Bum Magic: A Tale of Sludge and Slime

He pulled the granny up and put her in a seated position. The skin on her face looked like it was detached from her skull, hanging down each side of her face in sheets. Her white hair was caked with dirt and blood and stood up like wispy spires branching out in several directions. Her cardigan hung off of her shoulder and revealed more of her mark. It didn’t look like it went past her shoulder at all – no farther than ours.

Micky got on one knee to look straight into her remaining eye.

“Who do you work for?” he said calmly.

“Fuck yourself,” she replied.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he said. He grabbed her arm and made it burst into a cloud of blood and bone shards. Her screams filled the still night air. I was sure someone would hear it and try to come to her rescue – I hoped not, for their sake.

“Who do you work for?” Mickey repeated.

“We both got the same boss, honey,” she said. “Soon as y’all drank that elixir, you became followers. Devout ones too, seein’ how much y’all have progressed in such a short time. We didn’t expect that, bein’ honest with you.”

“Is your leader coming for us?” Mickey continued the questioning – it was hard to say how much longer she’d be conscious.

“Boy, you are touched,” she said. “My ‘leader’ is already here.”

Mickey started to look visibly frustrated. He grabbed her head and shoved his finger into her empty eye socket. It was partially closed, so he had to wriggle his finger through a mound of caked blood to get into the fleshy hole.

“I’m going to add a finger for every bullshit, cryptic answer you give us. Do you understand? We need real answers: What is the name of your cult? What do you believe? How many of you are after us?”

She wailed in agony. The only other time I had heard that much anguish in a scream was when I burned those men alive in the compound. It was a different level of pain than most people are used to. The screams tried their best to convey the unimaginable, soul-piercing pain that they experienced, but they always failed. Mickey held her head firmly as she tried to collapse onto the floor. He took his finger out, which produced a wet, sucking sound. Her eye rolled into the back of her head for a moment, but she still remained conscious. Finally, she spoke.

“You stupid piece of shit, I’m already tellin’ you,” she said. “We worship the only god we’ve ever seen. The god that lives in our arms. It’s blessed us, and its blessings are undeniable. Very soon, the blessed will run the world. That’s why y’all need to die. We can’t have a couple of hoboes thinkin’ they’re entitled to a piece of our power. That’s why we won’t stop comin’ until you’re both dead.”

Mickey clenched her middle finger in his hand.

“How many more are coming? How far behind are they?”

The granny smiled a grotesque smile; her crooked teeth were snapped and chipped and dark red. My skull started to itch.

The top of her head turned to iron and she bashed Mickey in the face. His nose bent completely to the left and blood streamed into his mouth. She got up and tried to run, her hands still bound, but I kicked her in the back and she hit the ground face-first. She turned around and shot an iron ball at me. It was much smaller than the ones she had shot earlier, like a large BB, but it still hurt when it lodged into my cheek. She peppered my face and chest with metal pellets, but I wasn’t going to let her get away. I pinned her arms with my knees, and tiny drops of blood trickled off of my face onto hers. I opened wide and shot a constant stream of slime onto her face. She tried to move her face out of its way, but there was nowhere for her to go. She struggled under me, desperately trying to breathe, gurgling and thrashing her head until she finally went limp.

I cut off the stream and took a deep breath. It’s pretty hard to breathe with a hundred gallons of gunk coming out of your mouth. I caught my breath and stood up. Anita and Caleb were looking at me like I was the antichrist. Mickey cracked his nose back into place and laughed.

“That was fuckin’ brutal, dude,” he said. “Nice.”

“Not that nice. We didn’t get enough out of her. We still don’t even know the organization’s name for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“Oh, we got enough. We learned that most of these people ain’t shit. They don’t realize how badass we are. They thought this old bitch could take us both out by herself. We keep training, and we can probably tear ‘em all up, including this Alec guy you’re always pissing your pants over.”

I wasn’t convinced. We couldn’t keep waiting for them to find us. We needed to go after them, but we still didn’t really know anything about them – who the leading members were, where their other churches were, and most importantly, how strong they were. They might have underestimated us this time, but I didn’t think that would happen a second time.

“Whatever. Let’s just hide this body and get the fuck out of here. The longer it takes them to find her, the longer it will take them to find us, and we need as much time as we can get right now,” I said.

Mickey shrugged and gestured for Caleb to come grab the old lady’s legs. Caleb jumped, startled by the acknowledgment of his existence, dropped the flashlight, and ran to help lift the corpse.

“Caleb, man, I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this,” I said. “This has probably been the worst long-lost brother reunion of all time.” I thought about patting him on the back for a moment before remembering that my arms still didn’t work. That needed to be fixed. Caleb let out a squeak to show he heard me and walked with Mickey to the woods. Anita and I followed behind.

“Should we dig her a grave?” I said when we were about a ten-minute walk into the woods.

“I’m not diggin’ shit right now, Gus,” Mickey said. “Any of y’all want to dig a giant hole with no shovel in the middle of the woods? No? You want to get the fuck out of here? Good idea?” He gave me a look like I was a fuckin moron. If I had arms I would’ve slapped the shit out of him.

Caleb and Mickey dropped the corpse onto the ground. It landed on a root and rolled over so that she was lying on her face. We were all mentally and physically drained and wanted to leave, but right before we walked off, I noticed something on her back.

“What in the world is that?”