JMJ
Chapter Two
Death Knocking
"Boss? Hey, Boss?"
The warped sound of Billy's voice was making me sick…
No, I just was sick. Mostly Billy's voice was making me irritated. I shook, crumpling tighter with my back against the couch and my hair falling limply over the front of the cushions where my head was almost over the edge. My boots dug between two cushions. In between all this, the rest of me felt like a big sack of goo. I swallowed on goo. I breathed on goo. It wasn't like a cold or a fever or eating something bad. It was something else. Something I never felt before.
If I had not been already clutching my chest so hard I could feel my ribs through my clothes, I might have thought my bones had turned into mush. I couldn't open my eyes at first. I could barely move my head even though I could feel sticky drool next to my cheek. My teeth felt like they were going to fall out of my melting skull. My guts felt like they already fell out of place and were free-floating in a fishbowl.
The only thing I could think clearly was that I wished Billy would go away.
"Ace? Are you awake at all? Can you hear Billy?"
I moaned.
"Is that a 'yes', Ace? Billy was told that he wants to know how you are."
The other guys had put him up to it. The thinking gears started working again if only sluggishly. My brain was more like mush than playing any amount of games in the arcade all night long could ever do.
"What do you want?" I gurgled.
"Uh… oh! Are you, okay, Boss?"
"Yeah, sure, I'm great, Billy," I moaned. "Go away."
He hesitated. I could feel his huge bulk lean over me. He raised his arms twiddling his fingers or something.
"You deaf, Billy?" I warned, but I'm sure I didn't sound intimidating; even for Billy this probably made the situation look worse.
"No," he said nervously.
"Then what part of scram don't you understand?" I wavered in a voice that came out squeaky and horrible.
"Duh… okay, Boss."
He shuffled across the floor. I heard the door open and slam candidly shut behind him.
"The Boss says he's okay," Big Billy's voice echoed from outside.
There was silence, shuffling, and uncertainly. I opened a weak eye and my vision was so blurred at first it hurt to see like that. Closing my eyes and blinking the pair of them a couple times, I rubbed them to make extra sure, and then I tried again. Everything was still kind of hazy, but I could see the empty hideout. The gang had all cleared the room for Billy to ask their question, but maybe I'd already yelled at them half asleep.
I thought a moment. It didn't sound not right, but I couldn't remember for sure. My half-recalled dreams were as sick as I felt now, but I was glad that I was alone to back to them. I couldn't go back to sleep though, or whatever unconscious state I'd been in. I just laid there like a writhing dog, and I listened to my pack.
They were coming to peek to make sure.
"Boss?" asked Snake.
"He doesn't look good to me," commented Arturo.
"Aww, c'mon, guys," I choked. "Just let me sleep this off in peace."
Grubber had to have a look for himself too. I looked back at him with full seriousness. Grubber respected that with a rare look of seriousness himself. He closed the door. I sighed. Then I eventually fell asleep again. Somehow. When I woke up, I didn't feel any better.
"Hey, Boss!"
"Ngh!"
My eyes popped open and I cringed from the vibrations echoing liquid-like through my aching skull. As my vision went from double to single dizzily, I felt like I'd been beached on shore like a whale as I stared over the side of the arm of the couch down at Billy's hand.
"Billy gotchyoos some medicine to make you feel better in no time just like in the commercial!"
"Billy," I cracked.
"Yeah?"
"That's a cough drop."
"Yeah, but it's a watermelon cough drop."
Even the word "water" made me seasick.
"So?" I demanded.
Maybe he had meant it to be mint or lemon, but he looked at it pretty disappointed now.
"Don't you want to take it?" he asked.
"No."
"Oh."
I moaned.
"Sssay, Ace," Snake began with care. "Maybe youss should…"
I made a face.
"Y'know…" Snake twiddled his fingers and slumped into himself amazingly well for a normal human being, but it was the serious look of Grubber behind him that made me cringe.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and since I was too weak to get up I punched the couch with the strength of a bored lazy cat without the attitude.
"get…"
I moaned a second time.
"Help…?" Arturo finished impatiently; apparently it had been getting painful for him too.
"Yeah," breathed Snake in relief and relaxed his tense arms to swing on their hinges at his sides.
"Should Billy get help from the Powerpuff Girls?" asked Billy shifting his weight from one foot to the other as though the very floor was unstable.
"What good'zzz that gunna do?" Snake snapped. "They lost their powers anyway and it's not like they could investigate thisss."
"We could steal money and send you to a secret clinic in Mexico," said Arturo.
"I don't need no doctor detectives or tour guides, here, guys," I finally croaked with enough power to sound close to my usual self, "I know what happened. It was that stuff at the science lab…"
The control I'd gained quickly sunk out of me again; I bet the Titanic doesn't feel much different in the ocean depths with fish and squids swimming through every squelchy salty corner. I could feel my face flush from the exertion. Though I didn't quite feel like puking, it was more like I was already submerged in some.
"You don't look right, Ace," said Snake.
"Yeah," added Arturo. "You look all swollen and pale and …"
"But if I go to a doctor I'm just gunna wind up arrested!" I spat. "I just need to— to sleep this off. That's all."
"Are you sure, Boss?" asked Arturo. "Maybe we could kidnap a doctor and bring him here."
"Oh, we could do that!" said Billy brightly.
"Oh, no we can't!" I panted. "Not without Chemical X, we can't. Look… just… I can't talk right now… just go. I can't deal with this now."
"Pthzzzzzz."
I opened my eyes at Grubber despite myself. He told me plain and simple that I knew I wasn't fooling anyone. He was right, of course, but I growled back. I grabbed the seat cushion and just threw it over my head. I couldn't handle it. I just couldn't. I could barely think anyway. All I knew was that I didn't want to deal with anything.
"Go!" I snapped.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
It was Grubber again, but I looked anyway. He shoved me a bottle of water.
The idea of drinking curdled my insides, but I took it. I knew he was right. I forced myself to drink with the slug of a drunkard, and I forced the cushion back down. Then I flopped, exhausted back onto it.
The guys left me, but they lingered outside for a while. At first I feared they would try to kidnap somebody anyway. Admirable in its own way. I mean they would risk arrest out of loyalty to me. It was touching. I mean it, but it was not the kind of sacrifice I wanted from them or myself. I just wanted to keep telling myself that it was wearing off. Hey! I had been able to have a conversation again. I had to be getting better. Right?
I drank some more from my bottle. Not surprising I was dying of thirst no matter how waterlogged I felt. But it was not waterlogged, it was goo-logged, wasn't it? That stuff from the sci-fi geeks had been goo not water.
Maybe throwing up was the best way to get rid of it. I could make myself puke.
I reached under the couch with a wavering hand and pulled out some really dated tootsie rolls in a jar. Unwrapping them, I shoved them into my mouth all at once. They tasted old and half melted and I waited. The gulp was grosser than the taste, though, but nothing happened. The goo usurped it. That had to be it. I ate some more. I stuck my finger up my mouth, but though I gagged and wheezed nothing came out.
What was happening to me?!
I dropped again exhausted, and sleep took me again.
More poking.
I moaned, but I did not move hoping whoever it was would just go away. Whoever it was did leave, and out the door the others were waiting. When the door shut I could hear Arturo say in his straightforward way, "I think the boss is dying."
I heaved and then let my tenseness fall away as limp and heavy as a bean-toy from the drug store.
Maybe I was dying.
Was this really how it was going to end?
Really?
With biting irony?
#
For the first time ever I woke up without the guys waking me.
Crickets, distant traffic, snuffling dogs out in the trash and a whistling draft through the creaky boards around the shack. If it was not for the familiar beats of what I'd come to think of as home, I might have thought I was on some boat swaying from wave to wave.
Poetic, I thought dryly. Go write a poem, why don't you?
There was something missing, though. It was the dead of night, but I didn't hear the snores of the others. I mean, it probably was not that weird. They had to eat and stuff. They'd be back before dawn, but I did feel kind of abandoned suddenly without them bugging me. I guessed they were ready to let me try it my way now of just sleeping it off. Trouble was, I was not sure how long I'd been doing that. It might have only been a couple days since I got sick. It might have been weeks. I didn't know.
The night itself felt like eternity, the kind of eternity that you could almost call an entity. Something you could almost talk to like the darkness and the solitude. It was almost like I was taking on a new paranormal gang before I entered the paranormal myself. Was this what a death's agony was like? I'd heard of them. Who hasn't, but unless you truly have one of those near-death experiences, you'll never live to tell anybody what it's like afterwards cuz you'd've already left beyond that one way street that no one no matter how defiant can rebel against and turn the other way.
I shook with some regrets, but they were only half-witted ones— half-baked even. The thought of doughy half-baked cookies made my stomach churn loudly. I wasn't really sorry for much, except going into Ex's storage place.
Then there came the knock on the door.
"Hmngh?"
It wasn't a casual kind of knock. It was kind of like something without brains pawing at the door. It was caught freakishly away on the wind like a phantom sound from the world beyond.
I shivered a cold sweat.
It had to be death. Somehow I was dead-certain it was that skeleton on all the band covers cloaked in medieval warlock warrior regality with Viking braids hanging from the cracked skull and a guitar on a strap around the fleshless shoulder to play my ballad on my way to punk Valhalla or maybe just down the Styx— or "Sticks" as I used to think of it… the Sticks of the dead realm where creeps just faded into dust together. It was a joke most of the time, but now…
I swallowed hard. All grogginess was gone. Even the familiar sounds echoed like they were all dried up on the wind. I may have started out like the submerged Titanitc, but now I was a shipwrecked ancient thing, not yet dried out, but the air around me was ready to crumble me into sandy sod.
If I'd gone through eternity before, I felt like I'd entered something beyond universal infinity, to something from a multi-verse of eternities.
Then the door moved like someone was testing it to see if it was locked… or to just create some unneeded atmosphere, but who else could afford drama more than Death itself, right? The chilled breeze that swept in was no gale but it filleted me with piercing shards. I squeezed my eyes shut against the shock, but more because I did not want to look at those blank holes where eyes should be or see a mouth moving without skin and flesh when it would speak my name.
"Ace…?"
It even had the decency of keeping my real name forever anonymous to the universe. I would have prayed in homage to him for keeping my identity secret for me, but instead I broke into a panic. All pain and slog completely vanished from my mind and senses as full adrenalin kicked in with a force stronger than any wave of the ocean.
I leapt from the couch and stumbled onto the floor, tripping over a box of games and movies and almost falling into the floor before I caught myself on the table. I fell anyway, dropping to my knees with hands thrown out onto the grainy wooden floor before the weight of the silhouette in front of me.
I pressed my hands together and heaved on every breath like a worn bellows— choked on every heart-throb like some animal was stuck in my throat belching.
"Please!" I begged hoarsely. "Please, no! Have mercy on me! I'm too young to die! Please don't take me yet! I—I—I'm not ready yet! Stop! I can't take it!"
I covered my head and shook with terror awaiting the neon lightning to strike me away from the mortal realm, and then—
Normal shoes stepped across the floor.
"It's worse than I thought!" exclaimed a voice— a voice that was way too dweeby to be the voice of Death, I can tell you that.
Still breathing hard and unable to calm my nerves just yet, I opened my eyes and saw a guy that was shorter than me, pudgy and somewhat stooped. The dump lights reflected off a round pair of glasses, and although I could not make out every detail of his moon face, I could tell he was nothing ethereal. Not even the ghost of a lost nerd. He seemed almost as shocked as I was about what he saw had been on the other side of the door.
He stooped down immediately in his heavy trench coat towards me. I was too stunned to do much more than blink where I knelt with my jaw wide and my heavy breaths only now subsiding. Weakness was overcoming me again, but the guy took my limp wrist into his hands, moved the sleeve up gently and felt my pulse. He looked me straight in the face, and I guess my face was more lit up from the light coming from outside the window than into his face.
He took a tool and shone light into one eye to watch it dilate. He looked inside my gaping mouth with that same light and backed up again. Standing upright, though not exactly straight, he tapped his chin and turned the light out again.
"This isn't good. This isn't good at all."
"What?" I whimpered.
The man turned to me again and looked past me. I guess he saw the string for the lamp behind my head and reaching over me, he pulled it.
Yep. Fully nerd, through and through. You could not make up someone more stereotypical, and it was a weird thing seeing him in a fedora out in the middle of the night in a shack in the junkyard like he was cosplaying as Detective Bullock. It would have made me laugh not too long ago, but at this point I was not sure if I'd ever laugh again. My eyes narrowed on his little shifty mousy eyes.
"Afraid the rest of the gang'll come back, huh?" I asked, realizing that since this guy had said my name, he knew perfectly well that he had dared this scientific expedition, or whatever he was doing, in Gangreen territory— worse than picking an excavation camp in the middle of a lion's hangout.
"Oh, your friends are pretty far away at the moment, and I won't take long."
I bristled. The adrenaline had not abandoned me entirely yet, but I was still more afraid than angry. I was still dizzy with panic and frustration. Nothing was in my control anymore.
"You gassed 'em out like hyenas or something?" I demanded.
"I think they went out for pizza," said the nerd. "We had to wait for the right moment to come to you once we located you."
"Located me."
"Well, only because of the experimental substance within you. It is a highly unstable hazard to be merged with biological flesh. I'm surprised you are as in good of shape as you're in, honestly."
He offered me a hand to help me off the floor. I stared it like. It might as well have been covered with leprosy, but if anyone was the leper around here, it was me, I knew. I let my head fall, and reluctantly I took the clammy sweaty palm into my own hand, as weak and unsteady as the teeth felt in my gums as I swallowed again and tried to clear my throat for some scrap of dignity I might have left. And my own hand was a funny color. Not like that sweet slime green we all knew not too long ago or that nice icy-shard blue I was for less than a day once, but just pale, sickly, almost yellow in a truly gross sort of way. And not the kind of gross that you could make cool either unless you really were a zombie from Night of the Living Dead.
I don't remember sitting down, but we were suddenly on the couch together, and it was surreal in a way that I can't even describe. I thought I had to be having some fevered hallucination, but here we were solid and talking like I was some student and he some kind of school nurse or councilor advising me to stay healthy and not to drink or smoke. I could only nod or shake my head mystified as he asked me questions about how I felt and if I'd been eating well or if I had notified anyone.
With the last question, that puckered pasty forehead of the man scrunched into a painful mess of spaghetti with his short fat brows as a pair of meatballs.
"You should have gotten help right away."
I sniffed. "Yeah, so… who are you?"
"My name is Dr. Otto Form and I work for a medical research facility here in Townsville. I was one of the experts asked to examine the work left behind by Pr. Ex to see if I could ascertain anything about it. The substance that you… engulfed yourself in was my main occupation. Now, I don't know everything about it, but I conjecture that it is meant to be absorbed into biodegradable substances and then once absorbed to absorb whatever organic matter it has been absorbed into."
"Don't you scientists know how to speak English?"
"I believe that the goo is not quite dissolved into you, but that it will reach that moment soon, and once it does it will dissolve you."
My mouth slowly dropped again. I shuddered. My teeth chattered. How could they not? I then clamped my mouth shut.
"And… you came here to 'undissolve' it out of me, doc?" I squeaked rubbing my hands together nervously; I grinned despite myself.
I knew I looked pathetically desperate, but I was too desperate to care.
"Well, I can't do it here," said Dr. Form.
