“The chewing is important,” she hissed. “If he chomped fast. If he chomped slow. If he fuckin’ chomped at all.”
“Oh my God,” I said, bewildered. “Are you freaking serious?”
Candy Vargo had opened a fresh box of toothpicks. She spit out the wad in her mouth and replaced them. With each word she spoke a pick came flying out. “If he chewed Tom Hanks up completely, then Tom Hanks is a goner. On the other hand, if he munched without shredding him, it’s up in the air. If the shit stain just swallowed him whole, then, yes, he could potentially pass the Higher Power through his butthole.”
My mouth moved without my brain’s permission. “I don’t think Shitty Ritchie’s butthole could poop out an entire person.”
“I’d have to agree with that assessment,” Tim chimed in.
“And I didn’t think the tiny turd could eat a person in one bite—chewing or no chewing,” Candy shot back. “Plus, when I expelled the Angels out of my poop chute, it wasn’t like they came out in one fuckin’ piece. It was more like a random appendage here, a brain there, a kneecap, an elbow, a spinalcord. BUT, because I didn’t actually chew the jackasses into a gelatinous pulp, they were able to reform with magic. Get it? The chewing is the key to life or permanent death.”
“Excuse me,” Heather choked out as she sprinted to a cluster of bushes that hadn’t been destroyed and emptied the contents of her stomach.
How in the hell was this conversation even happening?
“Okay. Okay, moving on,” Charlie said, trying to reel the conversation back in to something productive. The fact that he gagged a few times as he spoke made Heather throw up again. I was half ready to join her. “I think we’ve heard enough of the graphic details.”
“Daisy asked,” Candy Vargo pointed out.
“I regret that,” I muttered.
Charlie continued after clearing his throat six times. “Here’s what we know, Shitty Ritchie ate the Higher Power. Then a freakish being appeared claiming to be the Higher Power showed up, got pissed when it heard about the true Higher Power, and then kidnapped them. Right?”
“Yes,” Gideon confirmed.
“Here’s what we don’t know,” Charlie said.
“Welp, that list is gonna be fuckin’ long,” Candy muttered.
Heather rejoined the group. She didn’t look good. Hell, none of us looked real good right now. The chance of someone else losing their cookies was high. The Demon guards had quietly put a healthy distance between themselves and Candy Vargo.
Charlie ignored Candy’s comment as did the rest of us. “We don’t know if the being is lying. We don’t know where the thing took Alana Catherine, Jennifer and Shitty Ritchie. And… we don’t know if Shitty Ritchie chewed when he ate the Higher Power. Therefore, we’re unsure if the Tom Hanks version could be expelled from Shitty Ritchie’s rear end.”
The conversation was absurd. Unfortunately, it was real.
Running my hands through my hair, I addressed the group. “We need to leave.”
“And go where?” Charlie demanded.
“The Higher Power’s plane,” Gideon ground out. He was wound tight and about to go off.
“That could potentially be a waste of time,” Heather pointed out, with her hand over her mouth. I wasn’t sure if she was sparing us from her breath or if she was going to throw up again.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out a piece of gum and handed it to her. She took it gratefully.
“Or, maybe it’s not a waste of time,” Tim added. “If this being was trapped by Tom Hanks for billions of years, it might go back to what it’s familiar with.”
“Why in the hell would the creepy fuck be familiar with that plane if it was locked in a box for gadzillions of years?” Candy Vargo grunted.
We were getting nowhere fast. However, we kept going. There was no other choice.
None of us were sure if the unfamiliar being would have gone to the Higher Power’s plane. Charlie insisted that the thing would go into hiding somewhere else, knowing that the plane was the first place we would search. Heather ended up siding with Charlie. Tim was convinced that we should go to the Higher Power’s plane first. If we came up empty, we’d regroup and widen the net. Gideon listened to all the theories as he paced back and forth. Candy Vargo didn’t have an opinion. That wasn’t good considering she was the Keeper of Fate.
“I don’t know who’s right,” I admitted. “What I do know is that Jennifer saw this coming.”
Again, all eyes shot to me. It wasn’t a great feeling.
“Why were we not informed?” Charlie asked in a tight and unhappy tone.
