The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion Page 9

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “Skark claims to see him all the time, but I never have. He thinks Ferguson has been trying to kidnap him and get some sort of revenge. He’s written us mail for years—in one sentence he talks about how much he hates us, and then he begs to get back in the band in the next.”

  “Is he actually a threat?”

  “He hasn’t been yet, as far as I can tell.”

  A burst of air nearly knocked Cad and me off the bench. We looked up and saw the Interstellar Libertine hovering over our heads, Driver hanging out the window and looking down.

  “If you’re not on this bus in the next eight seconds, we’re leaving you behind,” said Driver. “We’re already late to our next gig because of you malcontents.”

  “Does this mean Skark still needs a bassist?” said Cad.

  Skark lowered a window and looked outside.

  “All it means is that I’ve decided to temporarily forgive you for your insubordination,” he said.

  “I never said I was sorry,” said Cad, looking at Skark. He turned back to Driver. “Did we get the Chinese food order?”

  “I’m holding your pork fried rice as we speak,” said Driver.

  Cad turned to me. “One of the advantages of playing out here is that Berdan Major has terrific Chinese.”

  “How is it possible there is Chinese food in space?”

  “Everybody loves Chinese food,” said Cad. “Why wouldn’t there be Chinese food out here?”

  Driver opened the door, and metal steps lowered from the bus, accompanied by an ear-rupturing creeeeaaak. The smell of lo mein was overpowering.

  “Does this mean you and Skark are cool?” I asked.

  “Only until the next gig,” said Cad. “Which—I forgot to mention—is inside the belly of a Dark Matter Foloptopus, one of the largest and most unpredictable animals in the universe. Not to freak you out.”

  “That absolutely freaks me out,” I said. “Why would you play a gig in a place like that?”

  “Skark is trying to toughen up our image,” said Cad, stepping up the stairs. “This is what we have to do now to get attention, because he’s forgotten how to write new material.”

  “Because your negative attitude sucks me dry,” said Skark, shouting from inside the bus.

  “You can’t be sucked dry if you have nothing left creatively.”

  “You’re a parasite.”

  “You’re a wax figure of your former self.”

  “Churl.”

  “Reptile.”

  “The wontons are getting cold,” said Driver.

  Cad had been right about the Chinese food being good—a little salty, but considering we were hundreds of light-years from Earth, it was nice to have a taste of home. I gobbled it down and looked around to see if anyone in the band had leftovers, but they didn’t. Our stomachs full, everyone headed off in different directions to go to sleep.

  Though I’d been up close to fifty straight hours, I couldn’t inch my way over the threshold of exhaustion into unconsciousness. The band had climbed into their beds and passed out instantly—Cad in a hammock hanging from the ceiling, Skark in a cryogenic pod at the back of the bus designed to keep him young, Driver in an oversized bassinet, where he was snoring like a terrarium toad—but I was on the couch, which was covered in crusty stains and pungent smells that lingered no matter how many times I scraped at a crumbly spot or flipped a cushion. It was a couch that had clearly been sat on and spilled on and God knows what else, and now I was paying the price for all the idling and snacking and gas passing that it had experienced.

  Skark had conveniently left a bottle of Spine Wine at the base of the couch, so I swigged a mouthful in the hope that it would help me sleep. The liquid burned my throat, but I gagged it down before my body forced me to spit it out. My sleepiness turned to queasiness. Instead of thinking about how I couldn’t pass out, now I was focused on the astringent aftertaste and my bubbling stomach.

  That’s when the closet spoke to me: “I really don’t blame you for drinking alone.”

  “Hello?” I said.

  “In the closet,” said the voice. “I can see you through the crack at the bottom of the door. Do me a favor and open it. I need some air. Everybody is asleep.”

  I double-checked the bus to make sure everybody was indeed unconscious, and then turned the handle to open the door.

  The ram was staring at me. The sides of his face were brown, and a thick white stripe ran down the middle of his nose. He had two spiraling gray horns, and an uncombed white beard hung from his bottom lip.

  I hadn’t been face to face with an animal other than a dog or a cat since I had reached up to touch a petting zoo pony when I was five years old. I found the ram’s stare unsettling—he seemed to be pleading to me with his eyes, but I didn’t know what he wanted.

  Then he spoke and told me exactly what he wanted.

  “My name is Walter. You’re from Earth, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You need to take me back there. I have a job. I have friends. I have responsibilities. Skark has destroyed my life by keeping me on this bus.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t help get me out of here. This band is about to break up, and when the last gig happens, I don’t want to be stuck in some wasteland millions of miles from home. I’ve been on this bus for four years, and I already had a touch of claustrophobia before I even got here. I’m going to need twenty years of psychiatric analysis to unwind all the issues I’ve developed because of this.”

  “Four years?”

  “Skark picked me up in northern Nevada and said I was his spirit guide, which I am not. I’m not even religious. I thought he might let me go, or at least let me see my wife, when the band made that pit stop at the In-N-Out where we got you, but nope—he didn’t even think about me. Which is typical. That guy only acts in his self-interest.”

  “As I’m learning.”

  “Right right right, how could I be so insensitive?” said Walter. “I’m sorry about your prom date. I have fond memories from my own prom. I went with this plump little golden-furred girl. You should have seen the thigh hair on her.”

  At the back of the bus, Skark’s sleeping pod popped open.

  “Quick, close my door,” said Walter. “We’ll talk more later. Pretend like you’re asleep. If you think he’s moody before a show, you have no idea what he’s like when he can’t sleep.”

  I shut Walter’s closet, flopped back down on the couch, and kept my eyes shut. I heard Skark stumble down the center of the bus and grab the bottle from my side.

  “Freeloading human,” I heard him mutter. “Find your own wine and leave mine alone.”

  Once he had the bottle, Skark shuffled his way to the kitchen. I heard a chair scrape the ground and the refrigerator open and shut. I heard the wine hit the bottom of a glass and Skark take a long gulp. Then I heard nothing at all, so I peeked.

  Skark was sitting at the small, round kitchen table, without any makeup on, donning none of his typical tight, fancy clothing. He was shirtless, revealing his bony frame, and he was wearing a pair of beaten yellow track shorts. His hair was uncombed and hanging loosely down his back, and his limbs were cadaverous.

  He pulled a pad of paper out of a stack of fashion magazines and picked up a pen. He licked the tip of the pen, took another gulp of wine, and then…nothing.

  “Come on,” I heard him mutter. “Dondoozle is Friday.”

  He was trying to write a song.

  “Useless petrified lump of a brain,” he said.

  It was an odd feeling, but in that moment I felt myself identifying with Skark for the first time. He had a few more vertebrae and ribs than I did, but underneath his makeup and flashy reversible gemstone jackets, he was simply an awkward guy, same as any other musician who started out playing songs by himself in a bedroom. Even the way he was sitting seemed familiar—slumped over a table, holding a pen, staring helplessly at a pad
of paper, disbelieving that anything was achievable. I heard him hum a few notes, scribble a few lines, stare at what he had written, and then cross it out, frustrated.

  “Dammit,” he said. “Come on, come on…”

  I watched him repeat the pattern for as long as I could stay awake—scribble, cross out, scribble, cross out—but soon a combination of exhaustion and momentary distraction from my nausea overtook me, and I closed my eyes.

  Walter the ram whispered to me before I passed out.

  “If I were you, I’d get myself home as soon as possible too,” he said. “And if you could find me some fresh grass, that would be great. I’m so tired of Chinese. I used to be gluten-free.”

  —

  I awoke to find Driver yanking a skintight yellow latex jumpsuit over my half-naked body, putting his scabrous foot on my chest to give himself extra leverage for the pulling.

  “I’ve never seen anybody with a body as weird as this kid’s,” said Driver. “He’s tall, and he’s thin, so you’d think that a jumpsuit would be fine, but his calves are disproportional to the rest of him, so the pants are too tight.”

  “The pants are supposed to be tight,” said Skark, himself wearing bright orange lipstick and a mirrored unitard. “Remember—it’s a jumpsuit. It’s supposed to highlight one’s figure, and the best way to do that is by making it as formfitting as possible.”

  “Get your foot off of me,” I said. “I was sleeping.”

  “Ah, now you’ve woken him up and he’s cranky,” said Skark. “At least we got it on him before the theatrics began.”

  “Now. Foot. Off.”

  “Let him go, let him go,” said Skark. “I can’t handle hearing humans complain. They always skip reasonable discussion and go straight to melodrama.”

  Driver took his heavy foot off my body, lifted me up, and sat me down on the couch.

  “Don’t act like it was an assault on your modesty or some such stupid thing,” said Skark. “I couldn’t bear looking at your awful clothing anymore, so—though you have been a profound nuisance during your time on this bus—I magnanimously decided to give you a jumpsuit from my personal collection. An archival-quality item, I’ve been told by the curators of various museums’ fashion collections. Driver did the alterations to make sure it would fit. He’s a wizard with a needle and thread.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’ve always wanted to start a menswear line,” said Driver. “Suits, ties, but my own haute couture version of—”

  “Enough, Driver. On this bus, only my dreams are worth discussing,” said Skark.

  “You could have waited until I woke up instead of manhandling me,” I said. “Or even better—you could have asked me if I wanted to wear something new and given me the chance to say no.”

  “Why waste the time trying to convince you to put it on if I was going to make you wear it anyway? My bus, my rules. Now stop complaining and look at yourself. You’re marvelous.”

  I looked in the mirror. Banana-yellow latex hugged every bump and ridge of my skinny body. The jumpsuit had sequined cuffs, and its neckline was cut into a sweeping V that extended to its lightning-bolt-embroidered belt, placing maximum attention on my understuffed groinal region.

  “That jumpsuit is a collector’s item from our 2005 tour of the Pindino Nebula,” said Skark fondly. “You wouldn’t believe how much sweat I shed in that outfit. It was murder to find a dry cleaner who could get out the stains, but it was worth it to restore it to its former majesty. Though the ensemble does seem to be missing something. Driver, are you sure there isn’t an accessory you forgot to put on him? Some sort of bauble? I seem to remember there was more to it than just the belt with the lightning bolts.”

  Driver searched his pockets and pulled out a yellow headband.

  “You’re right, I forgot to give him this,” he said.

  “I knew there was something else,” said Skark. “Wonderful.”

  Driver grabbed the top of my head to keep me still and pulled the headband over my ears.

  “Oh God yes, now it’s perfect,” said Skark. “Details are so important to an outfit, don’t you think? Now don’t let me catch you trying to take that jumpsuit off, Bennett. That’s a personal gift and I would be insulted. This is my peace offering for our arguments, by the way. Outsiders should never be exposed to a band’s internal drama.”

  Skark marched to the back of the bus. Driver returned to the wheel.

  I stared at myself. The jumpsuit’s V-neck exposed my hairless, nonmuscular chest, while the latex made my elbows seem bonier and my legs look positively giraffelike. Hideous.

  Then: BOOM!

  The bus was walloped by a blow that flipped it on its side, followed by a second impact on the ceiling. I was hurled end over end toward Cad’s pull-up bar, which I grabbed the moment before it beheaded me. One of Skark’s decorative canes whizzed past me and burst open the True-Atmosphere Atmosphering Apparatus like a piñata, scattering purple powder through the room. Skark apparently had a taste for harder intoxicants than mere Spine Wine.

  “Looks like we found the Dark Matter Foloptopus,” said Driver. “Hold on, I’m going to try and take us in without making it mad….”

  “You could have warned us you’d come upon the Foloptopus before it started trying to kill us,” said Skark.

  “You asked me to help you with Bennett’s jumpsuit….”

  “I would have waited had I known we were in a dangerous area….”

  BOOM BOOM BOOM

  A mass blotted out the windows on the left side of the bus, and I realized it was just the pupil of the Foloptopus’s eye. I felt like a goldfish in a pet store aquarium being scrutinized by a customer who was really eager to tap on the glass.

  BOOM BOOM BOOM

  “Driver, while this dance with death is lovely,” said Skark, bracing himself against his sleeping pod, “do you think you could possibly get us into the stomach of this Foloptopus without letting it crack the bus open?”

  I saw three sucker-covered tentacles shoot toward the windshield, and Driver jerked the wheel to avoid them. In front of us, I could see the Foloptopus’s beak, and the metal slivers of other ill-fated spaceships caught in the corners of its mouth.

  “Here goes, hold on,” said Driver, slapping a square button at the base of the dashboard.

  Cad threw open the bathroom door, holding an electric razor.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” he said.

  “I’d get out of the restroom if I were you,” said Driver. “You don’t want any splash back.”

  The bus surged forward and I lost my grip on the pull-up bar. I tumbled through the air and smacked the wall. I heard Walter baaaaaing as his body thudded against the walls of the closet, and I saw Skark soar across the room and whack into Driver’s bassinet, snapping it with his body, spraying splinters into my face.

  Outside, there was a tremendous squish sound, and the bus came to an abrupt, merciful stop. Everybody was alive, barely.

  Somehow, Driver, Cad, and I were piled on top of each other in the back corner of the bus, with Cad at the bottom of the tangle of bodies, his face wedged in Driver’s buttocks.

  “This…is…horrible…,” said Cad, muffled.

  Skark came to the rescue, grabbing Driver and Cad and pulling them to their feet, allowing me to roll to freedom.

  The bus started rocking, and from outside came a chorus of voices and whoooooos:

  “Skaaaaaaarrrrrk.”

  “You’ve been my hero since I was two hundred years old, man.”

  “I’ve loved your music since I was a toddler in the pouch.”

  “Skark. I think you’re my dad. I’m not even kidding. My mom has pictures of the two of you at a motel….”

  I peeked out the window and saw that fans wearing Perfectly Reasonable T-shirts were surrounding the bus.

  A chest-high android pushed its way through the fans. It looked like it had been constructed from hardened gelatin, its partially translucent skin revealing an
inner metallic structure, while its head contained two asymmetrical eyes stacked on top of each other, giving it the appearance of an old stereo speaker. It started slapping the side of the bus with its semitransparent palm.

  “You’re late,” said the android. “You’re supposed to be onstage now. Your crew set up hours ago, where were you? Get ready and get out there.”

  “You were supposed to sedate the Foloptopus before we arrived,” said Driver. “It’s in our contract. Do you know the damage you’ve caused to this bus?”

  “Not as much damage as I’m going to do to you unless you start playing now. You think it’s cheap to lease space inside a Dark Matter Foloptopus? No wonder your band has a reputation for being unreliable.”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” said Driver.

  “Maybe, but if you’re not out there in ten minutes, you’re not getting paid. I already contacted your lawyer, so you better hustle.”

  That struck me as interesting—the android had contacted the band’s lawyer. Assuming the lawyer didn’t have his office inside the Dark Matter Foloptopus, which seemed like an unlikely place for a firm, it meant that the robot had somehow reached out to another planet.

  I whispered to Cad under my breath: “How, exactly, did he contact your lawyer?”

  Cad looked at me like I’d suffered a head injury. “Do I have to explain the concept of a phone to you? I know you’re from a hick part of New Mexico, but come on.”

  “There are phones that can make calls between planets?”

  “You’re on a bus with the technology to bounce between solar systems in a few hours,” said Cad. “You don’t think these aliens have figured out a way to make long-distance calls?”

  At the front of the bus, Driver was reading a voluminous contract while the android stood next to him, pointing at provisions buried deep in the back.

  Driver frowned. He checked his watch and turned to the rest of the band.

  “The promoter is right. If we’re not onstage in ten minutes, we default on our fee, which means we won’t have enough money to get to the next gig.”