Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening (11 page)

“We were never really alive anyway,”
Ranch says. “Look beneath you. Jeac, there is nothing. The only reason we
aren’t dead now is because of this bucket. Because our superiors thought we
wouldn’t figure it out.”

Ranch moves closer to Jeac. Jeac
presses his shooty McRifle against Ranch Dressing’s face.

“You may or may not be right, Ranch,”
he says. “But I came here for a different reason.”

Ranch pushes the barrel away from his
face.

“Jeac, no,” he says. “Think this
through!”

Jeac grips the grip of the gun tight
and locks the butt of the gun into his shoulder.

“Jeac, you’re my partner,” Ranch
pleads. “You’re my friend.”

Ranch lowers to his… Knees? Do
velociraptors have knees?

“No Ranch,” Jeac says. A single tear
trails down his face and rests on his beard. “I’m a tower cop, goddamnit!”

An explosion of led roars from the
black depths of the cylindrical death tube. Hundreds of tiny lead balls shred
through Ranch’s face and neck. The torn flesh and milky warm blood splatter
onto the far wall and look like a smokers’ tarred lung. Ranch’s body lays
stiff.

“Goodbye my friend,” Jeac says. He
gently kicks Ranch’s broken corpse into the bucket, but the velociraptors’ tail
gets caught in the metal grating. Jeac kicks harder until he finally decides to
just pick up the mangled corpse. He starts yanking on it to loosen its tail.
Jeac drops the raptors’ dead body out of frustration, crosses his arms, and
scrunches his face.

“Hmph.”

THE END?

Twelve years later. Jeac sits at his desk smoking a live hamster (fact:
hamsters are a euphoric drug). Its ass burns and ashes as it squeals and
writhes in his fat hand. He is a hero. Well, he is a hero to the precinct. The
people of Chandaka are still enslaved and sacrificed regularly.

Oddly enough, the blood from the
rampaging golem has coagulated and glued the broken pieces of Chandaka back
into place. A new sea exists, a new ocean. A blood ocean.

The wizards who dueled atop the tower
and killed more people than the C.D.P.D did in the entire time the bucket
existed have been prosecuted and shot into one of the dying suns. They’re
probably still alive.

Randomly and for no reason, which is
basically the same thing, Jeac gains a conscious. He realizes that the tower is
evil. He stands with such a force that his desk flies off the ground and
through the ceiling, killing twelve office workers above.

“I’m not sorry!” he shouts to no one
in particular.

He storms out the door, grabbing his
metal shard axe and the same shotgun he used to kill Ranch. He heads down the
hall and into Armando’s office where he finds him once again puffing on an
insanely long pipe. The room has been repaired since his last visit, but
poorly. The far wall is constructed of cardboard. Jeac jumps on Armando’s desk
and rips off his pants.

“Jeac!” yells Armando. “What in the
name of the infernal shark gods who we all started worshipping last week are
you doing!?”

“I realized something,” Jeac replies.
“I was used! Used to defend an evil secret that is evil and was secret! Ranch
basically rubbed my face in it! And now I’m going to rub your face in this!”

He defecates all over Armando’s desk
and then grabs him by a tuft of hair. He slams his face into the shite with
such force that his nose breaks off and flies out the back of his skull. Jeac
catches the cartilage-based smelling appendage and chews it like gum while
using his axe to saw off Armando’s scalp. He takes a moment to sew it into his
beard, but as he’s finishing the job he looks up and sees Alfonzo standing,
mouth agape in the doorway.

“You scalp-tosser!” the banana cries.
“You killed my son!”

He draws one of his banana pistols
from a holster. He doesn’t have time to fire. Jeac has already jumped from
behind the desk and is running with his arms spread out wide like the default
T-pose for characters in video games that haven’t been animated yet.

He dislocates his jaw like a snake
and slams face first into Alfonzo’s stomach. With a mouthful of banana he
continues to run down the hallway, his arms scraping the cheap wallpaper off
around him.

Jeac looks back and sees Alfonzo
pulling himself down the hall towards him. His lower half still lying in the
doorway.

Jeac stomps on the ground and the
walls around them creak loudly. He stomps again with such force that a
shockwave ripples through the ground and launches the sentient nanner into the
ceiling. Then, that entire section of the tower that they are in falls off,
because why not? Jeac rushes away from the scene of the awesome double homicide
and heads to the roof.

“I have to get to the murder shaft!”
he says. “I have to make things right.”

Alfonzo hangs onto a beam and with
all his remaining strength he pulls himself up and over the edge. He crawls to
his sons destroyed desk and hits the comically large panic button sitting
underneath. An alarm that sounds like someone hitting a bag of cats with a
dying walrus goes off to alert all of the forces in the tower that something
really bad is going on.

Why this button didn’t exist before
with the golem and stuff, I don’t know. Maybe they developed it after the golem
situation. Who really cares?

Upon hearing the stupid sounding
alarm, all of the cops in the tower know what’s up. Jeac has gone insane! Yeah,
I just decided the alarm is for precisely that. So ignore the garbage about it
maybe being about the golem. They form squads and suit up.

Jeac hears the alarm as well and
thinks it is nothing more than a beautiful song. He starts humming along as he
sprints up the central staircase, decapitating and mutilating anyone who gets
in his way. He reaches a wooden barricade and hops over it as a group of
Piccassi yells at him and tells him he’s wanted for questioning. He assumes
it’s a trap because it is and shoots one in the face and cuts the legs off
another. He scalps them and eats their limbs.

“If it’s just me against all the rest
of the tower I could be in trouble,” he realizes. “Wait. My old friend! The Ted
Lincoln and the other people!”

He continues up the stairs until he
reaches the desolate remains of what used to be Ronin territory. It’s now the
new top of the tower. He climbs up a statue of the late Mu, who someone has
drawn a penis on. While sitting cross-legged atop the head of the statue, Jeac
claps his hands together and begins making cartoon bat noises. He peers off
across the blood ocean at Mount Graevelay. The world shakes and the top of the
mountain bends like a straw. The shaking subsides for a moment and then
increases in strength tenfold, as the volcano erupts and shoots pyroclastics in
the direction of the tower.

Shadows begin to dot the concrete
around Jeac so he sprints for cover. Rock shards of various sizes start
spreading about as small objects crater into the ground. Out of some of the
craters arise his dwarf brethren. Others continue through the entirety of the
tower due to the bullet-like velocity of their launch. They explode upon impact
with various objects in or around the tower. Some of the Chandakan believe
their new shark gods have granted them a copious supply of grape jelly.

After what will forever be known as
the Dwarf-Hail – by what historian I do not know – Jeac gathers with his
compatriots at the edge of the tower. Wading in their direction on top of the
most adorable giant kitten you can imagine, is Ted Lincoln. He is holding a
scepter made of bamboo adorned with an aerosol cheese product. As he grows
nearer to the tower the kitten yawns and purrs. Ted Lincoln raises his scepter.

“It is I, Ted Lincoln!” he declares.

His name echoes back through the crowd
of excited dwarves.

“Yes, we can see that,” one unamused
dwarf named Charles scoffs from the back like a smart ass.

Ted Lincoln scowls and pushes down on
the button on top of the can of cheese and it jettisons forty-two hundred feet
into Charles’ mouth as he grins stupidly. Charles begins to choke to death and
falls to his knees.

“Ha!” Ted Lincoln laughs. “Just
kiddin’!”

He retracts the cheese back into the
can and is fine because for some reason the other author is sympathetic with
this random character who literally only exists in this paragraph. I’m being
told I’m a dick.

Anyway, the dwarves start dancing
around and start chanting some random garbage and the kitten starts climbing
the tower. Lots of people die. When it reaches the top it eats Charles.

“Noooo!” the other author yells. “Not
Charles!”

The kitten curls up into a ball and
goes to sleep. The dwarves start running in all directions with no plan other
than kill. Ted Lincoln and Jeac head to the door that leads to the murder shaft
and Jeac eats it.

Ted Lincoln helps Jeac up and places
his hand on Jeac’s shoulder. Ted Lincoln nods towards Jeac with such admiration
that Jeac gets a splitting headache and bleeds from his eyes and nostrils. Jeac
stares deeply back into Ted Lincoln’s eyes, but his gaze has no affect on the
mighty dwarf. After a long while wasted in competitive brotherly appreciation
they giggle through the very intense awkwardness and continue towards the
murder shaft.

Meanwhile, lots of dwarves and tower
cop people have an epic battle and it’s pretty cool. You should picture it and
then draw it or something because, yeah. I will tell you that one Sky-Cop sees
Jeac and Ted Lincoln head into the murder shaft and follows them. He gets there
right after they do.

Apparently, they find some kind of
fat nuke that Ranch and Water Baby had left behind and so they take it, dump it
in the bucket, and then they fight the Sky-Cop. The Sky-Cop tears off Ted
Lincoln’s head with his feet and then Jeac strangles him with his beard. It’s
very intense. Super gory. There’s also cheese everywhere.

The nuke shows signs of explodiness
so Jeac commandeers the dead Sky-Cops’ jet pack. He flies off into space as
Chandaka blows up behind him and after a few minutes he comes to the
realization that there is no air in space. As he’s suffocating he watches globs
of the blood ocean, no longer bound by the non-existent gravity of the planet,
drift off into space. Jeac pops like a balloon. He’s dead.

THE END.

Hayden Wiseman
lives in Vancouver, WA and really
enjoys coffee. He’s writing two other books and will release them when he feels
like it. Follow on Twitter for nonsense garbage tweets: @HedinnWeis

Hunter Wiseman
also lives in Vancouver, WA and is
very greatly satisfied by a quality dump each morning and also in the afternoon
and sometimes mid-day. Follow on SnapChat for nonsense garbage tweets:
Aniquicklegs.