Critical Failures III (Caverns and Creatures Book 3) (6 page)

“It was the cop, right?”

“Well that’s only half the story.” Tim looked at the ground. “I sort of removed his testicles.”

“He cut my goddamn man-sack off!” said Dennis, tears streaming down both sides of his face.

“Please stop crying,” said Cooper.

“It was an accident,” said Tim.

“How do you accidentally cut a guy’s balls off?” asked Julian.

“That’s pretty fucked up, dude,” said Cooper.

“He was trying to rape me!”

“It’s true,” said Dave. “Chaz and I were right there.”

Cooper jerked the cop around to face him. “Did you try to cornhole my friend?”

“Listen, I’m real sorry ‘bout that,” said Dennis, weeping and slobbering. “Really I am. But that’s in the past now, and it still don’t 'splain where my nuts is run off to.”

“Shit,” said Julian. “I think I might have an idea about where they’ve gone, but you’re not going to like it.”

Dave gasped. “Oh no. You don’t mean…”

Julian called out at the sky. “Ravenus!”

“Just in here, sir,” said Ravenus, hopping out from the shade inside the van. “Terribly hot in this world. Is something amiss?”

“What the fuck is that?” said Dennis.

“Ravenus,” said Julian, gesturing to Dennis. “Have you seen this man’s testicles?”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Ravenus. “Are they very impressive?”

Tim failed to hold back a snort.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Julian. “They’ve been separated from his body. They would have been here in the back of the van.”

Ravenus looked at exactly the spot where the severed scrotum had been when they left it. “Is
that
what that was? I suppose that explains my indigestion.”

Dave, Tim, and Julian winced simultaneously.

“What is it?” cried Dennis, looking up at Cooper. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Cooper. “I can’t understand the bird.”

“I’m sorry, officer,” said Julian. “My friend Ravenus here ate your balls.”

Dennis dropped to his knees. “NOOOOOOO!”

“Oh that’s hilarious,” said Cooper.

“I’m not a man!” said Dennis, sobbing on the ground.

“Well you really shouldn’t have left them lying around,” said Julian.

Dennis only sobbed louder.

Stacy stepped out of the Bayside Poison Control Center. She was no longer wearing a lab coat. She looked less like a doctor and more like a girl on spring break. Her curly, brown hair was tied back with a bright orange scrunchie. Round, white-rimmed sunglasses hid eyes that Dave was sure were as bright as her untimely grin.

She held up a bulky, plastic Rouse’s bag. “Who wants yogurt!”

Chapter 6

“So this Mordred guy,” said Stacy as she and Tim tailed Julian’s car, which was, in turn, tailing a van full of monsters and pedophiles down highway 90. “He sent you into some other world with magic dice? Like,
real
magic?”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” said Tim. The solar-powered frog figurine on her dashboard bobbed its head back and forth, mocking him with its dead-eyed grin.

“Honey, I just saw a giant scorpion throw a refrigerator across my boss’s office. I’m beyond skepticism.”

“Well then yeah,” said Tim. “Magic dice. And if I’m ever going to get out of this stupid little body, I need to get those dice back. Only, we don’t have any idea where Mordred is, or how to find him.”

“Is he on Facebook?”

“How the fuck should I –” Tim stopped to think. She might be on to something. He pulled out his phone, flipped it open, and searched for Julian’s number. It was a long shot, but this could be a lead worth splitting the party for. “I need to get to a computer right now.”

“I’ve got a tablet on the back seat.”

Tim closed his phone. “That’ll do.” He reclined his seat all the way back, but still had to crawl almost entirely onto the back seat in order to reach the tablet because of his short arms. Tablet in hand, he crawled back up front and pulled the lever to raise the seat back upright.

“Make sure you log me out,” said Stacy. “I need to stay off the grid until I figure out what I’m going to tell my boss.”

“I think your best bet is to just say you were sick or something, and never made it to work,” said Tim, logging into Facebook with his own account. “I don’t think there’s anything you can say that will adequately explain what he’s going to walk in on.”

“Is that you?” asked Stacy. Tim had to hold the tablet toward her to avoid the sun’s glare.

“Yeah.”

“You’re cute.” She winked at him.

Tim’s face flushed. Not so much because an attractive girl called him cute. He was comfortable around women, and he knew he wasn’t a bad looking guy. He flushed because, despite photographic evidence to the contrary, she was talking to him like he was eight years old. “It’s an old pic—”

“Yow!”

Tim’s face slammed into the dashboard. He tasted blood before the pain had time to register. Busted lip. Probably broken nose.

“Sorry,” said Stacy. “Red light.”

Tim sat up. They were right on top of the van’s back bumper. “You broke my fucking nose.” He sounded like Donald Duck.
Yeah, it was definitely broken.

“You should be wearing a seatbelt.”

“And you should keep your eyes on the goddamn road!” He opened the console between the seats, hoping to find some tissues. All he found in there were old, dry orange peels. They'd do. He plugged his nostrils with bits of orange peel until the bleeding stopped.

Stacy smiled sympathetically at him. Her lips were shut tight, like she was trying to hold in a laugh. He must have been quite a sight from her perspective. A banged up little hobbit honking obscenities at her and shoving orange peels up his nose.

He pulled the seatbelt across and fastened it. The shoulder strap was in his face.

“I’ve got some books you can sit on if you—”

“Just drive the car.” He tucked the shoulder strap under his chin and looked at the tablet. He hadn’t been on Facebook in quite a while. He didn’t derive much pleasure from looking at updates from people he never even liked back in high school and were now succeeding in their professional and personal lives, while he was still stuck in the Chicken Hut and playing Caverns and Creatures with his degenerate friends.

The red circle at the top of the screen said he had seventeen notifications. Maybe he’d been missed after all. No such luck. They were all invitations to play shitty Facebook games.

He touched the ‘Search’ field and typed in Mordred. Best to start broad and narrow the selection as was needed. As it turned out, not a whole lot of narrowing would have to be done. The Mordred search only yielded ten profiles. Some were fat. Some were hairy. Anyone who referred to themselves as ‘Mordred’ was undoubtedly a shithead. But none of the profile pictures showed the particular fat, hairy shithead he was looking for.

Tim sighed. “Dead end.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Tim, scanning the freaky profile photos one last time. “It was a good idea. You’d think Facebook would be the perfect place for someone as lonely and lacking in social – Hold on a second…”

“Did you find him?”

“I don’t know. This one guy has his location set as Biloxi, Mississippi, but there’s no way that’s…” He touched the picture to enlarge it. The face in the picture was younger than Mordred’s, and clean shaven, with only the hint of a receding hairline. Closer inspection of the picture led Tim to notice some finer details in the background. The sofa he was sitting on. The paisley shirt he was wearing. They don’t even make shit like that anymore. “That son of a bitch. This picture’s got to be at least twenty years old. But that’s him all right.”

Tim scrolled down Mordred’s timeline. Mordred wasn’t a very frequent poster, and most of the stuff he did post was just fantasy memes and other bullshit. Nothing Tim could use. He clicked on Mordred’s ‘likes’, and found pretty much what he expected to find. Facebook pages for Caverns and Creatures, Larry Lilacs, Sorcerers on the Shore, and other fantasy-related pages. Nothing of use here either, except… Tim spotted a name he recognized, a local name. Jack’s Comics. He clicked on it.

The first thing that caught Tim’s eye was Mordred’s name as the latest entry in the ‘Recent posts by others’ field. Tim clicked on the post.

For those seeking adventure beyond your wildest imaginations!

Join me in a quest unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. No previous role playing experience required. You can learn as you go. Serious inquiries only, please. Contact me by private message for a place and time.

“That crazy fucker is already at it again!” said Tim.

“What?” said Stacy.

“He’s trying to lure more people into his fantasy world. This message wasn’t posted more than ten minutes ago.”

“Uh oh.”

“We’ve got to get to that shop. I bet that’s where we’ll find him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He’s got to restock his books and dice. He left all his shit at my place when he bolted. Here, watch the van. They’ll be turning soon.”

Stacy followed the van into the Rouse’s parking lot. The supermarket had opened, and there was noticeably more cars and people buzzing about, but Tim’s car was still far enough in the back of the lot that they should be able to park the van near it, open the rear doors, and talk without anyone seeing inside.

Tim hopped out of Stacy’s car and met Randy and Julian behind the van. “Open the doors,” he said. “Not too wide.”

Randy opened the doors. “Sweet baby Jesus!”

Even through his orange peel nose plugs, Cooper’s stench hit Tim like a rhinoceros farting point blank in his face. His eyes already stung from sleep deprivation. This felt like daggers being shoved into them. He took a moment to stave off the nausea and looked inside the van. Four faces looked down at him from their yogurt cups.

"What happened to your face?" asked Dave.

"I got hit by a car," said Tim, raising his hand up to Dave. "Can you give me a level zero heal to so I can take these fucking orange peels out of my nose?"

Dave touched Tim's finger. "Heal."

The pain dulled immediately, and Tim blew the bloody wads of orange peel out of his nose and onto the street. "I'm sorry. That was disgust -- Jesus!" He didn't think it could be possible, but the smell from the van was even worse now that his sinuses were clear.

"What's wrong?" asked Dave. He licked the inside of his yogurt cup.

“Ugh,” said Tim. “How can you even eat that in there?”

“It’s the most magnificent thing to ever have graced my palate!” said Professor Goosewaddle. His beard was thick and pink around his mouth. Four empty yogurt cups lay beside him on the floor of the van. “Where might we procure more of this?”

“We’re in the Rouse’s parking lot,” said Dave.

“Uh-uh,” said Tim. “Don’t even think about it. I might have a lead on where we can find Mordred. We can’t afford any distractions.”

“But he’s such a cute little old man,” said Stacy. “Let him have some more yogurt if he wants some. I can run in and get it while you guys work up a plan.”

Tim sighed. “Fine. Go get some fucking yogurt.”

“And Doritos,” said Cooper.

“Sure thing,” said Stacy. She started walking across the parking lot toward the supermarket entrance.

Cooper leaned out of the van and shouted after her. “Wait, no… Funyuns!”

“Cooper!” said Tim. “Get the fuck back in the van!”

Dave pulled Cooper in by the arm. Tim scanned the parking lot. A few old people were looking at him, but nobody was running or screaming, so they had likely dodged that particular bullet.

“You found Mordred?” asked Dave.

“Not exactly,” said Tim. “But I think I know where he’s going to go.”

“Where’s that?”

“Jack’s Comics,” said Tim. “He left all his C&C shit at the Chicken Hut. He’ll need to restock his books.”

“Sounds like a long shot,” said Dave. “How do you know he won’t just order books online?”

“He doesn’t have that kind of time,” said Tim. “He’s already planning to recruit some more players.”

“How do you know?”

“I found him on Facebook.”

“Mordred’s on Facebook?” asked Julian, tapping the screen on his phone.

“Don’t connect with him or message him or anything,” said Tim. “We can’t let him know we’re onto him.”

“So where is this place?” asked Julian. “Jack’s Comics.” He spoke the words slowly as he typed them into his phone.

“Biloxi,” said Tim.

“Yeah, I’ve got it on GPS.”

“We’ve still got almost an hour before it opens,” said Tim. “That should be plenty of time to find a good place to –” He yawned. “—stake it out.”

“Okay,” said Julian. “Well you guys can all follow me.”

“No,” said Tim. “You don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Sure I do.”

“Not one with a picture of a goddamn elf on it. Anyway, it’s best we go in as few cars as possible, so we don’t get separated.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Julian. “You can track me on your phone.”

“Good idea,” said Tim. “But my phone’s a piece of shit. Stacy’s got a tablet in her car.” Tim opened the passenger door of Stacy’s car, retrieved the tablet, and handed it to Julian. “Set it up.”

After a few minutes of fiddling, Julian showed the tablet to Tim. “You are the blue dot,” he said. “We’re in the same place right now, so that’s all you see. When we go more than about fifty feet away from each other, you’ll see a red dot. That’s me.” He ran across the parking lot. Sure enough, a red dot broke away from the blue dot on the map.

“Where’s Julian going?” asked Stacy, carrying two plastic grocery bags.

“Okay, it works!” shouted Tim. “Come back!” He showed Stacy the tablet. “Just testing out this GPS tracking thing.”

“Neat!” She handed off the bags to Cooper, who passed the bag full of yogurt to a very grateful Professor Goosewaddle.

Julian rode shotgun in the van so that he could navigate for Randy. Chaz reluctantly climbed into the back.

Tim hopped back into Stacy’s car, and they were soon on their way to Biloxi.

Tim’s eyelids were heavy. The last time he’d slept, he was in a different world. “I’m just gonna rest my eyes for a sec…”