A Pinstriped Finger's My Only Friend (8 page)

"I wonder if anyone else can see it change?" I watch the Living Cup shift from a swarm of golden bees to a spinning propeller. "We can't be the only ones, can we?"

Just as I say it, the hologram makes its most shocking change yet. This time, it starts as a golden noose tied with a hangman's knot and transforms into a giant human face. A face that is all too
familiar
.

"Holy spit!" I'm shivering. "Is that..."

(If I could pee myself, I'd do it right this second!)

"...is that...?"

(Somebody get me a defibrillator! This is
too much
for my heart!)

(If I
had
a heart, that is.)

"That's...impossible!" I feel dizzy. Not light-headed, since I've got no head, so let's call it light-
fingered
.

Judd lets me fall at his side...

(
Upside-down
, thanks a lot, that really helps with the
dizziness
.)

...and then, without taking his eyes off the giant face rotating far above, he proves I'm not crazy. He confirms what I've seen, what it looks like.

Holy spit.

"That's
me
." Even as the words leave his mouth, the image changes again, becoming a golden hourglass with golden sand running into the lower chamber. But the face was up there plenty long enough for us to get the picture.

No doubts remain between us.

"That looked like
me
," says Judd.

"It sure did." I swing up and tap his palm in agreement. "Except for the made-of-gold part."

"But why?" Judd scowls as the Living Cup continues its transformations. "Why me?"

"Good question." I decide to lighten the mood. "And why the hell was
I
left out?"

He doesn't seem to hear me. He just repeats what he said a moment ago.

"Why me?"

*****

TWO HOURS
LATER:

So if all the students in your school could fly...

(Not to mention all their
other
super powers...)

...what would the lunchroom be like?

If you guessed the food would be served in a kind of whirling matrix up in the air, you'd be right. Because that's how it is in the "eatatorium" at West Beach High. Everything's spinning in an elevated cyclone, which the kids have to fly into and out of, grabbing servings of food on the way.

Non-super-powered students need not apply. In other words, Judd can't even feed himself.

If not for Kaela, he'd have no way of snagging a single bite of grub. He'd also have no way of warming it up, since everything in the matrix is served cold. It's up to the students' heat rays...

(...projected from eyes, ears, navels, buttholes...)

...to cook it for consumption. So it's a good thing Judd has Kaela, or he'd be spit out of luck in the lunchroom. He'd also be missing someone to interrogate.

"So you think your team will win the Permanent Tournament?" He asks the question while she's busy heating up a slice of pizza with a beam from her left nostril.

"You know
teams
don't win the tournament," says Kaela. "Individual
players
do."

"Right, right." Judd brushes his hand through the air.

(His
left
hand.)

"I misspoke." He grins and shrugs. "So do you think
you
might win the tournament, then?"

Kaela drops the pizza slice on a white paper plate on the table in front of him. "I'll give it my best
effort
." She smiles and reaches for a slice of her own. This time, the orange heat ray blazes out of her
right
nostril.

"It sure would be great to win the Living Cup." Judd tries to sound casual, as if he knows it all instead of next to nothing. "It would totally change your life, wouldn't it?"

"More like the
opposite
, right?" When she looks at him, she practically has
You're nuts
written all over her face. "It's the
Permanent
Tournament, remember?" She finishes zapping her pizza and takes a big bite.

"Of course! I'm just messing with you." Judd taps his fingers on the table...

(Ow! Cut it out!)

...and then gazes off into space. "Maybe I'm jealous, too. I wish
I
could win that trophy."

"Really?" says Kaela. "You
want
to be stuck as a powerless ground-hugger for the rest of your life?"

(Ding ding ding! Critical info alert! Critical info alert!)

(If my nonexistent ears were here, they'd be twitching up a storm right now!)

Judd's radar is going off, too. "I'd be stuck the way I am for the rest of my life, huh?" He narrows his eyes and tips his head to one side. "Is that something
you
want?"

"Hell yes!" She sips her drink...

(Whatever the heck that rainbow-colored glowing liquid is, floating in midair without a cup.)

...and laughs. "To be like this forever? Young and perfect in every way? To never turn into one of those boring, flattened-out
adults
? Who
wouldn't
want that?"

Judd's about to ask another question...

(This is just getting
interesting
!)

...when suddenly, someone whooshes up and lands behind us with a titanic
thud
. "Bitch!" We
know
that voice.

Judd whips around, and there she is--
Eva
, looking angry as all get-out.

Looking
hotter
than humanly possible, too. Her golden eyes and aura glow stronger than ever. There's no breeze in the place, but her long, blonde hair ripples around her as if there
is
one. The same effect wraps her purple basketball uniform tight across her sexy curves.

She looks like someone out of a super-hero movie. "Get away from my man, Kaela!" Little arcs of lightning dance over her skin. The air smells like salt spray and ozone. "You were
warned
!"

Kaela floats up off her seat, laughing. "If
anyone's
gonna do any warning around here, it's gonna be
me
." Her fiery red hair rises and ripples like Eva's, then literally bursts into flame. "You'd do well to get out
now
, you skinny bitch."

I look from one to the other, watching the hotness...

(...I mean the
drama
...)

...unfold. Is it possible for a
finger
to get turned on by a super-catfight?

(Yes it is.)

And it looks like I'm not the only one who feels that way. All around us, kids are chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!" and banging fists and silverware on the tables.

A scoreboard pops out of the wall with a score already in place in giant red letters and numbers:
Eva 12, Kaela 14.
So I guess this isn't the first time the girls have gone at it.

"Hey!" Judd gets up and raises his arms. "Let's everybody calm down, okay? Take a deep breath, guys."

"You want me to take a breath?" Kaela keeps her eyes glued to Eva as she says it. "Done and done, my darling." With that, she starts to inhale...and keeps inhaling long past the point of normal breath-completion.

Then, she blows it all out in one giant gust directed dead-on at Eva, sending the girl flying across the eatatorium.

Eva slams into the far wall with an echoing crash and keeps on going. Some of the kids cheer, others boo, and a bunch zoom over to gape at the smoking hole, looking for signs of Eva.

"So much for
that
skank." Kaela dusts her hands off and smirks. "You do
not
dis me in
my
house and expect to get
away
with it." Looking down at Judd, she flashes him a wink.

In that split-second when she's not paying attention, Eva bursts out of the hole in the wall and tears across the eatatorium. She plows into Kaela like a runaway missile, blasting her into another wall with a force so explosive, it makes the whole place shudder.

At this point, other fights break out in a chain reaction around the vast dining hall. The chamber erupts with the thunder of superhuman punches, the sizzle of searing heat rays, and the screeching of sonic beams fired from hyper-powerful mega-student vocal cords.

I can see where this is heading, so I jab my nail into Judd's palm to get his attention. "We need to
amscray
, dude!
Vamanos
! Get outta here!"

"No kidding!" Judd looks around, trying to pick the best way to go--then heads left. Just as he takes his first step in that direction, a table hurtles across his path and cuts down a kid standing nearby. The kid bounces right back up without a scratch, but that table would've done a
lot
more damage...

(...
permanent
damage...)

...to non-super-powerful Judd.

"Close call, dude!" I jab his palm to get him moving again. "All the more reason to get the fudge outta here!"

Without another word, Judd continues left toward the nearest exit. I think he's shell-shocked, but at least he's in motion.

"We're almost there!" I see the big double-doors twenty yards away, standing wide open. "You can make it, dude!"

Like a heartbeat after I say that, this kid comes barreling out of nowhere at Mach 5 or something, charging straight for us. We barely have time to swerve out of the way, narrowly avoiding what I'm pretty sure would've been a fatal collision.

But we
don't
avoid the cell phone that comes plunging down from above, streaking like a meteor toward Judd's head.

I see the phone a split-instant before he does, and I scream as loud as I can. "
Duck!
"

He tries, but the phone still whacks him on the side of the head. He goes down hard, giving himself a secondary bump when his skull hits the floor.

I'm awake for a moment more than he is...just long enough to see a small army of some kind of security robots rush into the room belching tear gas. Then it's sweet dreams for me, too.

I wonder, as I fade, what madhouse world we'll wake up to next time. It'll have to go some ways to be crazier than this one.

*****

LATER:

Something cold touches Judd's cheek, and that's what brings him around. Brings
us
around.

He groans and rolls his head away from the cold thing...but then it touches his other cheek. His eyes flutter open just a little as he softly emerges from unconsciousness.

And then, when he sees what he sees, there's no more softness. His eyes spring
wide
open, and he shoots instantly from half-awakeness to
holy-crap-what-the-screaming-blue-blazes-on-a-cracker-ness!

(I'm right there
with
him every step of the freakin' panicky way!)

Judd cries out, he can't help it, his mind is
blown
. One minute, he gets knocked out in a world of perfect super-god teens, and the next minute, he wakes up to see something from a
horror movie
gazing down at him.

"Judd?" The thing has Kaela's voice, but somehow that's not helping. "Dost thou crave a
slash
?"

The light's low...

(Thank God for small favors!!)

...but the Kaela-thing's features kind'a
jump out
at ya, know what I mean? Talk about horrific! This mutilated version of the original girl is covered in
scars
and studded with
blades
and
hooks
and
needles
.

(So much for the perfect, supple athlete with the golden eyes and aura!)

The blades come in all shapes and sizes and are literally
stuck
in her pale
flesh
. Most of them are dripping or oozing with
blood
, from the razor blades over her eyebrows to the serrated steak knife driven through both cheeks. She has old-fashioned razors, long and curved, lodged in her scalp and neck. Both ears and both sides of her nose are lined with barbed fish-hooks.

Butcher knives are attached to her shoulders like wings. Hunting knives and scissors jut point-first from her chest and abdomen, ready to pierce anyone who's bold enough to try to hug her.

"Fairest Judd?" When I get a better look at her mouth, I see her teeth have been sharpened to points like the teeth of a shark. "Thou lookest somewhat perplexed, my love. Perhaps another
bloodletting
shall easeth thine mind."

"N-no thanks!" Judd raises his hands up in front of him as if to push her away...

(What the fudge is he
thinking
???)

...which is when I start wailing to beat the
band
'cause my
life
is flashing before my
eyes
!

(If I
had
any eyes!)

"
Knives
!" I don't care if razor-girl hears me, this is life and death I'm facing here! "No touching!
No
touching
!"

Judd jerks his hands away and scuttles out from under her. "I'm fine! R-really, I'm just
great
!"

Kaela straightens, revealing the belt of needles--knitting needles alternating with syringes--poking out of her slender waist. The midriff of her purple and orange uniform is bare, allowing the points to jab the air freely.

(Is that a basketball uniform, a cheerleader's uniform, or what? The only thing I know for
sure
is that it's smeared with
red splotches
...)

"Then thou hadst better put thy
hands
to work, sirrah." Kaela waggles her fingers, which are tipped with scalpel blades. "Thy quarry didst incapacitate thee for but a short time. We may still apprehend the foul beast and seize the treasured prize we seek."

Judd scoots backward until he hits a wall...

(...made of rough stone blocks blotched with slimy black mildew and trickling with water...)

...then pushes himself up to his feet. "Treasured prize?"

"Never heard of it, eh?" Kaela laughs and winks. Her eyelashes look like the points of dental drills. "Though we
both
know, thee and I, that thou
longest
to take it for thy very
own
."

(What is with the weirdo
language
, anyway? Knives plus the Middle Ages equals
ass-ache
for yours truly!)

Before Judd can say another word, we hear shouts from a side passage and the sound of feet running over the dirt floor. "To arms! To arms!"

Instantly, Kaela zips long swords from the flesh of her outer thighs and leaps into a fighting pose--one sword forward, one overhead, body turned sideways and perfectly aligned. "Hie thee hither, Leary! Thy cohorts standest ready!" She shoots a look over her shoulder at Judd and snaps her head to one side, the universal gesture for
get-your-ass-
over-here
-pal.

The tunnels are dimly lit with wall-mounted torches, but we still get a good look at Wayne Leary when he runs into view. Like Kaela, he's covered in blades, hooks, and needles, some stuck in his flesh from outside, others protruding from inside his body. There's a chainsaw blade mounted on each leg, and there are drill bits up and down his arms. Three crossed swords have been driven through his belly as if by a stage magician performing a trick.

(How is this guy still
walking around
like that??)

Two big disks with jagged edges cover his chest--the blades of a circular saw. Like Kaela, he has his own special set of wings--lawn mower blades sticking out of his shoulders at forty-five degree angles. There's a meat hook in either hip, driven deep into the flesh. He carries a sickle in each hand...correction! Each of his hands
is
a sickle!

And in between all those blades and hooks and needles is enough scar tissue to build a mutant monster. The patch on his forehead (between his jigsaw-blade eyebrows) is the only smooth piece of exposed skin I see anywhere on him.

This ain't the Wayne Leary
we
know!

"Our foes art on the march!" Wayne pants, he's out of breath. "E'en as we speaketh! I hath seen them with mine own two eyes!" He points one of his sickle-hands at the side passage from which he's just emerged. "We must
runneth
!"

"We shall heedest thy timely warning, Leary!" Kaela clangs her swords together. "Lead on, good sirrah!"

"Follow me!" sayest Wayne...

(...I mean
says
Wayne! They've even got
me
doing it now!)

...as he runs back into the passage. "Do not a laggard nor a short-sword be! The Living Cup goeth not to the slow nor faint of heart!"

(Homina homina! Did he say
Living Cup
?)

Kaela dashes after Wayne, and Judd follows close behind.
No way
is the dude gonna hang alone in
this
neck of the weirds!

Not that the way forward looks much more
inviting
. The side passage is just as mildew-slimy-water-dripping-medieval-dungeony as the one we ran out of. The air's all musty, with an unmistakable piquant overlay of human urine and feces.

(Could this be a
high school
??)

As we run the length of the passage, Judd drifts back a step, raises me up, and whispers. "Did you hear that about the Living Cup?"

I nod by flexing my tip. "It exists here, too."

"It's important. It has to be." Judd looks grimly determined. "Important to
us
."

Just then, Wayne calls out from the head of the line. "Not far now! The glorious battle shalt soon beginneth!"

"Battle?" Judd says it loud enough for the others to hear. "I thought we were
running away
."

Kaela laughs. "Dost thou takest us for base
cowards
? Are we not the
top
of our
class
at
Serial Killer High School
?"

That's enough to shut up Judd. It shuts me up, too. Because I have an answer to one of my questions, and it's a friggin' doozy.

Yes, this
could
be a
high school
.

Wayne leads us through two turns--right, then left--then stops and holds up a sickle-hand. "Hush now!" The passage ahead is pitch-black. The wall-torches have all been extinguished. "Mine hackles doth rise aplenty!"

"Tis a
trap
!" Kaela looks back and giggles. "But doth the enemy lie ahead? Or doth he seeketh to turn us in another direction where the
true
trap lieth?"

Judd shivers, I can feel it. We thought the
last
version of reality was hairy, but
this
one's downright
terrifying
.
Death
is starting to look like a pretty good possibility.

"A
fatal
mistake on the part of our enemies." Wayne's sickles screech as he scrapes them together. "They seemeth to have forgotten that gruesome
murder
is our
stock in trade
!"

"We splitteth up, then," says Kaela. "Judd, thou shalt remaineth here whilst Wayne and I go forth."

Judd's heart has been racing since we got here, but now it's out of control. "But what if they come
here
? I'm not
armed
!"

Kaela yanks a dagger from her hip and tosses it to Judd, who fumbles the catch. The blade lands point-first in the dirt at his feet. "Thou art toothless no longer, noble sirrah. Acquit thyself with honor should thy foes convergeth."

With that, she runs off down a well-lit corridor branching off to the right. Wayne gives Judd a quick salute with one of his sickles, then bolts down the pitch-black tunnel to the left.

As the sound of their running feet fades in the distance, Judd and I are left alone with the black slime and dripping water.

Something cracks nearby, and Judd grabs the dagger from the ground. He grips the hilt so tightly with both hands that his knuckles whiten.

(And
I
get
crushed
. My mind goes
blank
.)

"Ease up, dude! Ease up!" The pressure turns my voice into a squeak. "You're cutting off my
circulation
."

He lets up the slightest bit, just enough that I can think straight again. "Sorry, Pinkerton." His voice is trembling.

"The name is
Killdigit
!" I snap. "Either that or
Oogachucka
!"

"Whatever." Judd keeps his back to the wall and holds the dagger out in front of him. His eyes sweep continuously from side to side, scanning for suspicious movement in the shadowy passageway.

"Dude, listen," I tell him. "Try to chill, okay? Take some deep breaths."

Judd sounds shakier by the minute. "What if I just knock myself out with a rock or something? Then I'll wake up in a different reality, right?"

"Forget it!" I give him a quick jab in the palm. "A, the next world might be worse than
this
one. And B, you might give yourself a freakin'
concussion
."

"I don't see how that would be worse than
death
," says Judd.

I jab him again. "Could you please let up a little more? Your hand's all sweaty and cramped, dude!"

"Sorry if you're
uncomfortable
, Pinkerton." He actually
tightens
his grip on the dagger. "Kind'a got other things to
worry about
at the moment. Like a high school full of
serial killers
and whatnot."

"I still say you oughtta lighten up. If anyone's in danger, it's Wayne and Kaela."

(Would somebody please
shut
my stupid
pie-hole
?)

As soon as I say the words, someone leaps out of the shadowy mouth of a nearby tunnel...and it
ain't
Wayne or Kaela! Less than a pinky-second later, another someone springs from another tunnel on the other side of us.

Judd mutters a curse, and I do him five better.

(We fingers are
great
at getting our
point
across.)

We are really
swimming in it
now, man. Up to our eyeballs...

(...or
finger
nails
...)

...in the proverbial deep doo-doo!

Judd swings the dagger from side to side as the mystery someones stalk closer. The one on the left is a slender, dark-haired girl; the one on the right is a boy with a blond crew-cut. Both of them are tricked out like Kaela and Wayne, stuck all over with every kind of blade, needle, and hook.

"What haveth we here?" The guy has a machete in one hand and a big, hinged ice hook in the other. He clacks the two halves of the ice hook together as he walks. "Swine for the slaughter, mayhap?"

"Chicken for the spit, I daresay!" The girl carries a poleax that's taller than
she
is--six feet long, with a glinting silver blade that fans out to a crescent on one side and tapers off to a wicked-looking prong on the other.

"Ha!" The guy clacks his ice hook and swings his machete. "In that case, I hereby calleth the
dark meat
. The white shalt be thine, Priscilla!"

"Only if thou butchereth him first, Roland!" says Priscilla, just before she charges Judd with her gleaming poleax.

"Have at thee!" Roland cackles with laughter as he joins the charge, spinning his machete with easy grace.

Judd and I are stuck in the middle, armed only with a tiny dagger and overflowing buckets of sheer, squealing terror.

*****