Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening

His fat-fuck toe quivers at the presence of cosmic malevolence. Jeac Fernando,
a gorgeous bald dwarf, emerges from a door at the highest point of the C.D.P.D
tower.

The C.D.P.D is a skyscraper
unlike any other. Where most cities are constructed as a sprawl, spread out
with the occasional tower jutting skyward, the C.D.P.D started as a small
cluster city and then, instead of building out, its people built up. Towers
placed on towers, concrete slabs, roads, girders, intersecting and improperly
formed creating levels between multiple cities and continuing upward like a
junkyard Tower of Babel.

Jeac has climbed thousands of flights
of stairs to reach this point and is sweating profusely. He peers over the side
of the tower and sees remnants of similar city-scapes out across the Chandakan
wastes. The planet is a desert for as far as he can see. Occasional bits of old
highways peak out from under the sand in between the fallen shafts.

His pistol slips from his
sausage-like fingers, but he doesn’t drop it. His grip tightens and he begins
looking around the miles wide roof. The hot suns burn the blacktop and a single
drop of sweat falls from his face, hits the ground, and evaporates instantly.

His perusal of the immediate area
doesn’t last long before he sees what set his toe to throbbing: a pack of
blood-thirsty killers who have captured a baby and are preparing to sacrifice
it in some dark ritual. One of the perpetrators, Beatrice L. Humvee, an
ex-member of the A.M.M.D is clutching the baby in her hydraulic arms and
honking at the lizard men surrounding her. Jeac takes aim and fires off three
shots at the lizard men before yelling, “C.D.P.D! Freeze!”
Two of the
lizard men are dead and the others promptly turn and begin hissing at Jeac.
Beatrice lets off a long foghorn sound which causes Jeac to cringe. He raises
his weapon again. The bullets fly rapidly out of the pistol and bounce off the
car-beasts forehead. Her eyes, more similar to the bright lights on a car,
blink rapidly as she drops the baby, which explodes into a paste on the ground
(but it’s okay because the baby is 42 years old and also a being made of
liquid). Beatrice signals to her cronies and they start running away from Jeac.

“No!” Jeac yells and then jams his pinkies into his mouth in an attempt to
whistle. He breaks out two of his teeth and the sound that he generates is not
dissimilar to that of a thousand whoopee cushions being deflated in unison
while a carload of warlocks burns to death.

Despite this, a scraping noise is
heard seconds later and a velociraptor claws its way over the wall and onto the
blacktop behind him. Jeac jumps onto the back of his loyal friend, Ranch
Dressing, so named for his albino scales and blue head feathers.

He spurs the dinosaur and causes it
to jump into the air, big-clawed toe foot thingy first. It lands on Humvee’s
back and begins furiously clawing and biting, sparks flying everywhere and
blinding the clan of lizard-like sanquinophiles. This causes them to start
doing cartwheels, which everyone knows is how lizards clear their vision.

Unfortunately for them, they
cartwheel to the sloped edge of the colossal tower -- the side with the slanted
solar panels -- and plummet to their deaths. Jeac attempts to reload his
pistol, but the turbulence brought on by the struggle between the vehicular
being and his velociraptor causes him to drop the weapon. It falls their
combined distance, nearly twenty feet below.

“Curse my dwarven stature!”

Beatrice L. Humvee reaches back with large, tirey-hands and swats the raptor
and its miniature jockey off of her back. They hit the ground with a thud and
slide down another more angular portion of roofing to the fire escape, which is
rusted and likely to break. Ms. Humvee jumps onto the fire escape; her weight
rattles the bolts holding it to the side of the ridiculously tall building.

“Oh, no! The fire escape is breaking! Run my Peruvian Ranch Dressing,” Jeac panics
but is relieved when he sees that Ranch Dressing has sprouted wings and is
gliding away to safety. “Bastardo, Wait! Had I known you could fly I’d have
jumped with you!”

“Burn in hell, human!” Ranch Dressing yells… with words.

Jeac clutches at a loose bit of pipe as the scaffolding gives
way completely. Beatrice falls to the ground below and explodes, causing thousands
of dollars in property damage and killing nearly fifty people. As Jeac hangs
from the side of the building and sees the explosion, he makes his best attempt
at an action movie one liner, “So much for being… Eco-friendly.”

Suddenly, water drips
onto the pipe Jeac is gripping. First causing him to slip and then to let go
completely. He is surprised to find that he isn’t falling, but is being lifted
upward by a liquid hand. A dwarf’s worst fear: Falling up.

Part
II: A Fat Dump of Info

Chapter 2
“Fernando!
What the hell happened back there!? Do you know how many people died because of
that explosion?”

A bright yellow banana with rabies
foams at the mouth as he berates his protégé. He holds a gun shaped
suspiciously like a banana in his right hand… that is also made up of smaller
bananas. Alfonzo B. Nana proceeds to slap the shit out of Jeac with a peel that
he holds in his opposing banana hand.

Jeac sits in a leather-backed chair made of gorilla skins and cries. He suffers
blow after blow without any form of resistance. His punishment lasts for nearly
five hours and by the time he gets up to leave, his boss has had ten bathroom
breaks and allowed his underlings the chance to beat Jeac in his stead. Jeac,
tiring of this, shoots one of these men in the thigh and escapes out of the
office window. Never mind where he got the gun from. This is a typical
Wednesday.

After Jeac escapes Alfonzo’s office he walks around to the front of the police
station and right in to debrief his real boss (this is a joke about Jeac taking
off another person’s underwear), Alfonzo’s son, Armando, head of all
departments of the C.D.P.D.

Strangely, Armando is completely
human. Wearing a pin-striped suit, he sits with his mud-caked loafers up on his
large, sturdy, mahogany desk and smokes a twenty foot long pipe that requires
an assistant to light. The end of the pipe rests next to the door Jeac walks
through. He nearly trips over it. Jeac hobbles on stumpy legs over to an
overturned laundry bin and hops up onto it. He rests his hands on the desk in
front of Armando and begins fiddling with a pencil.

Between puffs of smoke that Armando emits from his mouth and nose like a
dragon, he asks, “So, what the hell happened, Jeac?”

“Oh, you know. Bada-bing. Bada-boom. Shit happens, boss. I took the usual
approach to the confrontation.”

“Jeac, we both know your usual approach is to go in guns blazing with no regard
for human or alien or robot or infant or zombie or aquatic or dinosaur life.”

“Yeah, and so I figured it’d work now, too. What’d I do wrong, boss?”

Armando takes the pipe out of his mouth and tries to gently set it on his desk,
but the end by the door gets caught in a leather jacket, causing resistance,
and he breaks his desk lamp and knocks over a mountainous stack of case files.
The pipe violently snaps in half and the end bounces up and cracks the light
bulb in the ceiling light. He sighs and replies, “Look. I know you meant well.
We all wanted Humvee off the streets… even if she did end up on the streets
during your assault, but the thing is… everything from floor one hundred and
forty nine upward is out of your jurisdiction. The Sky-Cops are pissed. The
whole department, hell, the city council, wants me to bench you. But I think I
have a better plan. You’re going undercover, Jeac.” Armando leans over behind
the desk where Jeac can’t see him and begins rummaging around under the pile of
case files and looks up a moment later. “This might take a few minutes, Jeac.
You got anywhere to be?”

“Not really. My ride, uh, flew off… and yelled at me.”

“Ranch Dressing is capable of speech?”

“Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are. Today has been a day full of new
experiences… Wait, why aren’t you surprised that he can fly?”

“Man, I grew that dinosaur in a test tube before I gave him over to you.
Raptors are standard issue for all detectives in our department, but you knew
that because you work here. This is really more of a pointless info dump in
case some bizarre outside force is witnessing our conversation. Anyway, you not
knowing he could fly is more of a surprise to me than my father being a
banana,” Armando says as he continues to shuffle papers around. After a few
more minutes he sits up and slams two large bits of metal down on his desk with
a pair of pants and what appears to be a fake mustache. Jeac reaches over and
grabs the pants and, holding them up to inspect them as he stands on the
laundry basket, says, “These things are way too freaking long. No way can I
wear these. No idea how this’ll keep me from getting benched anyway. Nice try, Armando.”

“Maybe check these out first,” Armando responds and tosses the lengths of metal
into Jeac’s still outstretched arms. “Gotta tell you, though, there is a
condition here. I have to take your gun and badge, Jeac.”
“Wait,
what!?”

“It’s not as bad as all that, really. I take your gun and badge and I tell the
city council you’ve been suspended or murdered or whatever. You put on that
disguise and I bring you in front of the department and tell them how you’re…
Well, for lack of better words… Your own replacement.”
“I’m gonna
be my own replacement?” asks Jeac, the breeze coming in from the window
rustling his eyebrows. “What a twist!”

He eats the pretzel.

Part
III: The Colonel and Their Factions

Other books

Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler

Torn by Kelly Fisher

Hold On (Delos Series Book 5) by Lindsay McKenna

Fun With Problems by Robert Stone

Spectra's Gambit by Vincent Trigili

Castles in the Air by Christina Dodd

I Hope You Dance by Moran, Beth

Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald

Schooled In Lies by Henry, Angela

Salt by Helen Frost