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7.

The building was quiet and Travis gently touched the elevator button, knowing he would get fired if he was found out. The car rose swiftly and he forced himself to stop bouncing on his heels as it rose, floor by floor. Johanna would kill him, he knew, if she found out, but it was late enough that no one else was around. Even she had gone home at last, telling Travis to find his own bed and seek its comfort for the night. He had waved her off, muttering about some details with a set designer he had to work out before tomorrow. She had no reason to doubt him and left him there, alone, shrugging and thinking to herself that she had made the right choice in P.A.s.

The elevator opened to the bright primary swirls and flourishes of the Giggly Wigglies floor. He had decided, after speaking to her, that something about her story didn’t hang together right. As he crossed the room, looking for some sort of clue as to the true nature of these reclusive actors, he noticed light coming from under a door set into the far right corner of the open space. He crept closer to it, listening for any sounds he could discern. Muttered voices rose and fell but individual words were impossible to work out. He sighed and turned to search the rest of the space, his shoe making a slight squeak on the tiled floor.
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———–

5.

Bobble Wobble dealt cards slowly, his soft pink wings stretching and relaxing as his arms moved. The week had passed slowly for the four Giggly Wigglies, an endless parade of screaming children and singing as it generally was. Bobble Wobble set down the deck of cards, silent, and picked up a large tumbler of whiskey, angling it so that his triangular face could drink and not spill liquor all over the table. Tamburto puffed a cloud of smoke out, thick and white, and took his cards, tapping them on the table softly.

“Now this is more like it,” he said happily. He fanned his cards out and squinted at them. Snorktasm laughed and nodded her agreement, her swirl painted, blunted, claws tapping against the back of her cards.
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———–

4.

Travis Ingram bounced on his heels as he waited outside Johanna’s office, a few days later. Her door was closed and the little white plastic sign that read ‘Yes, I am in a meeting, thanks.’ was showing. She had, or so she told Travis, been forced to get the sign and use it because of a Production Assistant that didn’t understand what a closed door could mean. It was one of the many things that she obliquely warned him about over the course of his few months working with the Giggly Wigglies. Travis took it all in stride with a wink and a shrug and sometimes the running of a hand through his short blonde crew cut. He wasn’t fazed by the antics of the show. Travis might have been new on this set, but he had worked in children’s for years now and he reckoned that once you’ve seen one of your childhood heroes puking on the carpet while screaming about needing whores you could just wink at everything as if it was a big joke.
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———–

3.

Johanna sighed to herself and pushed the ratings report away from her in frustration. The Giggly Wigglies were still the number one kid’s show in their time slot, meaning the guys upstairs would be pleased. Pleasing them meant a big bonus come the holidays, something that most producers would look forward to. Johanna would look forward to it too, but not until after she got back from her next meeting. She stood, bone weary, and forced her feet to move. She hated visiting what the industry deemed ‘the talent’. Her black leather heels clicked all the way down the corridor to the elevator.
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The song slammed around the room like an invading armies’ siren. It bounced off of the walls and ceiling, wrapping around everyone on the soundstage. The children cried with joy, screaming until their throats burned with the kind of passion normally reserved for people at punk concerts, but even they had nothing on these children. The speakers broadcasting the song had been designed to be able to drown out anything this side of a jet engine. The children managed to be heard anyway, as they always did. Johanna Herbister sighed, covering her headset microphone with her left hand, her green sparkling nails curling with delicate anger. The only thing Johanna found more consistently frustrating than the Giggly Wigglies was the hordes of little brats able to fashion, on demand, endless amounts of shrieking, mucus, shit and tears. Not always in that order, either.
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Coming soon: Far more free fiction. As in, I am fairly sure, a story every month. I will work out this month’s story soon. But more free stuff soon. Between free fiction every month and a webcomic and … well. You won’t be able to escape. Muah-ha-ha!

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Here is a 64-part (still just one guy) a capella version of Thriller.

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So I am starting a new novella this week. I’m excited. It promises to be full of action and adventure and hope and fun. A lot of fun. A ton of fun. More fun than you can … no I can shake a stick pretty good, but I feel confident that if you are bad at stick shaking this might be more fun than you could shake that stick at. It depends on how good you are with a stick, really.

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“There they are,” Edward said over his shoulder. “They don’t move too fast, and slower still when they have captives, but there are at least three of them for each of us. I am reminded of Custer, except he wasn’t on the move and the Brainers don’t have arrows. Also, we’ll win.”

“That is the general idea, Eddie,” Franklin said and then turned to face us, stopping our walk. “Here’s the thing. The captives won’t be much help to us. They’ll want to be but they’re weak and hungry by now. Which makes them a threat to themselves, really.”

“So we should separate them and get them clear,” Edward put in, “except that leaves us down a few men, doesn’t it?”

“It does. So here’s what we were thinking. If we can break their circle and round up the captives then…”
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We did as asked, as quickly as we could, which wasn’t half as fast as they wanted us to I’m sure. Everything got laid out of the ground in front of us. Edward and Franklin walked around the supplies, nodding. Travel and packing hadn’t seemed to have damaged a thing.
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“Eddie’s right. Everyone had a theory, but no one had seen it in action. So we went and looked. They tie them up and march them out across the desert. The Brainers ride some Brainer horses and corral them, like so many cattle.”

“Although traditionally you don’t tie cattle when you go on a cattle drive. Then again, I suppose that cattle don’t often want to escape. They might, granted, but they seem to be fine just walking.”

“Yes. Thank you, Eddie, for that brief, yet fascinating, look into cattle herding,” Franklin said with a roll of his eyes. “When we saw that we realized we couldn’t ignore it. Humans suffer, they die and they do what they need to in order to survive. We get that, better than a lot of people, probably. This is different.”
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———–

It happened late one night, out back of the bar. Edward was setting up his cook pots and slicing roots into a bucket. Franklin was busy starting a roaring fire. The men had taken to cooking late nights, Edward seemed to insist, and feeding whomever was still awake. It didn’t invite conversation, much other than thanks, but it warmed some of the locals to the two.

Johnny Boots saw it different. He felt that his woman, Betsy Klein, was paying that Bones man far too much attention. Betsy didn’t see it that way at all, but then she also didn’t see herself as Johnny Boots’ woman, either.

Boots was out back watching the fire grow along with his ire. He shot Edward a look, trying to warn the man off through sheer force of will. None of us knew, then, that battle was a losing proposition. Johnny Boots learned it soon enough though, and learned it for all of us.
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