A Pinstriped Finger's My Only Friend (14 page)

TWENTY-
EIGHT
HOURS LATER

"When do we go home?" Judd gazes at the never-ending throng with eyes so bloodshot, they look a hundred percent red. His voice is a croak of total exhaustion. "Haven't we helped enough people yet?"

I'm tired too, so wiped out I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. "I thought we'd be done by now." I drift off for an instant, then snap back. "So much for that theory."

As the next guy starts up the porch steps, another bus-blotch bounces up and parks along the street. (Buses are like paint-blotch cars here, only bigger.) The blur of paint opens up, and dozens more people tumble to the pavement, ready to pour their hearts out.

We would've been okay if not for the buses. There are twelve of them now, giant blotches idling in the street, waiting for their passengers to talk to Judd and get back on board.

Word spreads fast in this world when there's a sympathetic ear available--or at least someone who won't outwhine you when you want to do all the talking.

We've been through hundreds, and they just keep coming. Every story's the same: so-and-so is unhappy because life is too good. Even when it's bad, it isn't bad enough. These people won't feel right unless things are totally screwed up beyond all recognition.

So what can Judd tell them to make it better? Same thing he tells the latest guy to sit down and dump on him. "Things will get worse. You'll get what you deserve. Sooner or later, life will totally suck for you."

After hundreds of people, it's become automatic, like a meditator's mantra. For a while, we tried customizing our advice to suit each person...

("Your son will be an even bigger failure than you can imagine." "Your new house looks great now, but it's going to nickel and dime you to death." "It's okay that you've been elected to the legislature, because you'll probably set off a scandal that makes you crash and burn if you try hard enough.")

...and we even spent some time trying to straighten out messed-up thinking...

("Why keep expecting the worst?" "You should enjoy the good things in life while you can." "Why not ask yourself how things can get
better
?")

...but that was like talking to a brick wall. Make that a reinforced concrete wall sheathed in steel and surrounded by an impenetrable force field.

When things got boring, we even trotted out some reverse psychology...

("The harder you try to see the bright side, the worse off you'll be.")

...some tough love...

("Don't waste your time telling me your problems. Get out there and keep acting like a
jerk
, and I
guarantee
things will get worse!")

...and some displacement...

("Look at all those people! Why don't
you
give them a shoulder to cry on instead of
me
? Imagine how much more
crappy
that'll make you feel, listening to all that complaining.")

(Good thing
one
of us understands psychology so well!)

(That would be
Cyrano de Knuckle-Crack
, of course!)

But after the first two hundred or so, we just gave up on improvising. The only impact it was having was to drag things out.

And frankly, we just want to get through it now. Actually helping people doesn't seem to matter anymore. We just want this ordeal to be over. It was a bad idea, and we just want it to be over and done with.

The latest guy thanks Judd and goes away satisfied, leaving us a moment to ourselves.

(Just barely!)

"I can't take any more, Pinkerton." Judd looks pale, and his bloodshot eyes are sunk into deep, dark pits. "I swear, I'm gonna pass out."

Just as he says it, another bus-blotch bounces up on the street and disgorges its cargo of eager whiners. Things are just getting worse for us.

(The life-isn't-bad-enough crowd oughtta be eating their hearts out!)

I kept expecting the world to change by now, but it hasn't. My plan was a bust, and we're still stuck in this place. So I guess we need to consider other exit strategies, or we might end up listening to local whiners on this porch till kingdom come, as skeletons.

(The pinky bone's connected to the...
hand
bone...the hand bone's connected to the...
dead
bone...)

Judd's eyes flutter, trying to close. "Maybe if I could just fall asleep, everything would change like it did before." His head bobs down, then back up. "Maybe sleeping still works, even if helping people doesn't."

I watch as the next whiner--a brown-haired middle-aged woman--steps onto the porch and walks toward us. "At the rate you're going, you'll never get to give it a try."

"Oh my God," croaks Judd. "I've never been this tired in my life."

And he can't go to sleep, poor guy...or can he? Suddenly, his eyes shut, and his head drops. I feel the change in his body as his heartbeat slows, his breathing deepens, and his muscles relax.

Finally
. Dude is out like a
light
.

All I gotta do is settle back and drift off with him, then wake up in an altered reality. Hopefully one where the entire population isn't so neurotic, they need to bare their miserable souls to a teenager.

(B-bye now, planet of whiners! You're as horrifying in your own way as Serial Killer High School!)

Judd lets out a single, gentle snore, and that's music to my ears.

(If I
had
ears.)

As I start to fade, I'm aware of the next whiner sitting down on the red gelatin chair. She starts talking, but I can't make out the words as darkness and silence swell around me.

(Rock-a-bye Killdigit, on Judd's left hand...)

I embrace sleep like it's a long-lost brother. Everything dissolves around me, and I couldn't be happier. Whatever the next world is like, at least it won't be this particular crazy crap-hole.

(...when the psychedelic wind blows, the pinky will rock...)

I mean, cool sky and houses and that, but the people are
nutjobs
. Not wild about the flying fanged sneakers, either.

(...when the fingernail snaps, the pinky will fall...)

Goodbye, stupid world. Sayonara! Good riddance!

(...and down will come Oogachucka...)

Finally, I am out. As in gone. No awareness of anything.

And then...

And then...

(...knuckles and all!)

Everything suddenly rushes back to me. Oblivion gives way to consciousness, nothingness to somethingness. I reach out with my senses, wondering what the new world will be like.

And then, when I get the full picture, I snap instantly to full alertness. "What the--?"

Judd follows the same exact process, floating back from oblivion, reaching out with his senses...then exploding back to awareness when he gets an inkling of where we are.

Which is the same damn reality in which we fell asleep.

"You've gotta be kidding me," says Judd.

"Kidding you about what?" It's the same brown-haired woman who sat down in the red gelatin chair beside us just before we dozed off. "I don't understand."

"Maybe we weren't asleep long enough." That's what I say, but it's for Judd's benefit. It's so he doesn't lose hope.

Because what I'm really thinking is this: We're
trapped
! We're never getting out of this crazy nightmare! Not only are we never going
home
, but we're never getting out of
this
dump!

It's fear talking, and I know it, but I can't help myself. I've been the strong one for so long, pulling Judd through one bizarre scenario after another. I'm entitled to have a meltdown at this point, aren't I?

Aren't I???

The brown-haired woman clears her throat loudly. "Excuse me. I waited patiently for my turn, but first you fell asleep on me, and now you seem distracted." She frowns, and then something occurs to her and her face lights up. "Oh, I get it! This is some kind of
therapy
, isn't it? I
deserve
to have an awful appointment, and you're making sure I
get
one."

"Yeah." Judd nods. He looks like death warmed over, spread on a cracker, thrown up by a dog, and pooped on by an elephant. "That's exactly right."

Then we both fall dead asleep again and wake up once more to the same lousy world.

And the meltdown that's been breaking loose inside me goes from Three Mile Island to Chernobyl, leaving me for once with nothing to say and no confidence to give just when Judd needs it the most.

*****

AN ETERNITY
LATER

Night-time never comes. The psychedelic sky just keeps blazing away, sliding and turning and twisting above us.

Since Kaela took her wristwatch and left, we have no concept of time. I count off five-minute intervals for each confession, but I have no idea what time of day it is. Daylight goes on and on forever here, just like the babble of the masses.

They never stop coming. Bus-blotches park up the neighborhood, clogging every street. When new ones arrive, they have to park blocks away, leaving the people to troop across acres of motion picture lawns like pilgrims converging on the Vatican.

We tried to stop them a bunch of times, tried to shut the whole thing down. That was when we found out that it wasn't up to us anymore. We were so outnumbered, we had no choice but to keep going, keep listening. When Judd tried to leave, people grabbed him and stuck him back down on the yellow gelatin chair.

Now he has guards--muscular young guys with crew-cuts who stand on either side of him with arms folded over their chests. Any time Judd dozes off, they shake him awake. Any time he gets up, they each grab an arm and shove him back down...or escort him to the bathroom, if that's where he needs to go.

(He needs to go there a lot, since people keep pumping him full of coffee--which is pink and thick as pudding and super-strong in this reality.)

Judd looks gaunt and thoroughly defeated. His skin is as pale as paste. The rings around his eyes have turned into black holes. His coffee breath is awful.

At one point, he stares down at me with that thousand-yard stare of his...

(Million-yard stare is more like it.)

...and says, not caring who hears him talk to his pinky finger anymore, "Do you think we're in Hell, Pinkerton? Do you think that's what happened to us? We died and went to Hell?"

I want to tell him I don't believe that for a second. I want to say that whatever's happened to us, there's no way we could be dead...and if we were, we couldn't possibly be in Hell. I want him to know I believe that not only can we get out of this, but we can get our butts home easy-peasy and get right back to normal everyday life.

I want to say all that so bad, it hurts. He's my best friend--more than that, he's
family
--and I want to give him
hope
. I want to give him
strength
and
faith
.

But I can't. I just can't anymore.

So what I say, even though it rips my heart out, even though it makes me sicker than I've ever been to say it, is this: "You might be right, dude. You might just be right."

A fresh whiner bounds across the porch and plunks himself down on the red gelatin chair, ready for action. He's a young, skinny kid with a shock of red hair and a faint bluish tint to his green scales.

Judd ignores him and keeps talking to me. "Maybe I was too selfish in life, huh? I didn't take the time to listen to other people's problems. I didn't really
care
."

The new whiner cocks his head to one side, looking puzzled. "You don't care about my problems? That's great! I don't deserve your compassion! Tell me more!"

"Do you think maybe this is my punishment?" Judd asks me. "Being forced to listen to all these people's problems for all eternity?"

I should tell him no, absolutely not, he needs to take heart. I know he needs me to talk him through it, I can see it in his eyes--but I see something else in there, too, something he's too tired to try to hide: He already knows what my answer's gonna be.

"Maybe." That's my answer. "I guess it's possible."

I didn't think Judd could slump any lower, but he does. It's like I just put the last nail in his coffin. He's never looked like this for a single second of a single day in all his ultra-cool life. He has never been brought so low by anyone.

And now that I've done it, I feel terrible about it.

The whiner guy's oblivious, of course. "Okay, look. I'm just not getting the full effect here. I'm not convinced that my life's in the toilet yet."

Judd still isn't paying any attention to him. "Maybe we've been in Hell this whole time. Remember the Cyclops and the barbed wire guy? They were like demons, weren't they?"

I nod. I can't argue with that one.

"Demons?" says the whiner guy. "What demons?"

"The purple furry things and the puffballs, too," says Judd. "They could've been demons."

"Purple furry puffballs?" The whiner guy sounds incredulous.

"Being in that reality where everyone but me was a super-powered athlete sure was punishment." Judd rubs his sunken eyes. "Maybe because I was too wrapped up in sports? Maybe I made other people feel bad?"

"Makes sense," I tell him.

"And the serial killers," says Judd. "Was that my punishment for hurting people?" He frowns and stares into space. "I guess I used to pick on some kids when I was younger. I beat a few up in my day...but that was a while ago."

"Maybe it doesn't matter how long ago it was," I say.

"What's this about
serial killers
?" says the whiner.

Judd keeps talking like he and I are on the porch alone. "I never thought I'd end up in Hell. I always figured I was a pretty decent person."

"Same here." Finally, I can say something encouraging and mean it. "I thought the same about both of us."

Whiner guy looks baffled enough to burst a blood vessel. "What are you
talking
about? And why do you keep looking at your
finger
instead of
me
?"

"I don't want to spend eternity in Hell." Judd's eyes are welling with tears. The stress, exhaustion, and hopelessness are finally catching up to him. "I wish I had another chance. I wish I could go back to the way things were and be a better person this time."

"Hey, you!" The whiner guy is snapping at Judd's guards. "What's
his
problem? I didn't come all the way from
Alaska
so I could sit here and listen to
him
vent."

"Cool your jets," says one of the guards.

The other guard grabs Judd's left shoulder and gives it a rough shake. "What
is
your problem? Need some more coffee?" He shakes him again. "Maybe some stronger stuff?"

Judd brushes off the guard's grip. "I'm fine." He tries to get up and collapses from exhaustion.

The crowd is jammed right up against the porch, and they swarm him as soon as he hits. People fight to dominate his line of sight; they chatter away about their issues, each trying to out-shout the other.

Judd drifts off and takes me with him, but it doesn't last. Something jars us awake for the hundredth...

(Millionth?)

...time, and we see for the hundredth...

(Billionth?)

...time that we're still stuck in neurotic-land.

The guards pick Judd up by his arms and carry him back to his yellow gelatin chair. They plop him down on it, but he goes limp and starts to slide off. One of the guards has to pull him back up and hold him there by his shoulder.

By now, the crowd's in an uproar. People are rushing the porch, calling out their problems, and the guard who isn't holding Judd has to try to push them back. He throws people back into the crowd like water balloons, heaving them right and left.

But it isn't enough. The people mob him, overwhelming him with sheer numbers. When the other guard rushes to his aid, they take him down, too.

Then, they come after Judd. The whiner guy who was Judd's latest appointment actually tries to defend him, begging with the others to back off and give him some space.

They don't listen. They pitch the whiner guy through the stained glass front wall of the house, and then they all start grabbing Judd at once.

He's limp as a dishrag, barely conscious, which is just as well. Because these maniacs are literally tearing him apart. They're pulling his arms and legs and head in different directions, playing tug-of-war with his body. And the whole time, they never stop babbling about their miserable lives.

I fight back as best I can, jabbing one of them in the eye when he gets too close. But that's just one guy. As soon as he staggers away, clutching his eye, another one takes his place.

(What a nightmare!)

Screaming for Judd to wake up, I poke and jab at everyone in range, but it's a lost cause. I jab one of the hands pulling Judd's left arm, driving my nail in hard enough to draw blood, but the hand doesn't let go. If only I could break free and go berserk, I
swear
I'd do some major damage...

(If I could break free and grow five feet
taller
, I should say.)

...but for now, it just ain't happening. Our wild journey through freak show realities is coming to an end, the hard way. The
dead
way.

But hey, let's look at the bright side. At least we'll get away from
these
neurotic weirdos.

(Unless, of course, this is Hell, where the torture is never-ending, and the cycle will simply begin again.)

(Holy spit! When did I, the mighty Oogachucka, become such a
pessimist
?)

The people keep babbling and tugging on Judd's body parts. I feel the strain on his muscles, bones, and ligaments, as if he's tied to a medieval torture rack and the inquisitioner keeps turning the crank. I'm glad he's so out of it, he doesn't seem to notice the pain. I just wonder how much longer he can...

Snap!

(What the
fudge
??)

I hear the sound once, and then again...and again...and again.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

(OMG! OMG!)

Snap! Snap snap snap snap!

It doesn't take long for me to figure out what's happening. I get the picture when all of a sudden, there's a really loud

SNAP!

...and I find myself being lifted away from Judd, much higher and farther than I
should
be if I were still
attached
to him!

(OMG, I got my
wish
! That'll teach me to
wish
for something!)

Somebody broke me off Judd's left hand and is holding me up in the air, high enough to see what's happening to the
rest
of the dude.

(As I watch, I get the sickest feeling I've ever had in my
life
.)

Snap! Snap!

The maniacs finally did it. They finally managed to pull him apart. One has his thumb, one has his right leg, another has his left hand. A woman has his left foot, and she's fighting to hold on to it while two guys pluck off the toes like grapes. Someone else has Judd's right forearm, minus the hand. And then there's this overweight girl who has his...

(This is awful. I almost can't look.)

...who has his
head
, broken off at top of the neck.

(Poor dude. Oh my poor, poor dude.)

A pack of other people still has hold of his torso. They're clawing at it, trying to open it up.

It's something out of a nightmare. Any doubts I had about this being Hell are quickly disappearing as these lunatics keep ripping apart my best friend like a horde of ravenous zombies.

The whole time, they never stop talking. They never stop pouring out their so-called troubles, as if the separated body parts could somehow hear them and give some helpful advice. As if Judd Ramsey weren't dead and gone already.

I go limp in the grip of the teenage girl who tore me from Judd's hand. It's
my
turn to reach my lowest point, then go lower. If I had a human face, tears would be running down it right now. I don't think I can bear to watch the debacle for even another minute.

But just as I'm about to look away, I notice something: Judd isn't bleeding. After what the lunatics did to him, there should be blood
everywhere
, but there isn't a drop to be found.

In fact, I see now that where the pieces broke away, they've somehow healed. You'd expect to see ragged wounds, wouldn't you? Torn, bloody joints where arms separated from shoulders or legs were ripped out of hips.

But guess what? The breaking points are all neat and tidy and sealed off. I see someone waving a lower right leg around (talking to it the whole time, of course), and the part where the leg split from the knee is perfectly smooth.

Watching as the idiots keep fighting over Judd's torso, I see that his neck is also sealed and smoothed over. It's like he's made of rubber or clay or something, so when a piece gets torn off, it leaves a clean break with a smooth surface on both sides.

I can't see the base of my own little body, but I'm guessing it's the same way. I should've known, since otherwise all the blood would've drained out and I'd be dead as a clipped fingernail right now.

I squirm in the girl's grip, but she holds on tight and keeps waving me in the air. The best I can manage is to twist myself around and keep an eye on Judd's torso. I keep wondering why the dude's parts aren't ripped up and bloody. What the fudge does it
mean
?

It's a good thing I'm looking in that direction at that particular moment, because just then, something happens. Something
incredible
.

(Even for
this
crazy place, it's incredible!)

Judd's torso lights up. It flares with a bright white glow so intense that its contents become visible right through the skin. I can see Judd's ribs like glow sticks and his organs underneath, his lungs, heart, stomach, liver, and intestines pulsing with phosphorescent light.

It's enough to make people stop babbling and stare. Some of them let go of the torso, scared of what's happening to it. Others lean in closer, gaping with wonder.

They get an eyeful as the glowing organs start to flicker and disappear. One after another, they vanish from the chest cavity, leaving only bones, muscles, and skin...which also flicker and go away. Soon, there's nothing left but thin air where Judd's torso used to be.

The same thing happens to the rest of his body parts, which are dispersed through the crowd. People try to hold on to them...