Irregular Creatures Read online

  All material contained within copyright © Chuck Wendig, 2011. All rights reserved.

  Cover by Amy Hauser.

  The stories contained within are all works of fiction. All names, characters, places and scenarios are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Visit terribleminds, the website and blog of Chuck Wendig.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Credits

  Acknowledgements

  Foreward

  About the Author

  Dog-Man and Cat-Bird (A Flying Cat Story)

  A Radioactive Monkey

  Product Placement

  This Guy

  Mister Mhu’s Pussy Show

  Lethe and Mnemosyne

  The Auction

  Beware of Owner

  Do-Overs and Take-Backs

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I acknowledge that these are stories.

  I acknowledge that I am impatient and need to lose weight.

  I acknowledge that my addiction to off-color Lithuanian pornography is one day going to get me into trouble.

  I acknowledge that chocolate and bacon are both delicious, and thus deserve to be together – like, in a sexual way.

  I acknowledge –

  Wait, what?

  Oh. Oh. I totally got this wrong, didn’t I?

  I’d like to thank Amy Hauser for her kick-ass cover.

  I’d like to thank Chris F. Holm for offering me a little dollop of Kindle-formatting advice.

  Above all, I’d like to thank my wife, who puts up with my shit daily and still manages to both a) support me and b) not stab me in the face with knitting needles.

  FOREWARD

  I was tempted to write this foreward backward, just to be an asshole.

  I don’t have much to say here except: contained within you will find nine stories. These nine stories are all products of the last decade of my writing life and they drunkenly swerve across multiple genres, themes, and tones. Some are funny. Some are whoa, holy crap, grim. You’ll find in here family-friendly magical realism sandwiched by short stories that talk about Thai pussy shows and zombie fluids. You’ll find mermaids and lady-boys. You’ll find Bigfeet and bad Dads. I’m all over the map on this one.

  Or am I?

  See, I discovered that each story was bound to the next by a common thread, and that thread is why I chose the title “Irregular Creatures” for this collection. Each piece offers a look at a truly irregular—strange, bizarre, off-kilter, gonzo—critter, such as:

  Flying cats! Zombies! Giant chickens! Candy bar aliens! Mystic hobo hermaphrodites!

  What does that say about me? Hell if I know. Maybe that’s how I see myself (and in a way, how I see all writers): perhaps we’re all just irregular creatures.

  Or maybe I just like making up really weird shit.

  I’ll let you decide.

  Please to enjoy.

  DOG-MAN AND CAT-BIRD (A FLYING CAT STORY)

  It was my third night exiled to the couch when the strange cat came pawing at our patio door.

  The sound startled me. Not that I had been sleeping. Oh, I tried, but lumpy cushions kinked up my spine like a garden hose, and the scratchy pillows pushed Triscuit patterns onto my smooshed cheek. I got up, stumbled over to the door, and saw the little beast sitting there, matted head held low.

  It thumped its paw upon the door, meowing and pressing its orange face against the glass like a drunkard who just wanted some sleep. I shook my head no, tried to shoo it away, but the animal wasn’t having any of it. It pawed the glass again and looked up at me with sad, moony eyes.

  I slid the door open, quiet as a thief (waking the wife and son would be tantamount to further disaster), then frowned at the cat.

  “Mrow,” the cat said.

  “No,” I said. “Get out of here. Shoo.”

  “Mrow,” it said again.

  “I don’t like cats!” I hissed. “I’m a dog man. Go away.”

  “Mrow.”

  Then it died.

  ***

  A moment on my exile. How did I get here?

  Missy said: “Joe, it’s time to give it up and rejoin the real world.”

  I said: “Oh, c’mon, Miss. Like your job is the real world? Answering phones? Getting coffee for the boss?”

  I might’ve made a “pfeh” sound. Or a “pshh.”

  I definitely added: “Please, if that’s the real world, then shoot me in the face.”

  Boom. A wall of ice slammed down, a thousand miles thick and colder than an ice cube in a snowman’s butt pucker. I could see the frost crystallizing in her eyes. She did not yell, she did not flail or punch me or even frown. No, she said one thing very quietly, very clearly.

  “From now on, the couch is your bed.”

  And so began my exile.

  ***

  I turned on the porch lights. The cat lay on its side, utterly still, its pink tongue jutting of its mouth. Orange fur lay matted against skin, stuck there with a spackle of dried blood. A number of scratches and cuts lined its body, like it had been kicked through a thorn bush and into a bucket of broken glass.

  “Ew,” I said. I wasn’t a cat person, but that didn’t mean I relished the sight of a dead one. And now? Now I had a cat carcass on the patio. Missy wouldn’t like that. She’d blame me, somehow. She blamed everything on me. I was a lout, a wretch, a pair of idle hands waiting for the Devil’s work. She’d probably say I was a cat killer, too. That I killed it just so she’d have to clean it up.

  I tried to imagine what lead to this poor kitty losing Life Number Nine on our back patio. Some wicked scrap with neighborhood strays? Cruel children?

  Regardless of the cause behind its untimely end, it was becoming swiftly apparent:

  I was going to have to dispose of its corpse.

  “Ew,” I said again.

  I reached gingerly for the cat, looking for maybe a convenient handle or something--

  The cat twitched.

  Death twitch, I thought. Cat probably had gas or something.

  Then the cat’s tongue sucked back into its mouth.

  The mouth opened, and out came a weak: “Mrow?”

  I took a deep breath. The cat wasn’t dead. A wave of relief hit me that was fast supplanted by a tide of dread. When it came to explaining this to Missy, a live cat was far more problematic than a dead one.

  Scooping the beat-up kitty into my arms, I could’ve sworn that a shadow darker than night passed overhead. But when I looked up… I saw nothing.

  ***

  I’ll make it clear again: I’m a dog man.

  Dogs are trusty dudes. They’re good people. Loyal to a fault. They’ll drag your supine body off the train tracks before running to fetch help from the local authorities. Before breakfast, they’ll get your slippers and bring you the paper. After lunch, they’ll take a bullet for you. Before dinner, they’ll lick their privates in public, ensuring that you, their Lord and Master, get a front row seat. Why? Because dogs don’t live for themselves. They live for you.

  Cats? C’mon. Cats are jerks. Self-interested, lazy little bloodsuckers with passive-aggressive tendencies. Take your cat to the vet and watch how he poops under your pillow two days later. Stop feeding kitty-kitty-pussy-poo the good stuff, and he’ll pee on the remote, scratch up the wallpaper, and flick kitty litter into your Cheerios. Cats don’t care about you. You’re just a food-delivery service. You’re the pizza man and the plumber, and not much else.

  Legends associate cats with witches for a reason. Cats are evil. They kill bunnies and birdies. They steal the breath from babies. They plot your demise.

  Cats are bad people.

  Of
course, Missy won’t let us have a cat or a dog, so what did it matter? “Think about it,” she used to say. “We’d be living with animals. Animals are dirty.”

  That ended that discussion. No dogs, no cats. No hamsters, spiders, mice, or goldfish. And most of all, no argument.

  Except now, at least for the moment, we had a cat. And as soon as Missy found out, we’d damn sure have an argument.

  ***

  I brought the cat out to the garage, grabbing the comforter from the couch on the way out. Against my forearms I could feel the cat’s pulse. It was uneven, a bumpity-bump here, a pause, then more stuttery thumps. The cuts on the cat were all pretty superficial – thin razor slashes, itty-bitty nicks – but they were everywhere. Occasionally that pink tongue wriggled out and licked at the air.

  The garage was my world. A hundred square feet of Joetown, Population Joe. It was dusty, musty, and bland. And I liked it that way. The place was my palette, a thrice-dimensioned canvas, a suburban tabula rasa. It was where I worked, where I cobbled together my sculptures of metal and wood.

  At least, it was the place where I was supposed to do that.

  I hadn’t done one in – what? Six months? Eight?

  But we don’t talk about that.

  I angled the comforter onto the workbench, and laid the cat down on it.

  “This is temporary,” I said to the cat. “If you die, not my fault. You did this to yourself, little man.”

  I walked back inside to get some supplies.

  In the medicine cabinet I found some Neosporin, some Transformers Band-Aids, and a big brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  “What the heck are you doing?”

  There stood Missy. Her hair a tangled nest, arms crossed. One of my old t-shirts, a black Depeche Mode tee from years back, hung loose over her breasts, and I couldn’t help but think, She looks really good right now.

  “Me?” I asked.

  “Who else would I be talking to?”

  “Well-played. I’m just, uh. I cut myself.”

  Character note: I’m a crappy liar.

  Her gaze went to my face, my hands, all parts of my bare skin. She frowned. Missy had a special frown that transcended her mouth. Her very face frowned. The brow creased, the eyes darkened. It was impressive, if scary. Like witnessing a storm tumbling end-over-end on the horizon.

  “I don’t see a cut.”

  “I cut my… back.”

  “Your back?”

  “Right. The couch is sharp.”

  “The couch? You’re telling me –“ She shook her head. “No, never mind. Just grab the stuff and go, I’m tired and I have to pee.”

  Free pass, ducked a bullet. I got the hell out of there.

  ***

  In the garage, above my workbench, I have one piece of art that isn’t my own. Bri-bri – that’s our son, Brian, now a young man at the ripe age of 11 – drew it when he was in 3rd grade.

  He had drawn an elephant riding a skateboard. In its trunk, it held a laser pistol. Gun-toting laser-elephant was shooting at, I don’t know, some distant off-page enemy. It was a cool drawing. He had talent for a kid his age, and I’m not just saying that because I’m his Dad and I think everything he does is dipped in gold and tastes like chocolate.

  He brought the picture home from school and showed it to Missy and me. We both fawned over it. We’re good at that – we may not come together on all things, but we join forces when it comes to Brian. Wonderparents Power Activate. Form of Awesome Mom! Form of Still A Dipshit But Awesome Just The Same Dad!

  Except here, one subtle difference.

  I say, “Brian, this is great, this is awesome, good job.”

  She says, “Brian, we’re very proud of you.”

  I add, “Totally proud, little man!”

  And she says, “But I don’t think they make skateboards big enough for elephants.”

  Silence.

  Wide-eyed stare.

  Brian plodded off, chin down. What internal balloon lives inside a child’s soul, Missy just lanced it with the hot pin of parental reason.

  I told her that you don’t say that to a kid. I mean, Brian’s 11, he watches TV, he knows elephants don’t ride skateboards (though, no promises about the laser pistols). But still, why say it out loud? Why ruin the fun? Might as well just kick Santa Claus in the face and throw the Easter Bunny down a set of steps.

  “But I don’t want him growing up with distorted perceptions of reality,” she said.

  “He’s just a kid,” I explained. “That’s called his ‘imagination.’”

  “Well, I don’t think we should encourage these unhealthy ideas.” And that was the end of that. Door closed, end of discussion, game over.

  That’s when I realized. Missy is capital-R Reality. Missy is concrete and math problems and the Ten Commandments. Me? I’m crazy. I’m the pen touching paper, the fingerprints in clay, a smudge of mixed-up color. I’m that skateboarding elephant shooting off a laser gun.

  I’m the guy who accepts new possibilities.

  At least, I was supposed to be that guy.

  ***

  I came back into the garage, only to find that the cat had sprouted wings while I was gone.

  This was not a possibility I had considered, nor was it a possibility I accepted upon its discovery. These were not metaphorical wings. I don’t mean to suggest that the cat was feeling better, and might as well have had wings. These were the genuine article.

  The wings thrust out from right behind its front shoulders (do cats even have shoulders?). They lay folded tight against the animal’s side, but they were unmistakable in their identity.

  I reached out, hesitant, and touched one.

  It was not feathered. Rather, it had the smooth, silky down of a baby kitty or tiny chick. Skin stretched from the tip of the wing and connected to the feline’s side. Like bat wings, but softer and prettier. The wings didn’t disturb me. I didn’t find them gross. To the contrary, the wings spoke to a kind of simplicity and grace.

  The cat had wings.

  “Mrow,” it said.

  “Mrow is goddamn right,” I said and wondered exactly when I was going to wake up from this lunatic dream.

  ***

  I returned to the couch an hour later, once I had finished tending to the cat’s many injuries. I got the animal purring by the end, which seemed a good sign. He closed his eyes and curled up into himself, the wings tucked back so tight they almost disappeared. And then the zoological anomaly slept like the dead.

  I, on the other hand, slept like the undead. That is to say, I thrashed about, moaning and groaning, stiff with couch-bound rigor mortis. It was my brain. It wouldn’t stop thinking. No matter what I did – counting sheep, thinking one word over and over again, mediating my breathing – my head wouldn’t shut up. Mostly about the stupid cat. I could sell the cat, I thought. Or sell tickets to see the cat. Come one, come all! This way to the fearsome Cat-Bird! Or bat-cat! Or owl-kitty! Maybe, I thought, I should take it to the vet. They’d be able to look at its cuts, take care of it, and maybe explain to me just how in the world a cat that didn’t have wings is now a cat who has wings, when cats in general never have wings at all, ever, ever, ever. Maybe I should’ve paid more attention in biology class.

  I hate cats.

  ***

  “I want you to clean out the garage.”

  Brian and I both looked up from our cereal bowls. He of the Apple Jacks and I of the Froot Loops. Missy had her fingers steepled over a plate of egg whites and toast.

  “The garage,” I said. “But that’s my space. That’s –“

  “Joeworld,” she said with a barely detectable (but detectable just the same) eye roll. “I know you love that space. But you don’t use it.”

  “Mom,” Brian said, “that’s where Dad does his art stuff.”

  Atta-boy, Bri-bri!

  “No,” she corrected. “That’s where Daddy is supposed to do his sculpting, but he hasn’t done that in a long time.”


  “But, honey –“

  “It’s a garage, Joe. Garages are for cars. We don’t keep our cars there, we cram them into an already crowded driveway. It’s time we reclaim the garage for its original purpose. Viva la revolucion.”

  “Yeah, no, but see, I’m really going to start sculpting again.”

  She poked at her eggs with a fork. “You say that, and then you don’t do it.”

  I thought about it. Her logic was sound. Garages were for cars. That’s what normal people did, right? Like those guys in Boston say: Pahk the cahr in the gah-rahge. I wasn’t going to win this argument. Not that I ever won arguments. I mostly just gesticulated wildly and stammered a lot. It was little match against Missy’s Terminator-like logic.

  “Fine,” I said. In my mouth, the bitter taste of resignation.

  “I’ll help you after work today.”

  “After work?” Cat! Cat-Bird! Bat-cat! Winged Feline Alert! “Wait! No!” I said, probably too loud. “I’ll do it. It’s, uh, not like I have a job. It’s my project. Plus, Pottery Barn Rule, I broke it, so I’ll fix it.” I tried to smile. I think it came out crooked or something because Missy just frowned deeper.

  ***

  I waited until Missy went to work before heading out to the garage. To do otherwise might draw her attention, and I couldn’t risk showing her that late last night I’d inadvertently scored the family a new “pet.” So, in the meantime, I lingered on the couch in my bathrobe. It was a tattered thing, the robe, pale and green like seafoam or minty toddler vomit. I never changed out of my bathrobe when I didn’t have to. Missy wanted the robe destroyed, as if it were a biohazard. I couldn’t bear to do it harm. I think maybe it had a little of my soul woven into it.

  Missy grabbed a granola bar from the kitchen, and left.

  I waited for the resultant door slam, engine rev, and Doppler effect. It didn’t happen. Missy came back inside, huffing.

  “A goddamn cat,” was all she said. I reeled. It felt like she just slapped me in the face. She know about the cat already? Was she accusing me of something (that admittedly, I did)? Was she some sort of psychic Sherlock Holmes, unraveling mysteries with her Jedi mind powers?