The Shrinking Nuts Case Page 22

  ****

  I woke up on the cold hard floor of a jail cell. It was a standard cell; this must have been the town jail at one time. I heard moaning. It was me. I stopped moaning, but I still heard moaning, a little ways away from me.

  It was coming from the next cell. With a big effort, I turned my head so I could see through the bars. In the dim light I recognized another old buddy, Grogorath the giant. He was sized down to only about seven feet tall again. Big compared to the average human, but a midget among dragons and Cyclops. Like his buddy Mick, Grog still wore tea shirt, jeans, and no shoes, but the giant and his clothes looked to be in even worse shape than the troll. He sat leaning against the wall on the floor in the far corner of his cell, moaning with each breath.

  “Hi Grog,” I croaked.

  He stopped his moaning, managed to stand up, and stuggled to the bars to stare at me. “You alive, Jake Simon! Me be happy to see you, even without your troll hat! Me know you would come to save us.”

  “Sure,” I said. It hurt to talk, but there was nothing else for me to do. I couldn’t hardly do anything else, including moving arms or legs. I was all busted up inside and out. I probably looked even worse than Grog.

  “Me be sad too, because soon you die. Grog die too, very soon. Grog be hurt many times so Mick does what the elves want, but after tonight them not need Grog or Mick. Soon door between both worlds be open always. Elves not need troll magic anymore after this night, to keep door open. They will kill all trolls in our worlds then, because trolls could close gate. After they kill Mick they kill Mick’s family and tribe. With no more trolls to change gate, gate will stay open forever.”

  “Cheer up. I brought the magic power source with me: Margie. She’ll curse these elves back to hell.” It took me a long time to say that, a couple of painful words at a time.

  Grog shook his big shaggy head sadly. “Margie still need Mick to help set her magic free. Mick wear iron chains now, chains with spells that hold his magic. I hear others talk. Elves, Dragons, Cyclops, and others hunt Margie tonight, kill her. Then tonight Mick will open gate for last time. He open it so many times already, it stay open forever this time, so elves and elf helpers come here forever. Then they kill Mick and Grog. Then they rule your world. That be the big plan of Queen for long, long time. They let little Mick and big Mick escape so he help them do this. Mick, me, and you, we all be pawns in the evil game of the elf Queen.”

  “There must be a way to stop it,” I said. It hurt to talk, but I had to do it. “You’re a giant, do something.”

  Grog shook his head. “Me be weak little giant.”

  “If you were big again, I bet you could even clobber a Cyclops.”

  The big guy smiled, showing off his rotten teeth. “Easy job. Grog be biggest, strongest giant ever.”

  “And you could break the chains that hold Mick. You could free his magic.”

  “Maybe. But that be no good. Loranda elf magic stronger than Mick troll magic.”

  “But what if Margie uses her magic to help Mick this time?”

  “Maybe. Maybe Mick win, if Source help. Earth wild magic be strong here on Earth. Maybe what you say be good plan. But it all be no good, now Grog and Mick be little and weak.”

  There was something in my left back pants pocket that could help. I tried to move my left arm to reach it, and I hurt myself, just trying to move my stinking arm. It must be broken, I figured. But I had been getting better at talking, the more I tried, and I figured the same thing might hold with my other body parts. I tried again and I could feel my arm move, just an inch or so, but it moved, even though it felt like someone was drilling a root canal in my arm, minus any nifty Novocain. Damn, I could have used a few shots of rot-gut!

  I kept moving the arm, again and again, almost passing out from the pain, but slowly getting the job done, moving it an inch at a time. I was dizzy but I fought to stay awake. After maybe fifteen minutes, I was finally reaching my searching fingers into my back pants pocket. Yes, it was still in there. With a supreme effort, I pulled it out: the remains of a garlic-filled balloon. It was flat and torn and empty, and only slightly damp. It must have burst earlier. At least it made me stink so rotten that my captors hadn’t searched me very good, and the juice probably still protected at least my ass from elf-spells. Maybe that's why my ass seemed to be the only part of me that didn't hurt.

  “What that be, Mr. Jake?” Grog asked, watching me through the thick bars that separated our cells.

  “Garlic juice balloon,” I said.

  He smiled, showing off rotten teeth.

  “Sorry, buddy; it’s broken and the juice is all gone.”

  With that bit of news Grog sat down limply in his cell, more glum than ever.

  That was it, the last hope, the last long-shot I could think of. Now all hope was gone, not that there had been much of it anyway. I contemplated lapsing into blissful unconsciousness. Or, if I was really lucky I’d die soon, before the dragons ate me. Swell.

  “Yaaaaa,” I yelled, or at least attempted to yell, when I felt something rub my hand. My hand was on the floor near my butt, as far as I could tell, and I couldn’t see back there at all, but it had to be one of those giant rats after me, like they show in those jail movies. Or maybe it was one of those weird purple frogs the elves brought. Painfully I tried to move my hand away, and it did actually move a whole inch or so, but then there it was again: a light scraping touch, damp and rough like sandpaper.

  Actually, it felt familiar. “Prince?” I asked, hardly believing that it could possibly be him. But he walked around to where I could see him, despite only the dim Moon-light that came in through the barred windows, strutting like he owned the world, the magnificent, beautiful little bastard! Then he sat down and started licking himself; paws, legs, privates, everywhere he could reach, like he had all the fucking time in the world. Why not? He was small enough to probably be ignored by bad guys and to walk between the jail cell bars.

  “Where’s Vinnie and the others?” I asked, even though it hurt like crazy to even whisper. “Are they here?”

  “Jake bad,” he said, as plain as anything, which didn't address my question at all.

  “Yeah, yeah. Nobody else is here, just you, right? Do you have a message for me, or did you just come here to screw with my head?”

  The cat yawned and stretched, like it was in no hurry to do a damn thing, just to drive me nuts, I figured. Then he started playing a message recorded by his mob cat collar. “Jake,” said Vinnie’s voice, almost in a whisper. “If you get this we’re hiding like rats. There’s dragons and other big weird monster shit out here, looking for us. I figure it ain’t going to be too long before they find us. I got Tiny and the witch and the cat with me, but nobody is worth shit. Tiny mixed it up with some kind of one-eyed giant and actually took the monster out, but he’s broke up bad inside. I don’t think he’ll last the night. Margie the witch ain’t no witch at all! She’s been cussing all damn night with no results, except to bug us. She does have great legs and cleavage though; you were right about that much. Then there’s the damn cat. I’ll send him to find you though, that’s what I’ll do. Bring help if you can, Jake. That’s all. Go cat! Find Jake. Bring help from Jake.”

  Then there was silence. The message was over.

  OK, so I was wrong before about all hope being gone; NOW all hope was gone. Glad to have that one straightened out. On the plus side, one of my key observations on life was confirmed. Even if you think things are already as bad as they can get, there's usually plenty of room for them to get even worse, and they usually do. QED.

  The cat yawned and scratched himself. I wished I could do that, but yawning would upset my broken ribs, and scratching myself was only a dim exotic memory. At the very thought of scratching, I started to itch like crazy in a dozen places. I'd have given all my money from Marks to have one of those nifty bamboo back-scratchers, and an arm that worked good enough to use it on myself.

  “Shit,” I said, though pain
shot through me from even doing that. “Prince, record what I’m going to say and play back it to Vinnie. I’m held prisoner with the giant and the troll. I’m hurt bad; can’t move an inch. I’d like to help you guys out, but I can’t even scratch my own ass. I’ll be fed to a dragon soon. How about YOU sending help to ME! Garlic juice might help Grog, if you can spare some. Get me garlic juice, Vinnie!”

  “Take that to Vinnie, cat,” I said. “Go now!”

  The cat never gave any further indication it knew that I was alive, though of course I wasn’t very alive. Did it record anything at all? I had no idea. It yawned and licked its own butt for a few minutes, then stood up, stretched, and slowly walked out of sight.

  For the next hour or so I dozed or watched Grog doze. What a dumb way to spend the last minutes of your life, I thought, when I was thinking at all. It was getting pretty late at night, I figured. Sometime soon the hunting parties would return and I’d be a late night snack for an overgrown lizard. I'd probably be lucky enough to wake up as I was being stuffed into the mouth of a hungary dragon. Elaine would be better-off without me though, that’s for sure. That’s the only up-side about this that I could think of, and it wasn’t all that much of a plus, from my point of view. Maybe she and Joe would get together, I thought, but then I remembered that a dragon already got Joe. Shit.

  Maybe I'd be with my Mom and Pop again after I died though, that part would be good. And my Aunt Millie. It was mostly due to Aunt Millie that I never took up smoking. Smoking had killed her husband and then her and she would have killed me if I ever smoked. Besides, I noticed that girls that smoked tasted terrible when you kissed them, so I figured that guys that smoked must taste terrible to girls. The last thing I needed was to taste terrible to girls. None of that mattered now, but now I wondered about how the smoking thing played out in heaven. Did they have smoker and non-smoker parts of heaven? Mom, Pop, and Aunt Millie all smoked. Would we end up in different parts of heaven because of that? Could I have a nice fedora in heaven? And my Smith and Wesson? Would I be able to regrow my mustache there? Those kind of questions weren't ever answered by even the Greeks or Shakespeare, as far as I knew. While I was in that library with Elaine I should have checked that stuff out, just in case I was to get wacked and knowing about it came in handy. But a guy has his limits, and I was getting close to mine. I was dying and I knew it.

  Then in the dim moonlight I noticed the cat. It sat down in front of my face again and simply stared at me with its mocking cat eyes. Probably it had never gone to look for Vinnie. More likely he had been sleeping on the other side of my cell where I couldn’t see him the whole damn time, the lazy little bastard. Something about him was different though, and I strained eyeballs and my fuzzy brain to figure out what it was.

  Suddenly I figured out what it was. The cat must have gone back to Vinnie after all! Even in the dim moonlight I could see what he carried! “Hey giant, there’s two garlic juice balloons tied to the cat,” I said to Grog, as loud as I could, though it was only a whisper. “Tied to the cat’s collar.”

  Grog didn’t answer me. He was fast asleep and snoring a hell of a lot louder than I could whisper, the big stupid bastard, though you got to admire a guy that can sleep so good even under those kinds of circumstances.

  “Cat, wake up Grog and give him the balloons,” I said. The cat stretched, scratched behind its left ear, scratched behind its right ear, and then started licking his damned privates again. Not that I could blame him; hell, if I could lick myself like that I’d probably do it 24-7, but right now everything including the fate of the world, and more important, my own sorry hide, depended on the stupid damn cat getting garlic juice to Grog. “Go wake Grog,” I said, several times, though every breath and syllable caused excruciating pain.

  Finally the cat stood up, stretched by arching its back and extending its legs, and then walked slowly out of sight again. He probably got himself out of my sight so he could lick his balls in peace, I figured. “Damn cat,” I commented, with my last strength. I needed a loyal dog like Lassie or something, that’s what I needed, something that did what you told it to do, but I only had a stupid black mob cat that hated my guts. A guy has his limits, and I had reached mine. I blacked out.

  Next thing I noticed, I was being picked up by a giant hand and lifted up through space where there used to be a jail-cell ceiling. Then there was a huge ugly face looking down at me in the moonlight, and it wasn’t an ugly hungry dragon like I expected. It was an ugly giant. A familiar, smiling, ugly giant with rotten teeth and garlic breath.

  The cat’s garlic juice had apparently cancelled the magic spells on Grog, and he had reverted to his natural size, at least ten-tons worth, and broke into my cell. That silly conservation of mass business that Elaine had once mentioned didn’t hold once again, since he wasn’t eating me due to hunger. He stood quietly for a minute, listening with his giant ears. I couldn’t hear anything, but I figured that his giant ears could hear plenty.

  “Loranda be gone now,” he whispered. “Now be the time, Mr. Jake!”

  With a mighty roar he smashed through stone walls to the outside. He still held me gently in one hand as with the other he picked up a huge boulder that had been part of the prison wall, just in time to crush several dwarf guards that had the misfortune to investigate the ruckus.

  The Cyclops guarding Mick, when Grog found him, charged at us with an iron club bigger than me, roaring with rage, dragging poor Mick along with him. Grog sat me down on the ground and charged the Cyclops head-on, closing so fast that the Cyclops club-swing was off-target, then grabbing the creature’s own club away from him and using it on the one-eyed giant. He smashed its head to mush, judging from the sound. I was glad there wasn’t enough light for me to see the gory details, though I was probably already much too sick to puke anyway.

  The giant knelt next to Mick, and give him sips of garlic juice from the second balloon. “Emmm,” Mick grunted, with increasing vigor. Finally the troll grabbed the balloon from Grog and popped the whole thing into his mouth, chewed it with his rotten teeth, and swallowed it.

  As the garlic juice canceled out elf spells Mick grew rapidly in size, including his clothes, and the irons holding him to the dead Cyclops creaked and popped off of him one by one. Another huge smiling face even uglier than Grog’s was soon looking down into mine. Under the circumstances, I was glad to see it.

  “Jake! You save me! I always know you come!” he said. There was a huge smile on the troll’s ugly face. His black eyes twinkled, dancing with power. Then the dummy hugged me and I blacked out, probably as much from the guy’s stinking garlic breath as from pain and shock.

  The next part was like a dream. I heard voices, and then my whole body burned like it was on fire. Next thing I know, I was standing there looking down at Mick, who was lying on the ground, still huge but totally exhausted. Grog paced nearby brooding. The giant looked down at me and for a moment and cracked a smile, but then he looked at Mick and shook his head sadly. The cat stood nearby, also watching. A nice peaceful scene, but it wouldn’t be that way for very long. Loranda surly must have been summoned by now, and would show up with her goons at any moment.

  “Come on, Mick, what gives?” I asked the troll. “That Loranda bitch and her friends must be coming to get us by now. Are you ready to fight her again? I don’t think so! You look terrible, what happened to you? Hell, you’re still big but you look weak again!”

  Then I realized why. The troll had fixed my broken body with his magic, but it had taken a lot out of him. I must have been really messed up. Now I was fit as a fiddle, except I still needed to regrow the mustache. I still had no weapons or back-scratcher but I felt fine. Mick couldn’t even stand up now, the idiot. For sure he couldn’t battle elf queens, or even run away from them.

  “Come on Mick, we have to run off and find my mob buddies. Maybe they have more garlic juice.” I pulled up on a limp arm, but it was like trying to lift a truck. He had to weigh as much as an elephant, a bi
g fat one at that.

  Mick shook his big ugly head and spoke weakly. “Grog take you away now, Jake. I fix you good, you live now. I stay and slow down Loranda bitch, you go save yourselves and your friends. Run far away. My friends Grog and Jake will be safe.”

  “Leave you here to face that Loranda bitch alone? No damn way!” I protested.

  With great effort the troll lifted his head to look directly at Grog. “I order that you go, my old friend,” he said to the giant firmly. “You take Jake, save you, save Jake.”

  Mick stood there, not sure what to do, huge tears dripping from his eyes. He reached down towards me slowly, then stopped, his huge hands closing into fists, a determined look slowly forming on his ugly giant face. “No,” he said, simply, as he bent down over his big friend.

  Grasping the massive, slumping troll by a hand and an ankle, and with a lot of grunting and groaning, Grog heaved Mick up into the air and over his shoulders in fire-man-carry fashion. Then with his free hand he scooped me up. “Cat, find Vinnie,” he ordered, with his rumbling voice.

  With that, we were off. We moved steadily across the moon-lit Arizona landscape. I assumed that Grog was following Prince, but it was too damn dark for me to tell, as I couldn’t very well see or hear the damn sneaky cat. I thought that several times I caught a glimpse of the cat a little ways ahead of us, a dark little shadow slinking steadily through boulders, giant alien mushrooms, and brush, but I couldn’t be sure. Grog, on the other hand, had eyes as big as saucers and ears as big as an elephant’s. The moonlight and quiet little cat footsteps were more than enough for him.

  After maybe fifteen minutes, there has a loud clamor far behind us: inhuman roaring and screaming, mostly. I figured it was Loranda and company, arriving at their headquarters and finding out that we had escaped. We had a head-start, but not much of one. We had to keep moving.

  Aside from a groan once in a while, Mick was silent, but Grog’s breathing got louder and loader. Even his great strength was already giving out from carrying the big troll up and down rocky hills and gullies. Me, I felt fine. I would have offered to walk myself instead of being carried, but I knew it wouldn’t have made any difference, I was so small. Besides, especially in the dark and with boulders, brush and mushrooms, on foot there was no way I would have been able to keep up with the giant.

  The next bad-guy we ran into was another Cyclops, and he did no better than the first one. Without even putting his passengers down, Grog pulled the iron club from his belt with one hand and batted away the boulder that the Cyclops flung at us, and then brained the one-eyed giant.

  Maybe two minutes later Grog put me and Mick down. At first I thought he was simply catching a well-deserved breather, but then he turned to face the way we came and pulled out his club. In the moonlight a dozen huge, black, bat-winged, T-Rex sized lizards were flying towards us, breathing red fire, eyes glowing red.

  “GROAAAAGGHH,” roared Grog, in challenge to the dragons, as he positioned himself away from where Mick and I were sitting behind rocks.

  The dragons reared and spit fire in return, as the lead beast swept down towards Grog, talons reaching down like those of a gigantic eagle with two pairs of legs.

  Pushing his way through a wall of dragon fire, Grog’s iron club met the creature’s head, and dragon and giant went down together in a tangled pile of flailing black dragon and giant limbs. They rolled around for a few seconds, roaring, limbs kicking and smashed mushroom parts and squashed purple toads flying all-over, then Grog stood, holding the limp body of the dragon over his head, and threw it at the next attacking dragon, knocking it also to the ground, where he clubbed that one senseless.

  That was two dragons clobbered already but there were ten left. The dragons landed in a circle around him. They folded their great wings and advanced on Grog, walking-four footed, huffing plumes of red fire, great jaws snapping. Grog was everywhere, swinging the big iron club in an attempt to hold them back, but they closed in wherever grog wasn’t, like a pack of snarling wolves. Three of the black beasts pounced on Grog at once, one receiving a clubbed-head for its trouble, but the other two pushed Grog down on his back and piled onto him.

  “POWERRRRR OF THE LIGHT!” cried out Mick. He stood himself up on wobbly legs, and pointed a huge fist at the dragons attacking Grog. Orange and blue light burst from the troll’s fist with a thundering flash, and the two dragons on Grog were thrown off and clean out of the circle.

  The remaining circle of dragons, surprised, paused in their attack, while Mick, his strength again spent, sank to his knees. There he was met by Prince, rubbing against him.

  “Damn cat,” I complained, as I scrambled to get him away from the teetering troll, who looked like he was ready to collapse again. A squashed cat wouldn’t do us any good in these circumstances, I figured. Meanwhile, behind me, the dragons were ganging up on poor Grog again. As I picked the cat up and scrambled away from the troll, I noticed there was yet another balloon tied to the cat. The sneaky little bastard had another full garlic balloon! Vinnie must be close!

  Snatching the putrid thing off the cat, I dashed back and tried to reach up into Mick’s mouth with it, but with a moan he first toppled over backwards. I scrambled up onto his big stomach, making for the open mouth, but a huge dragon was suddenly towering over us, looking from me to Mick and me again, clearly confused due to having two things at once to attack. Maybe legends about their wisdom were exaggerations.

  I was confused too. If I threw the balloon in the lizard’s face it would probably retreat for a bit, and I’d be safe, if I moved fast. If I got the balloon into Mick, the reaction might take a little while, maybe too long to save anybody. On the other hand, if I broke the balloon over myself, it would almost for certain keep the lizards and everything else off me long enough for me to totally get away. On the other-other hand, if I didn’t do something damn quick the dragon would eat me.

  Mick’s big belly where I stood was heaving around, not giving me the firmest of footing, but I took the best NBA Oscar Robertson type jump-shot I could with the balloon. As a little kid I had loved to see old re-runs of the Big-O make those shots on TV, lining up his body just right and then gracefully jumping up and pushing the ball up so that it arched towards the basket. My Pop had shown me those re-runs; it was one of my best memories of my Pop. I had practiced this shot for years in my office, hitting my wastebasket with wads of paper and other assorted trash at least nine-out-of-ten times. Now all of that valuable practice paid off. The balloon disappeared into the troll’s mouth.

  Jumping up like that must have gotten the dragon’s attention though, since its jaws shot down at me. If I were a real basketball player with decent hang-time I would have been dragon food. As it was, it missed biting off my head by at least an inch and I landed on Mick, then rolled off of him, got up and sprinted towards the dragon. I ran between its legs then off to one side, cussing at it loudly as I went, to keep its attention.

  I hoped it would follow me away from Mick but hoped equally hard that it wouldn’t. I got my wish. The dragon spun around and was after me in moments, roaring fire in rage.

  I only got about twenty yards when I tripped over a mushroom or something in the near-darkness and went down hard. Rolling with the fall and looking up I could see the dragon’s dark silhouette over me, blocking out the moon, roaring in triumph as its giant jaws came dropping down towards me. I prepared to roll away but I knew I would be too late. This time the lizard had me.

  I shut my eyes and there was a terrible crashing sound, but I noticed that I was still alive. That was a really pleasant surprise. Opening my eyes, I saw that the dragon was moving away from me, falling backwards. In the dim light I had the impression that something had jumped on it and knocked it away from me, and was now whopping the tar out of it.

  The dragon soon collapsed to the ground and lay still, and a short, wide, elephant-sized something stepped away from it. It had glowing eyes and when it bent over me I noticed it had putrid, rotten, gar
lic breath. "ME STRONG AGAIN!" roared Mick, happily.

  At the time, Grog was buried under a half dozen dragons. Roaring, Mick jumped onto the pile of dragons, his big fists swinging. Dragons were soon flying without even using wings. Grog helped Mick stand up and they stood back-to-back, roaring with laughter, knocking the lizards silly when they got close. In a matter of minutes there were only the two of them standing, aside from a couple of wobbly-legged dragons that didn't have enough brains to fall down.

  "Like old times!" said Grog, happily. The two of them hugged and gave each other high-fives. I ran towards them but stopped short when bright green light suddenly shined down on us from above.

  "Very impressive," said Loranda, from over-head. She floated in the air above us, forty feet above the ground, surrounded by green, shimmering light. She was ugly as ever. "But troublesome. If I didn't need you for one last permanent gate opening, I'd incinerate you now, Mickahl Al Calger. Things were easier when your tiny little self drew power from the human witch and kept opening the gate every week-day during bank hours, thinking that your big troll self still had to escape from the prison in our world. Instead, those gate openings unknowingly allowed me and my followers to invade Earth. As to your oaf of a friend Grogorath, I think that we can do without him right now."

  From Loranda's fingers a blast of green lightning erupted, striking poor Grog dead center, knocking him off his feet. I was knocked off my feet too, from the concussion. Nothing living should have survived that blast, but after a few moments Grog sat up, though he was smoking, beat up and moaning. Biting fire breathing dragons and power blasts from witches seemed to only give him superficial wounds or daze him. In response Loranda shrugged and waved her arms, and from out of the darkness a half dozen massive Cyclops advanced on the stunned giant with raised wooden and iron clubs.

  "No," roared Mick, and again with the sound of thunder, blue lightning shot from his eyes and knocked the Cyclops all flat.

  "Thank you," said Loranda, laughing. “I wanted you to use up more of your power.”

  At that there was a repeat of the Precinct battle, Loranda's green power beam against Mick's blue one. They were again pretty even, to start with. But now there was a second cast of characters, slugging it out. The dragons and Cyclops were revived enough to again attack. Grog was soon being over-powered again and Mick had to keep diverting some of his blue lightning to knock them back from either Grog or himself.

  Every time he did that, the part of his flame that pushed against the elf’s flame was weakened and Loranda laughed and pushed harder, driving her flames closer and closer to Mick.

  I could do the math. Mick was giving it everything he had but a guy has his limits. It was only a matter of time.

  I had found some nice desert throwing-rocks and chucked some of them at the elf bitch, but they simply bounced off the green light that surrounded her, without even getting her attention. I tried cussing at her myself, but she ignored that too. I would have thrown the cat at her but the little bum was again nowhere in sight, not that I could blame him.

  All my useless carrying on did manage to get the attention of a Cyclops. I noticed him when he got close enough for the ground to be shaking. I leapt to one side as his giant cloven foot came down where I had been standing a moment before, and then ducked the gigantic wooden club that he swung at me. I figured to scramble up off the ground and run for it when I noticed that a several creep deep ring of elves and dwarves had formed in the shadows, surrounding the battling titans and myself. I had no place to run.

  By then I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to my Cyclops. I looked around and saw a monster hand coming at me too fast to dodge.

  That’s when the Cyclops blew up. The huge hairy arm and the hand attached to it that had been reaching for me slammed down to the ground next to me, one end of it a mass of torn, bloody flesh and broken bone. Meanwhile, the dwarves and elves were scattering and screaming, and dropping by the dozens in a hail of gunfire.

  “Far fucking-out,” shouted a familiar voice.

  “Vinnie?” I said.

  Out of the gloom a couple of dozen gun-toting thugs in messed up dark suits advanced through the swarm of fleeing dwarves and elves, mowing them down. Wide-shouldered Vinnie shared the lead, only a step or two behind a black cat.

  A big lout with a still smoking rocket launcher strode next to Vinnie. “I used the right kind of rocket that time, right Jake?” he said.

  “Joe?” I said. It couldn’t be, but it was! “Joe fucking Kebony,” I shouted joyfully!

  The big lug gave me a hand-up off the ground. “You still owe me fifty,” the bastard said.

  He looked and smelled a little singed, but he looked so good I might have kissed his ugly mug or something, but for the small distraction of dragons and Cyclops regrouping and coming at us, and Dwarf and elf spears and arrows flying out of the darkness. We lost several men right away, and were forced to flee into the shelter of nearby rocks.

  Dragons were blasting red flame and Cyclops were heaving giant boulders at us. We were soon out of rockets, and small arms fire and garlic balloons were mostly just pissing them off as they advanced on us. More deadly arrows and spears rained down from the sidelines from the dwarves and elves. We were getting whacked.

  Fifty yards away, through the advancing monsters, I could see that Mick and Grog were somehow still fighting on, but the end was near for them too, even though the mob had bought them a little time. A big ball of mostly green elf-light was slowly but steadily advancing towards Mick, while a couple Cyclops were beating up on poor exhausted Grog, laughing as they did it.

  “Where is Margie?” I shouted at Vinnie, though the noise.

  “Back a little ways,” said Vinnie, after he squeezed off another shot. “Didn’t you get my message? She don’t have no magic.”

  “Bull shit!” I shouted back. “That was then, before Mick was free. She needs to try again. Saving the troll is our only chance.”

  Vinnie actually shrugged, which is damn hard to do while machine-gunning a Cyclops and dodging an elf arrow. I guess it was his way of saying he was busy at the moment.

  I turned to the cat, who was sensibly cowering in back of a big rock at the moment.

  “Take me to Margie, Prince. Now.”

  “Bull shit,” the cat said back to me wisely, using my own recorded voice, as a spear bounced off his rock. Who said cats are dumb?

  “If we stay here we’re dead,” I said, trying to reason with the mangy little fur-ball.

  It worked, or maybe he simply decided to flee the battle scene at that point to save himself. Meowing, he shot away into the darkness, with me in awkward pursuit.

  “Kid,” I heard Vinnie yell. “Message for Snake: tell him to go ahead with plan B, right away!”

  I had to go through a couple of dwarves, which felt damn good, feeling their chins break beneath my fists, and watching them go down for the count.

  When I looked around, the fucking cat was gone.

  I didn’t have giant ears and eyes to track him. “Cat!” I said, in a loud whisper.

  I heard a meow from somewhere ahead, and I ran towards it, tripping over rocks, bushes, mushrooms, purple frogs and other stuff I couldn’t make out good in the dim light, which suited me fine. Then again I had no damn idea which way to go. But then I heard another meow, and so forth.

  After a couple more minutes of stumbling around in the dark a couple of black-suited men suddenly appeared and were sticking gun barrels into my ribs. Under the circumstances I was glad to see them. “Who the fuck are you?” asked one of them.

  “Jake,” said Margie, before I could reply, as she dashed up to me from the shadows and gave me a hug. “Where’s Vinnie?”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” said another familiar voice. Snake appeared with maybe a dozen other armed men. “It’s the Kid. Vinnie was supposed to rescue you, Jake. So what happened?”

  “There’s big trouble. I came to get help,” I said. “Margie has to go
help the troll fight the elf queen.”

  “I tried,” said Margie. “I don’t have any magic.”

  “That’s right,” said Snake. “The magic deal is a bust, and they’re too strong for us without it. The plan now is that we cut our losses. We regroup, get more guns and garlic, and attack again in a few days. Vinnie insisted on going back to get you, or we’d be gone already.”

  “No way,” I said. “They’ll have the gate to Fairy Land open for keeps by then, and let in hordes more dragons and what-not. If they ain’t stopped tonight, they won’t ever be stopped.”

  “Sorry Kid, the decision’s already been made. Didn’t Vinnie say anything when you left him?”

  “He said to tell you to go ahead with plan B right away, whatever that means.”

  “Shit,” said Snake.

  “So what’s plan B?”

  “We take off now, to fight again another day, just like I said. Full retreat, that’s plan B.”

  “What about Vinnie and the others?”

  “They’ll hold off the bad guys while we get away.” Until they were dead, he didn’t have to add.

  “No fucking way,” I protested. “We all go after Vinnie and the others, right now. We take Margie with us to help the troll, using her magic. That’s our only hope to win this thing!”

  Snake shook his head angrily. “Listen Kid, Vinnie and me are buddies from way-back, but this is the way he wanted it and this is the way it’s going to be. He’s dying for you, do you understand? This is your damn fault for getting snatched in the first place! Don’t give me no shit about it or I’ll drop you right here and now, I don’t give a fuck whose boyfriend you are.”

  I slugged him. My right uppercut, a good one. Snake went flying. A dozen burly hands grabbed me, and a couple of hard mobster fists made acquaintance with my own jaw.

  “Get away from him, all of you,” Margie shouted.

  For the next few seconds we were treated with the entertaining spectacle of a dozen mob toughs being flung away from me by forces unseen; they were flying, stumbling, and rolling away from me. The look of astonishment on all their faces was precious.

  Snake was the first to speak. “I’ll be damned!” Wide eyed, he looked at Margie. He smiled. He looked at me, and felt his chin, and shrugged.

  “I told you she has magic,” I said. “I had to slug you to make her show it. Now that the troll is loose she has plenty of powers. Now let’s go find Vinnie and win this thing.”

  Less than two minutes later about thirty of us hit them with rockets and machine guns, blowing apart a couple dragons and Cyclops and scores of dwarves and elves. Margie wanted to try out some things on the hordes of bad guys herself but I told her to focus on one thing: helping the troll. The troll was the key to everything.

  Poor Mick was on his knees, with Loranda’s ball of green power pressing down on him just above his head, when Margie let loose. “Let him be, elf bitch,” she shouted with an impossibly loud and powerful voice. “You won’t hurt him.”

  The green ball of elf fire dimmed and shrunk away into nothing, and Loranda turned to face her new foe, eyes big and glowing and smiling so that we could see her big sharp teeth. “Have it your way, human. He doesn’t have anything left. I’ll finish with him after I finish with you!”

  The green fire shot from her fingers at Margie! “No!” she shouted, just in time to stop it as it struck her, but she was knocked off her feet. “Eat shit,” cursed Margie, gamely, as she sat up, and a big clod of poop materialized and shot towards Loranda, only to be diverted away by the green light before it reached its target.

  “Upstart!” shouted the elf queen, “I’ve been doing this for ten thousand years! Did you think you could defeat me with a piece of dung flung by your wild Earth magic?”

  I didn’t. But while all that was going on a certain black cat was giving our two last garlic-balloons to a tired troll, and I was sneaking up on the elf bitch with something I had been almost dying to try out all night. It was my super-water gun, which Margie had been carrying for me since the dragon got me, all pumped up and ready. There was only a quart of garlic juice left in it, but I figured it would be enough.

  The thing was supposed to shoot over fifty feet into the air, and it worked perfect. “This one’s for Henry,” I shouted, as the stream of stink juice rose towards the witch. She screamed when the stream hit her ugly face, after passing through the green light like it wasn’t there, just like I figured. I kept pumping the juice onto her non-stop. The green ball of light dimmed as more stink-juice hit her, but she looked down at me, eyes flashing hate, white teeth showing as she snarled at me. The juice bothered her, sure, but didn’t stop her. Mostly it just pissed her off.

  She raised an arm and pointed at me, and I could see her lips starting to form words, as she glowed green brighter than ever. Maybe she was going to blast me to bits or turn me into a toad or something neat like that, I’ll never know. At that moment a tremendous ball of blue fire erupted from Mick and engulfed her.

  “Die, bitch!” shouted Margie, from where she sat, adding her magic to Mick’s in the form of a massive white lightning bolt that shot out from her finger tips to strike the already staggering elf witch.

  There was a huge clap of thunder that knocked me down again, and Loranda was gone. Some white ash floated down on me, and I brushed it off as best I could. Sure, I was wearing a torn-up outfit already covered in blood and dirt and cat hairs, but I didn’t want no part of that crazy elf witch bitch MOM on me, even in the form of her ashes.

  Vinnie gave garlic juice from another squirt-gun to Grog to drink and he was soon well enough to help Mick mash and chase off the remaining dragons and Cyclops, but they were running away anyhow. With Loranda vaporized they were both defeated and free. The mob toughs took out some of the retreating elves and dwarves, but most of them also disappeared into the night. No longer sustained by spells, giant alien mushrooms and the other weird stuff was rapidly withering away and turning to dust. What was left was good old fashioned American desert, grade triple-A.

  “End of story,” I pronounced.

  Mick went around healing folks then, including Tiny. The big mob guy was busted up bad, but Mick pulled him through, just like he had done for me. With Margie and garlic juice there to help him keep up his strength, Mick even fixed up scores of hurt dwarves and elves, which gained him plenty of respect in their eyes, I could tell. Meanwhile I was able to phone Elaine, and tell her that things were OK. Better than OK, now that the stinking shrinking nut case was at last closed for good. I told her to look for Grisim and get another check from him. The case was over. About damn time, I figured.

  One of the mob guys handed me my missing-in-action Smith and Wesson revolver and I was happy to get it back. I checked it for rounds. Not a shot had been fired with it, despite all the fighting. That was typical of my experience with guns; they usually aren't even there when you need them. I was happy to have this one back though, as I liked having the damn thing around even if I never used it much. It used to be my Pop's gun. It was the only thing of his that I had.

  Then we all went to sleep, then and there in the desert on the sandy ground, we were so damned exhausted. It was a warm night, and we even heard some coyotes, happily howling at the moon. I sort of felt like howling myself, but I was too damn tired.

  ****