The warmth and security of finally returning to his own body after an extended period away was like nothing Kevin had ever felt. It was joy, pure and unadulterated, better than all the sex he’d ever had all added together. But the feeling didn’t last; his subconscious reasserted control over the body it had been built to maintain, kickstarting his heart and his muscles and obliterating his happiness with wave after wave of rippling pain. His lungs roared open to take in a mighty, ragged breath. His fingers opened and closed involuntarily, his legs thrashed, and his bladder and bowels unloaded before he could even think about stopping them. Banging the back of his head repeatedly against the hardwood floor as his entire body spasmed didn’t help matters.
Although everything hurt like a son of a bitch, the fact that he could feel anything at all once again made him ecstatic. Every muscle contraction, every gasping breath, and every collision with the floor reaffirmed that Kevin Felton was once again alive, his soul safely residing in its proper vessel. Even the wet warmth of the filth in his pants was a welcome sensation. No shit had ever smelled as good as the shit soaking his drawers right then and there.
He lay on the floor for a long time, basking in the physical sensations as his body took its sweet time rebooting. He liked to think that it had missed him just as much as he had missed it. Except for that ugly mole on his elbow. He could’ve done without that thing.
When his fine motor control returned, he sat up and stretched his arms as far upward as they could go. Sitting felt good. Stretching felt good. Tracing his fingers down his chest to make sure it was really his felt good. He hadn’t realized how much he liked his body until he’d spent a few agonizing hours without it.
The thought snapped him back to reality. There was a reason for that out-of-body experience. Its name was Billy. Billy was pissed because Kevin had stolen his fiancée, so Billy had taken his anger out on the people Kevin cared about most. And Driff. Then Billy had dared Kevin to do something about it. In response, Kevin had valiantly crapped all over himself and flopped around on his dining room floor like a dying fish on the bottom of a boat.
Panicked, he tried to spring to his feet and promptly fell right on his ass when his weak legs refused to hold his weight. He tried again, this time by first raising himself onto his knees then slowly standing, his hand on the nearby wall for additional support. When his legs stopped shaking, he made his way into the kitchen with short, tentative steps.
He found his mother’s body on the linoleum where Billy had let it fall. The explicit wrongness of the scene was overwhelming; Abelia Felton, so full of life earlier that morning, had been reduced to a corpse by an asshole looking to prove a point. Kneeling beside his mother, Kevin checked her neck for a pulse. Nothing. Without her soul, Abelia’s body lacked the capacity to take care of himself. How long could it last in that condition? Kevin knew the term rigor mortis but had no clue how long it would take to set in or when Abelia’s body would begin to decompose. Could a human soul’s innate healing ability repair such damage? He didn’t know that either. He wondered briefly if he should find a way to shove his mother into the freezer to keep her fresh, then settled on simply moving her to the living room couch and covering her with a thin blanket.
Looking back at the winding trail of excrement he’d left behind him, Kevin considered his options. Whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it quickly.
“But what the hell am I gonna do?” he muttered to himself sadly.
What chance did he stand against an angry force of nature intent on royally fucking with him? A frontal assault would get him nowhere. Billy knew he was coming, and Kevin couldn’t compete with the reaper in a straight-up fight. The trick, he realized, would be to outmaneuver his opponent somehow. He didn’t have to incapacitate Billy; he just had to distract him long enough to release his friends. Freeing Nella would certainly even the odds if they could get Billy near a water source. But how could he keep the reaper occupied long enough to do that? He’d have to face Billy on his home turf, in Lordly Estates, which limited his options for making use of the environment. The one thing guaranteed to get Billy’s attention was Kevin Felton himself.
Which meant he needed help. Unfortunately, all of his obvious options were locked away in a travel mug or a drywall bucket. Involving Waltman and Jim Jimeson or Tom Flanagan or any of his other friends seemed like a bad idea. Not only did he not want to put any of them at risk, but he also didn’t think he could trust any of them to do the job properly. Besides which, how the fuck was he supposed to properly explain the circumstances so they’d believe him? He didn’t have that kind of time.
Shaking with fear, Kevin glanced out the window at the house next door and knew he only had one option. Mr. Gregson wasn’t going to be happy about the way things had gone down. He doubted the pixie would fight his battle for him, but if he approached Mr. Gregson with a solid plan that involved little risk to his own tiny person then maybe, just maybe, his crazy neighbor would agree to assist.
Although Kevin didn’t want to waste a single second, he took a quick shower and changed into a fresh pair of clothes. Showing up on Mr. Gregson’s front porch with a huge load in his pants seemed like a great way to get telekinetically thrown across the Harksburg town common. He absentmindedly lingered in the shower for a few minutes longer than he intended, lulled into security by the warmth and temporarily forgetting his troubles. After what he’d been through that morning, he couldn’t help enjoying a moment of peace. He angrily turned the water off when it dawned on him again that the clock was ticking.
Clean and dressed in fresh slacks and a black sweater, Kevin headed for Mr. Gregson’s. The front door creaked opened eerily as he scaled the steps onto the front porch. Kevin froze, a shiver running down his spine. He’d never been inside of his neighbor’s house. Heck, he’d barely ever caught more than a fleeting glimpse of the interior through the thick curtains on all of the windows. That Mr. Gregson obviously wanted Kevin to enter in spite of his obvious preference for privacy was rather ominous.
“Hello?” Kevin called out nervously. “Mr. Gregson?”
Did the door open a little further in response? Kevin couldn’t be sure. He began to wonder if this was just another part of whatever sadistic game Billy was playing with him. The reaper would’ve had plenty of time to travel from the Works and either incapacitate Mr. Gregson or recruit him to the cause. That latter possibility was especially frightening. Mr. Gregson would certainly be up for a rousing round of Fuck with Kevin Felton.
But that had to be impossible, right? Kevin had never mentioned Mr. Gregson’s interest in recent events to Billy, so the reaper would have no reason to think his target would run to the pixie for help, right? Likewise, Mr. Gregson couldn’t have found out on his own how badly Kevin had screwed up. The trick with the door was just another dumb game, and whatever new humiliation Kevin was about to suffer likely wouldn’t be fatal—or even the kind of temporary-but-nonetheless-painful sort of fatal that had permeated Harksburg recently. It would just suck.
Taking a deep breath, Kevin eased the storm door open and stepped into Mr. Gregson’s home. An intense sensation of not belonging washed over him as soon as he crossed the threshold, freezing him with his left foot inside and his right foot on the porch. “Mr. Gregson?” he tried again, his voice even shakier. Maybe the door had swung open simply because it hadn’t been shut securely. Maybe Mr. Gregson wasn’t answering him because he was asleep or showering or taking a dump. Maybe walking into his neighbor’s house uninvited would be the worst mistake of Kevin Felton’s life. Maybe he should turn around and find a way to deal with his reaper problem all on his own.
“Oh, fucking come in already!” Mr. Gregson’s familiar gruff baritone commanded from some indeterminate point ahead.
Kevin about jumped out of his shoes and would’ve shat himself again had there been anything left in his bowels. He scrambled inside, the storm door slamming shut behind him with a sharp crash, and caught himself on the wall just before he would’ve collided with a small table. His flailing arms just missed wiping out an arrangement of framed photographs. Forcing himself to breathe normally, Kevin found himself staring at a panoramic image of the biggest waterfall he’d ever seen, a seven or eight tier behemoth interrupted here and there with rocky cliffs and small islands like a pod of dolphins breaching the raucous waves. Beside that hung a smaller image of a jungle, a scene thick with flora of all shapes and sizes, all of it trimmed with rectangular purple leaves. His eyes traced half a dozen similarly fantastic scenes—deserts of obsidian, mountains of pure quartz, lakes turned pink with dense vegetation. At first, he thought they couldn’t possibly be real, that he was looking at some nerdy teenager’s collection of homemade desktop wallpapers, and then he remembered Donovan Pim’s magical forest and chastised himself for lapsing back into his former role as a stupid, naïve human. Set atop the table Kevin had almost crashed into was a tiny crystal castle, a glittering array of spiraling towers and soaring buttresses surrounding a sturdy central keep. Sunlight streaming in through the front door made it glow and dance as if on fire, its center a hot ember Kevin half expected to burn straight through the tabletop.
“From Talvayne,” Mr. Gregson’s voice explained. “My home. Before the bastards kicked me out.”
The pure hatred in Mr. Gregson’s tone sent a shiver down Kevin’s spine. The pixie obviously thought he’d been wronged in a most terrible way. But what if he’d deserved it? What if he’d done something that warranted exile? In that case, Kevin’s best hope for rescuing his loved ones was a hardened criminal likely capable of unspeakable things. He couldn’t decide if that was a positive or a negative.
The telltale cheers and frivolous music of a TV game show trickled into the front hallway from the living room beyond, drawing Kevin forward past a thick set of stairs leading to the second floor. The worn hardwood creaked beneath his feet, scratched and pocked here and there by the wheels of Mr. Gregson’s chair and looking for all the world like it had been attacked by some predator with ferocious claws. Ahead, Kevin could see the television’s antenna above the back of a heavy old couch trimmed in classic 1970s burnt orange. Matching wallpaper speckled with paisleys completed the retro look.
He came upon Mr. Gregson from behind and to the left, circling around the shitty old couch. The pixie had parked his wheelchair on the opposite side.
“Mr. Gregson? Um, hi,” Kevin stammered. Mr. Gregson ignored him, evidently hypnotized by a soap commercial with a cheesy jingle to the point that he couldn’t move a single muscle. Annoyed, confused, and frightened beyond belief by thoughts of what nature was likely doing to his mother’s corpse, Kevin bravely took a step in front of the TV—
—and promptly stumbled back in horror at the sight of the gaping hole in Mr. Gregson’s chest. The man sat in his chair with his shirt wide open, exposing the empty cavity where his heart and respiratory system should’ve been. Upon closer inspection, it appeared his organs had been replaced with some sort of glass ball reminiscent of a fishbowl. Though he didn’t move, Mr. Gregson’s eyes glittered with awareness. Somehow, the pixie’s shell was alive.
“Christ, that never gets old!” a small voice chirped.
A familiar force wrapped around Kevin and lifted him a few inches into the air. Although he couldn’t move most of his body, his head and neck still worked. “G-g-great trick,” he stuttered, his heart in his throat. The moment of truth surely wasn’t far away now.
A tiny green light zipped out from under the couch to hover in front of Kevin’s face. When his eyes adjusted, he found a tiny winged man in black sweatpants and a stained white tank top suspended in the middle of the glow, examining him with disdain as if his recent floor-crapping had somehow become common knowledge. The pixie’s combination of sharp, aquiline features, five o’clock shadow, and thick beer belly would’ve been considered handsome in certain dirty biker bars Kevin had driven past but never thought worth visiting.
“Mr. Gregson—”
“That’s Mr. Gregson,” the pixie replied, nodding toward his empty shell. “I’m Thisolanipusintarex. Rex for short for stupid humans who can’t say it right. What the fuck was the reaper doing in your fucking house?”
“Banging my mother.” Kevin couldn’t help himself, and he hoped his candor would break the ice and put the pixie at ease.
The little man scowled. “Have some respect for your elders, you little shit.”
Kevin blushed, chagrined. “Sorry.”
“And then the reaper stole your mother’s car.”
“You saw all that? Don’t you have anything better to do than spy on me?”
“Where did he go?”
“To the Roberts estate, to take possession of Ren’s soul. And Driff’s. Then, he went out into the Works and put Nella in a bucket. He’s got my mother’s soul, too.”
“And just why in the fuck would he do all that?”
This was it. “Billy knows.”
Rex paused for a moment, the wheels obviously spinning in his tiny mind. Kevin braced himself to be thrown against the ceiling or out the nearest window.
“He’s challenging you to rescue them.”
Kevin nodded.
“And you came here to ask me for help because you’re a pathetic human and Billy’s an unstoppable force of nature.”
“Yes, sir. P-p-please.”
The pixie hesitated again. Behind him, his human shell’s dark eyes glittered with anticipation.
“I’ll help you,” Rex declared.
Kevin’s jaw dropped, his heart leapt, and a crushing weight slipped off his shoulders. He couldn’t believe how easy that had been. Obviously, he’d underestimated his neighbor’s desire to put everything back to normal and keep Tallisker’s prying eyes off Harksburg.
“…on one condition,” the pixie added.
All of Kevin’s hope and joy suddenly fell off a cliff. “What’s that?”
Rex smiled evilly. “I need new skin.”
“New…skin? Like a graft or something?” That wouldn’t be so bad. After all, how much skin could such a tiny creature really need?
“Something like that.” Rex jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the catatonic, wheelchair-bound man observing the scene.
Something like that, indeed. “Is he…still alive?”
“Very much so. I even give the poor bastard a few hours of freedom every now and then. Not that he can get very far on his own.”
“And it’s…permanent?”
The pixie nodded. “I’m the only thing keeping him alive.”
It was Kevin’s turn to stop and think. Rex’s terms were extremely steep: a lifetime of unbreakable servitude in exchange for the safety of his loved ones. And Driff. He should’ve known the pixie’s help wouldn’t come cheap.
But could he do it? Could Kevin trade that much of himself to save his mother, his lover, and his best friend since childhood? And Driff? He quickly came to the conclusion that he couldn’t. He wasn’t that sort of selfless hero. The only thing Kevin Felton had in common with Captain America or Superman was that he sometimes wore blue. Self-sacrifice wasn’t that high on his to-do list.
He was, however, kind of an asshole. Risking Billy’s wrath by befriending him had come as naturally as speaking or walking. Although Kevin had meant no harm and had to come to like the reaper, he’d had no qualms about stringing him along. It had been his only option at the time, and he’d embraced it. Working a similar game with Thisolanipusintarex—playing along while searching for a way to flip the board and change his own fate—stood out as Kevin’s best and only chance. He needed the pixie’s assistance that badly.
And besides, after all the history between his neighbor and his family, after all the hell Rex had put him through the last few days, what was so bad about fucking the slimy little bastard over?
“After we rescue my friends,” Kevin said.
Rex quickly shook his head. “Before. The last thing that son of a bitch will expect is a pixie popping out of your chest.”
Kevin couldn’t deny that logic, but such a progression would severely inhibit his chances of escaping the deal. “No way. Once you’re…in charge, how do I know you’ll help me?”
“Felton, when have I ever lied to you? You’ll have to trust me.”
Over the pixie’s shoulder, Kevin thought he saw the man in the wheelchair shake his head ever so slightly.
“No deal. I’m leaving.”
Rex sighed in mock disappointment. “Well then, just go!”
But the pixie’s magic grip held Kevin in place. He struggled to move his arms and legs to no avail.
“Oh, that’s right!” Rex chirped, snapping his fingers like he’d been struck by a fantastic idea. “You fucking can’t! I’m in charge here, and if I say you’re my new skin, there’s absolutely fucking nothing you can do about it! Silly me! How could I have forgotten that? It’s kind of important.”
Though he fought with all his might, Kevin couldn’t free himself from his captor’s telekinesis. That overwhelming sense of helplessness he’d felt while in the reaper’s clutches—a feeling he’d hoped never to experience again—came roaring back with a vengeance. “Let me go!” he screamed for what felt like the billionth time that day. “I will find a way to make you fucking regret th—”
And then his jaw stopped working, frozen by the same paralyzing magic that rendered the rest of his body useless.
“No, you won’t,” Rex replied. “In fact, I suspect I’m going to enjoy this. After we kill the reaper, we’re going to disown your bitch of a mother, beat the ever-loving shit out of the Roberts twit, and fuck the daylights out of your saucy blue girlfriend. It’s going to be a riot!”
Never before had Kevin wanted a flyswatter so badly. If he could’ve moved, he would’ve done unspeakable things to Thisolanipusintarex: torn off his pansy-ass wings, tossed him against the wall, ground the pixie’s fragile little body under his heel until he begged for mercy. All Kevin could do was rage silently, partly angry at himself for being stupid enough and desperate enough to seek help from someone he knew absolutely hated his guts.
His captor magically dragged him into the adjoining kitchen, a tight space trimmed with cheap white cabinets and an island listing dangerously to the left. They paused long enough for the thin basement door to swing open and then they floated down the rickety wooden stairs. A rancid smell assaulted Kevin’s nose as they angled down into the stone and mortar dungeon below. It reminded him of how bad he’d smelled upon regaining control of his body on the kitchen floor after he’d crapped and pissed all over himself, except ten times worse.
“Back for more, huh?” a smooth voice echoed from below. “What’s it gonna be this time? I’ve had my thumb up my ass all day, so you’re in for a real fuckin’ treat if you want to chew on my hand again!”
In spite of his own predicament, Kevin couldn’t help swearing to himself and wondering what the fuck he was being dragged into now. Because seriously, why the hell was there someone fingering his own asshole in Rex’s basement?
They reached the floor and turned left, looping back around the base of the staircase. A trio of chicken wire cages jutted out from the far wall, speckled with rust but eerily intimidating despite the corrosion. In the left-most cage, a lone prisoner leaned arrogantly against the hard stone wall, glaring slow, painful death at the approaching pair. Because of his striking features, muscular build, and long blond hair, Kevin at first mistook the man for some sort of male model. Closer inspection revealed a pair of pointy ears barely sticking out from his golden mane. His white dress shirt and skinny black jeans were streaked with blood and grime and who knows what else. A cutlass dangled in a sheath at his hip, the guard trimmed with sparkling rubies. A single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a thin wire illuminated the room.
An elf? What the hell? Kevin would’ve asked if he’d had the ability.
“Afternoon, Rotreego!” Mr. Gregson greeted cheerily. “How’s the day treating you?”
“Fucking great! Just woke up from a nap on your cold stone floor and took a shit down the hole in the corner! I didn’t miss this time, either!”
“Congrats! I know how you hate having to push it in with your foot!”
Kevin decided that he liked Rex a lot better as a gruff curmudgeon who rarely put more than three words together. He wondered what accounted for the change; perhaps he didn’t like using his skin’s voice for some reason. Whatever it was, he really wished the pixie would shut the hell up.
Thisolanipusintarex dropped Kevin into the right-most cell, leaving an empty unit between his two captives. The door slid shut behind him and locked with a sharp metallic squeal. The sensation of being released from Rex’s magic grip was almost like breathing again after breaching the surface of a pool or a pond.
“You boys play nice, now,” the pixie said. “I’ve got some supplies to pick up before we get to business.”
“Hurry up,” Kevin snapped angrily. “My mother’s decomposing.”
“Be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!” Rex chirped as he zipped back up the stairs.
Alone, the pair of prisoners regarded each other coolly. The elf’s face and arms, Kevin could now see, were pocked with what appeared to be tiny bites. Kevin hoped the basement wasn’t full of bugs.
“He’s been eating me,” Rotreego explained. “Treats me like a giant granola bar. Pretty sure that kind of thing is what got him booted from Talvayne. Apparently, elf is good for eatin’ but not for wearin’.”
Defeated, Kevin slumped into an uncomfortable sitting position against the back wall. “What are you in for?” he asked.
“Stupidity.”
“Same here.”
“A victimless crime,” Rotreego mused. “Unless you count yourself, that is.”
“In my case, I ruined everything for three other people. And Driff.”
Rotreego’s eyes narrowed. “That jackass? He probably deserves it.”
Kevin snorted. “His soul is being held captive in a Chicago Blackhawks travel mug.”
“Deserves it.” Rotreego stepped away from the wall and closer to Kevin, suddenly looking unsure of himself. He drew the cutlass from its sheath at his side. “Say…is my sword on fire?”
“Um…what?”
“My sword. Is it on fire? See any blue flames dancing merrily up the blade, ready to smite my enemies?”
Kevin squinted and looked closer. “I don’t see shit.”
“Damn,” the elf replied, dejected. “I thought maybe it was just me, ya know?”
“Is it supposed to be on fire?”
Rotreego examined him for a moment, seemingly unsure what to make of the question. “Of course it is. I’m the Pintiri. The hero of Evitankari. The wielder of the Ether, the most powerful magic in the known world. I’m a leader! A statesman! An icon! Idol and role model to millions!” He sighed sadly. “Or at least, I was.”
“Okay,” Kevin was beginning to doubt his companion’s sanity. Maybe he’d caught something from Rex’s saliva. “I’m no expert on the subject, but…magic fire doesn’t just go away, does it?”
The elf collapsed on the floor and tossed his weapon aside, hanging his head between his knees. “Only one thing can separate the Ether from the Pintiri: the Pintiri’s death. That fucking pixie drove a railway spike through my heart a couple days ago. Killed me. Except…I didn’t die. Well, I did, but I healed up in moments and came right back. At the time, I thought maybe he’d tricked me with a spell of some sort. I haven’t been able to summon the Ether since.”
Now that, Kevin thought angrily, sounds too damn ridiculous to be a coincidence. But then again, if someone wanted to separate the magic from Rotreego’s sword, why not do it where it would be permanent? Maybe he was over-thinking things; life with all these magic assholes had certainly made him paranoid. “The local reaper’s been…busy,” he explained.
“Ah. Well, I guess everyone deserves a vacation every now and then.”
Nearby, an old engine roared to life and backed out of a driveway. Thisolanipusintarex was on the move.
“I just wanted to make sweet love to what I thought was a hot-to-trot little blonde number with the tits of an angel, but it turned out to be that little winged bastard instead!” Rotreego wailed. “That’s what I get for trusting an online dating profile!”
Cringing, Kevin frowned and examined his fellow prisoner, the supposed hero of Evitankari. If this guy was the best the elves had to offer, their race was in deep shit. He suspected there was more to it than that, though. Driff, for all his cold, heartless faults, seemed relatively competent. So how had this Rotreego asshole wound up in the position he’d reached?
He dismissed that line of thinking. He didn’t have time for idle speculation regarding elven society. Kevin’s priority at that very moment was finding a way out of there before Mr. Gregson returned and implanted a magic fishbowl in his chest cavity. Poking the chicken wire experimentally produced a shower of blue sparks and a burned fingertip, which explained why Rotreego had yet to hack his way free with his cutlass. The concrete floor and stone rear wall were both too dense to try digging through without appropriate tools. He eyed the exposed joists and plywood that supported the level above them, but there was no good way to reach them through the chicken wire cage.
“We’re stuck here, man!” Rotreego moaned. “I checked all that shit. Fucker’s a real pro. I’m going to spend the rest of my miserable life crapping in a hole and getting chewed on like a piece of beef fucking jerky.”
“Beef? You sound more like a chicken to me,” Kevin mumbled under his breath. He didn’t quite trust the unstable elf’s assessment and so he continued to search the room. Though he still felt like a moron for expecting help from Thisolanipusintarex, wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to do him any favors. Rotreego was living proof of that, and at the very least the elf’s presence confirmed that Kevin Felton was, at worst, only the second biggest idiot in the world.
Wherever she was, he knew that Kylie probably disagreed. And he finally decided that he didn’t give a shit what she thought.
The only thing in the room that seemed even remotely useful was the tiny window beside his cell. About the size of the Pussy Hatch in his own basement bedroom, the window was set into a notch in the foundation and appeared to open down and outward. Kevin could barely peer through it if he stood on his tiptoes. If he craned his neck while standing as tall as possible, he could see his own bedroom window up the driveway and to the left. As Rotreego tried and failed to conceal his pathetic sobs, the beginning of an incredibly stupid plan began to congeal in Kevin’s mind.
“Do you do any magic?” he asked.
“I already tried forcing the lock, melting the cage, and making a fissure open in the floor,” Rotreego whined. “None of it worked. I can’t affect anything inside of this damn wire.”
“Could you break that window?”
“Yes!” Rotreego snapped in a tone usually reserved for small children who’ve missed their naps.
Kevin waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. “Will you break that window?”
“Why?”
“Because that window breaking is an indescribably big part of my plan to get both of us out of here.”
Rotreego hesitated, shaking like a leaf in the breeze. “We’re not getting out of here.”
“Not with that fucking attitude,” Kevin snapped.
The elf looked up at him, his lip quivering below stone cold eyes. “Really, human? You don’t think I haven’t already thought of and tried every possible option available to us? You really think you can get me out of this when I couldn’t do it myself?”
Kevin had pretty much decided that Rotreego deserved to be trapped in his cage, but he needed the elf’s sorcery. “I think we can do it together.”
“Hmmph,” Rotreego growled, putting his head back between his knees.
“Even if it doesn’t work, Rex is going to be really pissed that someone broke his window. It’ll probably cost a fair amount to get it fixed.”
That did it. The sharp crack of shattering glass made Kevin jump. He looked over his shoulder and found a pile of tiny shards where the window used to be. Rotreego hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Will you shut up now?” the elf mumbled.
“Thanks,” Kevin replied, rolling his eyes. He stepped as close to the side of his cage as he dared, took a deep breath, and yelled with all his might. “Gnomes!”
“Oh, what the fuck?” Rotreego moaned. “That’s your grand plan?”
Kevin was sure as shit that no human would be able to open Mr. Gregson’s cells, and magic cast from inside the cages obviously had no effect on their prison. That meant he needed sorcery from outside, and the closest magic assholes he knew of were the sneaky little bastards that had been tangling his cords, hiding his keys, mismatching his socks, and turning his toilet paper roll around—assuming they even existed and Driff hadn’t been fucking with him, of course.
“Gnomes!” he bellowed again.
“That’s not going to work,” Rotreego grumbled.
“Better than doing nothing.”
“Sure about that? A few minutes ago, I thought you were probably an all right dude. Now I think you’re a raving idiot.”
“Story of my life,” Kevin muttered. “Gnomes!”
“Whaddaya want?” a surprisingly gruff voice replied. A tiny face peered around the window frame to look down into Thisolanipusintarex’s basement. The gnome had the chubby cheeks and dark, scrubby beard of a low-level professional bowler. A pointy red hat sat atop his head at a jaunty angle.
Kevin’s jaw dropped. He really hadn’t expected that to work. “Um…hi.”
“Eloquent,” Rotreego grumbled.
“Hi yaself,” the gnome said. “Whaddaya doin’ in that cage?”
“Screaming for help. Rex is going to shove a snow globe into my chest and take up residence inside. And he’s been chewing on Rotreego here.”
The gnome did not look impressed. “So?”
“So, we were hoping you might be able to give us a little help.”
“Like asking the termites chewing on your woodwork if they’ll take the trash out,” Rotreego muttered.
The gnome scratched his chin, considering. “I saw what happened to you this morning. Woke me up from my nap. Tough break, kid. Me an’ mine have always enjoyed messing around with you an’ yours. Yer mother always gets so deliciously pissed when I change the settings on the VCR. I’ll talk to the missus, see what we can do.”
“Thank you,” Kevin replied, bowing his head. When he looked back up, the tiny man was gone.
“Like asking a tapeworm if it’ll wipe your ass,” Rotreego grumbled.
Kevin turned to face the elf. “What exactly is your issue?”
“My issue,” Rotreego spat, “is that I’m the fucking Pintiri and I’m about to be rescued by a useless human and the disgusting vermin that have infested his shithole of a dwelling.”
“If you’d prefer, we could just leave you here.”
“No way. Just…don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation.”
So, it was a matter of pride, then. Kevin could kind of sympathize, at least to a small extent. He’d spent most of the day lamenting his own stupid decisions, but he liked to think he hadn’t been as annoying about it as the supposed hero of Evitankari.
“But seriously, this is like asking the bacteria in your athlete’s foot to paint your toenails.”
“Beyond the minor annoyances, what’s so bad about gnomes?”
“You don’t find the idea of a creature that gets its rocks off purely by fucking around with everybody else to be inherently repugnant?” Rotreego asked, incredulous.
Kevin scratched his chin. “Well, when you put it that way… these gnomes don’t sound all that different from you pain in the ass elves.”
“Ooooooh, clever.”
The gnome returned a few minutes later, this time accompanied by his equally tiny wife. The two of them floated gently down to the floor as if riding an invisible escalator. Squat, portly creatures with solid frames, their matching sky blue jackets and red slacks strained against their wearers’ bulbous curves. The woman wore her long blond hair in an intricate braid under her pointy red hat, her cheeks flush with rouge. Kevin couldn’t believe that something that small could have tits that big.
“I’m Yagor,” the male said. He wrapped a loving arm around the woman’s shoulders. “This is my wife, Iassonia.”
She smiled a crooked, gap-toothed smile that immediately made Kevin forget the size of her chest. “Pleased to officially meet you, Felton. You’ve a lovely home, even with all the…um…changes, lately.”
“My mother’s having a bit of a midlife crisis,” Kevin replied, blushing. “Thanks for coming.”
Iassonia took a few steps toward the cage, rubbing her hands together awkwardly. Her eyes darted back and forth across the cage like she was watching a game of table tennis. “Interesting,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “Your captor used a Parlava Cross overlaid with a Generian B-film to hide an underlying Red Quill. A rare combination, but not unheard of.”
“Uh…what does that mean?” Kevin asked.
The female gnome closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and strode right through the chicken wire. She looked up at Kevin and smiled brightly. “It means he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”
“That’s my girl!” Yagor crowed, waving to his wife. “Love ya, hon!”
“Love you too, sugar dumpling!”
Kevin gasped. “Can you…can you help me do that?”
“And me,” Rotreego moaned, “but please don’t tell anyone.”
Iassonia nodded. “Easily.”
“That may not be the smart thing to do in this case,” Yagor added.
Confused, Kevin crossed his arms over his chest. “Why’s that?”
“Have ya ever pissed off a pixie before, boy?” Yagor asked.
“Just this one.”
“They’re rabid, merciless animals,” the gnome spat. “They don’t forgive and they never, ever forget. You walk outta here and that little fucker will stop at nothing to find you, ‘specially with what you seen him doing to poor Rotreego over there.”
Kevin’s blood turned to ice. “That…sounds like the last thing I fucking need.”
“But don’t worry,” Iassonia chirped. “I’ve got just the thing.”