Bum Magic: A Tale of Sludge and Slime

“Seriously? That’s your plan? Get me fucking killed so we can maybe snag a henchman to torture? I thought you were a goddamn detective. Go detect something.”

I was pissed. She had damn near a half-century of investigative experience, and yet her plan sounded like some shit straight out of Scooby Doo.

“Look, we don’t have time to go over this right now. I have clients waiting. Why don’t you come over for dinner and I can try to convince you? Not that I’ve ever been able to convince you of anything. You can even bring your friend along if you really want to,” Anita said. “Your dad’s making tacos.”

Old Newton McCall never did miss a Taco Tuesday. If you got him started, he would go on about his “famous” tacos for hours. He would describe every step of the taco-making process in meticulous detail – from the tortilla selection, to the time and temperature the meat had to be cooked at, to the thickness the cheese had to be shredded – and they tasted like regular fucking tacos. It always drove me up a wall, probably more than it should’ve, how goddamn proud he was of his tacos. Very few people on this planet had the right to be proud about anything, in my opinion. But it’s not like I had anything else scheduled in my calendar for that time, and maybe her plan wasn’t as batshit as it sounded on the surface. She was a cold bitch, but she wasn’t stupid.

“Alright, I’ll eat some tacos and you can explain to me how offering me up as a sacrificial lamb will keep me from dying,” I said. “See you then.”

Mickey and I both got up at the same time. He smiled and bowed to my mother for some reason – I think just to annoy me – and we headed out. Tammy tried to chat us up some more, but I just waved without looking at her and left without breaking my stride.

I sat at one end of the dining room table, and Anita sat at the other. Newton sat to my left, smiling at me like a lobotomite. I did my best not to make eye contact with him and bit into my incredibly decent taco. Mickey sat to my right, and just past him sat someone I had never seen before. It was a tall child whose greasy hair covered his face as he hung his head to eat his food. He didn’t talk to me directly, but supposedly his name was Caleb McCall, and he was my brother.

Anita explained the situation to the table. Newton’s dumb smile turned into a dumb frown, and a single eye peeked out from the darkness of Caleb’s hair curtain.

“So you’re going to offer our son as a sacrificial lamb just to catch these criminals?” Newton said, appalled by the thought. “We just got him back, honey. Why not offer this other guy up instead? No offense, I’m sure you’re a great guy.”

“He’s not,” I said.

“I’m not,” Mickey said.

Newton sat in silence, processing the information and trying to transform it into something positive.

“Well, either way,” he said, “shouldn’t the guy with the ranged powers be the one to hide, ready for the sneak attack? Mr. Mickey would have to run all the way up to the bad guy in order to use his powers, right?”

“Their head honcho went after Gus, not Mickey, and Gus got away. They know his face. When they see it, they’ll immediately come running,” Anita said.

“But how many? What if they send an army? How will two guys be able to defend themselves, even with superpowers?” Newton said. “Anita, honey, I feel like you haven’t thought this through enough.”

“There’s nothing to think through, Newt!” Anita said, almost yelling. “This is a desperate fucking situation our son has got himself in, so a desperate plan is all we have! Of course this is a Hail Mary, but if they take some time to hone their skills, we carefully position ourselves, and time everything right, there is a small, small chance that –”

The plan was cut short before it could even begin. The dining room windows exploded all at once, and my dad slumped forward onto the table, smashing his face into his half-eaten taco. There was a baseball-sized crater in the back of his head that exposed his brain and sent waves of blood streaming down his neck and onto the carpet. Anita grabbed Caleb and threw him under the table. She pulled out her Colt .45 and ran to the kitchen to take cover against the doorframe.

Mickey was nowhere to be seen.

Everything had happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to think. Chaos swirled around me and I sat in my chair with my taco still in my hand. I dropped it and caught up with reality when an iron ball shot through the window and shattered my left shoulder. I didn’t scream. The pain did not register in my body. I just felt a hundred little pops and cracks all at once. Caleb yelped like a dying antelope and scurried on his hands and knees into the kitchen, and I followed.

“Help me move the fridge. Whatever’s being shot at us could go right through these walls,” I said to Caleb. His hair clung to the sides of his head to reveal a look of pure terror in his eyes. He didn’t respond, but he moved towards the fridge and helped me push it away from the wall and angle it towards the dining room. The three of us hid behind it, and an iron ball collided with it seconds later, sending deep vibrations through my entire body.

We had to get out of there. Another ball clanged against the fridge. Each one did significant damage to the front of the refrigerator. It wouldn’t last forever. A third ball came through and knocked the fridge door clean off, and it slid across the kitchen.

“Caleb, light this and hold it for me,” I said and handed him the Zippo. “Hold it far, far away from your face.”

He struggled to spark it, but eventually produced a flame and extended his arm so that his hand just went past the fridge. I shot a thin, powerful stream of slime from my finger through the flame. The stream of fire made it out of the dining room window and lit a bush on fire. It gave us just enough light to see a flash of black moving towards the front yard.

“Fuck, I didn’t hit him,” I grumbled. Anita took a few potshots at the silhouette, guessing where it would be after we couldn’t see it anymore, but it didn’t seem like she hit anything other than the wall.

If the shadow shot through the front door, this refrigerator barricade suddenly turned into a trap; we were sitting ducks crammed into that narrow space. I was the first to move from behind the fridge, and I booger-bombed the front door open and told Caleb to throw the lighter on the ground in front of me. He did, and I sent a trail of slime from the lighter to the front yard, and then pooled the yard with slime. The entire lawn was ablaze – Newton would’ve been devastated if he was still breathing – so that we could at least have some light from this angle. It must have worked, because there was no sign of the black figure.

There was still no sign of Mickey either.

Anita reloaded her six shooter, Caleb wiped some snot off his nose, and the three of us made a beeline for the garage. A ball smashed into the metal garage door and produced a screeching, ear-piercing reverberation – I would’ve covered my ears if one of my arms wasn’t being used as a weapon and the other wasn’t shattered to fucking bits. A barrage of heavy balls hit the door until there was a gaping hole in the metal, big enough for a truck to drive through, that let moonlight into the room.

There was someone else in the room with us. He stood directly in front of the gaping hole, the moonlight shining on him like a spotlight. It was Mickey, holding an aluminum baseball bat, and locking eyes with the black silhouette.