Glitch (Part Four)

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

Norton sat in a stony silence for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours. Scrimbly leaped onto the back of the armchair and rubbed his head affectionately against the back of his neck. There was a sharp crackling noise like somebody crushing a plastic egg carton, and two amazing creatures materialised. “Hello there,” the nearest one said, and Scrimbly jumped off the back of the chair to greet him. “I'm George, and this is Uma.”

“You don't look like a George,” Norton replied, nervously shaking the hands of his guests one after the other. “You look like a Tyson or a Bruiser, something like that.” George was a huge dog-faced being with pale blue skin that was completely hairless barring the thick black whiskers on his muzzle. He reminded Norton of a walrus, and he was dressed in a garish blue and orange striped suit. He wore a red beret, a pink rose was pinned to his lapel and a sword hung in a scabbard fastened to his belt.

“Hello,” Uma gurgled. Uma was short and squat. She (if the creature was a she) had long, powerful arms ending in heavily clawed hands and squat legs. Her slimy, unclothed skin was a silvery grey speckled with pale purple and black. There was a trunk-like appendage where her mouth ought to be, her blood red eyes were large and deep-set and she had a pair of horns like a prize Hereford bull sprouting from the sides of her broad, heavy skull. Uma's wide, flat nose was pierced, and she wore a thick copper coloured ring.

“There's no time for small talk,” George growled, drawing his sword and looking around the room. “The wanderers are close by, and it is our duty to protect April.” George was right, because all of a sudden things started to turn shitty, and the cowardly but nevertheless lovable Scrimbly vanished through the wall.

Norton sprang from his armchair and sat next to April, spreading his arms around her protectively as a strong smell of sewage and decay with a hint of what he guessed was ammonia poured into the room, and George and Uma stood at either side of the silver cord that emerged from her navel and disappeared into the painting over the fireplace. The daylight dimmed as a bank of black clouds rolled over the sun. A swarm of bluebottles appeared in the doorway and hung in an angrily buzzing pillar, and from its base a plague of beetles erupted and scurried swiftly in all directions. “Death,” something whispered amidst a horde of other voices. “Death and defeat and utter humiliation.....”

“Hello, ladies,” said the tall gangling figure that stepped out of the cloud of flies. “My name is Beautiful Bertrand, and I'm here to entertain you.” It was a tall, thin, long dead clown with a white face, a huge red nose and random tufts of dirty blue hair sticking out of his otherwise bald, oversized skull. His baggy clothes, which once may have been brightly coloured but were now stained and faded, hung in shitty tatters from his stinking, maggoty carcass. His big hazel eyes flitted between George and Uma and eventually settled on Norton. “Get away from her!” he hissed, strings of yellowish spittle dripping from his blackened teeth, and tentatively he took a couple of steps forwards. “The interfering little bitch is mine, mine and mine alone.”

“N..... No way,” Norton stuttered, fighting back the vomit that his churning belly wanted to eject. “You're not having her, fuck face.”

“If you come any closer we'll take you apart,” George said, “and I sincerely mean that - Uma and I make a great team. Go back to wherever you came from!”

“Fair enough,” the clown said, grinning all over his rotting face, one cheek hanging in ribbons from the underlying bones. “If that's the way you silly folk want to play our ancient game. Ladies and gentlemen, it's show-time!” Half a dozen little copies of himself skipped out of the cloud and somersaulted merrily around the room.

George was ready for the onslaught. He neatly beheaded the first one of the horrors to come in range, and he chopped the second one in two straight down the middle. Uma used different tactics. Her short trunk straightened out and spat a greenish goo into the faces of three of the little clowns in swift succession, and they collapsed to the floor, their faces dissolving and falling away from their skulls. The remaining one stood still, smiling at George as if it was trying to tempt him into moving away from the cord, but the sword wasn't George's only weapon. He pulled a knife from an inner pocket of his jacket, held it by the tip and threw it hard it into the little fiend's face, striking him in the eye, and he fell to the floor squealing like a trapped rat.

“Very clever,” the clown growled, “but not nearly clever enough.” He stepped forwards and extended his hands, a vivid bolt of electricity emerging from his fingertips as he aimed his secret weapon at George, but Uma was ready for him. She spat out a dollop of goo that fizzed and smoked as it met its target, effectively absorbing the charge before falling smouldering to the carpet. “You'll pay for that, you appalling creature!” the clown said, rushing towards Uma. Uma bowed her head and charged, one of her horns piercing the monster's outstretched hand and the other passing straight through his belly and emerging from his lower back. Uma hurled her victim into the air and gored him again on his way earthwards, and he landed in an untidy heap. A thick, oily looking brown fluid pouring out of his mouth as he struggled to his knees. “Fuckers!” he gurgled. “This isn't the last you'll see of me, I can promise you that much.”

“Time to die, scum features,” George said calmly as he stepped forwards and lopped off the top of the clown's skull revealing a black, sticky mess full of squirming things. The ghoul looked up at George and tried to say something, but the words wouldn't come out of his mouth and he toppled onto his back, stone dead, one leg twitching spasmodically.

There was another crackle and a second clown appeared, this one short and bloated but in a similar state of corruption as the first. The apparition looked supremely confident until he glanced at his fallen comrades, then he immediately began to de-materialise. “Laters, dudes,” the monster whispered. “The show ain't over until the fat lady sings,” and then he was gone.

“Don't worry,” Uma said, “the fat lady won't have a chance to sing, she's been slaughtered. April and the Shymmera were hopelessly outnumbered by wanderers, but the word of their plight quickly spread and a variety of individuals poured in to join the battle. The wanders have been vanquished, and the few that escaped destruction fled back to their own nasty world. Oh, and the rents in the passageways have all been fixed.”

“Thank God!” Norton said as the extension of April emerged from the wall and was quickly reabsorbed by its host.

“Hi,” April smiled as her eyes opened a couple of minutes later. “Has the kettle broke, or what?” Norton hugged her tightly, a single tear running down his cheek.

“I owe you guys a big thanks, I don't know what I would have done without you,” he said, but as turned around George and Uma were gone, as were the corpses and every other trace of recent events. Scrimbly reappeared, casually washing his coat on the hearth rug. “I owe you a big thanks as well, April.”

“Oh, think nothing of it,” she said, yawning her head off. “As long as you pay my fee ASAP.”

“Which is?”

“Dinner for two in a nice Indian restaurant. Shit, I'm so tired - these out of the body experiences are really draining. I don't want to interfere with any possible reconciliation you might have with your wife, Norton, but I'd love you to wine and dine me, just as friends for now. After that, who knows? We'll just have to play it by ear.....”