Blood Lite

The Sound of Blunder J. A. Konrath and F. Paul Wilson

"We're dead! We're freakin' dead!"

Mick Brady, known by the criminal underground of Arkham, Pennsylvania, as "Mick the Mick," threw the remains of his shrimp egg foo yung across the cellar, then held a shaking fist in front of Willie Corrigan's face. Wil­lie recoiled like a dog accustomed to being kicked.

"I'm sorry, Mick!" Willie said through a mouthful of General Tso's chicken.

Mick the Mick cocked his fist and realized that smack­ing Willie wasn't going to help their situation. He smacked him anyway, a punch to the gut that made the larger man double over and grunt like a pig.

"Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my hernia! You know I got a bulge there!"

Mick the Mick grabbed a shock of Willie's greasy brown hair and jerked back his head so they were staring eye to eye.

"What do you think Nate the Nose is going to do to us when he finds out we lost his shit? We're not going to be eating takeout from Lo's Garden, Willie. We're both going to be eating San Francisco Hot Dogs."

Willie's eyes got wide. Apparently the idea of having his dick cut off, boiled, and fed to him on a bun with a side of fries was several times worse than a whack to the hernia.

"We'll... we'll tell him the truth." He shoved a handful of fried noodles into his mouth and crunched out, "Maybe he'll understand."

"You want to tell the biggest mobster in the state that your Nana used a key of uncut Colombian to make a pound cake?"

"It was an accident," Willie whined. "She thought it was flour. Hey, is that a spider on the wall? Spiders give me the creeps, Mick. Why do they need eight legs? Other bugs only got six."

Mick the Mick realized that hitting Willie again wouldn't help anything. He hit him anyway, a slap across his face that echoed off the concrete floor and walls of Willie's basement.

"Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my bad tooth! You know I got a cavity there! Hey, did you eat all the duck sauce? Is duck sauce made from duck, Mick? It don't taste like duck."

Mick the Mick was considering where he would belt his friend next, even though it wasn't doing either of them any good, when he heard the basement door open.

"You boys playing nice down there?"

"Yes, Nana," Willie called up the stairs. He nudged Mick the Mick and whispered, "Tell Nana yes.'"

Mick the Mick rolled his eyes, but managed to say, "Yes, Nana."

"Would you like some pound cake? It didn't turn out very well for some reason, but Bruno seems to like it."

Bruno was Willie's dog, an elderly beagle with hip dysplasia. He tore down the basement stairs, ran eighteen quick laps around Mick the Mick and Willie, and then barreled, at full speed, face-first into the wall, knocking himself out. Mick the Mick watched as the dog's tiny chest rose and fell with the speed of a weed whacker.

"No thanks, Nana," Mick the Mick said.

"It's on the counter, if you want any. Good night, boys."

"Night, Nana," they answered in unison.

Mick the Mick wondered how the hell they could get out of this mess. Maybe there was some way to separate the coke from the cake, using chemicals and stuff. But they wouldn't be able to do it themselves. That meant tell­ing Nate the Nose, which meant San Francisco Hot Dogs. In his twenty-four years since birth, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his penis. He'd miss it something awful.

"We could sell the cake," Willie said.

"You think someone is going to pay sixty thousand bucks for a pound cake?"

"I dunno. Maybe. Some people ain't so bright."

Truer words were never spoken, Mick the Mick thought.

"No junkie is going to snort baked goods, Willie. Ain't gonna happen."

"So what should we do? I—hey, did you hear if the Phillies won? Phillies got more legs than a spider. And you know what? They catch flies, too! That's a joke, Mick."

"Shaddup. I need to think."

"Okay. I don't think I like the Phillies anymore. Are they called Phillies because they're all named Phil? I think—hey, we got fortune cookies. Lemme see my for­tune."

He cracked open a cookie and pulled out a slip of paper.

"Look, it says, 'You are very wise.' I always think it's funny to add 'in bed' after a fortune. That means mine is, 'You are very wise in bed! Ain't that funny, Mick?"

"A freakin' riot, Willie. Now let me think."

Willie tossed Mick the Mick a cookie. "Open yours, Mick! Open yours!"

"How about instead I open your skull with a ball-peen hammer?"

"Do I got a fortune in my skull, Mick?" Mick the Mick cast his eyes about the basement for some sort of bludgeon, but the basement was unfortu­nately bludgeon-free. So he decided to open the damn cookie. Anything to shut Willie up. "What's it say, Mick?"

" 'You will change the world.' Yeah, right."

"No!" Willie shouted. " 'You will change the world in bed'!"

Mick the Mick couldn't think of an appropriate response, so he rabbit-punched Willie. Even though it didn't solve anything.

"Jesus, Mick! You hit my kidney! You know I got a stone there!"

Mick the Mick turned away, rubbing his temples, will­ing an idea to come.

"That one really hurt, Mick." Mick the Mick shushed him. "I mean it. I'm gonna be pissing red for a week."

"Quiet, Willie. Lemme think."

"It looks like cherry Kool-Aid. And it burns, Mick. Burns like fire."

Mick the Mick snapped his fingers. Fire, "That's it, Willie. Fire. Your house is insured, right?"

"I guess so. Hey, do you think there's any of yesterday's pizza left? I like pepperoni. That's a fun word to say. 'Pepperoni.' It rhymes with 'lonely.' You think pepperoni gets lonely, Mick?"

To help Willie focus, Mick the Mick kicked him in his bum leg, even though it really didn't help him focus much.

"Jesus, Mick! You know I got the gout!"

"Pay attention, Willie. We burn down the house, col­lect the insurance, and pay off Nate the Nose." Willie rubbed his shin, wincing.

"But where's Nana supposed to live, Mick?"

"I hear the Miskatonic Nursing Home is a lot nicer, now that they arrested the guy who was making all the old people wear dog collars."

"I can't put Nana in a nursing home, Mick!"

"Would you rather be munching on your vein sausage? Nate the Nose makes you eat the whole thing, or else you also get served a side of meatballs."

Willie folded his arms. "I won't do it. And I won't let you do it."

"Woof!"

Bruno the beagle sprang to his feet, ran sixteen laps around the men, then tore up the stairs.

"Bruno!" they heard Nana chide. "Get off the counter! You've had enough pound cake!"

Mick the Mick put his face in his hands, very close to tears. The last time he cried was ten years ago, when Nate the Nose ordered him to break his mother's thumbs because she was late with a loan payment. When he tried, Mom had stabbed Mick with a meat thermometer. That hurt, but not as much as a wienerectomy would.

"Maybe we can leave town," Willie said, putting a hand on Mick the Mick's shoulder.

That left Willie's kidney exposed. Mick the Mick took advantage, even though it didn't help their situation.

Willie fell to his knees. Bruno the beagle flew down the stairs, straddled Willie's calf, and began to hump so fast his little doggie hips were a blur.

Mick the Mick began searching the basement for some­thing flammable. As it often happened in life, arson was really the only way out. He found a can of paint thinner on a dusty metal shelf and worked the top with his thumbnail.

"Bruno, no! Mick, no!"

Mick couldn't get it open. He tried his teeth.

"You can't burn my house down, Mick! All my stuff is here! Like my comics! We used to collect comics when we were kids, Mick! Don't you remember?"

Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amaz­ing Spider-Man #146, and traced his finger up and down the Scorpion's tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out, slapped at Willie's bad tooth. Willie dropped the comic and curled up fetal, and Bruno the beagle abandoned the calf for the loftier pos­sibilities of Willie's head.

Mick managed to pop the top on the can and he began to sprinkle mineral spirits on some cartons labeled "Pre­cious Photos & Memories."

Willie moaned something unintelligible through closed lips—he was probably afraid to open his mouth until he disengaged Bruno the beagle. "Mmphp-muummph-mooeoemmum!"

"We don't have a choice, Willie. The only way out of this is fire. Beautiful, cleansing fire. If there's money left over, we'll bribe the orderlies so Nana doesn't get abused. At least not as much as the others."

"Mick!" Willie cried. It came out "Mibb!" because Bruno the beagle had taken advantage. Willie gagged, shoving the dog away. Bruno the beagle ran around Willie seven times, then flew up the stairs.

"Bruno!" they heard Nana chide. "Naughty dog! Not when we have company over!"

Willie hacked and spit, then sat up. "A heist, Mick. We could do a heist."

"No way," Mick the Mick said. "Remember what hap­pened to Jimmy the Spleen? Tried to knock over a WaMu in Pittsburgh. Cops shot his ass off. His whole ass. You want one of them creepy poop bags hanging on your belt?

Freaks me out."

Willie wiped a sleeve across his tongue. "Not a bank, Mick. The Arkham Museum."

"The museum?"

"They got all kinds of expensive old stuff. And it ain't guarded at night. I bet we could break in there, get away with all sorts of pricey antiques. I think they got like a T. rex skull. That could be worth a million bucks. If I had a million bucks, I'd buy some scuba gear, so I could go deep diving on shipwrecks and try to find some treasure so I could be rich."

"You think Tommy the Fence is going to buy a T. rex skull? How we even gonna get it out of there, Willie? You gonna put it in your pocket?"

"They got other stuff, too, Mick. Maybe gold and gems and stamps."

"I got a stamp for you."

"Jesus, Mick! My toe! You know I got that infected ingrown!"

Mick the Mick was ready to offer seconds, but he stopped midstomp.

"You ever been to the museum, Willie?"

" 'Course not. You?"

"Nah."

But maybe it wasn't a totally suck-awful idea.

"What about the alarms?"

"We can get past those, no problem. Hey, you think I need a haircut? If I look up, I can see my bangs."

Willie did just that. Mick the Mick stared at the cardboard boxes, soaked with paint thinner. He wanted to light them up, watch them burn. But insurance took forever. There were investigations, forms to fill out, waiting periods.

But if they went to the museum and pinched some­thing small and expensive, chances are they could turn it around in a day or two. The faster they could pay off Nate the Nose, the safer Little Mick and the Twins.

"Okay, Willie. We'll give it a try. But if it don't work, we torch Nana's house. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

Mick the Mick extended his hand. Willie reached for it, leaving his hernia bulge unprotected. Now that they had a plan, it served absolutely no purpose to hit Willie again.

He hit him anyway.

"I don't like it in here, Mick," Willie said as they entered the great central hall of the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

Mick the Mick gave him a look, which was pretty use­less since Willie couldn't see his face and he couldn't see Willie's. The only things they could see were whatever lay at the end of their flashlight beams.

Getting in had been a walk. Literally. The front doors were unlocked. And no alarm. Really weird. Unless the museum had stopped locking up because nobody ever came here. Mick the Mick had lived in Arkham all his life and never met anyone who'd ever come here except on a class trip. Made a kind of sense then not to bother with locks. Nobody came during the day when the lights were on, so why would anyone want to come when the lights were out? Which made Mick the Mick a little nervous about finding anything valuable.

"It's just a bunch of rooms filled with loads of old crap."

Willie's voice shook. "Old stuff scares me. Especially this old stuff."

"Why?"

" 'Cause it's old and—hey, can we stop at Burger Pile on the way home?"

"Focus, Willie. You gotta focus."

"I like picking off the sesame seeds and making them fight wars."

Mick the Mick took a swing at him and missed in the dark.

Suddenly the lights went on. They were caught. Mick the Mick feared prison almost as much as he feared Nate the Nose. He was small for his size, and unfortunately blessed with perfectly shaped buttocks. The cons would trade him around like cigarettes.

Mick the Mick ducked into a crouch, hands above his head. He saw Willie standing by a big arched doorway with his hand on a light switch.

"There," Willie said, grinning. "That's better."

Mick wanted to punch his hernia again, but he was too far away.

"Put those out!"

Willie stepped away from the wall toward one of the displays. "Hey, look at this."

Mick the Mick realized the damage had been done. Sooner or later someone would come to investigate. Okay, maybe not, but they couldn't risk it. They'd have to move fast.

He looked up and saw a banner proclaiming the name of the exhibit: elder gods and lost races of south CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA.

"What's this?" Willie said, leaning over a display case. Suddenly a deep voice boomed: "WELCOME!" Willie cried, "Whoa!" and Mick the Mick jumped— high enough so that if he'd been holding a basketball he could have made his first dunk.

Soon as he recovered, he did a thorough three-sixty, but saw no one else but Willie.

"What you see before you," the voice continued, "is a rare artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill."

After recovering from another near dunk, plus a tiny bit of pee-pee, Mick noticed a speaker attached to the underside of the case.

Aha. A recording triggered by a motion detector. But the sound was a little garbled, reminding him of the voice of the aliens in an old black-and-white movie he and Wil­lie had watched on TV last week. The voice always began, "People of Earth ..." but he couldn't remember the name of the film.

"We know little about this ancient lost race but, after care­ful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropolo­gists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion."

"Hey," Willie said, grinning. "Sounds like the alien voice from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers''

"The ancient artifact before you once belonged to an ancient shaman."

"What's a shaman, Mick?"

Mick the Mick remembered seeing something about that on TV once. "I think he's a kind of a witch doctor. But forget about—"

"A shaman, for those of you who don't know, is something of a tribal wise man, what the less sophisticated among you might call a 'witch doctor.'"

"Witch doctor? Cooool."

Mick the Mick stepped over to see what the voice was talking about. Under the glass he saw a three-foot metal staff with a small globe at each end.

"The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards have further determined that the object is none other than an ancient shamans scepter of power."

Willie looked a Mick the Mick with wide eyes. "Did you hear that? A scepter of power! Is that like He-Man's Power Sword? He-Man was really strong, but he had hair like a girl. Is the scepter of power like a power sword, Mick?"

"No, it's more like a magic wand, but forget—"

"The less sophisticated among you might refer to a scepter of power as a 'magic wand,' and in a sense it functioned as such."

"A magic wand! Like in the Harry Potter movies? I love those movies, and I've always wanted a magic wand! Plus, I get crazy hot thoughts about Hermione. She's a real fox, Mick. Kinda like Drew Barrymore in E. T. Hey, why does the wand have a deep groove in it?"

Mick the Mick looked again and noticed the deep groove running its length.

"Note, please, the deep groove running the length of the scep­ter of power. The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe that to be what is knows as a fuller ..."

A fuller? Mick thought. Looks like a blood channel. "... which the less sophisticated among you might call a 'blood channel.' The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural His­tory and Baseball Cards believe this ancient scepter of power might have been used by its shaman owner to perform sacred religious ceremonies—specifically, the crushing of skulls and ritual disemboweling."

Mick the Mick got a chill. He hoped Nate the Nose never got his hands on something like this. "What's disemboweling, Mick?"

"When someone cuts out your intestines."

"How do you dooky, then? Like squeezing a toothpaste tube?"

"You don't dooky, Willie. You die."

"Cool! Can I have the magic wand, Mick? Can I?"

Mick the Mick didn't answer. He'd noticed something engraved near the end of the far tip. He leaned closer, squinting until it came into focus.

Sears.

What the—?

He stepped back for another look at the scepter of power and—

"A curtain rod . . . it's a freakin' curtain rod!" Willie looked at him like he was crazy. "Curtain rod? Didn't you hear the man? It's, like, a magic wand, and— hey, what's that over there?"

Mick slapped at Willie's kidney as he passed, but missed because he couldn't take his eyes off the Sears scepter of power. Maybe they could steal it, return it to Sears, and get a brand-new one. That wouldn't help much with Nate the Nose, but Mick the Mick did need a new curtain rod. His old one had broken, and his drapes were attached to the wall with forks. That made Thursdays—spaghetti night— particularly messy.

"WELCOME!" boomed the same voice as Willie stopped before another display. "What you see before you is a rate artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill."

"Hey, Mick, y'gotta see this."

After some biblical thinking, Mick the Mick spared the rod and moved along.

"We know little about this ancient lost race but, after care­ful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropolo­gists here at the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion: The artifact before you was used by an ancient shaman of this lost race to perform surrogate sacrifices. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'shaman,' please return to the previous display.)"

"I know what a shaman is, 'cause you just told me," Willie said. "But what's a surrogate—?"

"A surrogate sacrifice was an image that was sacrificed instead of a real person. Before you is a statuette of a woman carved by the ancient lost race from a yet-to-be-identified flesh-colored substance. Note the head is missing. This is because the statuette was beheaded instead of the human it represented."

Mick the Mick stepped up to the display and immedi­ately recognized the naked pink figure. He used to swipe his sister Suzy's and make it straddle his rocket and go for a ride. Only Suzy's had a blonde head.

"That's a freakin' Barbie doll!" He grabbed Willie's shoulder and yanked him away.

"Jesus, Mick! You know I got a dislocating shoulder!"

Willie stumbled, knocking Mick the Mick into another display case, which toppled over with a crash.

"WELCOME! What you see before you is a rare tome of lost wisdom that once belonged —"

Screaming, Mick the Mick kicked the speaker until the voice stopped.

"Look, Mick," Willie said, squatting and poking through the broken glass, "it's not a tome, it's a book. It's supposed to contain lost wisdom. Maybe it can tell us how to keep Nate the Nose off our backs." He rose and squinted at the cover. "The Really, Really, Really Old Ones."

"It's a paperback, you moron. How much wisdom you gonna find in there?"

"Yeah, you're right. It says, 'Do not try this at home. Use only under expert supervision or you'll be really, really, really sorry' Better not mess with that."

"Oh yeah?" Mick had had it—really had it. Up. To. Here. He opened to a random page and read. " 'Random dislocation spell.'"

Willie winced. "Not my shoulder!"

" 'Use only under expert supervision.' Yeah, right. Look, it's got a bunch of gobbledygook to read."

"You mean like 'Mekka-lekka hi—'?"

"Shaddap and I'll show you what bullshit this is."

Mick the Mick started reading, pronouncing the gobbledygook as best he could, going slow and easy so he didn't screw up the words like he normally did when he read.

When he finished, he looked at Willie and grinned. "See? No random dislocation."

Willie rolled his shoulder. "Yeah. Feels pretty good. I wonder—"

The smell hit Mick the Mick first, hot and overpowering, reminding him of that time he stuck his head in the toilet because his older brother told him that's where brownies came from. It was followed by the very real sensation of being squeezed. But not squeezed by a person. Squeezed all over by some sort of full-body force, like being pushed through a too-small opening. The air suddenly became squishy and solid and pressed into every crack and pore on Mick the Mick's body, and then it undulated, moving him, pushing him, through the solid marble floor of the Arkham, Pennsylvania, Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

The very fabric of reality, or something like that, seemed to vibrate with a deep resonance, and the timbre rose to become an overpowering, guttural groan. The floor began to dissolve, or maybe he began to dissolve, and then came a horrible yet compelling farting sound and Mick the Mick was suddenly plopped into the middle of a jungle. Willie landed next to him. "I feel like shit," Willie said.

Mick the Mick squinted in the sunlight and looked around. They were surrounded by strange, tropical trees and weird-looking flowers with big fat pink petals that made him feel sort of horny. A dragonfly the size of a bratwurst hovered over their heads, gave them a passing glance, then buzzed over to one of the pink flowers, which snapped open and bit the bug in half.

"Where are we, Mick?"

Mick the Mick scratched his head. "I'm not sure. But I think when I read that book I opened a portal in the space-time continuum and we were squeezed through one of the eleven imploded dimensions into the late Creta­ceous period."

"Wow. That sucks."

"No, Willie. It doesn't suck at all."

"Yeah, it does. The season finale of MacGyver: The Next Generation is on tonight. It's a really cool episode where he builds a time machine out of some pocket lint and a bro­ken meat thermometer. Wouldn't it be cool to have a time machine, Mick?"

Mick the Mick slapped Willie on the side of his head.

"Jesus, Mick! You know I got swimmer's ear!"

"Don't you get it, Willie? This book is a time machine. We can go back in time!"

Willie got wide-eyed. "I get it! We can get back to the present a few minutes early so I won't miss MacGyverl"

Mick the Mick considered hitting him again, but his hand was getting sore.

"Think bigger than MacGyver, Willie. We're going to be rich. Rich and famous and powerful. Once I figure out how this book works, we'll be able to go to any point in history."

"You mean like we go back to summer camp in 1975? Then we could steal the candy from those counselors so they couldn't lure us into the woods and touch us in the bad place."

"Even better, Willie. We can bet on sports and always win. Like that movie."

"Which one?"

"The one where he went to the past and bet on sports so he could always win."

"The Godfather?"

"No, Willie. The Godfather was the one with the fat guy who slept with horse heads."

"Oh yeah. Hey, Mick, don't you think those big pink flowers look like—"

"Shut your stupid hole, Willie. I gotta think." Mick the Mick racked his brain, but he was never into sports, and he couldn't think of a single team that won anything. Plus, he didn't have any money on him. It would take a long time to parlay the eighty-one cents in his pocket to sixty grand. But there had to be other ways to make money with a time machine. Probably.

He glanced at Willie, who was walking toward one of those pink flowers, leaning in to sniff it. Or perhaps do something else with it, because Willie's tongue was out.

"Willie! Get away from that thing and try to focus! We need to figure out how to make some money."

"It smells like fish, Mick."

"Dammit, Willie! Did you take your medicine this morning like you're supposed to?"

"I can't remember. Nana says I need a stronger sub­scription. But every time I go to the doctor to get one, I forget to ask."

Mick the Mick scratched himself. Another dragonfly—this one shaped like a banana wearing a turtleneck— flew up to one of those pink flowers and was bitten in half, too. Damn, those bugs were stupid. They just didn't learn. He scratched himself again, wondering if the crabs were back. If they were, he'd be really angry. When you paid fifty bucks for a massage at Madame Yoko's, the happy ending should be crab-free.

Willie said, "Maybe we can go back to the time when Nate the Nose was a little boy, and then we could be real nice to him so when he grew up he would remember us and wouldn't make us eat our junk."

Or we could push his stroller into traffic, Mick the Mick thought.

But Nate the Nose had bosses, and they probably had bosses, too, and traveling through time to push a bunch of babies in front of moving cars seemed like a lot of work.

"Money, Willie. We need to make money."

"We could buy old things from the past then sell them on eBay. Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have four hands? I mean, you could touch twice as much stuff."

Mick the Mick thought about those old comics in Willie's basement, and then he grinned wider than a zebra's ass.

"Action Comics' number one, which had the first appear­ance of Superman!" Mick the Mick said. "I could buy it with the change in my pocket, and we can sell it for a fortune!"

Come to think of it, he could buy eight copies. Didn't they go for a million a piece these days?

"I wish I could fly, Mick. Could we go back into time and learn to fly like Superman?"

"Shh!" Mick the Mick tilted his head to the side, lis­tening to the jungle. "You hear something, Willie?"

"Yeah, Mick. I hear you talkin' to me. Now I hear me talkin'. Now I'm singing a sooooong, a haaaaaaaaappy soooooong."

Mick the Mick gave Willie a smack in the teeth, then locked his eyes on the tree line. In the distance the canopy rustled and parted, like something really big was walking toward them. Something so big, the ground shook with every step.

"You hear that, Mick? Sounds like something really big is coming."

A deafening roar came from the thing in the trees, so horrible Mick the Mick could feel his curlies straighten.

"Think it's friendly?" Willie asked. Mick the Mick stared down at his hands, which still held the Really, Really, Really Old Ones book. He flipped it open to a random page, forcing himself to concentrate on the words. But, as often happened in stressful situations, or even situations not all that stressful, the words seemed to twist and mash up and go backward and upside down. Goddamn lesdyxia—shit—dyslexia, "Maybe we should run, Mick."

"Yeah, maybe ... wait! No! We can't run!"

"Why can't we run, Mick?"

"Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer went back in time and stepped on a butterfly? The point is, evolution is a really fickle bitch. If we screw up something in the past, it can really mess up the future."

"That sucks. You mean we would get back to our real time but instead of being made of skin and bones, we're made entirely out of fruit? Like some kind of juicy fruit people?"

Another growl, even closer. It sounded like a lion's roar—if the lion had cojones the size of Chryslers.

"I mean really bad stuff, Willie. I gotta read another passage and get us out of here."

The trees parted, and a shadow began to force itself into view.

"Hey, Mick, if you were made of fruit, would you take a bite of your own arm if you were really superhungry? I think I would. Wonder what I'd taste like?"

Mick the Mick tried to concentrate on reading the page, but his gaze kept flicking up to the trees. The prehis­toric landscape lapsed into deadly silence. Then, like some giant monster coming out of the jungle, a giant monster came out of the jungle.

The head appeared first, the size of a sofa—a really big sofa—with teeth the size of daggers crammed into a mouth large enough to tear a refrigerator in half.

"I think I'd take a few bites out of my leg or some­thing, but I'd be afraid because I don't know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don't taste like straw? Hey, is that a T. rex?"

Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a lit­tle. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book's pages to ripple.

"I think we should run, Mick. I don't wanna be dino­saur poop."

Mick the Mick agreed. The tyrannosaurus stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn't outrun it. But he didn't have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

"The T. rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won't be able to ... Willie, come back!"

Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot, he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from Manny's Meats on Twenty-third Street, which gave a disturbingly human cry when its little neck snapped.

Behind them, the T. rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eigh­teen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature's tongue and play Texas hold 'em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close and cause terminal death, the T. rex skidded to a halt and squinted down at the dead little furry thing that used to look a lot like Sal from Manny's Meats, but now looked like Sal with a broken neck. The T. rex nudged it with its massive snout, as if it was trying to wake proto-Sal up.

"What's it doing, Mick?"

Mick the Mick had no idea. The dinosaur nosed the furry thing back and forth, back and forth. Like playing with a toy. Then it gently picked up proto-Sal and flung it across the jungle, toward Willie. It landed at his friend's feet.

"I think it wants to play, Mick." Willie picked up the limp animal. "Hey, you see this mouse thing? Looks like that butcher from Manny's. But smaller. And with a tail. And it don't got no tattoo that says 'Fillet the World.'"

"Throw it, Willie!"

Willie cocked his arm back, aiming at Mick.

"To the dinosaur, you moron!"

"Oh. Fetch, boy!"

Willie tossed proto-Sal, and the T. rex snatched it right out of the air, crunching on it like popcorn.

"He can catch, Mick! Let's throw him something else."

Mick the Mick scanned the jungle floor, quickly over­turning a large, flat rock. Beneath it was a family of small rodents who resembled the Capporellis up in 5B—so much so that he swore one even said, "Fronzo!" when he broke its little furry spine. Mick the Mick scooped it up, raising his arm to throw. But the lizard was no longer star­ing at them. Instead, the creature was bent over and sniff­ing one of the big pink, fishy-smelling flowers.

"Throw it to me, Mick! We'll play monkey in the middle!"

The 'saur stuck out its queen-size-bed tongue for a lick, and the flower chomped down on it. This sent the T. rex into a screeching, stomping, spitting fit, crushing the flower beneath gigantic talons. Then it sniffed out a similar flower and gave that one a lick.

"Now's our chance to get away, Willie. Willie!" Before Mick the Mick could stop him, Willie yelled, "Catch!" and chucked a fallen tree branch at the dinosaur. It smacked against the T. rex's head with a painful-sounding thud. The T. rex locked eyes on them and roared.

"He don't want to play no more, Mick. I don't, neither." They ran. The thunder lizard lunged after them and gained quickly—no surprise, what with it being able to cover a dozen of their steps with only one of it own.

As Mick the Mick whipped through the jungle, over­whelmed with bladder-squeezing panic, he tried to force lucidity and make his very last thought something pro­found and revelatory. Instead, all he could think of was that Brady Bunch episode in Hawaii when Greg found the cursed tiki idol.

Not a brilliant last thought, but everyone had to admit that was one of the show's best episodes. "Mick! It's not following us anymore!" Mick the Mick chanced an over-the-shoulder look and indeed the T. rex had once again abandoned pursuit. It simply stood there, staring off into the jungle, as if in deep thought. Then it dropped to the ground like it had been shot, the impact a sound of thunder.

Had some caveman killed the dinosaur? Or perhaps some rich hunter from the future on some kind of pre­historic hunting expedition? Or Nate the Nose, who had come back in time to get his money?

But another look at the Tyrannosaurus dispelled any such notion. The thunder lizard wasn't dead. It was licking itself between its legs. Really going at it, too, like a giant Jurassic dog.

"I wish I could do that," Willie said. "But he'd probably bite me."

After a good thirty seconds, the T. rex sighed loudly, balletically leapt to its feet, and became distracted by one of those dragonfly things, wandering off after it.

This T. rex was beginning to remind Mick the Mick of someone he knew. He just couldn't place who. But he was getting a flash of why the damned things were extinct.

Which gave Mick the Mick a great idea. An idea that would save their asses and make them even richer than Action Comics #1.

"Look for an egg, Willie."

"An egg, Mick? You hungry? I'm kinda hungry, too. I like my eggs sunny-side up, because they look like big yellow eyes. Then I make a smiley mouth out of bacon, and I call him Mr. Henry. Don't we need chickens to get eggs, Mick?"

"Dinosaur eggs, Willie. If we bring one back with us, we can grow a dinosaur. Just like that movie."

"Which one?"

"The one where they grew the dinosaurs."

"The Merchant of Venice?"

"Just find an egg, Willie."

"I get it, Mick. We grow a dinosaur, and we can feed it Nate the Nose so he won't kill us—"

"Shaddup and search for a damn nest."

"I'm searching, Mick. Hey! Look!"

"You find one?"

"I found one of those pink flowers that smell like fish and look like—"

Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric flowers, using a long red rope.

No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie's intestines.

"Help me, Mick!"

Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie's duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

"It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!"

A bone-shaking roar from behind them. The T. rex had lost interest in the dragonflies and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-size head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

No, the dooky was all Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream. Willie's face contorted in pain.

"I think I need a doctor, Mick. Use your cell phone. Call nine-one-one."

Mick the Mick released his friend's innards and wiped his hand on his shirt just as the T. rex leaned over them and opened its maw, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a big punching bag. He could never remember what those things were called.

"Look, the dinosaur is back," Willie groaned. "Check out the size of his epiglottis, Mick. Like a big punching bag."

The book. It was their only chance. Mick the Mick raised the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and flipped open to the same page that had brought them here. Maybe if he read the passage again, it would take them back to their time. Or if he read a little earlier, maybe they could go back to before Nana made the cake, and prevent this incredibly stupid chain of events.

"I think my kidney just fell out." Willie held some­thing red and squishy in his cupped hands. "It still hurts from when you punched me."

Mick the Mick concentrated. Concentrated as hard as he could, blotting out Willie and the T. rex and everything in this horrible prehistoric world except the words on the page.

"It looks like a kidney bean. Is that why they call them kidneys, Mick? Because they look like beans? I like beans."

Mick the Mick's hands shook, and his vision swam,

and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks, but he began to read aloud.

"Is this my liver, Mick? And what's this thing? I should put all this stuff back in." Willie dropped to his knees and began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving everything into the gaping hole in his belly.

The T. rex lowered its mouth, about to swallow them both at once.

Sweat soaked his face and stung his eyes, and the hair still left on Mick the Mick's comb-over started to curl from the T. rex's breath as its jaws began to close, but he finished the passage, reading better and faster and harder than a homeschooled foreign kid who won spelling bees. Nothing happened.

The fabric of reality didn't vibrate. The ground didn't dissolve. There was a familiar pbbbbth sound, but it was from Mick stepping on Willie's colon.

Willie flopped sideways and sprawled out onto his back, limbs akimbo, looking like he took a bath in lasagna. Mick the Mick ducked down next to him, narrowly escap­ing the snap of the dinosaur's bite. The Tyrannosaurus grunted, then opened wide for a second try.

"Mick ..." Willie panted, his breath fading. "Read ... read the part... that sent us here ... but... read it back­ward."

The T. rex snatched both of them into its jaws like a giant bulldozer, if bulldozers had jaws and could snatch people. The Really, Really, Really Old Ones book fell from Mick the Mick's grasp, and the dagger teeth punched into his legs and chest with agonizing agony, but for the first and only time in his life his dyslexia paid off, and with his last breath he managed to cry out:

"OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!"

Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded—or growing out of?—a toadstool-like thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who'd sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn't Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes—two of them on stalks—and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey cro­quette that had been rolled in seasoned bread crumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, "Mick, is that you?" but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguine.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his—

Whoa! Tentacle?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a bread-crumbed, worm-garnished, turkey cro­quette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultane­ously at the same time seem not wrong, too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, "Hi, Nana." His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie's Nana?

Of course it was, Mick the Mick had known her for years.

"There's an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else."

"Or else what?"

A new voice said, "Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?"

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He'd miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren't turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn't have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

"Oh no," Willie moaned. "I don't want to eat Micks cloaca."

"I meant your own, jerk!" the newcomer barked. "But I have a hernia—"

"Shaddap!"

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you lent your bike to.

Wait... what was a bike? "What's up, Nate?"

"That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A frisson of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?" The brick? What brick?

Mick the Mick had a moment of panic—he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about. Oh yeah. The, product. Now he remembered. "Sure, Nate, it's right in here."

He led Nate to the kitchen, where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod, but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn't have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn't know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 5B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as con­fused.

Willie was playing with his cloaca.

Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, "A'ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe . . . fer now. But you don't deliver that product like you're apposed to and it's casse­role city, knome sayn?"

"We'll deliver it, Nate," Willie said. "Don't you worry. We'll deliver it."

"Y'better," Nate said, then left with his posse.

"Where we supposed to deliver it?" Willie said when they were alone again.

Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

"The same place we always deliver it."

"Ow!" Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. "That hurt. You know I got a—hey, look!" He was pointing to the TV. "The Toad Whisperer is on! My favorite show!"

He settled onto the floor and stared.

Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, "Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake, but I'm out of flour. Could one of you boys—oh, wait. Here's some. Never mind."

A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick's brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen...

What had Nate the Noodge called it? "A frisson of malaise and apprehension." Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling, like what he was having right now.

But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching The Toad Whisperer. As soon as that was over, they'd go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madame Yoko's for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum massage. And maybe a cloac job.

The frisson of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show, he'd snag himself a piece.

For some reason he thought of an odd-shaped cookie with a prediction inside. What was it called? A prediction pastry? No, something else, something similar.

Who cared? Predictions never came true. The only thing you could count on was Nana's cake. That was always good.