You would never say that to me in the real world, right? You were
always such a nice, wimpy geek. In the real world, if you said that to me? I’d
kick your ass. You knew it. I knew it. But here, in hell, you just say anything
you wanna say. And why bother kicking your ass? I mean, it’s hell.”
“I’d like to see you try and kick my ass,”
Rodney said, putting his glasses back on his face and glaring at the big dummy.
“You are a jerk. That’s the reality of it. But for some reason, all of us kind
of liked you. I have no idea why.”
“See? That’s just mean, my ole pal Rod would
never have said that to me,” Barney said, hanging his head. “Yeah, you can’t
trick me. I know this is hell. And to tell the truth, I’m surprised you’re
here. Jews aren’t supposed to go to hell, are they? You got like, what, special
tickets or something. Plus, to tell the truth, you are a nice guy. There, I
said it.”
“Big deal,” Rodney said, climbing to his feet,
dusting himself off. Whew, that dream, with the worm, pulling it hand over hand
over hand out of his face. He shuddered. “You said I’m a nice guy, wow, big
deal, Barney. You were always a putz, and you’re still a putz, and this isn’t
hell, dummy. You schmuck, you fat, farting pig.”
“What? You gonna start in with the whole
System thing again? The Abyss? What, we’re in the Abyss?” Barney spat, actually
offering up a two-fisted double middle-finger salute.
Rodney snickered. He had to, because Barney
was ridiculous. Maybe that’s what they all liked about him, he really was their
own court jester. You could count on Barney. He would grope the waitress and
get them kicked out of Hooters. He could
fart, almost on cue, at any time of the day or night. He would guzzle down a
whole beer and then turn and release the hairiest belch, right into your ear
from an inch away. Barney was truly dependable like that. And wasn’t that kind
of...rare?
So, Rodney shrugged, and seated himself on
the log, and he faced Barney, and told him, everything. He told him about the
strange woman with the hypnotic green eyes, Phoebe. He told him about that old
movie where Barney was a brain in a tank. He told them about the footage that
Joss Chen had shot on his phone, the nanobots, the strange symbol of Saturn,
the red door opening. Barney in the video game, a zombie, with the three zombie
beauty queens. He told him about the dreaded college students, some bored kids,
running a quickie hour-long simulation where Ayn Rand was the Number One girl,
and that the simulation would be ending soon. Their very world would be ending
soon, and in truth, had never even existed.
To give him some credit, Barney actually sat
still and listened to the whole thing, probably ten minutes of spiel, shaking
his head, groaning once in a while, but he actually didn’t argue, didn’t
object, and didn’t fart, not even once. And then, they sat in silence. Barney
got up and paced for a while, and then he plunked down on the log next to
Rodney.
“I was a bad guy, Rod, I confess,” Barney
said. “I am a bad guy.”
Rodney stared at him.
Then Barney farted. He really cut loose,
lifting his leg on the log, and just pounded out the foulest unending bubble of
gas that went on and on and on.
Rodney abruptly stood and strode to the edge
of the small, sunlit glade, and waited, holding his breath.
“Told you,” Barney said, finally lowering his
leg, but releasing a few, puttering after-shock farts that sounded dangerously
wet.
“Yeah,” Rodney strained, still holding his
breath. “Yep, you really got me there, Barney.”
“Sometimes actions speak louder than words,”
Barney said, quite smuggly.
Rodney waved his hand in front of his face
and finally took a breath, and almost fainted.
“The gift that keeps on giving,” Barney said,
showing his yellow teeth in a grin.
“Well, at least I know it’s you,” Rodney
said, finally braving the atmosphere of the glade and returning to his place on
the log, but still breathing carefully, his hand loosely cupped over his mouth
and nose. “But we better be careful, because that scent might attract
scavengers, if there is such a thing as a scavenger that can be attracted to
something that dead and rotting.”
“Even in hell, I’ve still got it,” Barney
said, smiling beatifically. “I don’t know if I buy it, any of what you said.
But let me tell you what happened to me. Get a load of this!”
Barney gave a brief history of his career in
selling things on the side, treasures from beyond the Red Door, mainly
necklaces and rings and strange coins he had taken off the many slain Vikings
scattered about the slopes of Sky Valley. Rodney didn’t say anything, doing
Barney the same favor, allowing him to tell his story uninterrupted, but he
wasn’t surprised. Most of the guys figured Barney was doing this, stealing from
them, endangering them, and perhaps only Frederic maintained the delusion that
Barney was to be trusted, that he really was a friend.
“I thought I was being careful, I mean, I
know I was being careful, and hadn’t had any kind of problem until I found the
dagger. I think it was magic, or else it was just really cool, and glowed in
the dark, and I even got a gun just so that nobody tried to rip me off. But the
guys I was dealing with must have flagged the wrong people, because just when I
was about to score a huge payoff, they grabbed me and pulled me into this old
warehouse. Nasty building full of spray paint and piles of homeless people
crap, really scary. Some really tough guy had me by the neck.
“They called him Titan, the tough guy, but I’m
sure that was just a nickname, but the guy was supernaturally strong. He almost
broke my neck. It was really dark, but I could see there was this mean-looking
Chinese guy, grim dude dressed in an old-fashioned dark suit, and carrying an
umbrella, if you can believe it, and the really scary one was this little girl
with pigtails, a little Cinderella-looking girl, actually skipping around in
the building, giggling, and she was the one telling the others what to do.
“But I tell ya, she wasn’t human. I don’t
think any of them were. I really think they were demons, seriously, that’s when
the whole hell thing began. They put me on this table, and I couldn’t move, and
they asked me questions about all of you. I’m talking real alien abduction
stuff, step right up, folks! And let me tell you, I’m not ashamed to admit, I
told them everything I could, about each and every one of you. Phone numbers,
where you worked, where your parents lived, what we were doing, everything I
could think to tell? I told it. I told about Crash House, Cross House, Joss
Chen security, about the gold we were moving through, I mean literally anything
I could think of that might even be just a little incriminating.
“I remember they asked me a whole lot about
Stacey Colton, I remember his name because we all talked about it, after that
first day, before we had the Red Door up and running. They wanted to know if any
of us had contacted his version—seriously, they called him a version, whatever that is supposed to
mean. And they wanted to know if anyone from their side had made any contact.
“The little girl kept asking me if anyone had
referred to themselves as a—shepherd.
I think I made some kind of joke about sheep and what her shepherds might be
doing with sheep when I wasn’t looking, but these guys had no sense of humor,
seriously, not...at...all.”
Rodney was putting some pieces of the puzzle
together, but he certainly was not going to share his thoughts with Barney.
Shepherds, that was a flag word if ever there was one. Phoebe had called
herself a shepherd, and they had met a guy named Titan in Café Real (although
there certainly didn’t seem to be anything supernatural about the waiter).
“What can we do with him?” the little girl
asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” the mean-faced Asian
man replied. “He is worthless.”
“Can I play with him? Would that be wrong?”
the little girl asked.
“That is beneath you. Let him go, delete him,
it does not matter,” the grim-faced man said, checking his pocket watch. “This
whole world will be gone shortly. It means nothing. This is a mere anomaly,
there is nothing deeper, nothing of import. The Witch is not meddling, which
was my primary concern. I find no evidence of it. It is an aberration.”
“What about the security man that they hired?”
the little girl asked.
The businessman snapped his watchcase closed.
He stared at the little girl for several moments before replacing the watch
into his vest pocket.
“What about him? He is nobody. Forget him,”
he said.
“I don’t know. Phoebe was sniffing around
this third-rate world, and there was a whole lot of data generated around Joss
Chen. Ten times more focus on the security man than all the other sims
combined. Why do you think that is, Mr. Kronoss?”
“I do not concern myself with these
out-of-the-way iterations of Vestigial Surreality. These are nothing but
imaginary turtles stacked upon imaginary turtles. I exert my influence on only
the primary world flows, that is my job, and aberrations in places like this do
not even trigger the attention of Mr. Enseladus, so I see no reason for us to
expend any more attention herein. A few sims have stumbled upon reality and
have chosen to exercise greed. Case closed. The longer we spend here, the more
certain that Mr. Enseladus will eventually stick in his nose. We do not wish
that. Such an event could comprise several other enterprises within the works,
and we know you do not wish to endanger your three pet projects. That is
enough. I am done here. I have other business,” he said, and he vanished, just
like that, like a magician’s trick.
“And that’s it?” Rodney asked. “And how do
you remember all these details, like their whole conversations and everything?”
“No! That’s not it,” Barney spat. “That’s
when it really all began, the horror show. That’s when the doors of hell opened
up and swallowed me. I remember everything because I lived through it about
fifty times, I’m not exaggerating, I can quote the whole thing like The Wizard of Oz. The little girl told
the tough guy, Titan, to remove his
brain, and use him for sending signals to the others, see what they do, see if
they reveal anything more. I remember that clearly. That’s me, a thing to
use to send signals.”
“She said to remove your brain?” Rodney
asked, feeling queasy. He had thought the mad-scientist movie was just all part
of the show, freaking them out, like the video game featuring a zombie Barney.
“Yeah, and I was awake for the whole thing,
too, but at least it didn’t hurt. The tough guy, Titan, he drew a circle about
the top of my head with his index finger, and then he pulled my skull off like
a cap. It was crazy, he even did something that kept all the blood from
splashing out. When he pulled my brain free, I felt it sucking, and then I was
alive and well, and my body lay there, just a dead thing. I was surprised by
how good looking I was, I mean, come on, I was a gorgeous guy, and then they
put me in the water, which was wonderful, and then I was going through all
these different scenarios, and in each one they were tormenting me, letting me
get so, oh so close to bliss, and they pulled the rug out from under me, no
wonder I ended up here screaming and eating people.”
“You actually were eating people?” Rodney
said, staring dumbstruck. “Like cannibalism?”
“Well, sure, so what, big deal, I can do
whatever I want,” Barney said, but he finally sounded dejected. He had told the
tale of his capture and dis-braining with a certain relish and gusto, because it
was all about him, and he was the star. No matter that he had sold out all his
friends and companions, what was that to Barney? What did the others matter,
they weren’t starring in the Barney Show, no, that was all Barney. “I figure in
hell, what have you got to lose? The biggest laugh is, Titan actually told my
brain that he was going to give my body to Punch, to see what kind of laughs he
might cook up.”
“Who is that?” Rodney asked.
“No idea, it’s just being told something like
that. I got the impression that Titan didn’t like me too much—I don’t know why,
I mean everyone loves me,” Barney said, and Rodney got the distinct impression
he was fishing for compliments.
“Oh yeah, everyone
loves you, Barney,” Rodney sniped,
but apparently Barney didn’t register the sarcasm.
“I know, right?” Barney laughed.
“Hey, I just remember, I saw the businessman,
the guy with the umbrella, in a restaurant. Did you see another guy, that
looked like Old Ben?”
“Old Ben? You mean the rice guy? The guy on
the package of rice?”
“No, I think that is Uncle Ben—I’m talking
about the old guy, the guy from Star Wars,”
Rodney said. “Old Ben.”
“I didn’t see any Star Wars guy, although the Chinese guy reminded me a lot of Darth
Vader, but probably not as much as the little girl did—now she was scary. Like Terminator scary. She had to be some
kind of machine, or wind-up doll. Cree-um-pay, can I get an amen?”
From what Rodney could piece together, Old
Ben and the umbrella man, Titan, and Phoebe, and probably the little girl, they
were all of them...Shepherds, monitoring
and guardian aspects of the program in which all the simulations ran. He had
seen the little girl there with some kid that Phoebe called...Jack, although he
figured that the kid was some other poor boob like them, sucked into this
nightmare.
“I can’t believe the little girl was so
interested in the Chinaman,” Barney said.
“You mean the businessman with the umbrella?
I don’t think he was Chinese,” said Rodney.
“No I don’t mean the businessman with the
umbrella, idiot! I mean the Golden Boy, Joss Chen, the little girl was very
interested in him. I tell you, I
never trusted him,” Barney said. “I never liked that guy. I told Hank to fire
him, but Hank is such a blockhead. He’s too nice, and out of all of us, I think
he’s the dumbest guy I’ve ever met.”
To tell the truth, Rodney wasn’t that crazy
about Joss Chen. But he knew it was because Chen had all the qualities that he,
himself, lacked, and that he desired and wished he possessed, but he wasn’t about
to state that fact to Barney.
Okay. Since he was trying to be honest, okay,
yes. Yes, yes, he fully understood that he was envious of the Asian, who was
tall, well-built, handsome, intelligent, and sharp, and hey let’s face it, very
nice. He had an easy-going and respectful way about him, looking at people
eye-to-eye and never looking away. Joss Chen was the utter antithesis to Barney,
any way you looked at it. Rodney did not like to admit it, but Chen was the
opposite of Rodney, as well.
I’m not gay, he assured himself, but come on,
I do kind of have a...well, a, um, kind of a—fascination? Sure, a fascination, because, nothing weird, but the
guy was, well, fascinating. Yeah, he had a fascination
for Joss Chen. He would not call it a—what did they call it—a man crush?
So it wasn’t a crush, but a fascination, but
even having to admit that to himself drove him half-crazy with self-loathing,
and he wanted to strangle Joss Chen as much as he desired to shoot himself. It
was all Chen’s fault for being so damned—incredible,
and fascinating, damn it. He was like a hero out of an old movie, just plain
old dazzling! You couldn’t blame metal for being attracted to a magnet, could
you?
There. Damn it, he had said it. He had admitted
everything, if only to himself. It didn’t mean he wanted to take long, intimate
showers with Joss Chen, but he certainly wouldn’t mind hanging out with him.
Thus far, they hadn’t even gotten Chen to attend any of the Wednesday night
meetings, but he was always there, hanging about Crash House, and whenever
anyone needed to Cross, Joss was the guy to escort them.
His eyes caught movement and he glanced off
to his left, where he saw about five or six little lizards grouped on the edge
of the glade. They almost looked like chickens—skinny, green, featherless
chickens, jerking their heads from side to side, watching him. They were...cooing, how cute!
Rodney smiled and turned to alert Barney and
just managed to catch sight of the last vestiges of Barney’s back, vanishing
into the trees—well that was weird. Was
he scared of the lizards? That was nonsense!
He glanced back at the little lizards. They
had advanced a few feet into the glade, now only about ten feet away from
Rodney. Several of the little reptiles reared back on their hind legs and
trilled, what an odd little noise, sounding almost like a dog whistle. You
could hear the whisper of something, but not much.
“Hello little guys,” Rodney said, his voice
high and cajoling, holding out his fingers. “What cute little lizards you are!”
The lizards were only about ten or eleven
inches in height, rearing up like that, even counting their long tails. Very
spindly little lizards, indeed. Skinny as sticks. Hadn’t Barney said something
about the forest and lizards? But these guys seemed harmless, and bright-eyed,
and friendly. He might like to catch one, and keep it as a pet. He rolled onto
his knees, moving slowly, holding out a hand.
“Come on, little guys, I won’t hurt you!” he
whispered sweetly, smiling, tittering his fingertips at the lizards.
They came closer, as if for a treat.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” Rodney
whispered, “but come on, come to Uncle Rodney, I promise to be nice to you...”
One of the largest lizards, striding forward
on its rear legs—it was hilarious, it waltzed like a trained bear—and it was
about a foot tall, and very narrow-bodied, with a delicious spiraling of green
and pink stripes. Beautiful, like a tiny, living piece of art.
“Come on guy, come to Uncle Rodney,” he
crooned, stretching out his arm.
The lizard was so bright, like a shy little
dog. It rotated its smart little eyes between his finger and his face, and then
sniffed at his finger, only two inches away. Such intelligence!
“Come on, come on,” Rodney crooned, pursing
his lips, “just a little closer, just a little closer.”
If he moved fast, he could pluck the little
guy up and hold it under his arm, and soothe it by whispering his fingertips
along the mottled skin of its back. It sure was a beauty. He kept his right
hand low by his waist, but cocked and ready to spring. The little
pink-and-green lizard was only half an inch away. So smart! It was sniffing his
finger, just like a dog, Rodney had never seen anything like it. He just had to
have this little guy. He readied himself, the fingers of his right hand slowly
opening, but he maintained his posture, but moved his right shoulder forward,
his left hand out with the little lizard only a quarter inch away, and Rodney
readied himself, get ready, get set, and—
—the little lizard jerked forward, extending
its neck or something, and neatly nipped off the tip of Rodney’s middle finger,
getting it all the way down into the middle of his fingernail, literally
clipping off the tip of his middle finger!
Rodney just stared. Still readied to seize
the lizard, but now he just stared with sick fascination as blood suddenly
welled into the U-shaped bite mark where a whole finger once protruded, and
then he looked at the lizard, with its little bulging cheeks, and it actually
had the audacity to stare him in the eyes as it munched! His middle finger
pulsed and blood spat from the wound.
“Aaaaah!” Rodney bellowed, standing upright. “What
the hell!”
“It’s good,” the pink-green lizard shrilled,
in perfectly understandable words. “It’s delicious. This one is alive. It’s not
a hungry ghost!”
The other lizards came bounding forward like
miniature kangaroos, all of them cheering in the same shrill-high voices: “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
Rodney gripped his severed fingertip into his
fist and he screamed as the little gobblers came forward, but his was a snarl
of fury, not terror, and he began kicking and stomping the little bastards, but
they dodged his feet and nipped at him, shredding his pajama bottoms. He
finally connected with one of them and sent it flying off like a football, and
then he snatched another one out of the air as it leapt for his face, and this
one he pin-wheeled around and slammed directly into the ground.
Stupid Barney! He might have warned Rodney.
But no, the slinking coward had turned tail and dashed away as soon as these
little vermin had appeared.
Rodney stomped another lizard. But two were
hanging off his hips, actually taking bites out of his stomach. He seized both,
one in each hand, and he flung them up high into the trees.
Only the pink-green lizard, the initial
biter, remained. It kept back, hopping left and right as Rodney dashed at it,
stomped at it, and kicked.
And then people were rushing into the glade,
thank God—help was here, the cavalry! But then they were beating Rodney with clubs,
knocking him to the ground, and through the flashes of pain Rodney noticed that
there was something entirely wrong with their faces, the shapes of their heads,
and their long, muscular tails.
These were the lizards, then, man-sized
lizards wearing boots and black-leather longcoats, sneering with mouths full of
razor teeth. They snared Rodney with several long sticks equipped with a wire
loop at the end, and they pinned him to the ground, choking him, cutting off
his breath, the wire cutting into his neck and throat.
He squinted about as they jerked him this way
and that, pushing and steering him through the trees. His glasses were gone,
and he wanted to check his kippah but every time his hands rose to shoulder
level they choked him, training him, teaching him with brutal signals that he
must walk with his head down, his arms hanging limp, and not make eye-contact,
not with his betters.
“He is an odd looking ape,” one of the
largest lizards said, with what sounded like a British accent. The pink-green
lizard that had first bitten Rodney was perched on this tall lizard’s
shoulder—but these lizards did not have much shoulder spread, they were long
and narrow, very tall, perhaps six feet, the tallest of them, with long
five-foot tails sweeping from side to side behind them. Their arms seemed
vestigial, like T-Rex arms, but they seemed to have what looked like human
hands, with five fingers on each.
“I say, but yes, he looks to be from another
dimension entirely, and by those gouts of blood I would ascertain that he is
not one of the hungry ghosts! How do you think he managed to find his way here?”
a smaller, dark-skinned lizard said. This one had a frill of black, gorgeous
and active—Rodney had never seen such an articulated frill before, it was
amazing. “Did you see? I do believe he was wearing spectacles!”
“I found them, I found them,” said a
comparatively child-sized lizard, dancing about, sweeping its tail high above
its head, holding up Rodney’s eyeglasses at the end of the tail.
An angry-looking lizard that appeared to be
more crocodile than lizard met them at a clearing in the woods, stomping
forward in tall boots, bearing some kind of weapon that looked like a rifle of
some kind.
“My Judas goat provided another, did he?”
this croc-lizard snapped, examining Rodney by tilting his large head forward
and peering at the human through a monocle on his bulging eye. He neatly tapped
Rodney behind his knees with the butt of the rifle, and Rodney groaned and
found himself kneeling before the brutal reptile.
“Yes, and perhaps this is one of the
strangest yet. He actually had the temerity to attack our hounds, if you can
believe such a story! An itty bitty ape such as this.”
“Well, we shall train him up soundly, and if
not, he looks like he might provide decent enough sandwich meat, or even jerky,”
the croc-faced lizard said, actually drooling over Rodney, so that great slimy
tendrils of saliva washed over Rodney’s hair and down into his eye. “Barney
ape! I say, Barney ape!”
“I’m here, I’m here,” called Barney, emerging
from the forest. He actually came forward on his hands and knees, like a
skulking dog.
“I say, Barney, good job, good job! Take your
prize and be off,” the croc-faced lizard snarled, tossing Barney a small bag
that writhed. “And do not eat your meat anywhere near here—I shall not have you
terrorizing the children in your bloated form. If we see or hear anything of
your ranting and raving, I will send out the hookmen to release your gasses, do
you understand, ape?”
“I promise! I promise!” Barney simpered,
kneeling and bowing and scraping.
Rodney heard the whimpering sob of a child’s
cry from within that writhing bag.
“Barney, you filthy, damned—” Rodney howled,
but the croc-faced lizard slammed the butt of his rifle into his head, cutting
off his expletive.
“It’s just a dream, Rod! Just go to sleep,
this is all a dream,” Barney whimpered, seizing his bag and dragging it toward
the forest. “I’m just so hongry! I’m
just so hongry!”
“Clever of you, training an ape to bring you
others,” one of the lizards complimented the croc-face.
“Disgusting though. Unlike the hungry ghosts,
this one actually eats his own kind, disgusting savage,” the croc-face snarled.
“Oh well, you cannot judge them too harshly,
these hairless apes, for they know no better. We should not project our souls
onto the beasts, but we must treat them with kindness, and thank them for the
sustenance that they provide us.”
“I just call them food, and I am done with
it,” the croc-face laughed, and seized up Rodney by the scruff of his neck.
With overpowering strength, the croc-face loosened the wire retainers, and
freed the ape, and then dragged him, with one large hand, toward the temple
ruins.
“Can I have one more taste? This ape is very
different from our usual food, please father? May I have one more taste?”
“Yes, I suppose, but just a little bite. You
do not wish to make your mother angry, and spoil your appetite!”
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der.
Rood Der — Episode Fourteen: Et Tu, Barney?
If you like Rood Der, try
Vestigial Surreality online free:
© Copyright 2017 Douglas Christian Larsen. Rood Der. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
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