Egypt just got worse. It had started out dry, sandy and utterly devoid of worthwhile human culture but somehow it had become something more awful than that—dry, sandy, utterly devoid of worthwhile culture and completely interminable. There hadn’t been so much as a band of dirty, scheming Bedouin thieves for over a week now. A week of wandering a desert that hadn’t been any good to anybody since Alexander the Great sought to rid it of its negroid cat worshipping savagery.

We brought no food or water as the Sheikh of the City of Brass had told us, we rode no camels, we prayed to no god for help and did not break camp. I was not sure exactly how my stomach could growl so loud when there was nothing but stuffing in it, but it was getting to be unbearable. I considered eating Chang, but he was pretty scrawny and as loyal as he might have been, I somehow didn’t think he’d agree to it. I could tell from the ravenous look in his eyes that François was thinking the same thing. The gigantic lumberjack had not eaten since the great feast the djinn had conjured for us.

“My stomach rombles, Monsieur Ploosh. I wurhee for ze revonge alon cannot sate a man forevair. We have wondaired so far…”

Don Pedro patted François on the back.

“Do not panic theñor! It shall not be long before I find the theal that my tattoo matches, the one that the king of the thiudad told us about and we destroy that bathtard Jimmy Plush forever! Theenk of your daughter left at the altar, theenk of my brother! I need only feel my thtomach with hith blood, and you need only do the thame!”

The Spaniard was flamboyant, but a gifted swordsman like he should be. If it hadn’t been for him the pirates would surely have gotten us. We learned a lot on that pirate ship, about war, about manhood and about who we could trust. François had thought all Spaniards were weak before they fought side by side, but he’d been proven wrong and he knew that Don Pedro was wise beyond his seven years of age.

François nodded his head gravely and took Chang and me into his heavy, muscular, stinking sweaty arms.

“Ze Spaniard is right! We moost not loose sight of ar goel. Zat will only lead to meesfartune. We moost be veejalant and stroong of weel!”

Veejalant and stroong of weel we were. Starving and dying of thirst, we also were. So, when we saw a colossal, shallow, drinkable lake of sparkling green water we stopped speaking of vengeance, adventure and strength of will and ran toward it. We waded into the shallow water, cupped our hands and drank for a very long time. The water was sweet, there was a hint of lime to it, but it burned a tiny bit like good liquor. Got us a little woozy like good liquor too, but we were mighty thirsty, so we kept drinking. Must have been really good liquor, because in the middle of the lake I hallucinate a gigantic, island sized sea turtle with a concerned look on its huge, sea turtle face.

“You should leave this place,” it told me in my liquor water addled head, “you should leave this place before it’s too late.”

“Do not be stupide, turtle! Zees place ees a good place to be!” Francois replied to the turtle’s voice in my head.

“The water eeth deleethious, turtle, you weel not have it all for yourself!” Don Pedro shouted, reprimanding the creature.

“A bad man lives on my back,” the turtle explained, “he is worshipped as a god, a bad god. He has tricked the people that live on me and they are not good people anymore. Leave now. While you still can, before the poison in my urine makes you slow.”

I shot the turtle in its mansized eye.

“Why did you do that? I was only trying to help you.”

Francois swam up to the turtle’s eye and began hacking at it with his axe.

“Do not tell us what to do, turtle! And do not hog your precious urine!”

Don Pedro in turn swam up to the eye and started poking it with his saber.

“Yeth! Thith ith the thing to do! We muth not let the turtle trick us out of his magic piss!”

“You are drinking my urine,” the turtle calmly explained again, “you are drinking my urine and it is poisonous. If you do not flee as fast as you can, right now, there is going to be trouble.”

Chang launched himself at the turtle’s forehead, hitting it with a flying kick, then clinging to it, so he could punch it several times.

“You deceive and betray us, giant turtle! Your greed will not be tolerated.”

“Alright,” the turtle said, it’s voice heavy with annoyance, “you can drink all the urine you want, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Chang bowed to the turtle.

“You have fought honorably, giant turtle in my imagination. I honor you with honor.”

“Thank you,” the turtle replied, his tone patronizing, “I love honor.”

Francois laughed heartily.

“Join us, turtle in dreenking your piss! We will get dronk together and we will have merry times!”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. You’re all going to die soon. I warned you but you’ve had too much of my urine to drink and you’re probably too stupid to listen anyway.”

“Keel ze turtle!” Francois resumed his hacking, Don Pedro his stabbing, Chang his karate chops and me my shooting – the buzz from the urine fueling our violence. (I added that line because I feel there needs to be a bit more blatant explanation for all the characters’ violence, especially Chang.)

“Actually, the term is zaratan. And stop attacking me. You’re all in terrible danger.”

Suddenly, Chang collapsed from a blowdart to the neck. Then, Francois collapsed from a blowdart to the neck. And then Don Pedro. As I blacked out from a blowdart to the neck, I could hear the turtle sigh.

“I warned you.”

I awakened to typical post blowdart trouble. Chang, Don Pedro, Francois and I were tied to giant beef jerky sticks. Jackalheaded men were dancing around is in a circle, chanting in some nonsense language. Maybe it was a nonsense language. Maybe it was just French or something. I don’t know, all those languages sound like nonsense to me. That was typical post blowdart trouble. The man towering above us, his vast body clothed in the skins of a lot of these jackal-headed men, meant more than typical post blowdart trouble.

This must have been a pretty big turtle if Townsquare Vanzetti could take up residence on its back and start a cult of jackalmen. In the future I would remember to always listen to turtles and not to drink magic pisswater, no matter how good it was or how drunk it got me. All I could do was what I usually did in these situations, create a diversion with some snappy banter while I think of a (usually violent) solution. As I decided to do this, Vanzetti tossed Francois’ giant jerky stick into his mouth, swallowing it whole. I started bantering immediately after that.

“So, Vanzetti, you’re doing well for yourself. I don’t think I know anybody with a cult of jackal people back home.”

He chuckled. The turtle shook.

“I can smell the fear on you, Plush. I didn’t think teddy bears could sweat.”

I could…then I could…maybe…umm…I was drawing a blank. All I could come up with was to banter more.

“So how did you get here? You were dragged into the ocean by half the town.”

Vanzetti yanked a nearby palm tree out of the ground, reached into the pocket of his jackalman suit and pulled out a book of giant matches. He lit the palm tree and started to smoke it.

“Yes, Plush, you did me quite the disservice back there. Not only did my congame get revealed to my associates, I had to deal with the harsh facts myself. I hate the Chief Inspector so much! He thwarted me every step of the way for years and to find out it was me was a horrible shock. I spent a year in a coma as I drifted at sea. For six months I came to terms with this horrible realization and then for six months, I engaged in a battle with my other self that raged throughout my psyche. A battle I finally won.”

“Good for you,” I shot back, “I never liked the Chief Inspector.”

“Nobody really did. When I awakened, I found something truly fascinating.”

“Your feet?”

Vanzetti chuckled again.

“You wish, Plush, you wish! No, it was a bottle the size of a small ship bobbing alongside me. And there was a message inside. Do you know what it said?”

“Dear Friday, I just don’t think it’s working out. I’ve found comfort in the arms of Tarzan of the Apes, yours, Robinson Crusoe.” Not the wittiest thing anyone’s ever said, but I was under a lot of pressure to keep the conversation going.

Vanzetti didn’t appreciate the joke. He plucked Don Pedro’s jerky stick from the ground and swallowed him whole. The turtle quaked again with his laughter.

“A tasty morsel, but not very satisfying. Maybe I’m just in the mood for Chinese.”

He wanted me to shout out, “no!” – to beg for my chauffeur’s life and then for my own. It wasn’t something I was going to do. That would be over quickly and besides, giant cannibal mobsters usually could not be talked out of eating people. Still thinking. Still realizing that these ropes are too tight to squirm out of and that it would be hard to jump out of the way as he shoved me down his cavernous throat. Also, violence was out of the question. Situations like this made me see just how often violence actually does get me out of most of my scrapes. When even violence has forsaken you, you’ve got troubles.

“You trying to scare me by eating my chink? Go ahead and eat the chink, then. I’m not scared, Vanzetti. I’m not scared and I never will be.”

“We’ll see about that, Plush,” he replied. The worst thing about his tone was that it wasn’t threatening. He was too sure of himself to need to make threats. I couldn’t blame him.

He ate Chang. He ate the faithful chauffeur who I could count on even before the Seven were assembled. I considered violence again, but the opportunity wasn’t there. I hated to admit to myself how much I’d needed the goofy, slanty SOB, but I had. And now the Spectacular Seven was down to one. It was one of those times when I felt like I’d always been the least of us.

“You know what that note said, Plush?” he asked.

“You asked me that already.”

“And now that you’re all alone, I’ll tell you. It said to get onto the third zaratan I saw and that it would end up beached in Egypt. And when it was beached in Egypt, I’d get the chance to finish you off once and for all. To kill your friends and get you alone. It was signed Charles Hatbox. In exchange for this information, all he wanted was to make sure my jackalman friends cut out your heart before I swallowed you and sent it to him.”

“Then why haven’t you cut out my heart?”

“Because I’ve gotten what I needed from this Hatbox fellow. And when all the fur’s been dissolved, I want to be able to taste the meat inside. If there is anything but stuffing.”

“Probably isn’t. You ought to let me go. I’m not really worth eating.”

There was no more banter, Vanzetti picked up the beef jerky stick and swallowed it and me whole. I closed my eyes and prepared for Hell. There was no way a guy like me could expect Heaven.

Hell was something moist and gooey. I was probably in some sort of mud trap. I opened my eyes so I could stare down my demonic tormentors. Apparently, in Hell you got your feet stuck in a chocolate cake the size of an elephant. Apparently in Hell a girl dressed as a squirrel climbed up said cake to help you out of it. Apparently, I was not in Hell. She took my hand to extricate me from the cake and then put me on her back and started the climb down.

“Hang on tight, Mr. Plush. We’ve been expecting you. Your friends, the sheriff.”

“The sheriff of Hell?” I just had to make sure.

“Nah. I don’t know if Hell even has a sheriff. Since we’re mostly hookers, we’re not a very religious people.”

“Makes sense.”

When we got to the base of the cake a girl dressed in a tight amoeba costume was waiting for me with a bucket of cold water to scrub the cake off of me. As she washed me off, I couldn’t help but notice that the cake I’d climbed down from had big double doors on it, as if it were being used as a building. There were several other cakes as well with doors on them and busy Furries went in and out going about whatever business they went about in here.

“Excuse me,” I asked the amoeba girl.

“Yes, Mr. Plush?”

“Why does that cake have double doors? Why am I still alive?”

“The sheriff will explain that at city hall.”

“City Hall?”

“It’s inside the cake.”

I didn’t even try to ask for an explanation. I don’t know why, living a life like mine, I would have expected anybody to have a sensible one. My time as a detective taught me that in the end the solution to every case is that life doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t have to. A giant mobster can have a belly full of hookers residing in a cake city sometimes. And this giant mobster did. This giant mobster also had a familiar big lumberjack in his stomach, one that set down a large bundle of beef jerky outside of the cake building.

He threw his big, hairy lumberjack arms around me. For once I didn’t feel like shooting him in the head for it.

“Monsieur Ploosh! It is un plaisir to see you again!”

“And to see you, Francois. There isn’t any way you could explain this to me is there?”

Francois let go so the amoeba girl could return to the business of toweling me off. He did not provide me with the explanation I wanted.

“Done!” said the amoeba girl, toweling me off, “You’re ready for your meeting, Mr. Plush.”

Francois said nothing. He simply led me into the cake. Gathered around a table made of stale bread were several more Furries of nearly every species imaginable, sultry crayfish, shapely meerkats, buxom voles...Vanzetti had devoured a lot of hookers in his day and variety, for him, must certainly have been the spice of life, adding flavor to each one of the poor unfortunate whores. Also seated around the table were Don Pedro and Chang, who didn’t seem any worse for wear. Chang gave a bow.

“It is a relief to see most honored Mister Plush has come out intact.”

“Everything but my sanity. Somehow, I’ve become convinced that I survived being swallowed and now I’m inside a cake meeting with a bunch of Furries and some of my dead compatriots.”

“Ah, thenor, Plush! It ith a miracle! We have thurvived because a man of Vanzetti’s size takes decades to digest anything!”

“Some miracle. We get to die slow instead of quick?”

A hooker in a crayfish suit laughed.

“Francois told me you were a bit prickly. At least you’re not as bad as the rumors around Nero City said you were. You’re not going to die in here because Francois and the rest of us have been working on a ladder that leads up to Vanzetti’s right eye. All you need to do is go up there, roll it out of the socket and you’ll find freedom.”

“Sounds disgusting, but I guess that’s life.”

“Trust me,” said the crayfish girl, “it’s the only one of the escape routes you’d want to go near.”

Francois nodded.

“All of ze rest you could get lost in forever.”

“Well, since you put it that way, the eyeball doesn’t seem so bad anymore.”

A girl in a monitor lizard suit whose bare breasts stuck out through two strategically placed holes entered the cityhall cake, huffing and puffing.

“It’s….done.”

She collapsed and died on the spot. The hookers gathered around her, recited the Lord’s Prayer, then pounced on her, tore off her suit and started to devour her flesh. Had it not been for my time in the police station, I would’ve been disgusted by the sight of a cake full of prostitutes eating an old friend, but it was in context now. It felt like an act of love. They ate ecstatically, joyfully and tenderly and it seemed as if, in this place, any girl would give herself to feed her friends and colleagues. I was surprised when Francois joined them, until I saw the look in his eyes. He’d fallen in love. With all of these girls. Just like a Frenchman.

Maybe if I were a more softhearted guy like Francois was, I wouldn’t be so angry. With a town full of prostitutes that wouldn’t be digested for several years head over heels in love with him, who could really blame him for deciding to stay instead of risking death at the hands of the real Jimmy Plush?

The ladder led to a cavern occupied by a white, spongy mass of fat that could only be Vanzetti’s eyeball. I shot the thing five times, jumpkicked it, knifehanded it, punched it, kneaded it, elbowed it and shot it five more until it came loose. With another series of kicks, punches and shoves, it rolled out of the socket, letting me once more see the light of day. Chang, Don Pedro and I leapt from the socket down to Vanzetti’s enormous shoulders. Before he could shake us off, we zoomed down his arms and hit the ground running pursued by the jackal-headed bastards.

Since it wasn’t the first time we’d run from a barrage of spears, we outdistanced the primitive scum and were off the turtle and swimming for our lives in a shallow pool of hallucinogenic zaratan piss in no time. When Plush was dead and I was safe at home, I would have to slow down my life somewhat. When you reach the point where a swim through a pool of turtle piss as spears are being thrown at you is a relief, it’s probably time to reevaluate everything. Perhaps I should move out to the country and settle down, do some fishing, sit on my porch whittling tiny wooden canoes. Or larger wooden canoes for if I have to swim for my life in hallucinogenic turtle piss again. Well, we live, we learn, we get wetter, we get wiser. We leave friends behind to live their lives in a mobster full of whores. Boy, back when I was Hatbox all I’d wanted was to tell some stories about cowboys and purple-skinned alien nymphomaniacs.

When we’d outdistanced the oasis and the spears, we came to the legendary Valley of Severed Heads, a place where hills of grinning, stinking decayed skulls leered at travelers, laughed at them and warned them to stay away forever. Having just emerged from a giant eyesocket, being stared at was the last thing I wanted. Their chants of “You or Him”, which was not so much painful as painfully obvious didn’t make things any more enjoyable. When I’d set out on this quest, I knew it would be either me or him. Any idiot would know that. Didn’t see why a bunch of ancient heads should bother to taunt me with it. Too many of the goddamn things to waste ammunition splitting all their skulls, too. I got some consolation from knowing that it couldn’t be that long before war was declared and Egypt and our boys would bomb the jackal-headed monsters, zaratans and eerie laughing skulls off the map.

At the edge of The Valley of Severed Heads, we were met by a small, pink mechanical man with a head that was pretty similar to a toaster.

“What the hell do you want?” I snapped at the little automaton. It being pink and a foot shorter than I was, I felt pretty tough.

“I have come to greet you.”

The three of us waited, heaving large sighs in unison.

“Well? I don’t have all day, robot.”

“Greetings, earthfolk. You approach the Tomb of the Martian Pharaohs! But beware…”

I shot the tiny robot in the head. For more or less no reason. Well, scratch that. I shot him because something completely unrelated to him annoyed me. Which is a reason. A good enough one for either the real Jimmy Plush or myself to shoot someone for. Besides, it was obvious that we were approaching the Tomb of the Martian Pharoahs. A few feet in the distance was a pyramid made of glowing green space metal with flashing diodes all over it. It sure as hell wasn’t Graumann’s Chinese Theater. Also couldn’t be the Arc de Triomphe. It was a little hot for Paris.

The majestic alien workmanship, the colors, the lights and the scale would have been impressive to somebody who hadn’t seen the things I’d seen in my travels and exploits, but it was a bit under whelming. Having just escaped from a giant mobster on the back of a giant turtle I expected a little more than a big green pyramid. The turtle was big and green, Vanzetti was big, so the martians would have to do better than this and some stupid little robot to get me “ooing” and “ahhing” like the tourist I was. The small figure standing at the entrance waiting for us was a start.

The small figure was supposed to be a dead man. Of course, things are always supposed to be other things, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Don Pedro was. The guy was his exact duplicate; seven years old, swarthy, inexplicably mustachioed and inexplicably alive.

“Ramon!” he shouted, “Ramon!”

Don Pedro’s twin rushed to him with open arms and embraced him. At least with one arm. The other was reaching for a knife at his side. A knife that he plunged into his brother’s back. Don Pedro’s face filled with the sting of the blade and the betrayal all at once.

“Ramon! Why?”

“Plush promised me the secrets of the alchemist Alejandro Montoya, the secrets our family has searched for all these centuries. You are a small price to pay for cosmic awareness!”

Don Pedro was tough. He pulled the knife out of his back, backed up and drew his sword, wounded though he had been.

“Thenor Plush, Thenor Chang, the time hath come to take my leave of you! Go, into the pyramid, I will take care of my treacherous brother! En garde, perro!”

Ramon smiled a bloodthirsty smile and drew his blade and a duel that would no doubt be the end of both of them began. A duel that provided me the opportunity to slip into the pyramid. I could have stopped to shoot Ramon in the back but it was the sort of thing that makes Spaniards real sore, so I didn’t. I walked through the temple’s large, open entry way (which it turns out, had no magic seal to be opened with Don Pedro’s tattoo) into a chamber illuminated only by green torches. I didn’t like what I saw in there.

There were about fifty of the things. White birds with grilled cheese sandwiches for heads, sandwiches that opened and closed as they squawked out cries of doom, all the while dripping out hot cheese. They were mad, too. When the Professor had told me Martian folklore spoke of grilled cheese sandwich birds, I laughed at him. But nobody was laughing now.

“Go!” Chang screamed at me.

“I can’t do that!” I shouted back. “We’ve already lost too many!”

The birds swooped down at Chang and their cheese burned his face—the flesh starting to sizzle. The grilled cheese sandwich birds were too many for him to take. I took aim, hoping a bullet square in the middle of the flock would scare ‘em off.

“No!” I don’t know how Chang saw through the globs of yellow heat, but he didn’t want me to shoot, “you save your bullets! You save your bullets for that bastard, Jimmy Plush!”

“Don’t be a fool, Chang!”

“You don’t be a fool!” He cut two in half with one chop, “Don Pedro dies for nothing if you don’t go on without me. Francois dies for nothing if you don’t go on. Most honored Mr. Plush, this is the honorable way.”

He was right. Five of the Spectacular Seven were dead now, giving their lives so the archvillain in Charles Hatbox’s…in my…body could finally be stopped. Painful as their deaths were, any of them would have done it ten times over if they knew that it would mean the end of that bastard. Also, Chang’s face was virtually immune to burning at this point. I felt a great admiration for the Chinaman when I figured out that he had been letting me scald him with hot coffee so his skin would become less heat sensitive in case we got into a situation like this one. More kooky advice from Confucius, most likely, but it worked this time.

I continued deeper into the tomb, following the light of the green torches and the funny scribbles on the wall. They were mostly scribbles that is, except for one. I was taken aback when I saw it. Not the kind of thing you’d expect in a martian tomb. I led the kind of life where there were things to expect from a martian tomb. None of those things were a raised carving of a teddy bear face identical to my own. I felt an inexplicable urge to touch the thing. If you have no good reason to touch a mysterious carving in a martian tomb, it’s usually a good idea not to. I should have known this. I did know this. I should have found it strange that I forgot it. But, when one is in a state that would cause them to forget such a rudimentary rule of alien crypt exploration, their will is usually not their own. So, I forgive myself for touching the carving.

There was a flash of light that smelled of strange, exotic space flowers. Though I had never been to space, I knew the name of every component of the sweet smell in the air, from the Saturn meatrose to the hotfudge flytrap of Mercury’s fire jungles. The room faded around me, leaving me floating in a starry sky, a sky that offered my mind the name of every one of its millions of stars, a sky that told me that if I survived, I was going to be alright. I asked it what it was that I needed to survive. It replied by grabbing me with a gigantic hand made of stars. The hand reached up and up and up and up and up…

Until it burst through the floor of a sandstone temple not unlike the tomb I had just come from. I was in another long corridor with teddy bear faces carved into the walls with all manner of expressions on them, some laughing, some weeping, some sticking out their tongues, some scowling angrily, some eyeless, some bearing a single eye in the center of their foreheads. As I moved further down the great corridor, my eyes began to play tricks on me. The faces were changing their expressions, smiles becoming frowns and frowns becoming smiles right before my eyes. After all I’d been through, this shouldn’t have made me doubt my sanity, but it did. Moreso when I started to hear the sound of laughter.

At the end of the corridor, there was a twenty foot high golden door with a fifteen foot high teddy bear face on it. The face was dead serious until I got closer, and then it smiled widely, after which time it opened, leading me into what must have been an entirely different tomb. This one was bigger inside, taller and full of hundreds of sarcophagi. When I set foot inside they opened, revealing what one would expect from sarcophagi; mummies.

But these were not what I would expect from mummies. Most of the time one suspects mummies to be inanimate, which these mummies were not. Most of the time one does not expect mummies to have neongreen skin and teddy bear heads. Which these mummies did. Also, one does not expect mummies to charge at them en masse, which these mummies did. Apparently, I knew very little about mummies, or else martian mummies were just that different from conventional mummies. I assumed the Chinese fighting arts headstanding pogosnake stance and hoped for the best.

They shuffled at me. From headstanding pogosnake stance, one can execute the upside down whirlwind decaptitating batkick, which I did by spinning my legs like helicopter blades and bouncing on my soft, cottony head. My helicopter blade legs took the heads off of three mummies and when I landed and went into a rolling spikeshark roll, I knocked three more of them off balance. And as you probably know, when a foe is on the ground, you can do the on-the-ground implosion chop, which is particularly effective on bodies whose organs have turned to dust. And boy, did those mummies implode easily. There were onions and sawdust everywhere and I was barely getting started.

A few of the mummies revealed that they were capable of shooting blue lasers from their eyes. I was lucky that these mummies were slow and I had been trained in performing acrobatic martial arts maneuvers. I dodged, flipped, decapitation kicked mummies while the laser eyed ones melted their brethren. A year ago, laser eyed mummies would have terrified me, but now? Another kick, another jump. Watch the sawdust and onions fly and then I hardly see myself killing anymore. I see only survival in front of me, only my lack of options. I barely notice when the last of the mummies have either killed each other or been killed by me and I’m alone.

I continued into the tomb and the floor faded away, turning into a river of blue satin. I swam through it, knowing that I could still sink to the bottom and I could still drown, even though it was only fabric. I could still feel and I could still die and I could still love, even though I was only fabric. Those thoughts were not my own. Something on the other end of the river was sending them out to me. But who? Why? I struggled against the fabric current, maneuvered around angry tricycles that tried to nip at my feet, drowned out the calls of mama, mama, mama from baby dolls that swam toward me and then sank to the bottom. There were bigger things ahead.

Literally.

When I emerged from the river, dripping with satin, I found myself in a giant chamber with walls made of tin cowboys shooting capguns back and forth at one another. In the center of the room was a smiling teddy bear face glowing green like many of the other smiling teddy bear faces and this one was every bit as seductive, every bit as off kilter. In a language of humming martian vibrations that I shouldn’t have been able to understand, it told me to go to it and kneel there for three days. When a green glowing sigil on the floor tells you to kneel for three days, you do it.

So, I went to the sigil and I knelt down. The cowboys on the walls turned their capguns away from each other and pointed them at me, continuously pelting me with hot, smelly smoky capgun fire. I should have been distracted by taking bullets from thousands of tiny, belligerent tin cowboys, but I wasn’t. I should have been distracted by thoughts of the real Jimmy Plush grabbing the lingam and making this world his, but I wasn’t. I thought only of kneeling and glowing.

This place was having a strange effect on me.

After the third day, a fifty foot high naked green woman appeared. I felt the stirring of a phantom erection, a Charles Hatbox erection. She was a real hot fifty foot tomato, legs, hips, waist, bosom made as well as they’d ever been. It didn’t bother me that the hair around her pussy was made up of smiling teddy bear faces, it didn’t bother me that instead of nipples she had two teddy bear heads. It didn’t bother me that her head was that of a green, mouthless teddy bear. I felt a stirring in me, I felt like a man again in her presence.

Her left teddy bear nipple opened its mouth. It spoke in a commanding womanly voice, a voice like a gossamer hatchet.

“Welcome, Charles Hatbox.”

“Thank you,” I replied, bowing down and kissing her left foot. Like most of my actions of late, I did not know at all why I did so.

The right nipple spoke up next. Its voice was a softer, breathier version of the same voice.

“Welcome Hieronymous James Plush.”

“Thank you.” I bowed down and kissed her right foot. Hot and cold feelings fought for dominion over my body. I liked these new stirrings of pleasure and the slight feeling of divine serenity, but I was not happy about being driven to actions I didn’t understand. If I was going to lose control of myself, I at least wanted to be able to blame it on too much gin.

“You are hungry,” said the left nipple.

“He is desperately lacking in nourishment,” the right continued.

“If he wishes to live he must feed,” said the left.

“I concur.”

She lowered one of her great big mitts and I climbed on and was brought from mitt to tit, brought up to her left breast.

“Open wide, Charles Hatbox and be fed.”

I opened my mouth and the nipple opened its mouth. It spat green martian milk into my opened mouth. Delicious green martian milk. I floated in the air, my soul bathed in starlight, my mind opened as far as a French girl’s legs and I saw Charles Hatbox born, Charles Hatbox suckled, Charles Hatbox riding a tricycle, Charles Hatbox dressed as a cowboy firing a capgun, Charles Hatbox opening a Christmas gift. A small, familiar Christmas gift. A Christmas gift that looked at me from the mirror every damned, accursed day since…he…I…he named the bear Jimmy Plush. His mother sewed a tiny fedora. Hatbox brought it everywhere, they pretended to solve mysteries in the livingroom and in his backyard. It was only the size of a regular teddy bear, but it was sure as hell Jimmy Plush. What could this have meant? Hatbox throwing the bear out. Hatbox in school, hiding, slinking, unknown and mediocre. Hatbox writing the novel nobody wanted. Hatbox trying to make some money playing cards, winning a couple poker games. Hatbox losing poker games. Hatbox getting rejected. Hatbox being shot down by girl after girl after girl and magazine after magazine. Hatbox getting into hot water with Halperin, Hatbox meeting Jimmy Plush, feeling a faint glimmer of recognition and thinking he was worth trusting. Hatbox making the last mistake I would make as Hatbox. Hatbox slipping away.

“Why are you giving this back?” I asked, tears dampening my fur, “I don’t want this as me. I want this as Hatbox. I want to be Hatbox again, so I’m going to get the lingam and I’m going to get myself back. Stop torturing me!”

“This is not torture,” said the right breast, “we are imparting wisdom. Wisdom that you will end up needing.”

“What if I don’t want it?”

“You’ve passed the point at which it would have been your choice. And I am truly sorry for that.”

The hand grabbed me again and raised me to the right breast.

“Eat up, Hieronymous James Plush and be nourished.”

Lightness. Stars. Dizziness. A child playing detective. A child dragging me downstairs. A child holding me at night, every night. Holding back words because I’m not permitted to say them. Holding back anger at being left out in the mud and then being violently scrubbed. Garbage in an alley, I stand up and I scream. I begin to grow up, standing three feet high, unafraid of language, angry, angry, angry. A gun, a fedora, a bottle of gin, answering questions for any who needed them answered. Making short work of anyone who got in the way. Awful things. Lies, crooked cases, double crosses. Deviant sex, unnecessary violence, an abused chauffeur and nobody to answer to but me. And why should I answer to anybody? I’m the baddest teddy bear in town. The others get dragged downstairs, covered in mud, abandoned, not me. I’m nobody’s toy. This city is my plaything. The world is my plaything and it will be mine. A greenskinned monk, a strange book, a chance to get back at the man I hated most. Almost too easy. But of course it was. Wasn’t anybody better than Jimmy Plush.

This time I threw up the milk. I couldn’t stand the things that were inside of Jimmy Plush. There was no reason anybody should have to. Made me want to leave right away so I could get to killing the bastard and making sure only Hatbox remained.

“Thanks, ma’am…ladies? Whatever I call you. I’ve made my decision now. Hatbox lives and Plush dies today. No need the world should have to deal with that teddybastard.”

“You’re unarmed,” said the left breast.

“Very risky.”

“You need a weapon.”

I shook my head.

“I only need my hands to bring him down.”

The right breast contradicted me.

“He knows what you know. He knows how you fight and he has a fullgrown man’s body to fight with.”

“He is a clever and dangerous opponent.”

“I cannot let you take him on unarmed.”

A ladder of doll arms extended down from her sex.

“Grab hold of the arms.”

“Climb the ladder.”

“Claim your gifts.”

“Claim your power.”

“Become the man who will survive.”

“Or the bear.”

“Or the bear, yes, or the bear.”

The giant hand set me down at her feet again.

“Go ahead, climb into my womb.”

I had more reason to trust her than I had most people. As much pain she might have caused, she caused it by telling the truth which is something I didn’t tell myself very often. My commitment to finding it for others was usually a professional necessity and most of the time when I did, it was because I’d end up finding my way back to somebody’s door that I already felt was worth kicking down. She had filled me with serenity and fear and hope and confusion and clarity. I climbed the doll arms knowing that ahead would probably be more of this. At the top, green Plush lips parted and I was once again someplace else.

But where? It looked like Nero City but everything was sort of a silhouette. Silhouette buildings, silhouette cars, silhouette whores against silhouette lampposts, silhouette mothers with silhouette strollers with silhouette babies inside them. I felt tall, fleshy and sad. I knew this feeling. This was Charles Hatbox. I was Hatbox again, walking down these shadow streets. I opened up my wallet as I approached a silhouette girl’s lamppost.

“How much for a good time?”

She put her hand on her chin.

‘Bsssppppspsspsssbssssp,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Bssssppssssspbsbbbssbbbsppsppp,” she whispered.

“Can you speak louder.”

“Sppppsspspsppsspsppspspspspppspspspsp, sppbbspsspbh, shhhhspsspsp,” she replied, no louder than before.

Suddenly, a great shadow loomed behind her, holding up a big shadowy sledgehammer. I tried to shout “look out”, but the words never left my mouth. I reached into my pocket for my gun but found only a tunafish sandwich and a copy of Tarzan of the Apes. The sledgehammer came down, pounding her into inky pulp, but I didn’t care. I walked away from the crime scene to find a game of three card monte.

On that, I fared a bit better. There was a shadow man with a shadowy table but the cards on it were real. I laid down five dollars. He shuffled them around, then told me with a gesture to pick one. I picked the one in the middle. Had to be the one. There was a smiling teddy bear face on it. An arrogant, patronizing, evil smiling teddy bear face. I laid down another five and we played the game again. The one on the left. Had to be the one on the left. Smiling teddy bear face. Five dollars. One in the middle. Smiling teddy bear face. Five dollars. One on the left. Smiling teddy bear face. Five dollars five dollars five dollars teddy bear…I shook myself from inside, told me to end this. As I fought for control, I…Hatbox…I dropped more and more money. I was starting to hear tiny laughter from the teddy bear on the card. At last, I managed to pull away from the three card monte game, running down the black identical streets to find my home.

In the middle of a shadowy slum was a perfectly solid tenement which I knew I resided at. I did not feel proud to reside here but don’t remember caring much that I had at one point. I walked past many identical dingy apartments, until I came to my dingy apartment. A skinny Dalmatian ceased pondering his empty dish to approach me.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, you worthless shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jimmy Plush killed me. Sent the meat to your girlfriend. She sold it to Halperin.”

“I’m really sorry, dog,” was all I could think to say.

“Doesn’t bring me back, does it?”

There was a cowboy sitting on my couch, dribbling blood out of his mouth. His face was more hollow than the dalmatian’s, he looked like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

He tried to stand up, but ended up rolling onto the floor, where he started crawling toward me.

“Feed me! You son of a bitch! Feed me! Feed me!” the cowboy shrieked. I backed away, seeing no option but to hide in the tiny bedroom. I knew I had nothing for the dog or the cowboy and I knew that they had every right to blame me for the state they were in.

I locked the bedroom door, thinking I can breathe easy, but heard a breathy feminine voice beg.

“Feed me, feed me, feed me, oh god, feed me…”

Lying on the bed dying was a purple skinned alien princess, skeletal and demanding, her spacebreasts all the more big, round and obscene compared to her tiny, dying body. She crawled off the bed and onto the floor to pursue me. I had to open the door again, to get away from her, even if it meant having to deal with the cowboy and the dog. I ran for the front door, kicking clawlike starving hands and grasping paws away from me as they closed in.

Kicking them aside, I reached the hallway and knocked on my neighbor’s door for help. A starving man in a spacesuit answered, I could barely see his face since his helmet’s faceplate was splattered and obscured with blood. He reached out to me, mumbling into his helmet. I knew he wanted to be fed. These were my unwanted children, the creations of my hack imagination (and my dog) having to live only on the meager hopes of the worst pulp writer who ever lived. I was a man who could not even dream right.

They were closing in on me now, the only place that I could possibly think to hide was in the elevator. I got in and they did not even try to follow. On the wall of the elevator, there was one big button: it was a green teddy bear’s face, glowing and whispering secrets with its vibrations. I pressed it and as it should have, the elevator started to rise and rise and rise…

The elevator door opened into a green fleshy cave. I was Jimmy Plush again. Or I was Hatbox-Plush. Whatever. I was no longer Charles Hatbox. It felt like a relief for once. I’d forgotten what my life had been like. Spending time as a crime-solving teddy bear who was hated all over town could do that to a guy. All the weak heroes, all the vulnerable fantasies and all the lost possibilities hadn’t occurred to me. Why should they have? Life was as bad as it could get. Dodging bullets, returning fire, fistfights with gangsters and freaks, journeys into magical tombs weren’t signs of success by any measure of the word. It didn’t matter, did it? I’d be a man again. Dammit. This was so confusing. I screamed at the top of my little teddy bear lungs. If I had lungs. Somebody screamed back.

“Not so goddamn loud!” said a voice from deeper in the cavern.

“Hello?” I shouted.

A short, squat green man in a monk’s robe, a man I’d seen when the right breast showed me Jimmy Plush’s life, hobbled in on a cane.

“You? Hmm. I’d been expecting the other one.”

“He’s probably off stealing the lingam.”

The green monk shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

Since I hadn’t expected a tiny green monk here in the womb of the giant teddy bear goddess, I decided I should probably find out what he was doing here.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

He looked at me as if it were a ridiculous thing to ask, as if any man on the street could answer the question for him.

“It should be obvious.”

“Maybe I’m slow. Tell me.”

“I’m the high scholarpriest of the Martian Teddy Bear Goddess, Sekharun.”

Sekharun, huh? Sounded good.

“Pretty name.”

The scholarpriest laughed.

“Beyond that. In our language it means Arbiter of Transcendant Joys.”

“Your language being Martian?”

“Yes. The task that brings me joy is to guard the treasures that are supposed to be here.”

“So you guard the lingam?”

“No, sometimes I go to the outside world to spread stories of the lingam and the glories of Mars, but I do not guard the lingam. It’s not supposed to be here. I only guard treasure that’s supposed to be here. The computosphinx guards the lingam. Only the wisest of men may pass without being torn to shreds by its wrath.”

“So what treasure do you guard?”

He made a face.

“Whatever’s supposed to be here.”

As he said this, a large golden chest appeared. He examined it for a couple of seconds, mumbled something to himself then sat down and entered a deep meditative trance for a minute.

“This is yours,” he said upon awakening.

“Alright. Is there something I need to do?”

“Why would there be something you need to do? Didn’t I say it’s yours?”

“But aren’t you supposed to guard the treasure that’s supposed to be here?”

“Why should I guard it? It’s yours.”

I still couldn’t help but think that this monk was not particularly good at guarding things. But, that didn’t matter. I opened up the chest. There was a curved sword, some sort of zapgun and a pair of grey, wool pants inside.

It was a nice gesture on the part of the goddess, but I felt sort of lost again.

“What are these?”

The monk looked inside the chest.

“Well, from the looks of things, an enchanted scimitar sacred to Osiris, a Martian disintegrator ray and a pair of wool trousers. All things you need. Very good gifts.”

He was right about that. If anybody needed a Martian disintegrator ray, it was me. The sword looked expensive, too. Still wasn’t sure about the pants. I never wore pants because I never had anything to…I felt a heaviness between my legs. A familiar but foreign heaviness. A happy new heaviness that made me feel complete. I cried tears of joy when I discovered that from now on, I would need to wear pants and barring the vaults of particularly depraved collectors, I was the world’s first anatomically correct three foot tall teddy bear.

“See,” said the monk, “very good gifts. The goddess provides. You should put on those pants.”

I did. Gladly. They were a perfect fit. Not that I would expect pants manifested by the cosmos to be anything but. Magic sword, raygun, manhood. I felt ready for just about anything. I wasn’t even bothered by the giant hand that reached through the soft, cushiony green…oh. Considering how I’d come in, I should have known what this cavern was. The knowledge was beautiful and disturbing at the same time. I sat down in the palm of the hand and let it lower me back down through the womb, which it did, but it set me down somewhere else entirely.

Another one of those big sandstone chambers. Boy was I getting tired of big sandstone chambers. You’d think Martians would be more creative. Apparently, they thought the best thing Earth had to offer was sandstone. Well, they had to be fond of sand anyway to decide that Egypt was the best place to build their tombs. In this particular sandstone room, I found something unique: bits of shattered metal wings, shattered metallic lion parts and some high tech space teddy bear’s head. Its mouth opened and closed, repeating “Why? Why? Why?”

This must once have been the fierce computosphinx—then Jimmy Plush was already headed for the lingam chamber. I drew the sword and raygun and ran ahead.

The chamber beyond the computosphinx glowed gold, a welcome change from sandstone and in here were statues of gods I’d heard of before, gods without teddybear heads, a god with a crocodile head, a goddess with a lion head and a tall, kingly god. Would have been a beautiful place if it wasn’t for Jimmy Plush in the body of Charles Hatbox with a huge, mummified penis in his hand. Not something I wanted to see. Just plain disturbing first of all and secondly, it meant that Plush had the artifact he wanted. For once I didn’t waste any time with banter. I took aim with the Martian disintegrator and hoped it disintegrated teddy bear bastards in pulp writer bodies. It let out a green laser beam that hit Plush square in what used to be my chest.

And nothing happened.

“Damn cheap space garbage…” I mumbled.

“The disintegrator’s fine, Hatbox,” said Plush, “but you’ve forgotten that when we were in Atlantis, I was showered in magical radiation, the kind of magical radiation that would repel Martian lasers. Or have you forgotten that Atlantis was founded by aliens of Venusian extraction?”

Damn. Professor Svenson would have known that. I wish I could’ve saved him from those rhinos.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll find some way to kill you, Plush.”

He laughed contemptuously.

“With that Martian pigsticker of yours?”

He reached into his trenchcoat and pulled out a spiky, red sword.

“This sword is forged of adamantine coral by Atlantis’ finest swordsmith.”

There was only one thing I could say in response to that.

“En garde, you bastard!”

I lunged with the scimitar and he parried. I went in for a punch with my offhand only to find there was a knife in his. He thrust into my palm, spilling some stuffing. He laughed again, a haughty Errol Flynn laugh that should never have come out of Charles Hatbox’s mouth.

“Ha! First blood.”

Since my palm was already cut and in pain, I really didn’t have anything to lose from grabbing the blade, nothing but more cotton. It was worth it to take hold of the knife and toss him over my shoulder using the Chinese fighting arts. He flew a couple feet, hit the ground and I’m sure spilled a little blood of his own. I turned just in time to avoid getting stabbed in the back as he got to his feet, surprised to find that there was only a small bump on his head. Guy must have really known how to fall.

“I’m impressed. Nice work…for a teddy bear!” He surprised me with a particularly aggressive lunge, one I almost couldn’t parry. He surprised me again with a kick in the chest. I had less luck with the kick than with the lunge and flew back a few feet. I was dazed, so by the time I got to my feet he had closed the distance and he was ready for me. He smiled a smile I had never known my former face was capable of. Damn. I hope I never looked that vile when I smiled at people.

“This is the end, Plush. I’ve brought you here to finish you off, to cut out my own heart so I can work the lingam. I couldn’t very well cut out my heart when it was in my body could I? And there were so many things you’d done to me that needed paying back. Dragging me through the mud, tossing me down the stairs…this is going to hurt so much worse than getting tossed down stairs…”

I closed my eyes expecting decapitation, feeling that this must surely be the end of the line. I opened them when I heard a “swoosh” and a “thud”, to see that the chauffeur I had thought dead had not been killed by the grilled cheese sandwich birds and had come out of nowhere to knock Jimmy Plush to the ground with a flying kick.

“Dishonorable Mister Plush, the time has come for revenge!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Plush, rising to his feet.

The Chinaman leapt at Plush, preparing to kick his head clean off but it was not to be. Plush was quick on the draw with his Atlantean Disemboweler pistol, the pistol he had fired at Captain Von Frankenstein when the undead pirate had decided that Plush was too vile even for him to side with. I did not close my eyes as the gun ripped Chang’s intestines out of his body. The least I could do was witness his grisly death.

In the next few moments, three factors worked against Plush: first of all, Atlantean Disemboweler pistols only carry two shots, second of all, his hatred of the Chinese made the whole spectacle mesmerizing and hilarious to him and third of all, I was small fast and angry. Scimitar drawn, I leapt at the laughing sadist, slicing into his legs. He bled. He stumbled. I hacked. He bled. He stumbled. I hacked. He hit the floor. I jumped on his stomach.

“So you going to cut my heart out to wish for your own body back?” he laughed hysterically, “Then I’ve still won. I’ve made you sacrifice lives, take bullets, do things a man should never have to do just so you can resume being your original crummy self instead of having a chance at the earth and all of its splendors, or wishing for harems of beautiful women or…”

I sliced his throat to shut him up. He was right. And hell, from all I’d learned and all I’d done, I figured out it meant something to be Jimmy Plush. I had my gun, I had my wits and I had a few inches where a man needs to have ‘em. No point asking for the world. I had killed the bastard Jimmy Plush and the bastard Charles Hatbox in one stroke of my sword and walked out of the temple as the one, the only, the new and improved heroic Jimmy Plush. Not too bad of a thing to be.

I returned to the only place I really knew, in spite of hating it. It was different, though. Where once I saw only filth, disease and stupidity, now I saw potential. Towns, countries, they’re like people themselves, they don’t turn good or bad overnight, they get better or they get worse, they do one evil thing or one good thing at a time, they lose people, they kill people they get dragged downstairs or brought in by cops that cut off limbs. It hurt to look at the driverless limo outside my office but I couldn’t stop staring. The best man I knew was dead.

If I’d been able to pay attention, I would have seen the smelly, Chinese brutes sneaking up behind me to stuff me in a sack. But I wasn’t able to pay attention and they got the drop on me because of it. I didn’t mind being stuffed in a sack that much anyway. I’d been through worse and if I felt like getting out of the sack, I had a scimitar and a martian disintegrator inside my coat. I waited.

When they removed me from the sack, I was rewarded by the sight of a pale, angry, Chinese woman. She’d be kind of a looker if she wasn’t Chinese, and if she wasn’t my dead chauffeur’s estranged wife taking revenge for his death and the humiliation he’d suffered at the hands of both me and the real Jimmy Plush. The long, razor sharp fingernails and the gang of Chinese thugs didn’t do much for her appeal either.

“Tear him apart!” she ordered them, “Let him die before my eyes!”

There were about twenty of ‘em, real big for Chinese, a couple of eunuchs among them that towered over the others. A fella without a martian disintegrator would worry. I fired on the brutes, hoping to sizzle them with hot green death, but failing to remember that the Chinese are descended from the Venusians that colonized Atlantis, so were genetically immune to martian disintegrators, though unfortunately for Chang, not to the disembowelers their species used. Failing to blast my assailants, I drew the scimitar, outmaneuvering them with my agility and knowledge of the fighting arts. Big as these guys were, I made short work of them and headed for the door.

“Where are you going, coward?” Chang’s wife shouted at me.

“I’m turning my back on you and walking away.” I knew as I said it that it wouldn’t be that simple. She practically flew across the room to block the door. I didn’t think anybody could move that quick.

“My husband is dead because of you! I am not leaving until I’ve ripped everything out from inside of you!” She showed she was going to make good on her threat by attempting a good old fashioned open palmed heartripper. I saw it coming, so I could block it.

“I’m not the man you think I am. I did take your husband to his doom but I’m…”

She intended to shut me up with a gilded battleaxe fist. It worked, for a second, my concentration focused on a crawling banana slug sweep, which she deftly dodged, but I was determined to say my peace.

“There was another man who was me before I was. He…”

“Enough of your lies!” She launched into the decapitating batkick. I ducked, readying myself to spikeshark roll when she landed. We exchanged meaningless blow after meaningless blow after meaningless blow, counterattack after counterattack, me wanting nothing more than to make her stop attacking, her wanting nothing more than to keep it up until I was dead. We fought like this for longer than I thought I could fight anyone and god help me, I started to really feel the new equipment. She wasn’t just pretty for a Chinese woman, she was pretty for a woman.

We sat down and caught our breath.

“We both lost everything. The man who killed your husband is an associate of the man who killed my girlfriend and my fiancée. He ruined my life and I have to start over from nothin’. Did the same to you.”

There was understanding and sympathy in her sweet shadowy eyes.

“You don’t seem like the man my husband wrote home about. You seem sad and good and honest.”

“I’m tryin’.”

“I could have been like my husband,” she said, tears flowing down her cheek, “but I’m impatient. I have hate in my heart. I ran my gang in China and he came here to be an honest man.”

“It’s hard to be the kind of man your husband was.”

She put her hand on my thigh to comfort me and was surprised by what she found. As I said, I’d been getting very excited. She pulled off her kimono, opened up my pants and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I was inside a woman, part of her, moving in her and feeling something, as if, for once, there was more in me than stuffing and pain. As she held me close, I thought again about what it meant to be Jimmy Plush. I was soft, warm, a thing to make people feel secure and like they live in a good enough world.

“I’ll be back,” I told her, “I’ve got some business.”

“You’d better be,” she said, and meant it.

I agree that storming into J.L Wong’s and martian disintegrating Skinny and Johnny was the kind of thing the first Jimmy Plush would have done but the new, improved Jimmy Plush wasn’t gonna be a saint just because the last one was a bastard. That would be letting him win. I was through living my life by standards set for and by other people. Anybody who’s read a pulp novel before knows that heroic and merciful ain’t synonymous.

Which is why what I did after kicking in the door to Vic Halperin’s office surprised me.

It was quick and pathetic. I kicked in the door. He reached for his gun. I disintegrated it. He attempted a very respectable jumpkick. I responded with a much more respectable sidestep. He hit the floor hard. I pointed the disintegrator at his head. He started begging for his life.

“What do you want, Plush? Please, anything!”

I looked past the real Jimmy Plush and I looked past Charles Hatbox and I looked into myself.

“First of all, you’re out of the pimp business.”

He nodded in agreement.

“Fine. Will that be all?”

I shook my head.

“How’s your driving?”