Thatgot the adults’ attention.
“Hey, where the fuck is my kid?” Some dad yelled out, already belligerent before he knew what was going on. He was wearing a Frankie’s Funhouse adult tee shirt that he’d cut the arms off of to make a muscle shirt. Admittedly, he had quite a bitof muscle. It was flexing right now—veins popping and his neck throbbing like an overfed eel.
I opened my mouth to suggest running and to tell them their kids were hiding in the mall. But I was in a very stressful situation and mangled the entire thing.
“I hid your fucking kids!” I screamed and they looked at me in a terrified expression that quickly morphed to rage. Luckily Dizzy Duck and the rest of the Funhouse Band really kicked off the song. Death metal blasted, Marabell Mozzarella was slamming her drumsticks on her set like she desired to obliterate them. Dizzy Duck’s beak opened and Japanese lyrics came spilling out.
“What?” I said, not that anyone could hear me over the guitar, drums, and bass. Oh and Frankie’s chainsaw. The belligerent dad stepped past the stage, coming at me like a silverback gorilla that intended to rip a threat in half. Frankie bent down while giving a squeaky, manic giggle that sounded wildly inappropriate as he dug the chainsaw into the throbbing eel neck of Belligerent Dad.
Frankie didn’t bother trying to work his way through the thick neck. He ripped the chainsaw back out with a wet slurp and blood rained down from the chainsaw as the neck geysered red in an impressive, high-powered fountain half fueled by cocaine.
The parents started screaming, Frankie giggled, and Gus turned towards me and ran. I tried to work off my skates as fast as possible, shooting up looks at Gus barreling towards me. Frankie leapt off the stage to butcher an arm off one of the moms. She stood there watching in shock, screaming as good as any scream queen as he sent the weapon through the limb and it fell to the ground.
Dizzy Duck was now singing Welcome to the Jungle in Japanese. I must have accidentally loaded the wrong languagefloppy disc during the brief training Gus gave me. Man, I was shit at this job.
I battled the long, pizza and frosting coated sleeves of my work uniform sweater. I grabbed at the fabric, pulling and rolling to simply get use of my fingers so I could untie the skate laces.
It was too late though. I only got one knot untied by the time Gus got to me. I prepared for a fight, rolling onto my back and getting my skates ready for pulverizing his balls until his kids felt it. But then he just ran past me through the exit to the arcade area. Well, that was disappointing. I was all hyped for another round of fighting. The screams and music were really getting me pumped for it.
Then I heard the rattle of the metal door at the front of Frankie’s and felt the floor drop out from underneath me. He was closing the place up with all of us inside.
“Fuuuuck,” I wailed, scrambling back up to my skates, with no hope left to get them off. My shorts were riding up my ass fiercely, and the untied skate’s lace kept getting dangerously close to the wheels. My arms windmilled with the extra fabric spinning around as I raced towards Gus at the entrance. He was most definitely pulling down the metal partition.
I slammed into it at the same time he pulled a deadbolt from his pocket and slid it into the lock.
“You fucker!” I snarled, slipping my fingers through the gaps and shaking the metal curtain hard enough to hopefully knock him in his preppy face. He stood up with a smile, pushing back his blonde hair and smiling at me.
“You’ll all be dead by morning,” he promised and I could see the complete surety on his face. I bared my teeth and thrashed the metal again.
“Why?” I hissed.
“Because I’m in a bad fucking mood,” he said, glaring at me as he gripped his neck where Frankie had previously slashed it open.
“Who are you?” Because something was going on. Normal people didn’t come back to life. Normal people didn’t have their fatal wounds disappear without a trace. He just smirked so I screamed at the top of my lungs. He reached up frantically to grab the second metal partition, this one wasn’t a meshwork but a solid steel wall. I watched the neon lights of mall signs blink out as he slid it all the way down with an ominous thud.
With the mall fully cut off, the screams and carnage behind me were louder. I felt cold as I realized there was a lot less screaming than before. A whole lot less. Then Ray rammed me and we went sprawling to the ground. My hip burned with pain from falling on it. Ray looked over his shoulder and two other people slammed into the metal partition that locked us in, hyperventilating and banging bloody hands against the metal while screaming for help.
Suddenly Ray had his hand wrapped around my arm so tight it hurt. I tried to jerk out of his grip, briefly wondering if it was the same hand just buried halfway in someone's ass.
“Get off me,” I hissed.
“Where’s a room we can go in? One we can lock,” he asked, his bright blue eyes darting around. I heard the chainsaw revving like a streetcar getting ready to race and nodded, scrambling up and skating towards the back rooms. Ray and the two others followed me as I went past the kitchen. I could smell burning. Fuck, I really did leave a pizza in there.
“I got to get a pizza,” I said.
“How are you this dumb?” Ray asked, not even angry, just shocked.
“It’s burning, it could set the whole place on fire with us in it,” I hissed, pushing past the swivel double doors. The othersfollowed as I raced towards the oven and pulled open the front. Black smoke came barrelling out making deep coughs rattle out of me. I noticed the others suddenly dart behind stainless steel counters and turned to look at the door.
The shadow of Frankie was there—two red glowing eyes and a purring chainsaw.
“I see you,” he sang out before giving his little high-powered chipmunk laugh.
“Fuck, I hate that laugh,” I said. He pushed the doors open as I flipped the oven off. The pizza wasn’t on fire, just a blackened husk so I left it in there and booked it.
“Gather close kids!” Frankie chipperly said, his sweet tone offset by the blood dripping from his dark suit and the deep growl of his weapon of mass murder.
“R-r-r Ramona,” the last part came out a garbled, deep mess. It sounded like he was malfunctioning. I stopped moving and looked at him standing in the middle of the kitchen. He was looking at me, his eyes flicking between his normal purple and glowing red. I felt for him all of a sudden. It suddenly hit me that he was trapped in his own body, a slave to whatever Gus programmed him to do. And he was fighting it hard, his eyes flicking while he called my name. Calledmefor help.
