It’s no secret I’m a huge F. Paul Wilson fan. When we were both invited into the Blood Lite anthology, I asked him if he would like to collaborate on a funny horror short. He graciously agreed, and we produced this slapstick bit of schtick. It was a lot of fun to write.

“We’re dead! We’re freakin’ dead!”

Mick Brady, known by the criminal underground of Arkham, Pennsylvania as “Mick the Mick,” held a shaking fist in front of Willie Corrigan’s face. Willie recoiled like a dog accustomed to being kicked.

“I’m sorry, Mick!”

Mick the Mick raised his arm and realized that smacking Willie wasn’t going to help their situation. He smacked him anyway, a punch to the gut that made the larger man double over and grunt like a pig.

“Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my hernia! You know I got a bulge there!”

Mick the Mick grabbed a shock of Willie’s greasy brown hair and jerked back his head so they were staring eye-to-eye.

“What do you think Nate the Nose is going to do to us when he finds out we lost his shit? We’re both going to be eating San Francisco Hot Dogs, Willie.”

Willie’s eyes got wide. Apparently the idea of having his dick cut off, boiled, and fed to him on a bun with a side of fries was several times worse than a whack to the hernia.

“We’ll…we’ll tell him the truth. Maybe he’ll understand.”

“You want to tell the biggest mobster in the state that your Nana used a key of uncut Columbian to make a pound cake?”

“It was an accident,” Willie whined. “She thought it was flour. Hey, is that a spider on the wall? Spiders give me the creeps, Mick. Why do they need eight legs? Other bugs only got six.”

Mick the Mick realized that hitting Willie again wouldn’t help anything. He hit him anyway, a slap across his face that echoed off the concrete floor and walls of Willie’s basement.

“Jesus, Mick! You hit me in my bad tooth! You know I got a cavity there!”

Mick the Mick was considering where he would belt his friend next, even though it wasn’t doing either of them any good, when he heard the basement door open.

“You boys playing nice down there?”

“Yes, Nana,” Willie called up the stairs. He nudged Mick the Mick and whispered, “Tell Nana yes.”

Mick the Mick rolled his eyes, but managed to say, “Yes, Nana.”

“Would you like some pound cake? It didn’t turn out very well for some reason, but Bruno seems to like it.”

Bruno was Willie’s dog, an elderly beagle. He tore down the basement stairs, ran eighteen quick laps around Mick the Mick and Willie, and then barreled, full-speed, face-first into the wall, knocking himself out. Mick the Mick watched as the dog’s tiny chest rose and fell with the speed of a weed wacker.

“No thanks, Nana,” Mick the Mick said.

“It’s on the counter, if you want any. Good night, boys.”

“Night, Nana,” they answered in unison.

Mick the Mick wondered how the hell they could get out of this mess. Maybe there was some way to separate the coke from the cake, using chemicals and stuff. But they wouldn’t be able to do it themselves. That meant telling Nate the Nose, which meant San Francisco Hot Dogs. In his twenty-four years since birth, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his penis. He’d miss it something awful.

“We could sell the cake,” Willie said.

“You think someone is going to pay sixty thousand bucks for a pound cake?”

“It’s just an idea.”

“It’s a stupid idea, Willie. No junkie is going to snort baked goods. Ain’t gonna happen.”

“So what should we do? I — hey, did you hear if the Phillies won? Phillies got more legs than a spider. And you know what? They catch flies too! That’s a joke, Mick.”

“Shaddup. I need to think.”

Mick the Mick couldn’t think of anything, so he punched Willie again, even though it didn’t solve anything.

“Jesus, Mick! You hit my kidney! You know I got a stone there!”

Mick the Mick walked away, rubbing his temples, willing an idea to come.

“That one really hurt, Mick.”

Mick the Mick shushed him.

“I mean it. I’m gonna be pissing red for a week.”

“Quiet, Willie. Lemme think.”

“It looks like cherry Kool-Aid. And it burns, Mick. Burns like fire.”

Mick the Mick snapped his fingers. Fire.

“That’s it, Willie. Fire. Your house is insured, right?”

“I guess so. Hey, do you think there’s any pizza left? I like pepperoni. That’s a fun word to say. Pepperoni. It rhymes with lonely. You think pepperoni gets lonely, Mick?”

To help Willie focus, Mick the Mick kicked him in his bum leg, even though it really didn’t help him focus much.

“Jesus, Mick! You know I got gout!”

“Pay attention, Willie. We burn down the house, collect the insurance, and pay off Nate the Nose.”

Willie rubbed his shin, wincing.

“But where’s Nana supposed to live, Mick?”

“I hear the Miskatonic Nursing Home is a lot nicer, now that they arrested the guy who was making all the old people wear dog collars.”

“I can’t put Nana in a nursing home, Mick!”

“Would you rather be munching on your vein sausage? Nate the Nose makes you eat the whole thing, or else you also get served a side of meatballs.”

Willie folded his arms. “I won’t do it. And I won’t let you do it.”

Mick the Mick took aim and punched Willie in his bad knee, where he had the metal pins, even though it did nothing to fix their problem.

“Jesus, Mick! You hit me in the…”

“Woof!”

Bruno the beagle sprang to his feet, ran sixteen laps around the men, then tore up the stairs.

“Bruno!” they heard Nana chide. “Get off the counter! You’ve had enough pound cake!”

Mick the Mick put his face in his hands, very close to tears. The last time he cried was ten years ago, when Nate the Nose ordered him to break his mother’s thumbs because she was late with a loan payment. When he tried, Mom had stabbed Mick the Mick with a meat thermometer. That hurt, but not as much as a wiener-ectomy would.

“Maybe we can leave town,” Willie said, putting a hand on Mick the Mick’s shoulder.

That left Willie’s kidney exposed. Mick the Mick took advantage, even though it didn’t help their situation.

Willie fell to his knees. Bruno the beagle tore down the stairs, straddled Willie’s calf, and began to hump so fast his little doggie hips were a blur.

Mick the Mick began searching the basement for something flammable. As it often happened in life, arson was really the only way out. He found a can of paint thinner on a dusty metal shelf and worked the top with his thumbnail.

“Mick, no!”

Mick couldn’t get it open. He tried his teeth.

“You can’t burn my house down, Mick! All my stuff is here! Like my comics! We used to collect comics when we were kids, Mick! Don’t you remember?”

Willie reached for a box, dug out a torn copy of Amazing Spiderman #146, and traced his finger up and down Scorpion’s tail in a way that made Mick the Mick uncomfortable. So he reached out and slapped Willie’s bad tooth. Willie dropped the comic and curled up fetal, and Bruno the beagle abandoned the calf for the loftier possibilities of Willie’s head.

Mick managed to pop the top on the can, and he began to sprinkle mineral spirits on some bags labeled Precious Photos & Memories.

Willie moaned something unintelligible through closed lips — he was probably afraid to open his mouth until he disengaged Bruno the beagle.

“Mmphp-muummph-mooeoemmum!”

“We don’t have a choice, Willie. The only way out of this is fire. Beautiful, cleansing fire. If there’s money left over, we’ll bribe the orderlies so Nana doesn’t get abused. At least not as much as the others.”

“Mick!” Willie cried. It came out “Mibb!” because Bruno the beagle had taken advantage. Willie gagged, shoving the dog away. Bruno the beagle ran around Willie seven times then flew up the stairs.

“Bruno!” they heard Nana chide. “Naughty dog! Not when we have company over!”

Willie hacked and spit, then sat up.

“A heist, Mick. We could do a heist.”

“No way,” Mick the Mick said. “Remember what happened to Jimmy the Spleen? Tried to knock over a WaMu in Pittsburgh. Cops shot his ass off. His whole ass. You want one of them creepy poop bags hanging on your belt?”

Willie wiped a sleeve across his tongue. “Not a bank, Mick. The Arkham Museum.”

“The museum?”

“They got all kinds of expensive old stuff. And it ain’t guarded at night. I bet we could break in there, get away with all sorts of pricey antiques. I think they got like a T-rex skull. That could be worth a million bucks. If I had a million bucks, I’d buy some scuba gear, so I could go deep diving on shipwrecks and try to find some treasure so I could be rich.”

Mick the Mick rolled his eyes.

“You think Tommy the Fence is going to buy a T-rex skull? How we even gonna get it out of there, Willie? You gonna put it in your pocket?”

“They got other stuff too, Mick. Maybe gold and gems and stamps.”

“I got a stamp for you.”

“Jesus, Mick! My toe! You know I got that infected ingrown!”

Mick the Mick was ready to offer seconds, but he stopped mid-stomp.

“You ever been to the Museum, Willie?”

“Course not. You?”

“Nah.”

But maybe it wasn’t a totally suck-awful idea.

“What about the alarms?”

“We can get past those, Mick. No problem. Hey, you think I need a haircut? If I look up, I can see my bangs.”

Willie did just that. Mick the Mick stared at the cardboard boxes, soaked with paint thinner. He wanted to light them up, watch them burn. But insurance took forever. There were investigations, forms to fill out, waiting periods.

But if they went to the museum and pinched something small and expensive, chances are they could turn it around in a day or two. The faster they could pay off Nate the Nose, the safer Little Mick and the Twins were.

“Okay, Willie. We’ll give it a try. But if it don’t work, we torch Nana’s house. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Mick the Mick extended his hand. Willie reached for it, leaving his hernia bulge unprotected. Now that they had a plan, it served absolutely no purpose to hit Willie again.

He hit him anyway.

“I don’t like it in here, Mick.” Willie said as they entered the great central hall of the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

Mick the Mick gave him a look, which was pretty useless since Willie couldn’t see his face and he couldn’t see Willie’s. The only things they could see were whatever lay at the end of their flashlight beams.

Getting in had been a walk. Literally. The front doors were unlocked. And no alarm. Really weird. Unless the museum had stopped locking up because nobody ever came here. Mick the Mick had lived in Arkham all his life and never met anyone who’d ever come here except on a class trip. Made a kind of sense then to not bother with locks. Nobody came during the day when the lights were on, so why would anyone want to come when the lights were out?

Which made Mick the Mick a little nervous about finding anything valuable.

“It’s just a bunch of rooms filled with loads of old crap.”

Willie’s voice shook. “Old stuff scares me. Especially this old stuff.”

“Why?”

“’Cause it’s old and — hey, can we stop at Burger Pile on the way home?”

“Focus, Willie. You gotta focus.”

“I like picking off the sesame seeds and making them fight wars.”

Mick the Mick took a swing at him and missed in the dark.

Suddenly the lights went on. They were caught. Mick the Mick feared prison almost as much as he feared Nate the Nose. He was small for his size, and unfortunately blessed with perfectly-shaped buttocks. The cons would trade him around like cigarettes.

Mick the Mick ducked into a crouch, ready to run for the nearest exit. He saw Willie standing by a big arched doorway with his hand on a light switch.

“There,” Willie said, grinning. “That’s better.”

Mick wanted to punch his hernia again but he was too far away.

“Put those out!”

Willie stepped away from the wall toward one of the displays. “Hey, look at this.”

Mick the Mick realized the damage had been done. Sooner or later someone would come to investigate. Okay, maybe not, but they couldn’t risk it. They’d have to move fast.

He looked up and saw a banner proclaiming the name of the exhibit: Elder Gods and Lost Races of South Central Pennsylvania.

“What’s this?” Willie said, leaning over a display case.

Suddenly a deep voice boomed: “WELCOME!”

Willie cried, “Whoa!” and Mick the Mick jumped — high enough so as if he’d been holding a basketball he could have made his first dunk.

Soon as he recovered, he did a thorough three-sixty but saw no one else but Willie.

“What you see before you,” the voice continued, “is a rare artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill.”

After recovering from another near dunk, plus a tiny bit of pee-pee, Mick noticed a speaker attached to the underside of the case.

Ah-ha. A recording triggered by a motion detector. But the sound was a little garbled, reminding him of the voice of the aliens in an old black-and-white movie he and Willie had watched on TV last week. The voice always began, “People of Earth …” but he couldn’t remember the name of the film.

“We know little about this ancient lost race but, after careful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion.”

“Hey, Willie said, grinning. “Sounds like the alien voice from Earth versus the Flying Saucers.”

“The ancient artifact before you once belonged to an ancient shaman.”

“What’s a shaman, Mick?”

Mick the Mick remembered seeing something about that on TV once. “I think he’s a kind of a witch doctor. But forget about —”

“A shaman, for those of you who don’t know, is something of a tribal wise man, what the less sophisticated among you might call a ‘witch doctor.’ ”

“Witch doctor? Cooool.”

Mick the Mick stepped over to see what the voice was talking about. Under the glass he saw a three-foot metal staff with a small globe at each end.

“The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards have further determined that the object is none other an ancient shaman’s scepter of power.”

Willie looked a Mick the Mick with wide eyes. “Did you hear that? A scepter of power! Is that like He-Man’s Power Sword? He-Man was really strong, but he had hair like a girl. Is the scepter of power like a power sword, Mick?”

“No, it’s more like a magic wand, but forget —”

“The less sophisticated among you might refer to a scepter of power as a ‘magic wand,’ and in a sense it functioned as such.”

“A magic wand! Like in the Harry Potter movies? I love those movies, and I’ve always wanted a magic wand! Plus I get crazy hot thoughts about Hermoine. She’s a real fox. Kinda like Drew Barrymore. In E.T. Hey, why does the wand have a deep groove in it?”

Mick the Mick looked again and noticed the deep groove running its length.

“Note, please, the deep groove running the length of the scepter of power. The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe that to be what is knows as a fuller…

A fuller? Mick thought. Looks like a blood channel.

“…which the less sophisticated among you might call a ‘blood channel.’ The eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards believe this ancient scepter of power might have been used by its shaman owner to perform sacred religious ceremonies — specifically, the crushing of skulls and ritual disemboweling.”

Mick the Mick got a chill. He hoped Nate the Nose never got his hands on something like this.

“What’s disemboweling, Mick?”

“When someone cuts out your intestines.”

“How do you dooky, then? Like squeezing a toothpaste tube?”

“You don’t dooky, Willie. You die.”

“Cool! Can I have the magic wand, Mick? Can I?”

Mick the Mick didn’t answer. He’d noticed something engraved near the end of the far tip. He leaned closer, squinting until it came into focus.

Sears.

What the—?

He stepped back for a another look at the scepter of power and —

“A curtain rod … it’s a freakin’ curtain rod!”

Willie looked at him like he was crazy. “Curtain rod? Didn’t you hear the man? It’s, like, a magic wand, and — hey, what’s that over there?”

Mick the Mick slapped at Willie’s kidney as he passed but missed because he couldn’t take his eyes off the Sears scepter of power. Maybe they could steal it, return it to Sears, and get a brand new one. That wouldn’t help much with Nate the Nose, but Mick the Mick did need a new curtain rod. His old one had broken, and his drapes were attached to the wall with forks. That made Thursdays — spaghetti night — particularly messy.

“WELCOME!” boomed the same voice as Willie stopped before another display. “What you see before you is a rare artifact that once belonged to an ancient lost race that dwelled in the Arkham area during prehistoric times. This, like every other ancient artifact in this room, was excavated from a site near the Arkham landfill.”

“Hey, Mick y’gotta see this.”

After some biblical thinking, Mick the Mick spared the rod and moved along.

“We know little about this ancient lost race but, after careful examination by the eminent archeologists and anthropologists here at the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards, they arrived at an irrefutable conclusion: The artifact before you was used by an ancient shaman of this lost race to perform surrogate sacrifices. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘shaman,’ please return to the previous display.)”

“I know what a shaman is, ’cause you just told me,” Willie said. “But what’s a surrogate—?”

“A surrogate sacrifice was an image that was sacrificed instead of a real person. Before you is a statuette of a woman carved by the ancient lost race from a yet-to-be-identified flesh-colored substance. Note the head is missing. This is because the statuette was beheaded instead of the human it represented.”

Mick the Mick stepped up to the display and immediately recognized the naked pink figure. He’d used to swipe his sister Suzy’s and make it straddle his rocket and go for a ride. Only Suzy’s had a blonde head.

“That’s a freakin’ Barbie doll!” He grabbed Willie’s shoulder and yanked him away.

“Jesus, Mick! You know I got a dislocating shoulder!”

Willie stumbled, knocking Mick the Mick into another display case, which toppled over with a crash.

“WELCOME! What you see before you is a rare tome of lost wisdom that once belonged —”

Screaming, Mick the Mick kicked the speaker until the voice stopped.

“Look, Mick,” Willie said, squatting and poking through the broken glass, “it’s not a tome, it’s a book. It’s supposed to contain lost wisdom. Maybe it can tell us how to keep Nate the Nose off our backs.” He rose and squinted at the cover. “The Really, Really, Really Old Ones.”

“It’s a paperback, you moron. How much wisdom you gonna find in there?”

“Yeah, you’re right. It says, ‘Do Not Try This at Home. Use Only Under Expert Supervision or You’ll Be Really, Really, Really Sorry.’ Better not mess with that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Mick the Mick had had it — really had it. Up. To. Here. He opened to a random page and read. “‘Random Dislocation Spell.’ ”

Willie winced. “Not my shoulder!”

“ ‘Use only under expert supervision.’ Yeah, right. Look, it’s got a bunch of gobbledygook to read.”

“You mean like ‘Mekka-lekka hi—?”

“Shaddap and I’ll show you what bullshit this is.”

Mick the Mick started reading, pronouncing the gobbledygook as best he could, going slow and easy so he didn’t screw up the words like he normally did when he read.

When he finished he looked at Willie and grinned. “See? No random dislocation.”

Willie rolled his shoulder. “Yeah. Feels pretty good. I wonder —”

The smell hit Mick the Mick first, hot and overpowering, reminding him of that time he stuck his head in the toilet because his older brother told him that’s where brownies came from. It was followed by the very real sensation of being squeezed. But not squeezed by a person. Squeezed all over by some sort of full-body force like being pushed through a too-small opening. The air suddenly became squishy and solid and pressed into every crack and pore on Mick the Mick’s body, and then it undulated, moving him, pushing him, through the solid marble floor of the Arkham Pennsylvania Museum of Natural History and Baseball Cards.

The very fabric of reality, or something like that, seemed to vibrate with a deep resonance, and the timbre rose to become an overpowering, guttural groan. The floor began to dissolve, or maybe he began to dissolve, and then came a horrible yet compelling farting sound and Mick the Mick was suddenly plopped into the middle of a jungle.

Willie landed next to him.

“I feel like shit,” Willie said.

Mick the Mick squinted in the sunlight and looked around. They were surrounded by strange, tropical trees and weird looking flowers with big fat pink petals that made him feel sort of horny. A dragonfly the size of a bratwurst hovered over their heads, gave them a passing glance, then buzzed over to one of the pink flowers, which snapped open and bit the bug in half.

“Where are we, Mick?”

Mick the Mick scratched his head. “I’m not sure. But I think when I read that book I opened a portal in the space-time continuum and we were squeezed through one of the eleven imploded dimensions into the late Cretaceous Period.”

“Wow. That sucks.”

“No, Willie. It doesn’t suck at all.”

“Yeah it does. The season finale of MacGyver: The Next Generation is on tonight. It’s a really cool episode where he builds a time machine out of some pocket lint and a broken meat thermometer. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a time machine, Mick?”

Mick the Mick slapped Willie on the side of his head.

“Jesus, Mick! You know I got swimmer’s ear!”

“Don’t you get it, Willie? This book is a time machine. We can go back in time!”

Willie got wide-eyed. “I get it! We can get back to the present a few minutes early so I won’t miss MacGyver!”

Mick the Mick considered hitting him again, but his hand was getting sore.

“Think bigger than MacGyver, Willie. We’re going to be rich. Rich and famous and powerful. Once I figure out how this book works we’ll be able to go to any point in history.”

“You mean like we go back to summer camp in nineteen seventy-five? Then we could steal the candy from those counselors so they couldn’t lure us into the woods and touch us in the bad place.”

“Even better, Willie. We can bet on sports and always win. Like that movie.”

“Which one?”

“The one where he went to the past and bet on sports so he could always win.”

“The Godfather?”

“No, Willie. The Godfather was the one with the fat guy who slept with horse heads.”

“Oh yeah. Hey Mick, don’t you think those big pink flowers look like…

“Shut your stupid hole, Willie. I gotta think.”

Mick the Mick racked his brain, but he was never into sports, and he couldn’t think of a single team that won anything. Plus, he didn’t have any money on him. It would take a long time to parlay the eighty-one cents in his pocket into sixty grand. But there had to be other ways to make money with a time machine. Probably.

He glanced at Willie, who was walking toward one of those pink flowers, leaning in to sniff it. Or perhaps do something else with it, because Willie’s tongue was out.

“Willie! Get away from that thing and try to focus! We need to figure out how to make some money.”

“It smells like fish, Mick.”

“Dammit, Willie! Did you take your medicine this morning like you’re supposed to?”

“I can’t remember. Nana says I need a stronger subscription. But every time I go to the doctor to get one I get distracted and forget to ask.”

Mick the Mick scratched himself. Another dragonfly — this one shaped like a banana wearing a turtleneck — flew up to one of those pink flowers and was bitten in half too. Damn, those bugs were stupid. They just didn’t learn.

Mick the Mick scratched himself again, wondering if the crabs were back. If they were, it made him really angry. When you paid fifty bucks for a massage at Madame Yoko’s, the happy ending should be crab-free.

Willie said, “Maybe we can go back to the time when Nate the Nose was a little boy, and then we could be real nice to him so when he grew up he would remember us and wouldn’t make us eat our junk.”

Or we could push his stroller into traffic, Mick the Mick thought.

But Nate the Nose had bosses, and they probably had bosses too, and traveling through time to push a bunch of babies in front of moving cars seemed like a lot of work.

“Money, Willie. We need to make money.”

“We could buy old stuff in the past then sell it on eBay. Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have four hands? I mean, you could touch twice as much stuff.”

Mick the Mick thought about those old comics in Willie’s basement, and then he grinned wider than a zebra’s ass.

“Like Action Comics #1, which had the first appearance of Superman!” Mick the Mick said. “I could buy it with the change in my pocket, and we can sell it for a fortune!”

Come to think of it, he could buy eight copies. Didn’t they go for a million a piece these days?

“I wish I could fly, Mick. Could we go back into time and learn to fly like Superman? Then we could have flown away from those camp counselors before they stuck their…”

“Shh!” Mick the Mick tilted his head to the side, listening to the jungle. “You hear something, Willie?”

“Yeah, Mick. I hear you talkin’ to me. Now I hear me talkin’. Now I’m singing a sooooong, a haaaaaaaaappy soooooong.”

Mick the Mick gave Willie a smack in the teeth, then locked his eyes on the treeline. In the distance the canopy rustled and parted, like something really big was walking toward them. Something so big the ground shook with every step.

“You hear that, Mick? Sounds like something really big is coming.”

A deafening roar from the thing in the trees, so horrible Mick the Mick could feel his curlies straighten.

“Think it’s friendly?” Willie asked.

Mick the Mick stared down at his hands, which still held the Really, Really, Really Old Ones book. He flipped it open to a random page, forcing himself to concentrate on the words. But, as often happened in stressful situation, or even situations not all that stressful, the words seemed to twist and mash up and go backward and upside-down. Goddamn lesdyxia — shit—dyslexia.

“Maybe we should run, Mick.”

“Yeah, maybe…wait! No! We can’t run!”

“Why can’t we run, Mick?”

“Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer went back in time and stepped on a butterfly and then Bart cut off his head with some hedge clippers?”

“That’s two different episodes, Mick. They’re both Treehouse of Horror episodes, but from different years.”

“Look, Willie, the point is, evolution is a really fickle bitch. If we screw up something in the past it can really mess up the future.”

“That sucks. You mean we would get back to our real time but instead of being made of skin and bones we’re made entirely out of fruit? Like some kind of juicy fruit people?”

Another growl, even closer. It sounded like a lion’s roar — if the lion had balls the size of Chryslers.

“I mean really bad stuff, Willie. I gotta read another passage and get us out of here.”

The trees parted, and a shadow began to force itself into view.

“Hey, Mick, if you were made of fruit, would you take a bite of your own arm if you were really super hungry? I think I would. I wonder what I’d taste like?”

Mick the Mick tried to concentrate on reading the page, but his gaze kept flicking up to the trees. The prehistoric landscape lapsed into deadly silence. Then, like some giant monster coming out of the jungle, a giant monster came out of the jungle.

The head appeared first, the size of a sofa — a really big sofa — with teeth the size of daggers crammed into a mouth large enough to tear a refrigerator in half.

“I think I’d take a few bites out of my leg or something, but I’d be afraid because I don’t know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don’t taste like straw? Hey, is that a T-Rex?”

Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a little. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book’s pages to ripple.

“I really think we should run, Mick.”

Mick the Mick agreed. The Tyrannosaur stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn’t outrun it. But he didn’t have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

“The T-Rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won’t be able to---Willie, come back!”

Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from Manny’s Meats on 23^rd street, which gave a disturbingly human-like cry when its little neck snapped.

Behind them, the T-Rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eighteen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide that Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature’s tongue and play Texas Hold ’em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close on Mick the Mick and cause terminal death, the T-Rex skidded to a halt and craned its neck skyward, peering up through the trees.

Mick the Mick continued to sprint, stepping on a family of small furry rodents who looked a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B — so much so that he swore one even said “Fronzo!” when he broke its little furry spine — and then he smacked smack into Willie, who was standing still and staring up.

“Willie! What the hell are you doing? We gotta move!”

“Why, Mick? We’re not being chased anymore.”

Mick looked back and noticed that, indeed, the thunder lizard had abandoned its pursuit, focusing instead on the sky.

“I think it’s looking at the asteroid,” Willie said.

Mick the Mick shot a look upward and stared at the very large flaming object that seemed to take up a quarter of the sky.

“I don’t think it was there a minute ago,” Willie said. “I don’t pay good attention but I think I woulda noticed it, don’t you think?”

“This ain’t good. This ain’t no good at all.”

“Look how big it’s getting, Mick! We should hide behind some trees or something.”

“We gotta get out of here, Willie.” Mick the Mick said, his voice high-pitched and uncomfortably girlish.

“Feel that wind, Mick? It’s hot. I bet that thing is going a hundred miles an hour. Do you feel it?”

“I feel it! I feel it!”

“Do you smell fish, Mick? Hey, look! Those pink flowers that look like —”

Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric plants, using a long red rope.

No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie’s intestines.

“Help me, Mick!”

Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie’s duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

“It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!”

A bone-shaking roar, from behind them. The T-Rex had lost interest in the asteroid and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-sized head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

No, the dooky was coming from Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream.

Mick the Mick released his friend’s innards and wiped his hand on Willie’s shirt. The pink flower made a pbbbthh sound and did the same, without the wiping the hand part.

“I gotta put this stuff back in.” Willie began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving them into the gaping hole in his belly.

Mick the Mick figured Willie was in shock, or perhaps even stupider than he’d originally surmised. He considered warning Willie about the infection he’d get from filling himself with dirt, but there were other, more pressing, matters at hand.

The asteroid now took up most of the horizon, and the heat from it turned the sweat on Mick the Mick’s body into steam. They needed to get out of here, and fast. If only there was someplace to hide.

Something scurried over Mick the Mick’s foot and he flinched, stomping down. Crushed under his heel was something that looked like a beaver. The animal kind. Another proto-beaver beelined around its dead companion, heading through the underbrush into…

“It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

Mick the Mick pushed aside a large fern branch and squatted down. The hole led to a diagonalish path, dark and rocky, deep down into the earth.

“It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

“You said that, Mick!”

“That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

Mick the Mick watched as two more lizards, a giant mosquito, and more beaver things poured into the cave, escaping the certain extinction the asteroid promised.

“That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Mick!”

“I’m not repeating myself!” Mick yelled.

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“I’m not repeating myself!”

“Yes you are!”

“No I’m not!”

“You just did!”

“I’m not, Willie!”

“I’m hurt bad, Mick!”

“I’m not, Willie!”

“I said I’m hurt, Mick! Not you!”

Mick the Mick decided not to pursue this line of conversation anymore. Instead, he focused on moving the big outcropping of rock partially obscuring the cave’s entrance. If he could budge it just a foot or two, he could fit into the cave and maybe save himself.

Mick the Mick put his shoulder to the boulder, grunting with effort. Slowly, antagonizingly slowly, it began to move.

“You got your cell phone, Mick? You should maybe call 911 for me. Tell them to bring some stitches.”

Just a little more. A little bit more…

“I think my stomach just fell out. What’s a stomach look like, Mick? This looks like a kidney bean.”

Finally, the rock broke away from the base with a satisfying crack. But rather than rolling to the side, it teetered, and then dropped down over the hole, sealing it like a manhole cover.

Mick the Mick began to cry.

“Do kidneys look like kidney beans, Mick?” Willie made a smacking sound. “Doesn’t taste like beans. Or kidneys. Hey, the T-Rex is back. He doesn’t look distracted no more. You think he took is medication?”

The T-Rex opened its mouth and reared up over Mick the Mick’s head, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that big dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a punching bag.

“Read to him, Mick. When Nana reads to me, I go to sleep.”

The book. They needed to escape this time period. Maybe go into the future, to before Nana baked the cake so they could stop her.

Mick the Mick lifted the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and squinted at it. His hands shook, and his vision swam, and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks and the hair still left on his comb-over was starting to singe and the T-Rex’s jaws began to close and another one of those pink flowers leaned in took a big bite out of Little Mick and the Twins but he managed to sputter out:

“OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!”

Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded — or growing out of?—a toadstoollike thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who’d sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn’t Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes — two of them on stalks — and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, “Mick, is that you?” but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his —

Whoa! Tentacle?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, “Hi, Nana.” His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie’s Nana?

Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

“There’s an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else.”

“Or else what?”

A new voice said, “Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?”

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He’d miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren’t turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn’t have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

“Oh, no,” Willie moaned. “I don’t want to eat Mick’s cloaca.”

“I meant your own, jerk!” the newcomer barked.

“But I have a hernia —”

“Shaddap!”

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

Wait … what was a bike?

“What’s up, Nate?”

“That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A frisson of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?”

The brick? What brick?

Mick the Mick had a moment of panic — he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about.

Oh, yeah. The product. Now he remembered.

“Sure Nate, it’s right in here.”

He led Nate to the kitchen where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn’t have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn’t know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and big rocks in the sky, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 4B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as confused.

Willie was playing with his cloaca.

Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, “A’ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe … fer now. But you don’t deliver that product like you’re apposed to and it’s casserole city, knome sayn?

“We’ll deliver it, Nate,” Willie said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll deliver it.

“Y’better,” Nate said, then left with his posse.

“Where we supposed to deliver it?” Willie said when they were alone again.

Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

“The same place we always deliver it.”

“Ow!” Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. “That hurt. You know I got a — hey, look!” He was pointing to the TV. “The Toad Whisperer is on! My favorite show!

He settled onto the floor and stared.

Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, “Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake but I’m out of flour. Could one of you boys — oh, wait. Here’s some. Never mind.

A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick’s brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen …

What had Nate the Noodge called it? “A frisson of malaise and apprehension.” Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling like what he was having right now.

But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching The Toad Whisperer. As soon as that was over, they’d go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madam Yoko’s for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum massage. And maybe a cloac-job.

The frisson of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show he’d snag himself a piece.

Yes, life was good.