Number One Crush
By M. Alford
Begun April 2008, finished August 2008
This is a fanfiction for entertainment purposes. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Eleven: Bankruptcy
Bloom hopped inside the dinghy, untying the boat from its mooring. He was encouraged to see the Calculator jump right in and sit right down as well, with no coaxing. It seemed the more the Calculator was talked to and interacted with, the more functional he became. Bloom thought the mute’s eyes even looked more alive, more “normal”, than they had at the camp. Perhaps it was simply being this close to the legendary Tower of Knowledge or whatever Cindel wanted to call it. Either way, Bloom was encouraged that he was taking the right steps. “Right, then,” he grinned, seating himself on the narrow prow bench and grabbing the oars.
He started off rowing hard in a straight beeline, making for the shore of the tiny island. The oars splashed as they cut the water smoothly. “We ought to--” Bloom began to say. But he never finished, because suddenly--
BUH-WHUMP!! Bloom went flying forth, losing his grip on the oars. He crashed against the floor of the dinghy face-first, kissing the slimy floorboards. The boat had made landfall already? He turned to look in the direction he had been rowing--
But they were still in the middle of the lake. They must have hit a shallow sandbar. “Crap,” muttered Bloom, climbing back up on the prow seat. “That’s no problem,” he reassured the Calculator, who was also steadying himself on his seat. “Just get around that, we’ll be all right--”
But when he tried to steer the boat around whatever it was they’d run aground, Bloom saw the prow of the little craft bump against an invisible barrier, just as if it was hitting a wall. When he tried to move past it, some feet down the water, there it was again. In fact, no matter where he tried to get across at the mid-point of the lake, the dinghy bumped its nose up against something immovable, impenetrable.
The invisible dome that the Mayor had mentioned. Bloom rowed a complete circuit around the perimeter of the island, stripping off his leather jacket and finally his tee shirt, rowing strenuously around, and around...
But there was no access.
“Crap,” Bloom grumbled again, sighing as he tried to discern what the hell it was they were up against. He put out a hand and could feel... something, solid and cool, almost like glass but not quite. It was perfectly smooth, as well as perfectly invisible. There was nothing making any division in the water that he could see. For a moment he considered diving into the lake and seeing if he could swim underneath whatever-it-was, but he didn’t know if the Calculator would be keen on following him. Besides, when Bloom pressed his fingers against the obstruction and slid them all the way down beneath the lapping surface of the water, he could feel the barrier continue underneath. There was no way to get through.
Bloom sat back on the bench, consternated. “Why, fox? Why all these barriers... why lock it up like this?” he muttered aloud. “Are you scared of learning something??” He sighed, grasping the oars, trying to decide what to try next. He’d already made three full circuits, searching for a break. There was nothing.
He looked at the Calculator, sitting there, hands idle. “What do you think, Calc?” he shot wearily. “Any suggestions? I’d love to hear them.”
The Calculator had been looking idly around himself, as if enjoying the day on the lake. He was gazing dreamily at the unobtainable island... and suddenly, his pale brow furrowed. For a moment, Bloom thought the Calculator looked like his attention was arrested by something. He almost looked as if he was... thinking.
Bloom sat up suddenly, having what they called an “a-ha” moment. He was going about this all wrong. He was just the oarboy. It was the Calculator who ought to be searching... calculating, trying to think of a way to get onto that island.
Bloom sat forward, sliding carefully to the floor of the small dinghy. “Switch spots with me,” he ordered the mute, pulling him over to sit in the prow seat. “Sit here, like this... all right, now turn... put your hands up, like this.” He pressed the Calculator’s skinny, pale hands against the invisible glass barrier.
The Calculator’s dull eyes looked briefly startled at his hands feeling a wall which was clearly not there. Then his waxy face broke in a smile--the first honest expression Bloom had ever witnessed on the mute's face. His mouth opened in a silent laugh, as he smeared his hands all over the magic barrier, amused by the curious oddity.
Bloom grinned too. “That’s right, you feel that? All right... now, I want you to feel along that wall for any breaks, any dents, anything. Concentrate on how we get in there.” Bloom sat back, watching the boy to make sure he followed directions.
Happily, the Calculator seemed to catch on right away. He sat there with arms outstretched, groping like a blind man as Bloom steered slowly around the perimeter of the glass wall, scraping the prow of the boat against the barrier. This took well over two hours, as they completed yet another circuit of the lake. The sun was setting. The sky was turning fiery red.
Suddenly the Calculator’s expression changed. He had been looking spaced-out; his fingers tracing the edges of the invisible wall blissfully, but all of a sudden something startled him enough to jerk his head toward the wall.
This did not go unnoticed by Bloom. “What is it? What’d you find?” Having the distinct impression that he was exhorting a collie dog to find Timmy in the well, Bloom carefully made his way to the prow of the boat, trying to feel along the wall where the Calculator’s fingers were.
There was a crack. A definite crack.
A leer lifted Bloom’s lips. “Sweet,” he cheered quietly. “That’s excellent! All right now, keep your fingers in there.” Sliding backward into his seat, Bloom gripped the oars once more. He tried to maneuver the dinghy so that the prow was poking directly into the crack in the wall. Feeling strangely perverse, Bloom began rowing, splashing the oars, trying hard to push the nose of the craft through the tight crevice.
He heard but didn’t see shards of crystalline material shatter off the wall and splash into the water, joining the cacophony of his oars. He heard jagged stone clawing at the sides of the craft, and he wondered if he and the Calculator were about to end up going swimming anyway. Bloom reached out, going on faith--and felt his hands grasp the rough edges of some rock-like surface. Doggedly he pulled, trying with all his strength to tug the little boat between the cracks--
Suddenly, with a jolt they were through, floating lazily on the lake surface, now on the interior of the shattered wall. “All right!!” Bloom cheered, slapping the Calculator on the back enthusiastically. “Way to go, Calculator! You crack that castle the way you burst her bubble, we’ll have this in the bag!” Cackling with satisfaction, Bloom began rowing toward the shore with vigor.
The prow of the boat cleaved into the dirt of the shore in no time. Bloom directed the Calculator to get out first, watching as the boy hopped out onto the peaty green shore. Bloom noticed right away that there was barely enough room to stand between the stone wall of the Tower and the water. There was in fact hardly more than the width of one person all the way around the island. Bloom steadied the Calculator, making sure both of them were standing solid upon the mushy ground, before he cast his gaze up at the forbidding stone Tower.
The wall was the typical stone-and-mortar kind of castle wall seen in a thousand MGM musicals and Looney Toons cartoons. Plus, it was old. The Tower had obviously weathered many, many years. In some spots the mortar had receded between the rocks so much that Bloom found he could slip his fingers in up to the first knuckle. “Look at this,” he spoke to the Calculator. “There might not be a door, but if we had something to jimmy these rocks loose...” Immediately he started trying to gouge the crumbly mortar away with his fingers.
His knuckles were scraped red and raw within minutes. Aggravated, Bloom looked around on the ground for something to use as a tool. He went back to the boat and grabbed one of the oars, hoping to wedge the tip of the board between the stones and get some leverage. Within a short time the end of the oar looked like a chewed-up popsicle stick.
Okay. Bloom stepped back (almost landing on his arse in the water) and took a deep breath. Last time, the Calculator had been the one to break through, so there was no reason to think he couldn’t do the same now. Bloom looked down at the scrawny mute’s narrow arms, skinny fingers... there was no way he could tear through solid stone with those. He’d be ripped to ribbons in a heartbeat. No, there had to be another route, one they were too busy being tough guys and doing it the hard way to consider.
Bloom tried to think this through metaphorically, since everything else in this realm worked that way. He was trying to get into a woman’s brain. Well, he’d never had any luck at that in the real world; why should he expect things to be any different here? His main interest was getting into their pants, not their minds. Wynnae’s constant admonition when she was trying to have a conversation with him about something or other sprang to mind: “I’m up here... hey, my eyes are up here, you sex-crazed jerk!--”
Bloom blinked. He raised his head from the bumpy rocks, raising his eyes to the top of the Tower. The black turret standing starkly against the sky.
“There you are, foxy,” he whispered appreciatively.
He knelt down by the Calculator, who had taken to imitating Bloom’s scratching at the tower wall. “Look,” he said, “I want you to sit tight, understand? Stay right here. And while you’re at it--” He pulled the Math problem out of the Calculator’s pocket and unfolded it. “Here’s something we haven’t tried. Instead of all this scraping and clawing, maybe you sit here and try to figure the problem out, all right? Now, I’m gonna clamber up this castle like a monkey man and see if I can get in from above. Either I’ll find a door out, or if I can’t, I’ll climb down and bring whatever’s in there out to you. No matter what happens, sit right here and think about that problem.” He patted the Calculator on the shoulder. “And wish me luck.”
Bloom made a search along the curve of the wall, trying to determine where the best footholds and handholds were. After two false starts, he finally found a series of recesses allowing him to trace a haphazard zig-zag path up the side of the Tower. His every muscle aching, sweat glistening on his tenuous arms, Bloom grappled one stone after another, making slow, tortuous progress up the side of the wall.
Below on the ground, the Calculator did as he had been told: he sat, cross-legged on the peat, staring at the computer printout of the runes that had appeared in the sky over the camp. His newly sharp eyes roamed the meaningless symbols directionlessly at first. Then... his blond brow crooked, as he seemed to light on something in the gibberish text.
He stood up, slowly. He seemed to be reading it. He looked up at the wall... and stretched out a hand to the cold stone. As if searching for a doorway, he smoothed his fingers up and down, eyes glancing back and forth from the wall to the paper, like he was reading instructions.
##
Meanwhile, back at the camp...
The Doc was in a quandary. He had a real problem with assisting the evil Judge from the late 1940’s era, in order to defeat the legendary King Arthur of British folklore. It was impossible, absolutely impossible for the two of them to meet in battle! And no matter who won, the effects on the space-time continuum would be disastrous! He had to find some way to sabotage the Judge, that was all there was to it. But how?
Up from behind his aborted attempt at a cloning machine popped a familiar, dark-haired head. “Doctor, what about this??” came the girl’s voice.
The Doc looked over at the young girl, startled only briefly. “What?... ah, what’s that, Mary?”
He recognized the girl. This was the Goddess--the original form she used to take when she visited him! This was incredibly encouraging--if the Goddess was playing a scene with him, then it meant she wasn’t thinking about killing him!
The teenaged girl dressed in 80’s stonewash jeans--his long-lost niece--brought over what she’d been indicating, a large wooden box full of... “Pinball machine parts!” she grinned. “Like you did before! If you load up the Judge’s plane full of these, there’s no way he can defeat King Arthur!”
The Doc nodded, the light dawning. Then he groaned in dismay-- “But the Judge has already left for the airfield! How do we get these in his plane??”
His young lab assistant looked briefly discouraged. “I sure wish we had some way to head him off at the pass,” she mused.
Suddenly the door to the lab popped open. There was Isaac. “Did I hear someone call for a horse?” he said, smiling at his girl.
She lit up at the sight of her cowboy boyfriend’s face.
##
Across the vale:
The King was standing at the head of an army of darklings; evil imps and sprites conjured up by the wicked Mayor of the realm. He did not relish going to battle the scurrilous Chrises with a legion of hellions, but he had no choice in the matter. This was the army he had. They were not his Knights of the Round Table, but they would have to suffice. At his right hand, his faithful pagegirl strummed a lyre, singing his praises:
“Oohhhhh, who lives in a kingdom that’s all made of spam?
--It’s King Arthur!
Who searches for grails in ol’ merry England?
--He’s King Arthur!
Who slays all the dragons and gets all the maids?
--That’s King Arthur!
Who’s represented in hearts, knaves, clubs and spades?
--He’s King Arthur!”
The King was enthused by this. He knew that as long as the minstrel girl was singing, she was not of a mind to strike him down. The Goddess was with him; his victory was all but ensured!
He turned to the legion of drooling scabrous helldemons, all champing at the bit to go into battle. “Hearken to my words!” the King shouted, raising his sword. “Today we fight for Goddess and country! Our kingdom is strong, and our power is great! Tonight we dine in heck!!” All the monsters roared with approval. “Not one of the Chrises can stand against us! Not even one!!”
Over the hill there came the distinct mechanical noise of a motor--a sound unfamiliar to the medieval King of the Brightens. He turned, looking at the hill--over which rose the formidable World-War-II-era dogfighter of the Judge. The aircraft was ironsided, armed with machine gun cannons... and roaring directly toward the earthbound (and severely under-armed) army.
The King stared at the bizarre machine from the future, openmouthed. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.
The guns started blazing. The evil Judge in the cockpit grinned as he fired away at the slobbering fiends. The King turned tail. “Run away!!” he howled at his army.
As he ran back toward the Harrys’ side of the camp, he was followed faithfully by his little lyre girl, eagerly detailing the action in a traditional Irish drinking song:
“Ohh, he came to the fight in his metal and lace
And his legend’s been heard almost everyplace
And he looks tough to death in his iron and steel
And he’s quick with the sword and the ironest will
The King marched his men over hill and the dale
But the Judge done outgunned him; against him he quailed!
And he ran for his life and he pissed in his pants
Now the Knights of the Table all do their Round Dance!
Swing and they curtsey and bow to their partner
They swing and they curtsey and do it some more, sir
They curtsey and swing and they go through the run
Take a bow to your partner and oops! now you’re done.”
The King and all his merry men looked quite the sight hightailing over the hills, running in terror from the superiorly-gunned Judge. But suddenly--there was a clattering noise of gears and steel splitting apart inside the warplane. The Judge scowled behind his tinted goggles at the panel of the cockpit. Every instrument was going berserk! An explosion blew out several of the glass gauges, and smoke began issuing from beneath the panel.
On the ground the Doc, Isaac, and the Goddess-in-the-form-of-Mary watched with bated breath as the flying machine soared out of the sky, plummeting downward straight into the ground. It did not explode--it merely squashed the cockpit and everything in it flat.
On the hill, the King saw that his attacker had been duly rousted by the Doctor and his young apprentices. He was understandably confused, seeing as the Doc was on the opposing side in this war. But at least the evil Judge had been disposed of!
But then they all witnessed a horrible sight: the wicked Judge had not been destroyed by the crash. They watched in amazement as the bizarrely disjointed form of the Judge got up out of the wreckage--as flat and paper-thin, for the moment, as his plane was. He shook himself out like a cat shaking water from its fur, and when he stood upright again, he was clearly mad. He ripped the goggles off his face, and his eyes glowed cartoonish red with fury. He shook his fist toward the Doc and the two lovers on the hill. "Curses!!" he howled at them, his voice a siren of doom.
The Harrys thought they had won. The Chrises were all but sent packing! Surely there were no more tricks the Judge had up his sleeve--
But then, over the hill came reinforcements. A pack of hundreds of goggle-eyed, giggling RATS, carrying crooked spears, swords and billy clubs, their long stringy tails lashing with rage. The Judge’s army. Almost as many as were of the King’s demonic troops.
The Judge set his red, evil eyes on the army, grinning hatefully. “Erase them all,” he commanded the rats icily.
The King raised his sword to his demons. “Legions! Attack!!”
In one foul swoop, the two bizarre armies crashed together like angry waves of blood red rage.
##
Across the waters, across the lake, in the tallest of the towering skyscrapers, the three females Siboney the Black, Zephyr the Red, and Cindel the Gold stood on varying levels of an ascending stairwell. From this vantage point they could look up at a huge, glowing sphere of crystal, hanging from the ceiling, directly in the center of the spiraling staircase. Through this scrying glass they watched the war as it raged on in the men’s camp across the lake. The Harrys and the Chrises thought they were very brave and noble. To the women they looked like a pack of second-graders playing army on the playground at recess.
Zephyr the Red tilted her fiery ponytail, smirking at the melee. “Boys wanna fight,” she observed.
Siboney the Black glittered in her sequined Angel of Death garb. “I wonder if any of them will die.” Her specialty was death, so she was keenly interested.
Cindel the Gold, the eldest of the female Muses, the star that the Goddess had first wanted to shine like, was the only one who seemed concerned. “What if they did? What if some of them killed the others?”
Zephyr sneered. “That’s not possible. They’re not strong enough.”
Siboney shook her head. “They are not.” She smiled coldly. “The Goddess is.”
There was thunder.
For the first time Zephyr seemed intrigued. “What would we do without boys? Who would we play with?”
Siboney’s ice-purpled lips lifted in a smirk. “I have dibs on Burt. And the Mayor.”
Zephyr wasn’t picky. “I’ll take any of them. Especially that new fellow, the Scot. I’ve been missing the taste of my homeland.” She chortled throatily.
“Which of us gets Isaac?”
Cindel raised her bangled arms. “Cool out, ladies! We need them all. We’ll save them all.”
“How will we do it?”
Cindel gazed on the glimmering crystal, regarding the war coolly. “Attack.”
##
The war between the Harrys and the Chrises raged on and on, for time immemorial. Or maybe just a few minutes. Isaac, who’d joined the Chrises, had got on his horse and was trying to make some headway against the King, but the giggling, chuckling rats were so thick underfoot that he was having the dadblamest time breaking though.
Suddenly the King looked up from the squabbling scores of rats clawing and gnashing at demons. He looked up in the sky, hearing a noise he had hoped never to hear again on this earth. The howling of banshees. A black phalanx of flying, fluttering forms were coursing over the hills, heading straight for the warring armies. They looked like locusts, but they were worse, much worse.
“Witches!!” the King howled.
They were thousands, and they were led by Zephyr the Red, in a fiery flying machine much deadlier than the outdated Sopwith Camel that the Judge had been piloting. She strafed the battlefield with billowing balls of fire, exploding hillsides and cliffs, sending rocks and rats flying. And Death came behind them; Siboney the Black, with her skeletal fingers grasping and outstretched, her eyes glittering out of the darkest shadows of Hell. Just the sight of her grinning death’s head was enough to strike fear into the hearts of both rodent and demon alike. Ebony-black curtains of terror and dread descended on the land like poisonous gas. Sparks of fevered paranoia and panic glittered in the dark like silver-steel stars.
Packs of heated, yowling catwomen from a hundred comic books and cartoon shows crawled along the ground, hissing and baring their claws. Covens of cackling, snaggle-toothed witches soared like blackbirds across the sky on their brooms. Zombie-faced wraiths of betrayed sweethearts and vengeful brides, murdered and cut to pieces and buried under floorboards and railroads, tore themselves free from their graves; dirt and bugs dripping from their rotting lace as they rose for revenge. Armies of scantily-clad Amazon women, bearing the feathers and beads and tattoos of their tribes, rose on all sides of the field like a wall. At their helm, a warrior princess lifted her sword and belted out a high-pitched battle cry. As one, the warrior women swooped in on the field like an avalanche.
Behind all this carnage, last but certainly not least, was Cindel the Gold, bringing up the rear. Her attack was not one of force however, but one of healing... one of love. Hers was the meat of the campaign, because her plan was to finally bring the women into the men’s camp, to bring the separate camps together. Coming together was the only way she could see to end this war. Love, not hate, was the order of the day.
But first, they had to get the men’s attention. If that meant attacking them... then that was how it had to be.
The women swarmed the battlefield with a vigor and a violence usually reserved for making love, or at least the premiere of a blockbuster movie. Siboney the Black flew over hill and dale, over the valley of grinning jack o’lanterns, racing toward Burt the Director, who was hiding in his coffin bed in the barracks. She fell upon him like pestilence on a crop, ravaging his bony limbs, devouring him blood and bone. And he loved every second of it.
Isaac the Cowboy seemed to realize this little powwow was a losing battle. He turned his trusty horse away from the slaughter, riding on back to the hill where his girl--the Goddess--still stood. He slid off his mount, mindful of the fact that he had to play this like he used to. “Is that really your ‘uncle’?” he asked her, nodding to the Doc. “Are you two really from the future??”
She nodded, her eyes full of love. “I love you Isaac,” she told him. “I’m just an ‘80s girl... but I’m your girl. No matter what year it is.”
Isaac removed his cowboy hat. He pulled her close and he kissed her, full on the lips. The Doc rolled his eyes, watching this display of typical teenage affection. But he was smiling.
Isaac smiled down at his wife, his Goddess. “Let’s get outta here,” he suggested to her. And she giggled, agreeing wholeheartedly. The two of them saddled up on Isaac’s trusty horse, and they rode off into the sunset, together.
From one end of the land to the other, the fight was taken out of every man. The female insurgents tackled every male warrior one by one, distracting their attentions from the fight. Weapons were dropped, armor was shed, battle plans were abandoned. Zombie flesh met bloodless skin; librarians ripped sweater vests off geeks; dogs and cats lay together; vampires were devoured by their brides. Pair by pair, every Muse male and female came together for the first time in one great, unadulterated communal orgy, every one of them together at last.
##
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond:
Bloom had finally, finally made it to the top of the dark tower. He pulled himself up into the space between two of the turrets, gasping with relief. Now he would see what the hell was in this vaunted Tower of Knowledge everyone was so obsessed with. Catching his breath, he rolled on his side, getting to his feet. Preparing himself, he looked over the edge of the turret, into the Tower.
There was nothing. Not a damn thing.
Bloom just stood there leaning against the stone for a moment, just breathing, trying to process this. A long long channel of stone, leading down into pure darkness. Maybe the oncoming twilight was making it harder to see anything on the floor of the Tower; Bloom sure couldn’t see anything. All the terrible secrets of a woman’s soul, all the intelligence of the so-called Goddess, all the fears and desires and knowledge that was supposedly locked up inside this ivory tower so far away from civilization, whatever was here that was supposed to augment the Calculator’s brainpower...
Nothing.
Bloom pounded the side of the stone with his fist, frustrated beyond any salvation. “This is garbage... this is garbage!!” he roared out his disgust with everything, with her. “Another mindgame! Another trick!” He glared up at the darkening sky. “You keep pushing me away! You keep jerking me along and messing with my mind, playing these games with me; you think it’s funny! I know there’s more than this in your empty head, fox! I KNOW it!!”
But he was spent. He honestly couldn’t go a step further. “You keep playing these games,” he muttered, leaning exhausted against the stone. “You keep playing, Goddess. Do whatever you please. I’ve had it! Do you hear? You’ve broken me! I’m done!!”
He felt two hard pistons shove into his back from behind.
Too weakened to stop himself, Bloom went flailing as he fell forward into the dark abyss.
##
He just barely saved himself. He grabbed onto the stone wall at the last minute, and he clung on by the sheerest stroke of luck. It reminded him of when he’d been hanging in the well in the City Hall basement, on the night of the sacrifice. Except this time he wasn’t strung up by the wrists, or half-naked. But Bloom wasn’t relieved. He grappled the slimy stone edge, his fingertips just barely hanging on. His arms still ached from the rowing and the climbing, and this new pressure on his ravaged muscles was sheer torture. He tried to get some leverage by getting a toehold on the stones of the wall--but this almost ended him right then: the rocks were icy and slick with slime on the inside of the Tower. His feet went skidding off instantly, causing him to hit the wall belly first and almost dislodging his fingers.
Bloom froze, regrouping. He clung to the wall, cheek against the slippery stone, trying to fashion some plan of escape. He peered carefully upward at the lip of the pit where his fingers were just barely grasping. If he didn’t figure out something in the next few minutes, he was going to fall. He couldn’t launch upward with his feet, and he couldn’t see any protrusions or things he could grab--
The Mayor’s face loomed over the edge. Bloom damn near lost his grip then, he was so startled. “You!--”
##
Meanwhile, below on the ground, the Calculator was tracing the exterior of the tower wall with one hand, clutching the parchment in the other. His eyes were wide, glimmering with curiosity. He looked up from the paper, to the wall, to the paper again, comprehension in his eyes.
##
Bloom took a deep breath, careful not to let his own efforts at speech jar him loose. “Help me,” he hissed at the Mayor, hoping against hope.
The Mayor, predictably, smiled at the flailing man. “Hey-hey there, neighbor,” he greeted cheerfully. “Thought you’d take a detour over to see the girls, eh? Well, can’t say I blame you. Gets lonely over in the camp, doesn’t it?” He stepped sideways, his feet dangerously close to Bloom’s clawing fingers.
Bloom grunted. “Haul me up, you bastard!!” What did the Mayor hope to accomplish, killing him this time?
The Mayor affected an expression of surprise. “I thought this was what you wanted! You asked me to zap you out of here! Well, friend... you’ve got it. Wish granted. Oh, I know it’s probably a waste of time to kill you. She’ll probably just bring you back again.” He met Bloom’s eyes, his evil smile growing sharper. “Then again... maybe she won’t. I guess we’ll just have to keep trying until we find out, won’t we?”
##
“Cir-cum-ference,” the Calculator spoke aloud. His voice was a rusty rasp from years of not being used, but his pronunciation was not affected. “Circumference...” He traced the shapes of the stones in the wall, fingers fluting along the edges of the eroded mortar. “Pressure... per square inch.” He tapped the rocks. “Three-hundred... thirty-seven... by seven-hundred...”
##
“You stupid--” Bloom was dangerously close to slipping loose. “I’m trying to help her! If you kill me--the Calculator...”
The Mayor sneered at the revolting development Bloom found himself in. “Y’know, I really thought she’d go through with killing you the other night. I really thought if I made her think of you as a sacrifice, to me...” He sighed, wagging his hand away at spilt milk. “Oh, well. It was worth a shot, right? Turns out I overstepped my boundaries that time. But she’ll forgive me. She’s generous like that.” He glared down at Bloom. “I still can’t imagine what she sees in you, though. You are NOT worthy of her, my friend. She’s just another cheap whore in your eyes. Isn’t she? Just more free milk. And I’ll tell you something else--she knows that! She’s not stupid! She knows where she stands with you.” He snorted derisively. “You think you can trick her into trusting you--into going to you with her sorrows--then you’re the one living in a dream world! I don’t know why she didn’t kill you when I asked her to.” The Mayor sounded genuinely stumped. Genuinely stung. “She used to do everything I asked her to.”
He sighed, regrouping. “But... I guess that’s just a testament to her grace... her mercy.” He almost sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “I can certainly respect that. Even if she’s wasting it on a punk like you.”
##
His hand landed finally on a rock. Not just any rock. By his calculations, allowing for the weight of the Tower, the angle of the land it sat upon, the age of the rock, surrounding weather conditions over the past ten years... if his calculations were correct...
The Calculator dropped down on his knees, grappling his spindly fingers around the edges of the rock which, by his reckonings, ought to be completely loose and easy to pry away. If this was true, then this was the only entrance into the Tower. By that logic, if this was the only entrance... then what he was looking for must be directly behind...
##
Bloom was almost beginning to wonder which would be more painful--letting go and being dashed to bits on the tower floor, or listening to the Mayor pontificate for another hour. “You know, you and I are a lot alike,” the Mayor rambled on, using one of the moldiest old villain speeches in the books. “Every time I fall for a beautiful girl, I end up dead too!” He chuckled. “I died for my wife; I died for my Faith... I’d die for my Goddess in a heartbeat.” He switched gears in a flash, voice going from jolly brevity to icy hissing cold in an instant. “But let me tell YOU a thing or two, you arrogant little knave--this is still MY town. And I will be damned to Hell--again--before I let some upstart Englishman like you take her away from me.”
“I’m not fucking English!!” Bloom couldn’t help exploding. It nearly cost him his grasp on the wall, but it was worth it.
##
The large grey rock came loose with a grating scrape, spilling plaster and dust. The Calculator dropped it with a thunk in the tender peat, and his wide eyes glowed in the silver-blue light of discovery emanating from the hole in the tower wall.
##
The Mayor didn’t hear Bloom’s last expletive, or didn’t care if he did. “I promised myself the last time I died was indeed gonna be the last time. No one’s going to take her. Not the Chrises, not you--no one.” His last words were spoken through clenched teeth as a hiss. “That’s MY girl.”
And then he stepped on Bloom’s fingers. Slowly.
Bloom groaned as the Mayor ground the toe of his well-shined loafers down on Bloom’s fingertips. The Mayor leered as Bloom’s weakening grip finally slipped loose.
He almost fell then. The Mayor deftly switched feet and at first looked as though he was going to do Bloom’s remaining hand the same way--slowly, torturously. He raised his foot--and then he smashed his heel down hard on the flat, red tips gripping the stone.
Bloom let out a roar as pain arced down his arm--and he let go. He heard the Mayor’s bloodchilling jackal giggle echoing madly in the stone well as he bounced off the sides, tumbling down and down into the dark.
##
The Calculator brought out the winking, shimmering kernel from its hiding place, and in that instant he had total, pure enlightenment.
In that instant, he knew the answer.
##
Bloom jerked awake in his bed.
For a horrible, horrifying moment, he knew he was right back where he’d started. In his cot. In the camp. Enslaved. No fucking closer to getting out of here than he’d ever been, and he knew if he dared open his eyes he was going to see Elijah goddamn Harrison standing over his bed just like always--
“Geoffie!!”
Bloom’s eyes popped open. He knew that shrill, yet breathy voice. “Wynnae??”
The next thing he registered was intense, pounding pain-- localized mostly to his left leg. He also acknowledged the headache-inducing effects of some kind of sedative, pulling through his veins in an attempt to ease the pain. He looked around at the completely unfamiliar hospital room he found himself in. One eye wouldn’t open. He realized the pain in his head wasn’t due so much to a headache as it was to something wrapped around his head like a vise. Something was inflicting undue pain on him.
He jerked, and knew more pain. “--Goddess!” he spoke aloud, since she was usually the culprit behind most of the pain he went through.
There was laughter all around him. “Uh-oh, sounds like Geoffie went and got religion while he was under. What’dya, see the bright light, Geoff? You see legions of angels coming to greet you?”
“I don’t think angels generally roam the place he would have ended up going to.” A snicker.
Bloom wondered if the disjointedness of the conversation could be totally attributed to the pain in his head. “What happened?... where’s the Calculator?” he muttered, pleading anyone to enlighten him.
“Now he wants a calculator. Man, you really did get blotto!”
Wynnae’s face--damn, she’d gone ahead and bleached her hair, as she’d been threatening to--hovered in his field of sight. “Baby, what did I tell you? If you’re too drunk to drive, call me! Don’t try being a big man and drive the PCH by yourself! But no, you just have to be the bad-ass, don’t you?...”
Bloom’s hand rose to brush away whatever it was covering his eye. “Just don’t touch that,” Wynnae insisted, grabbing his hand away. “You cracked the hell out of your head when you hit that wall. You’ve been in a coma for the past two weeks. You didn’t even act like you wanted to wake up!”
As if he could act like anything, in a coma. Bloom blinked his one good eye, and he imagined his one eye plastered inside a cocoon of demonic gastrointestinal acid blinked as well. “I’ve been out how long?...”
“Two weeks. Two whole weeks!”
“Felt like longer.” Bloom, or Geoff, which he knew now, remembered--that was his name, Geoffrey Bankblum--there, he remembered his last name! And he realized, then, why he’d mistakenly answered “Bloom” to Harrison’s query--“blum” was, indeed, at least half of his name.
He looked around at the room, at the people towering over his bed--his girlfriend Wynnae; his agent, Russ Melvoin; a couple of other fellows he imagined were doctors. He cast his single eye down at his body--his left leg was encased in a cast which somehow looked too miniscule, not adequate to contain all the crushing pain he was feeling inside it. And he felt something else was missing...
“The Math problem,” he spoke suddenly. “I wonder if the Calculator...” Then he imagined he already had his answer. He was back, where he belonged, because the Calculator had indeed solved the problem.
“Jeezus, you’re fixated on this calculator thing, aren’t you?” Russ tossed a handheld Textrument into Bloom/Geoff’s lap. “Here, you want it that bad. You gonna start doing trig now? That conk on the head give you some kind of super math ability?”
Bloom picked up the machine. He felt oddly let down. It had happened just as Cindel said it would. Once he gave the Goddess what she wanted, she had no need of him anymore. Of course, he had come out of it pretty good, all things considered--a broken leg, a broken head were miles better than oblivion. Well, theoretically speaking.
But what about the Calculator? What about Cindel--what about Harrison? What about the Goddess? Had Bloom fulfilled his purpose for her? Had solving the problem made her any happier? How the hell had she been able to suck him into her deranged world in the first place?? Had it just been a luck of the draw, just wild chance that he would crack his head open and put himself in a coma, just in time for her to spirit him away? Or... had SHE even ever been a real person at all... or just a fever dream, brought on by medication after a conk on the head?
It made Bloom kind of sad to realize that he would never find out. After all that he’d gone through... he felt cheated.
But... he guessed there was not a damn thing he could do to change it.
##
He recuperated, of course. His leg healed up, his head did too. He endured the usual phalanx of cheap tabloid news flashes; the unsolicited commentaries from so-called experts, about how disgusting and self-destructive celebrities were.
He was recounting for the zillionth time about his accident one day, at a meet-and-greet for a new, cheezy sci-fi series he’d clawed and scraped to get on. Most of the goth/punk kids were all there to see the two hot young babelicious stars of the show. Barely any of them were interested in getting anything signed or photographed with him.
Finally, toward the end of the day after he’d signed a shitload of things for a particularly tubby, zit-faced virgin who didn’t even bother to get his name right when he asked for autographs on all his soon-to-be-Ebayed materials, he was flexing his cramped hand and looked up wearily at the next in line. He stared. “Goddess!...”
The chunky female who’d been waiting behind El Ebay-o looked up, startled. Her big pale eyes were the same as the eyes of the deranged, bloodthirsty foxes he’d encountered in that far-off realm--although her body was quite a bit less shapely and attractive than any of the fantasy forms she’d assumed. The girl from the railway overpass. He would have known her anywhere.
“Uh... hi,” she finally got out, self-consciously. “Um... Geoff Bankblum??” She took a deep breath, as if nervously trying to calm herself. “Mr. Bankblum... I’m a huge fan.” Her voice was low, rushed, and she barely seemed able to look him in the face. “I really, I really enjoyed that show you played the doctor on, a couple years back. I was goin’ through a really bad time then... you helped me. Well, watching you helped me.” She chuckled, as if aware of how lame she sounded. “You... as your character...” She took a deep, exhausted sigh. “Oh, boy... Remember the episode where you, the doctor I mean, you were gonna lose your license, and you were having trouble with your drinking, and then your dad died, on top of everything else--but you came through it. I mean, he did. You just seemed so helpless, and lost, and then--you took charge. You got mad--took control. That really... I felt like, if you could do that, surely there was some hope for me... y’know?” She swallowed hard, daring to lock her eyes on his. “I was drinking too... kind of, after my boyfriend dumped me,” she mumbled confidentially. “I stopped, though. I even went back to school. I, uh, was kind of inspired by you.”
She drew in another sigh. “Oh God, I’m rambling. You must hear stuff like this from fans every single day; it probably doesn’t mean anything to you anymore. Anyway. I just wanted to let you know, I love your work. And I love your new show, and I just hope things keep going good for you. And... I think you’re really sexy.” She couldn’t look him in the face then, but she giggled. Remembering all the things her fantasy selves had done to him.
He had stood up from behind the table where he’d been signing crap for over five hours. He had walked around the side the entire time she had been talking, professing her adulation. He stood before her, this self-proclaimed “Goddess”, who had bled him and gutted him and made his life a veritable hell for months on end.
He grabbed her in his arms and he hugged her close, squeezing her tight.
The girl froze in his arms, startled by this display of unabashed affection. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said against her dandruffy hair. He meant it, too.
A smile was beginning to break out on her face. A purely happy, goofy, fangirl smile. “I’m... glad you’re okay... too,” she whispered back, only now thinking quickly enough to hug him back, to enjoy this delicious moment in her number one crush’s arms.
