Nerdly and Bruno
Part One – Sleep, Precious Sleep
Nerdly wrapped his skinny
pale arms around his pillow and clamped it to his ears. The drunken
revelry from downstairs drifted through the pillow and the thin young
man tossed and turned angrily.
“Damn those fools!” he grumbled.
Uncle Joe’s shrill laughter
pierced the loud din that was disrupting Nerdly’s precious sleep. His
own brother could be heard muttering drunkenly about “Nerdly’s precious
sleep.”
Oh how he hated those cretins!
Nerdly lived in a pleasant
but aging two-story house in the suburbs with his older brother Bruno,
their late parents having left their two boys the house several years
ago. Nerdly’s high IQ had steered him toward a career in science, but
his antisocial personality made it difficult for him to succeed in his
chosen profession. As a result, he had constructed a state of the art
laboratory in the basement of the house, preferring to conduct his highly-specialized
DNA research away from the prying eyes at the university. Bruno understood
none of his brother’s interests and had given him the nickname “Nerdly”
long ago. The name stuck.
Bruno couldn’t have been
more different from his brother. A large hulking figure, Bruno had barely
graduated high school and now drove a garbage truck for a living. It
paid quite well, however, and much to Nerdly’s chagrin provided the
bulk of the household income. Bruno spent most of his time drinking,
watching sporting events on TV, and bullying his younger, smarter brother.
There were different in other
ways as well. Whereas Bruno almost never got sick, Nerdly suffered from
a variety of ailments, including allergies to almost everything, perpetually
draining sinuses and a nervous stomach. Worst
of all were the headaches. Nerdly suffered from migraines since childhood;
the pain was often disabling.
Falling asleep had long been
an adventure for Nerdly. Conditions had to be perfect, and they rarely
were. Each night at nine thirty he began the long ritual of preparing
for bed. First he put on his favorite pajamas, the one with Albert Einstein’s
picture all over them. Then he swallowed a variety of prescription and
over-the-counter medication. Next he swabbed his ears, flossed and brushed
his teeth, and washed with special hypo-allergenic soap (his skin was
very sensitive). Finally he donned his sleep aids: the ear plugs and
eye shades. Of course he always made sure to leave the night light on,
having never gotten over his childhood fear of the dark. His brother
Bruno, on the other hand, could fall asleep anywhere and frequently
did in a drunken stupor.
Uncle Joe had been visiting
for a few days. The boys’ uncle on their father’s side, Uncle Joe was
a carbon copy of Bruno. It was no surprise to Nerdly that the two had
spent the last two evenings getting loudly drunk. Nerdly tried to avoid
them as best he could, spending most of his
time in the lab. Uncle Joe had shown an interest in the lab on the first
night of his visit. He and Bruno, having gulped down several beers,
drunkenly tried to jimmy the locked door open, but Nerdly had appeared
just in time to stop them. “Aw c’mon Nerdly, show Uncle Joe your shtupid
lab,” slurred Bruno.
“I’m only going to say this
once so pay attention,” Nerdly had told them officiously. “The laboratory
is off limits.”
The two drunken men laughed
at Nerdly’s attempt at authority, and amused themselves for an hour
with alcohol-fueled Nerdly imitations. Nerdly had seethed with rage.
Just as
he seethed with rage now as he tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep.
Those two drunks would be the death of him yet. He tossed and turned
for a while longer, then finally kicked the blankets off the bed angrily.
“Damn them!” he swore. “Now I have to go downstairs and ask them to
be quiet.” Nerdly was uncomfortable with conflict and had dreaded this
moment.
He put on his robe and slippers,
careful to remove the excess fuzz from the inside of the slippers, then
stormed down the stairs.
Bruno and Uncle Joe had been
sitting in the living room drinking beer and watching pay-for-view porn
on cable television. The volume on the TV was louder than it needed
to be, and the sounds of sex and bad music assaulted Nerdly as he stormed
down the stairs.
He immediately walked to
the cocktail table and picked the remote control out of the litter and
turned off the television.
“Hey what the fuck!” demanded
Bruno, standing up.
“Turn it back on Nerdly,”
said Uncle Joe from the sofa, barely diverting his rapt attention from
the empty TV screen.
“I’m trying to sleep and
you two neanderthals are disturbing me! Please
be quiet!” Nerdly stated as firmly as he could. He was quite angry.
Bruno made an exaggerated
sad face. “Aw, does the poor widdew nerd need his baby sweep?”
Both he and Uncle Joe snickered
at the joke. Nerdly’s face turned bright red.
“Bruno, why can’t you respect
my wishes?”
Bruno mocked his brother.
“Bruno, why can’t you respect my wishes?”
“Haw,” said Uncle Joe, picking
his nose.
“Because
you’re a NERD! That’s why!” shouted Bruno. He turned to Uncle
Joe. “Uncle Joe, look at the brother I get! A friggin’
nerd.”
“Huh?” said Uncle Joe. He
took a swallow of Budweiser.
Nerdly
felt himself losing control. Bruno always knew which buttons
to push. He was getting frustrated. “If by nerd you mean superior intellect,
then yes. I suppose I am a nerd.”
Bruno shoved Nerdly’s shoulder,
knocking the smaller man back a step. “Fuckin’ think you’re so smart,
huh nerd?”
Nerdly backed up a step.
“Mustn’t anger the beast when it’s drunk,” he thought. “I’m going back
to sleep,” he said, backing toward the stairs. “Try to keep it down.”
He retreated angrily up the stairs.
Bruno slapped Uncle Joe’s
beefy arm and laughed. “Uncle Joe, what a fuckin’ nerd, huh?”
“Turn the TV back on,” said
Uncle Joe.
Part Two – A Dish Best Served Cold
Bruno and Uncle Joe did indeed
keep the noise level down, but it was mostly because they were too drunk
to move. They cared nothing about Nerdly’s sleep. They watched some
more pay-per-view porn on the TV and drank more beer until Uncle Joe
finally got up with a loud belch and staggered to the guest room. Bruno
ate some cold pizza and drank another beer, then vomited in the bathroom
and finally retired to his own room.
Upstairs, Nerdly still tossed
and turned. His anger at his brother Bruno was keeping him awake. “The
nerve of that oaf! How dare he lay his hands on me!”
He fumed at the memory.
The two had fought for years.
Bruno bullied Nerdly regularly, ordering him around under the threat
of violence. He even humiliated him in public, especially when they
were children. As Nerdly remembered these other occasions he grew angrier
still.
There was the time in elementary
school when Nerdly was harrassed in the playground by a younger boy
and Bruno stood around and laughed as his brother got beat up. The other
children watched and chanted “Get the nerd!”,
Bruno joining in as well. Nerdly had always thought his hatred for his
brother stemmed from that incident.
Then there was the time when
Nerdly was in high school conducting an important experiment for a science
competition and Bruno was at the start of his drinking career. Bruno
had been fired from his job at the local factory for coming to work
drunk and consoled himself by getting drunk and wrecking Nerdly’s carefully
arranged experiment and presentation. Nerdly couldn’t put it back together
in time for the competition, and even though Bruno later apologized,
the damage had been done. Nerdly installed dead bolts on his laboratory
door after that.
Now, when Nerdly was working
on perhaps the most important work of his life, the ground-breaking
DNA research that would surely make him famous and demonstrate his genius
to the world, his brother’s drinking was getting out of hand. After
tonight, it was clear to Nerdly that Bruno’s drinking might somehow
threaten his research.
Yes, something must be done
about the situation. He mustn’t let his inferior brother get the better
of him, not anymore. It was time to take a stand, to make a statement
that even stupid Bruno would understand.
“But how?”
Nerdly asked himself. “How do I strike at the dullard?” Physical confrontation
was out of the question, of course. Bruno was much stronger than Nerdly
and had been in numerous fights over the years. “Intellect, I must use
my intellect. Brain over brawn, that’s where I’ll find the solution.”
Was it Bruno’s stupidity
or his drinking that annoyed Nerdly more? Well, there was nothing even
a genius like Nerdly could do about his brother’s low intelligence,
but perhaps he could do something about the drinking. “Alcohol,
yes. That’s the answer! I must find a way to neutralize the alcohol.”
The spirit of revenge drove
Nerdly. He excitedly weighed the options in his mind. He could put something
in the alcohol itself, but that was too risky. Bruno paid attention
to few details in life, but he did care about his beer. He would know
if his beer cans had been tampered with. Nerdly had to be able to do
it without Bruno knowing about it. That meant that the beer itself was
off limits.
That left Bruno. “Yes, I
could put something in his food that might negate the effects of any
alcohol.” But he rejected that idea, realizing that Bruno would notice
if he kept drinking and didn’t get drunk.
Nerdly smiled as the solution
burst into his head suddenly. He could develop something that would
make Bruno allergic to alcohol. Every time Bruno drank alcohol he could
get violently ill. He immediately thought of several substances in his
lab that might serve as a base for such a serum. Nerdly’s skills in
this area were quite advanced and he was certain that he could develop
something that was undetectable. “Yes,” he thought, “that is perfect.”
He was far too excited to
sleep now. He got up and donned his robe and after grabbing a keychain
from somewhere under the bed, went downstairs to his lab. There was
a lot of work to be done. The sooner he got to it, the sooner he would
be able to get his revenge on Bruno.
Part
Three – Important Work
Confident that Bruno would
not wake up before noon, Nerdly planned to work straight through the
night and into the morning. It should be a reasonably simply task to
create the anti-alcohol serum, and Nerdly was far too excited to sleep
now. He stopped in the living room and grabbed a half-empty beer can,
scowling momentarily at the mess.
Nerdly descended the basement
stairs and unlocked the heavy door to his laboratory. It was a long
and narrow room, the door opening into one end. The walls of the lab
were lined with large sturdy tables on and under which a variety of
scientific equipment and laboratory supplies were neatly kept. In the
middle of the left side of the lab, the table was dominated by a large
microscope sitting next to a sophisticated computer system. At the end
of the room sat a tall storage container that resembled a refrigerator
with a glass front. Nerdly kept all his samples locked up in the container.
In the far corner a large cage was home to Jonas, Nerdly’s rat and subject
of his most recent experiments. Jonas scurried from one end of his cage
to the other as soon as Nerdly turned on the fluorescent lights.
“Calm yourself Jonas, I’ll
get to you later,” said Nerdly. “Right now, I have more important work
to do.” He sat in front of the flat-screen computer monitor and typed
a password on the keyboard. The screen lit up and Nerdly began talking
to himself as he used advanced software of his own creation to design
the genetic structure of the anti-alcohol serum.
He extracted a sample of
beer from the half-empty can of Budweiser he’d taken from the kitchen
unseen, then performed genetic and molecular
analyses of the sample. He then retrieved a small petri dish from the
storage container and extracted a sample of that, then recalled the
analysis files for the sample to the computer screen.
“Bruno, I am about to put
an end to your drinking career,” he sung happily as he worked to create
his serum from the base sample. Jonas scurried about his cage at the
sound of his master’s voice. “Yes Jonas, soon I shall exact my revenge
for years of abuse at the hands of that clod.”
For the next several hours,
Nerdly was a man obsessed. He typed, he measured, he poured, he adjusted,
he calculated. Occasionally he would wipe his brow with the sleeve of
his lab coat. He recorded everything dutifully in a fresh experiment
logbook. He shifted from the computer to the samples to the microscope
and back again, muttering angrily to himself at every new obstacle and
breathing oohs and aahs whenever he made a breakthrough.
Finally, as the morning sun
peeked through the one small window in the lab, Nerdly stood up and
stretched. “Jonas, I think we’ve done it!” he exclaimed. Jonas scratched
at the glass walls of his cage.
“Oh stop it Jonas, I haven’t
forgotten you.” He removed the final serum sample from the microscope
sample holder and poured it carefully into a small sterile sample dish.
“You sit there and cook, my lovely,” said Nerdly.
Jonas’ renewed antics were
right on schedule of course. It was time for Nerdly to administer the
rat’s daily dose of the scientist’s experimental growth and immune system
booster hormone. Each day, Nerdly mixed some of the hormone into Jonas’s
water. He had tried it in solid food, but it worked faster and more
efficiently in liquid. The effects of the hormone were readily apparent
in the rat. Jonas had increased his muscle mass and size by nearly 50
percent and his immune system seemed to be operating at peak efficiency.
And the rat’s appetite soared; Jonas was always hungry now. Soon it
would be time to test the hormone on a human subject.
Nerdly removed the hormone
from cold storage and placed it on the table next to the anti-alcohol
serum. “My genius is unparalleled,” he said, admiring the two identical
sample dishes. He lifted the lid off the hormone sample and breathed
in the cool peppermint aroma. He extracted a small amount in a sterile
dropper.
As he stood up, however,
he began to feel dizzy. “Oh no, not now!” he complained, rubbing his
temple. The dizziness passed quickly into a familiar but unwanted dull
throbbing in his head. Nerdly frowned as he felt the beginning of a
migraine headache.
“Curse these headaches,
I don’t have time for this, Jonas.” Nerdly’s head was now on fire, and
he stumbled into his chair, groaning and clutching his head. This was
a bad one, he knew. He had suffered from migraines since he was a teenager,
and once it started, all he could do is lay his head down and let it
pass. He sat for a moment, clutching his face with one hand and the
eyedropper with the other.
“Oww, must..
lay… down,” he mumbled, the pain blurring his
vision. He felt faint and his head and the dropper with the hormone
in it fell onto the table. Nerdly did not see the dropper bounce off
the edge of the sample dish containing the anti-alcohol serum, and did
not see the several small drops of hormone spill from the dropper into
the serum. And he certainly did not see the tiny droplets of serum jump
from its open dish into the hormone dish that Nerdly had placed next
to it.
Nerdly raised his head after
several minutes. Ah, the pain was finally subsiding. He could get back
to work. He glanced at his watch – it almost 10:30! The migraine had
put him out for three hours. Jonas was running wildly inside his cage;
it was way past feeding time.
Nerdly spotted the eyedropper;
it had fallen on the table. Ruined, he thought, and he filled another
eyedropper with hormone from the sample dish. Still a little wobbly
from the migraine headache, Nerdly fetched a sack of rat pellets from
beneath the table where Jonas’ cage sat, and prepared the food for the
rat. He dropped several drops of hormone into the food and placed it
in Jonas’ cage. The rat was ravenously hungry and kept at his pleasant
task until the entire ratplate of food was gone.
“Good Jonas, eat. It will
make you big and strong,” Nerdly laughed.
He made some measurements
of the rat for later comparison, recorded it in his experiment logbook,
and cleaned up after himself. He covered the anti-alcohol sample dish
and tidied up the table.
“Bruno, you’ll be getting
something extra in your coffee this morning,” chuckled
Nerdly as he turned off the lights and exited the laboratory.
“What a day this shall be!”
he said happily, walking upstairs to the kitchen.
Part Four – Hair of the Dog
While Nerdly made a fresh
pot of coffee in the kitchen, Bruno began to stir. He awoke slowly,
stretching his large body this way and that, working out the kinks.
He was fully-clothed having passed out on his bed in a drunken stupor
the night before. The noon sun pushed through the half-open blinds,
laying uneven stripes across Bruno’s room.
Bruno had never been a morning
person, unlike his brother. He found it difficult to tear himself away
from the comfort of the bed, and the drinking had only made it worse.
After several minutes, he finally got himself upright and sat on the
edge of the bed. His mouth felt like an army had marched through it
and his head throbbed from the usual hangover.
“Oh man, do I feel like crap,”
he muttered, his voice raspy from too many
cigarettes. He glanced over at the table next to his bed. The alarm
clock, which he made a rule of never setting on the weekend, read 12:30.
Next to the clock sat a half-full bottle of Bud.
Bruno absently reached for
the beer and took a swallow. It was warm and he grimaced at the bitter
taste. He believed in the hair-of-the-dog theory of hangovers, which
stated that if a person drank alcohol the morning after a good drunk,
any hangover would be cured. Of course Nerdly berated Bruno for his
belief in the theory. He was always pointing out that there was no evidence
at all supporting the theory. Bruno didn’t care; he would continue to
cling to the theory, if only to annoy his nerd brother.
“Geez, did I get into a fight
with him last night? I don’t remember,” thought Bruno, taking another
swallow of warm beer.
Bruno chuckled at the thought.
He had gotten used to the memory lapses as he had been drinking for
years now. “Fuckin’ nerd always thinks he’s so smart,” Bruno growled.
In truth, Bruno hated his brother’s genius IQ. Bruno had never been
booksmart like Nerdly, being a more physically inclined person. Bruno
had tried for years to get his little brother to hang out with him,
to play sports and party. Nerdly would have none of it, instead insulting
Bruno for being a dumb jock who would never
amount to anything. Bruno would get angry,
they would fight, and so on throughout their lives. Although he didn’t
know it and couldn’t articulate it, Bruno had grown to despise his brother
for years of rejection.
Right now, Bruno needed coffee.
After quickly draining the remainder of the warm half-beer, the rumpled
and hungover man stumbled in the direction of the kitchen. As he shuffled
past the guest room, he noticed that Uncle Joe’s stuff was all gone.
“Musta left this morning,” thought Bruno. “Man that old guy can drink.”
Nerdly was whistling a nameless
tune in the kitchen, which smelled of strong Colombian coffee. One thing
Bruno could say about his brother, he sure made great coffee.
“Why hello brother dear,
do we have a headache this morning?” asked Nerdly.
Bruno headed in the direction
of the coffee and ignored his brother’s sarcasm. “Gotta have coffee,”
he grumbled.
“I’m not surprised,” said
Nerdly cheerfully. “You and Uncle Joe really tied one on last night.”
“Shut up and gimme a cup.
I need coffee.” Bruno rubbed his eyes and leaned on the kitchen counter.
“Uncle Joe leave?”
“Oh yes, Uncle Joe is gone
with the wind.” Nerdly grabbed a clean coffee mug from a cabinet and
handed it to Bruno. Nerdly smiled at his brother, who frowned in response.
“Yes, have your coffee you mindless goon, “he thought. “Soon my serum
will be coursing through your veins, making you allergic to alcohol.”
He watched eagerly as his
hungover brother filled the mug with the tainted coffee. The stuff was
nearly undetectable to the average human nose, and in Bruno’s condition,
he would never be able to tell the difference.
Bruno sat in his usual chair
at the kitchen table and poured a liberal amount of sugar into his coffee.
A small glass vase in the middle of the table held clean teaspoons;
Bruno grabbed one, stirred his coffee and took a sip.
Nerdly’s eyes grew wide.
“Yes, drink up you fool,” he thought. “I will enjoy seeing you suffer
when you try to get drunk later.”
Bruno closed his eyes and
sipped. The coffee tasted good. While he sipped, Nerdly’s concoction,
the serum accidentally mixed with experimental growth hormone, began
doing its work inside Bruno’s body. The alcohol in Bruno’s bloodstream
attracted the clinging cells of Nerdly’s serum, which had bonded with
the cells of the growth hormone. The hormone cells were quite aggressive
however, and bonded themselves to Bruno’s bloodcells, duplicating themselves
rapidly in the process.
Bruno had drunk half the
coffee when his stomach started to feel queasy. His face grew pale.
Nerdly watched his brother.
He didn’t look particularly well. “Why, whatever is the matter, dear
brother?” he inquired sweetly.
Bruno started to rise. “Ugh,
I don’t feel so good,” he said, and stumbled, knocking over the chair.
He felt weak suddenly, as if he had no strength in his arms or legs.
“What the hell did you put in this coffee, Nerdly? You
tryin’ to poison me or something?”
“Be serious, Bruno. Why would
I waste my genius on the likes of you? I think perhaps you had too much
to drink last night, and now you’re feeling the aftereffects.” In fact,
Nerdly had concluded that the serum was reacting to the alcohol already
in Bruno’s bloodstream. It was a bit unexpected. Nerdly had designed
the serum to interact only with a higher level of alcohol.
Bruno leaned on the counter
for support. He was feeling dizzy. He smelled peppermint. Suddenly,
his face felt flush with hot flashes. “What the hell is wrong with me,”
he muttered. He put his hand up to rub his hot face, and his flesh felt
soft to the touch. And sticky.
Nerdly turned around and
puttered around the coffee pot, wiping up a few stray coffee stains.
When he turned around, his jaw dropped.
Bruno’s face appeared to
be melting.
Part Five –“Mumph!”
Nerdly watched open-mouthed
as the tips of Bruno’s nose, earlobes and chin began to slowly elongate.
Bruno did not appear to realize what was happening. He had a sick look
on his face and was holding his stomach as if he was suffering from
gas. He tried to speak but his top lip was melting into his bottom lip,
and his voice came out muffled.
“Nuhmla
wha’s huppnuh t’muh?” Bruno asked, not feeling well at all and
beginning to panic. He’d never felt this bad before.
“Fascinating,” thought Nerdly.
Bruno’s shoulders were slumping
now, and he tried to raise his hands to feel the strange sensations
but found his arms stuck fast to his sides, the flesh melding together
through the fabric of Bruno’s clothes. He cried out, but the noise that
came out of the fleshy slit that used to be his mouth was a muffled
yelp. “Better get to the bathroom,” thought Bruno, thinking that he
was suffering from a particularly bad hangover. The smell of peppermint
was overpowering.
His butt was sticking to
the kitchen counter and it stung when he pulled away from it. He tried
to walk but his legs crumpled slowly under him. He found himself slogging
through thick muck. He looked down in horror to discover that the muck
was his own lower body!
“Oh this is just too perfect,”
said Nerdly gleefully. True, it was obvious that something had gone
wrong with the anti-alcohol serum. Nerdly was not pleased with that,
but his scientific curiosity ruled the moment. He was witnessing a dramatic
physical transformation. A transformation, a mutation that he had created!
This was incredible. And best of all, he had found a way to neutralize
his annoying brutish brother.
Bruno was now undulating,
desperately trying to move but unable to. “He must be transforming on
the inside as well,” Nerdly thought, making a mental note.
Indeed, Bruno’s musculo-skeletal
system was mutating, losing its molecular structure, replaced by formless
masses of tissues the consistency of cookie dough. His cries for help
were now simply low guttural moans. His eyes had become two narrow dark
folds of flesh. His nose had become a tiny hole. His face had melted
into a pile of thick lined muck with dark hair on the top. His legs
had already melted into a stout base, the rest of him forming a mild
cone shape. His arms could no longer be discerned as two separate appendages;
they had melted into the mass of Bruno’s thick form. His clothes were
being absorbed by his new body, the colors running through his lumpy
flesh as if painted on. Desperately trying to move, all the Bruno-blob
could do is undulate in place.
Nerdly pondered for a moment.
He grabbed a broom from the corner of the kitchen and approached the
blob-like creature that had been his brother Bruno. It was time to analyze.
“Now hold still, brother
dear. Let’s just see what you’re made of,” he commented, pushed the
broom handle toward the bottom of his brother. The substance that was
Bruno’s flesh gave instantly and the broom handle disappeared into the
blob. Bruno moaned loudly and shook, and Nerdly quickly pulled the broom
handle out and stepped backward. “Who knows what this creature is capable
of?” he thought.
Nerdly watched Bruno moan
and shake for a few minutes. “My my, we don’t like being poked, do we?”
Bruno’s slit-eyes seemed
to move in Nerdly’s direction.
“Incredible! You can still
see me and hear me, can’t you? I wonder what you’re thinking, brother
of mine. That this is a horrible nightmare and you’ll wake up soon?”
He laughed. “I don’t think so,” he growled, and poked Bruno with the
broom handle once and twice. Both attacks caused
Bruno to moan and shake angrily.
“Oh I’m sorry, does that
hurt?” asked Nerdly, and he slammed the end of the broom handle as deep
into Bruno-blob as it could go.
The blob seemed to expand
at this latest attack, and slid along the kitchen floor toward Nerdly.
“Heh heh,
oh no you don’t.” Nerdly danced away and giggled, enjoying his
newfound power over his mutated brother. Bruno tried to follow his brother
around the kitchen table, but could not move very quickly, and seemed
to be having difficulty navigating around objects.
Nerdly giggled and danced,
poked Bruno viciously, then danced away. He began to sing as he continued
his assault on the slow-moving blob that used to be Bruno.
“Who’s afraid of the big
bad blob? The big bad blob, the bad blob!”
Nerdly was beside himself
with joy. At last he had the upper hand on his stupid bullying brother.
At last he was physically superior! Oh he would enjoy this. Yes, he
would definitely enjoy this.
Bruno’s moaning took on a
plaintive character. Nerdly was unmoved. “Oh are we in pain brother
dear?” he asked sweetly.
His face darkened suddenly.
“Well too bad! I’ve suffered under your yoke long enough! The worm has
finally turned Bruno, and YOU appear to be the worm! Ha
hah!” He started batting Bruno with the broom, years of pent-up
frustration and anger rising to the surface.
Each strike with the broom
would cause the blob-flesh to retreat in on itself, then
slowly roll back to its original mound shape. Bruno’s flesh seemed to
be quite pliable. And yet, when he’d been poked deeply, no damage seemed
to occur. Nerdly was fascinated even as he gleefully got his revenge
on his brother.
Finally Nerdly tired of his
assault and let the broom fall to the floor, exhausted. He looked at
Bruno, who’s shape was settling into the familiar
mound.
Finally Nerdly stood up.
“Well, I’ve got to get you down to my laboratory Bruno. I want to find
out exactly what I’ve created, heh heh.”
Bruno let out a thick low
moan.
“Oh don’t worry Bruno, you’ve
always been curious about my lab and now is your big chance!”
Nerdly thought for a moment
as his brother the blob tried to move to other end of the kitchen, where
the wall opened up to the dining room. He was moving faster now, sliding
along the floor, leaving wet sticky brown stains in his wake.
“I need to restrain you somehow
Bruno,” said Nerdly, thinking aloud. In a few seconds, he snapped his
fingers and smiled. “Yes, that would do nicely. Very
nicely.”
Bruno was now entering the
dining room, staining the carpet with his blob goo. Nerdly ran past
him to the side door, which exited into garage. He flicked the light
switch on as he ran past it and began rummaging in the back of the garage
where piles of boxes, garbage bags and other assorted household items
made a disheveled wall.
“Ah, here you are,” said
Nerdly.
He grimaced as he pulled
a new green plastic trash can out from behind the pile. He wiped his
brow, fatigued from the small amount of exertion. “Yes, this will do
quite nicely.”
Part Six – Pie Day
It took Nerdly the better
part of two hours to herd his brother’s blob form into the plastic trash
can. At first he tried to use the broom, but the cookie-dough consistency
of Bruno’s new physique kept slipping through the bristles. Finally
he grew frustrated, and beat on the peppermint-odored mound in the living
room, eliciting thick moans and groans.
“This isn’t working at all,”
complained Nerdly, wiping sweat from his eyeglasses. He leaned on the
broom breathing heavily, thinking. Bruno’s eye-slits watched warily,
then he uttered a low moaning sound.
“Quiet Bruno, I’m trying
to think,” said Nerdly.
Suddenly Nerdly snapped his
fingers. “Yes, that’s precisely what I need for this job!” He put the
broom away and went back to the garage, grabbed a snowshovel and returned.
The snowshovel proved effective
and Nerdly was finally able to corral the Bruno-blob into the trash
can. Nerdly frowned as he saw the large brown stain on the living room
carpet. “Damn you Bruno, you’re a slob in any form.”
“Mumph,” said Bruno, his
thick moaning muffled by the confines of the trash can.
Nerdly managed to roll the
trash can down to his laboratory, but it took all of his meager strength
to accomplish the task. Out of breath, he huffed and puffed for several
minutes. Finally recovered, Nerdly took samples from Bruno’s blob-flesh,
to which Bruno reacted by groaning loudly from within his plastic cage.
While Nerdly studied Bruno’s
new physical form, the next-door neighbor was busy baking pies, today
being pie day.
Ethel and Bill Butterfield
were a retired couple who had been close friends
with Nerdly and Bruno’s parents. When they passed away, Mrs. Butterfield
took it upon herself to watch over the boys. As the years passed, her
watchfulness had been reduced to the baking and delivery of home-made
pies. She had frankly become a nuisance and Bruno largely ignored her,
but Nerdly had always felt an obligation to at least sit and have a
piece of pie and a cup of coffee with the old woman.
Today, Saturday, was pie
day. Nerdly had forgotten all about it in all the excitement over Bruno’s
accidental transformation. Mrs. Butterfield had not. In fact, she looked
forward to pie day as she and Mr. Butterfield had never had children
of their own. Mr. Butterfield was off on his
monthly fishing trip, which was fine with Mrs. Butterfield. Bill was
constantly in her way in the kitchen, retirement having left the man
with little to do with his time. So she had spent the morning baking
pies. On this particular day she had baked a peach pie and a boysenberry
pie. That nice Nerdly always made time for her and her pies. Such
a nice young man. His brother was a little standoffish she felt,
but she excused his behavior, saying to Bill on several occasions, “Boys
will be boys.”
As the pies cooled, Mrs.
Butterfield opened the far left cabinet in her kitchen and reached into
the dark recesses for a faded box of corn starch, shooing a large brown
cat off the counter. “Fuzzy, I think we’ll have the peppermint today.”
Fuzzy the cat had begun cleaning himself and ignored the old woman.
She opened the box of corn
starch and pulled out a small bottle of peppermint schnapps. She had
to hide her bottles; if Mr. Butterfield ever found out well, he wouldn’t
understand. She unscrewed the cap from the bottle, raised it to her
lips and drank several swallows of the liquor. “Ahh, that’s much better,
Fuzz” she said to the cat, who looked up for
a moment at the sound of his name.
The sink was filled with
dirty pots, pans and other baking utensils. Mrs. Butterfield picked
up a dirty bowl then shook her head. “No Fuzzy, I think I’ll just leave
these till later. It’s time to visit the boys.”
She went upstairs to apply
a fresh coat of makeup, which did nothing to hide her aging wrinkled
features and sprayed her thin gray hair, which she’d put up in her usual
bun. Then she changed from her housedress into her good visiting dress
and headed downstairs. She placed the cooled boysenberry pie into a
bag (Mr. Butterfield enjoyed peach pie; she’d save that one for him)
and put her coat on.
Fuzzy the cat jumped down
to follow the woman, but she shooed him away from the door. “No Fuzzy,
you stay here and keep an eye on things.” Of course the cat snuck out
through the old woman’s legs as she opened the door. She didn’t see
him dart into the bushes. She hummed a nameless tune to herself as she
happily trudged over to Nerdly and Bruno’s house.
Part Seven – In the Interest of Science
Nerdly worked in
his laboratory like a man obsessed. He took a sample from Bruno’s cookie-dough
flesh, which elicited loud moans from within the trash can, and exposed
it to a variety of tests and analyses. He rolled his wheeled chair from
one end of the lab to the other, peering momentarily into the microscope,
then wheeling to the computer terminal to type some formula or theorem,
then back to Bruno’s trash can, then back to
some gleaming piece of technology to run a test, then back to the microscope
again.
He oohed and aahed while
he worked, occasionally sharing his thoughts aloud with Jonas the super-rat
and his blob brother. Jonas’ cage sat in close proximity to Bruno’s
trash can and he scurried desperately from one of the cage to the other,
disturbed at the presence of the strange large smelly blob next to him.
“Jonas, calm yourself. It’s only Bruno,” Nerdly
said more than once.
After some time, he finally
leaned back in his chair and admired the molecular diagram on the computer
screen. He had figured out what had happened to Bruno. Apparently when
he’d suffered from his headache earlier, the anti-alcohol serum and
the experimental growth and immune system hormone had been mixed and
had created a new, wholly original serum. When the serum, which Nerdly
had secretly mixed into the morning coffee, entered Bruno’s alcohol-drenched
system, the alcohol triggered the new serum and Bruno mutated on a cellular
level. He Nerdly had created a new species!
“Bruno, you and I have made
history,” he crowed.
“Mmph,” said Bruno.
“Now now brother dear, sacrifices
must be made in the interest of science.” Nerdly’s analysis had led
to one inescapable conclusion: Bruno could not be changed back to his
original form. Not that he wanted to turn his brother back of course.
In his current form, Bruno was no longer a thorn in Nerdly’s side. He
was free of the oaf at last.
Nerdly peered down into the
plastic trash can. “I always thought you were a big lump, Bruno,” he
said, giggling at his own joke.
Some tests still had to be
performed. Nerdly was fascinated at his brother’s physical form and
was intensely curious to find out how the creature ate,
stored energy and ridded itself of waste products.
Nerdly glanced at the clock
displayed in the corner of the computer screen. “Oh I’m sorry Jonas,
I completely forgot your breakfast.” Jonas became excited as Nerdly
approached his cage, beginning the familiar ritual of feeding time.
Bruno’s eyeslits shifted to the top of his form and peered out at the
rat in his cage. He jiggled within the trash can momentarily.
DING DONG!
The front doorbell rang,
filling the house with its loud chime. Nerdly looked up at the video
monitor which he’d installed as a security measure. There was the neighbor
Mrs. Butterfield, looking clownlike in her flowered dress, caked on
makeup and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Nerdly! Bruno!” she called,
her voice sounding tinny coming through the security system’s small
speaker.
“Oh, it’s that meddlesome
old bat, Mrs. Butterfield,” he complained. “I totally forgot today is
pie day.”
“Mmmph,” groaned Bruno.
“Quiet Bruno,” said Nerdly.
He turned to Jonas. “Patience
Jonas, I’ll feed you first, then I’ll get rid of old Mrs. Butterfield.” Jonas complained
by frantically hurling himself around his cage.
Mrs. Butterfield tapped her
foot impatiently. The pie was going to get cold if she stood out here
too long! “Boys?” she called? She knew there were home; Bruno’s truck
was sitting in the driveway.
Well, it was pie day after
all. The boys wouldn’t mind if she let herself in. She fished into her
purse and pulled out some keys. Nerdly and Bruno’s parents had given
the Butterfields a copy of the house key years ago, intending for their
long-time neighbors and friends to look after the house while they were
away on vacation. Ethel Butterfield has kept the key.
She unlocked the door and
opened it slowly, peering around to see if either of the boys were
in the room. Fuzzy the cat had darted from bush to bush and had hidden
himself from Mrs. Butterfield's view. She felt something on her leg
and looked down to see Fuzzy run inside Nerdly and Bruno’s house.
“Oh Fuzzy, I told you to
stay home!” she scolded, but the cat was already in the house. “You
know Nerdly’s allergic to you.” She sighed, then walked through the living room to the kitchen. The remains
of Bruno’s and Uncle Joe’s previous evening were everywhere. And there
was a large brown stain on the carpet.
“My my, these boys really
should clean up after themselves,” she said. She bent down to inspect
the stain. The familiar odor of peppermint greeted her senses. “Peppermint,”
she said, sniffing. “How curious.”
Where were those boys? Surely
they hadn’t forgotten pie day. Well, at least Nerdly wouldn’t have forgotten.
Mrs. Butterfield had been coming over for pie day for a few years now
and Nerdly really enjoyed her pies. “Oh well,
I’m sure they’re around somewhere, I’ll just get the pie ready.”
She entered the kitchen and
smelled coffee. Nerdly had forgotten to clean the pot of coffee from
earlier that morning and Mrs. Butterfield detected its peppermint aroma
by sniffing. “Mmm, smells nice but it’s luke warm. I’ll just have to reheat it.” She pressed the
button on the coffee-maker and opened a cabinet to get cups, saucers
and plates. She sang as she worked, setting the pie on the table, cutting
two generous pieces and placing them on the plates, pouring two cups
of coffee, retrieving clean spoons and forks as well as sugar and milk.
Nerdly hurriedly prepared
Jonas’ food, taking care to add just the right amount of the growth
hormone, then jotting down a few notes in the lab notebook. Bruno shook
and moaned in his plastic confinement, but Nerdly happily tsk-tsked
his mutated brother as he went about his work.
“That blasted Mrs. Butterfield
and her tasteless pies,” thought Nerdly. He looked into the trash can
containing Bruno. “I’ll have to get rid of her quickly, we wouldn’t
want Mr. Butterfield nosing around now would we?” he said.
“Mmmph,” said Bruno.
“Nerdly! Bruno! Where are
you?” called Mrs. Butterfield in her loud singsong voice from upstairs.
Nerdly finished feeding Jonas and hurried upstairs, leaving the laboratory
door ajar. He certainly wasn’t worried about Bruno invading the privacy
of his lab; Bruno had become his latest experiment!
Nerdly raced upstairs, eager
to get rid of the unwanted visitor. “Coming Mrs. Butterfield, I’m coming,”
he called.
Mrs. Butterfield was sitting
at the kitchen table, which had two places set for pie and coffee. She
put down her own coffee cup and smiled when Nerdly entered the kitchen.
“There you are Nerdly, where’s
Bruno?” said Mrs. Butterfield cheerily. I hope you didn’t forget our
pie day. I brought boysenberry today.”
“Ah yes, pie day,” replied
Nerdly, thinking of a way to get rid of her quickly. He sat down, intending
to put the woman at ease. It wouldn’t do for the nosy neighbors to get
wind of Bruno’s transformation. “Poor Bruno had a rough night I’m afraid.
He’s sleeping in.”
Nerdly noticed Mrs. Butterfield’s
lipstick stain on her coffee cup. “Fresh coffee, Mrs. Butterfield?”
he asked.
“Oh my no,” she said, lifting
her cup. “I don’t know what kind of coffee this is that you made this
morning, but it’s very tasty.”
Nerdly’s face sank momentarily.
The coffee with the mutating serum! He rose from the table and tried
to snatch Mrs. Butterfield’s cup away from her. “Oh that stuff’s no
good, Mrs. Butterfield. Let me make a fresh pot.”
Mrs. Butterfield pulled her
cup away from him and frowned. “I like this coffee, Nerdly. Why are
you grabbing at it?” She gave Nerdly a suspicious look.
Nerdly put on his best fake
smile. “Ah, it’s been sitting there since last night and I wouldn’t
want you to-“
“Nonsense, it’s perfectly
fine once you reheat it. Now try the pie.” She sipped the coffee.
Nerdly sat back down, defeated.
“The damn woman,” he thought. But then his spirits lifted. The serum
was harmless without alcohol in the subject’s system.
“By the way Nerdly, your
living room is a mess! Don’t you boys ever clean?” asked Mrs. Butterfield.
“And there’s a big ugly stain on the rug. You didn’t get sick again,
did you?”
Nerdly was getting impatient.
“No no, that was Bruno. I have to keep after him all the time.” He looked
at his watch, then at the open door leading to his laboratory. Fuzzy
the cat slipped downstairs just as Nerdly looked.
“Mrs. Butterfield, is that
your cat?” he asked, getting up in a hurry. “Can’t let the stupid beast
into the laboratory,” he thought.
“Oh that Fuzz. He just loves
to follow me around,” said Mrs. Butterfield.
Nerdly became angry. He hated
cats and he hated unwanted visitors in his laboratory. Damn that woman
and her stupid pies and her stupid cat! “Excuse me Mrs. Butterfield,
but I have to get your little Fuzz out of my lab. I have some important
experiments underway and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”
Mrs. Butterfield nodded,
now shoveling forkfuls of boysenberry pie into her mouth. She spoke
through mouthfuls of pie. “Okay Nerdly, be careful. Fuzz can get skittish.”
Nerdly groaned as he practically
ran down the stairs after the cat. “You stay there Mrs. Butterfield,
I’ll be right back,” he called.
Mrs. Butterfield mumbled
something unintelligible, her mouth filled with pie and coffee. When
she heard Nerdly’s footsteps, she reached into her purse and pulled
out the bottle of peppermint schnapps. “Just a little bit to flavor
the coffee,” she said to herself, and poured a liberal amount of the
liquor into the coffee. She lifted the cup to her lips and drank.
“Mm-mm, that is good!” She
drank another, and her face felt hot. She smelled peppermint.
Part Eight – Nerdly’s Bad Day
Nerdly heard a crash as he
raced down the basement stairs to his laboratory. “What now?” he thought.
He went back up the stairs and grabbed the broom from the kitchen before
descending the stairs again. He did not see Mrs. Butterfield melting
in her chair.
As he pushed the lab door
open, an agitated and hissing Fuzzy the cat ran past his feet. Nerdly
started to curse the beast but several sneezes came out instead. He
looked up to see Bruno’s trash can container knocked over and Bruno
spread over Jonas cage and the sterile containment unit which held the
experimental growth serum.
“Bruno, what have you done
you fool?” he shouted, alarmed. Bruno’s cookie dough form had grown
in mass and now began to ooze in Nerdly’s direction. Jonas was nowhere
in sight. “My experiment! My growth serum!
Oh no!”
Nerdly felt his pulse quicken
and wiped nervous perspiration from his forehead. Bruno growled thickly
from the other end of the lab. “You’ll ruin everything, damn you!” Nerdly
held the broom out in front of him, brandishing it like a spear.
“Mmmphh,” growled Bruno,
who kept sliding his formless bulk toward his brother.
Nerdly heard a tiny squeaking
coming from Bruno’s lumpy flesh. “Jonas? Jonas, is that you, where are
you?” Nerdly took one small step closer to his brother, his broom-spear
out in front of him. “Now, you stay away from me Bruno. If
you’ve done anything to harm Jonas.” There was no threat to follow.
In truth, Nerdly was no longer so sure of his physical superiority over
his transformed brother. Bruno had obviously increased his mobility,
and Nerdly had no idea how quickly the blob could move. Once again,
his brother had succeeded in frightening him.
“Damn you Bruno,
give me back my Jonas!” cried Nerdly, enraged at his brother yet again.
He thrust the broom forward at Bruno once, twice, thrice, but each time
Bruno retreated his blob-flesh in on himself to avoid the crude weapon.
SQUEAK!
Jonas appeared from behind
Bruno’s expanding bulk looking confused. Nerdly swung the broom clumsily
from side to side to keep Bruno at bay and shouted encouragement to
the subject of his now ruined experiment. “Come to me Jonas, to me!”
Jonas twitched nervously then bolted past Bruno.
Just as Jonas appeared to
be out of harm’s way, a clay-like tentacle burst out of Bruno and snatched
the unsuspecting rat, wrapping its pliable flesh around the horrified
animal. Nerdly slammed the broom into Bruno, trying to dislodge his
rat, shouting “Let him go you freak! You’re ruining everything!”
Bruno’s flesh wrapped itself
around the broom end and tried to pull it in. The poor rat squeaked
and squeaked but the tentacle snapped back and Jonas disappeared into
Bruno with a loud sucking noise.
“NO!” cried Nerdly, who tried
with all his meager strength to pull his broom back. Bruno sent another
tentacle out at his brother, knocking off his glasses. “Ow!” yelped
Nerdly. “My glasses! You fool,
you know I’m nearly blind without them!”
Bruno’s tentacle retreated
but not completely; it hung in the air with a life of its own, bobbing
and weaving like a boxer waiting to land a knockout blow. Nerdly stumbled
backwards and fell, banging his knee on the cold basement floor.
The broom handle was stuck
fast and protruded from Bruno’s blob-flesh, waving back and forth with
each oozing movement forward. Abandoning all thought of attack, Nerdly
quickly got up clutching his knee. “I’ll get you yet!” he swore, and
raced back up the stairs.
His experiment ruined and
his revenge spoiled, Nerdly became concerned only with his own survival.
Just as he had many many times in the past, Nerdly was running away
from his bullying brother. He limped halfway up the stairs before realizing
he could lock Bruno in the lab, and turned to slam the door shut.
A thick arm-like tentacle
snuck into the doorway and stiffened, effectively keeping the door open.
Nerdly tried to close the door on the thing, but it was too strong!
Even in his freakishly transformed state, Bruno was still stronger than
Nerdly.
Bruno was bringing all his
bulk, still expanding due to his ingesting all of Nerdly’s experimental
growth hormone, against the door. “Mmmph, mmmph,” he repeated, pushing
the door open little by little. Nerdly was forced to back up and finally
gave up entirely and limped up the stairs.
He slammed the basement door
shut behind and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
“Mrs. Butterfield, I think—“
He stopped in midsentence. Mrs. Butterfield was gone. He squinted
to to try to see the details of the kitchen. It was then that he saw
that Mrs. Butterfield had also been transformed and sat undulating quietly
on top of the kitchen table, her horn-rimmed glasses perched obscenely on top of
her pale flesh-colored bulk.
“Oh no,” groaned Nerdly.
Part Nine – Nerdly Versus The Blob
Mrs. Butterfield had obviously
drunk the tainted coffee, and had obviously had alcohol. The alcohol
in her system triggered the mutating hormone in the coffee and the nosy
neighbor was now a hideous mound of cookie-dough flesh.
Nerdly looked around at the
kitchen. He couldn’t help but frown at the mess. Chairs were tipped
over, half the contents of the kitchen table
had been knocked onto the floor by Mrs. Butterfield’s bulk. Coffee and
pie stained the floor and cabinets next to the table. An empty bottle
of liquor sat in the corner. “Damn you Mrs. Butterfield!” he said angrily.
“Damn you and your damned pie day! Who’s going to clean up this mess?”
There was a groaning from
behind the basement door, which Nerdly had had the presence of mind
to close and lock. Bruno appeared to be quite strong, however, and Nerdly
doubted the door would hold for long.
He searched the messy kitchen
for something, anything to use as a weapon against the angry and rapidly
mutating blob that used to be his brother. He saw nothing and began
to panic.
“No no I must think of something!
I won’t let him get the best of me!”
The basement door started
to creak as the Bruno-blob pressed against it. Slivers of blob-flesh
crept tentatively under the door.
“Ack!” shouted Nerdly, and
he stomped his foot on the thin tentacles reaching under the door. They
retreated instantly and Nerdly’s foot missed.
From behind Nerdly, Mrs.
Butterfield was becoming agitated. She started to undulate, which shook
the kitchen table. “Not you too, Mrs. Butterfield,” Nerdly said, holding
his face in his hands.
“Unhh,” groaned Mrs. Butterfield.
The shaking kitchen table started to topple over, and the old woman’s
mutated bulk slid slowly over the table’s edge, forcing it down. Nerdly
jumped back as it fell completely and most of Mrs. Butterfield slid
onto the stove.
At that moment, the basement
door burst open and Bruno oozed into the kitchen, several tentacles
sliding along the floor in Nerdly’s direction.
“Stay back you fool!” shouted
Nerdly, and he ran around the fallen table and around the undulating
moaning Mrs. Butterfield to stand heaving in the entrance to the living
room.
Bruno had shifted his attention
to Mrs. Butterfield and sent his tentacles in her direction. The darker
flesh of Bruno’s grasping tentacles contrasted with the lighter color
of Mrs. Butterfield’s blob flesh. The tentacles held fast and pulled
rest of Bruno, now grown larger, toward the moaning neighbor. Bruno
seemed to growl as he fastened himself to the smaller blob and began
to stretch his form over it.
Nerdly squinted and watched
in horror as the Bruno blob began to absorb the smaller Mrs. Butterfield
blob. “You stupid clod, what are you doing?!” he cried, but Bruno ignored
him.
The sounds of Mrs. Butterfield’s
moans were fading as most of the blob flesh on the stove was Bruno’s.
The former old woman wasn’t giving up without a fight, however. Parts of Mrs. Butterfield
had siezed the front of the stove and were holding fast to the gas controls.
Bruno could not budge the smaller blob. He groaned loudly and several
tentacles shot out of him to grab hold of the ceiling and wall, giving
him better leverage.
Nerdly was frightened now.
Bruno would eventually win the struggle of the blobs and devour poor
Mrs. Butterfield. It wasn’t his fault, Nerdly reasoned. The old bat
should have minded her own business. This was
all Bruno’s fault. He raised his face to the ceiling and made two fists.
“This is all your fault, Bruno. ALL YOUR FAULT!!”
he shouted, shaking his fist.
An idea came to him suddenly.
What he needed was in the garage.
He ran to the garage, leaving
Mrs. Butterfield to her fate. Frantically he picked over the tools and
other items in the garage until with a desperate “Ah-hah!” he pulled
out the torch Bruno used to tinker with auto body repair. The weapon
gave Nerdly hope and with hope, confidence. He gripped the torch and
smiled. “Let’s see if you can withstand fire, Bruno,” he said, grimly
determined.
Racing back to the house,
Nerdly stopped in the living room. Bruno had all but completely swallowed
Mrs. Butterfield. His bulk now filled half the kitchen and was still
expanding. The smaller blob stubbornly clung to the stove control knobs,
her flesh stretched to its limits by Bruno’s assault.
Nerdly smiled and adjusted
the torch, then started it. A small but strong flame appeared. “Oh Bruno!”
he called to his mutated brother in a mocking voice. “I have something
for you!”
The Bruno blob turned its
eyeslits toward this new sound. Not quite done absorbing Mrs. Butterfield,
Bruno growled “Mmmph!” A tentacle appeared out of nowhere in front of
Nerdly, and he quickly adjusted the flame higher. The tentacle hissed
and crumpled to the floor.
“MMMMPPHH!!!” groaned Bruno.
“Ah-hah!
So we don’t like getting burned, do we?” taunted Nerdly. Emboldened,
he increased the flame yet again, and stepped forward on the attack.
“Take THAT!” he shouted, and aimed the flame for Bruno’s hefty flank.
Bruno snatched his injured
flesh away with a hissing sound. Bits of flame fell to the floor and
took root in one of the legs of a fallen chair.
Nerdly charged again, this
time swiping Bruno with the flame. “Hah!” he shouted, dancing clumsily
back after the attack. Smoke began to rise from the burning chair leg,
its highly flammable finish feeding the little fire. Nerdly ignored
the small blaze and danced back and forth, threatening Bruno with the
flame.
The blob shook back and forth
trying to avoid the awful flame. It hadn’t even finished with Mrs. Butterfield
yet. The smaller blob had been reduced to several thick strands, each
wrapped around the knobs that controlled the gas stove.
Nerdly turned the flame way
up and with a loud “Yah!” struck Bruno’s middle, if he could be said
to have a middle.
Smoke filled the room as
the part of Bruno’s flesh touched with the flame turned black and crumpled.
The flesh hissed as it burned. Bruno shook wildly from side to side,
still holding onto what was left of Mrs. Butterfield’s blob form. The
thick strands of Mrs. Butterfield held fast to the knob, but gave way
a little. The knobs began to turn, and gas began to flow.
Nerdly didn’t see the knobs
turning, he was a man possessed. All the years of abuse at the hands
of his brutish brother came to the surface and Nerdly had only one objective
– revenge. He was thrusting the large flame forward with regularity
now, laughing as more and more of Bruno’s mutated flesh burnt and hissed
and crumpled into ashes. Bruno retreated as much as he could, and
moaned constantly.
“Now we see who is superior!”
cried Nerdly dancing and thrusting with the torch. “NOW WE SEE!” He
thrust one more time and just as the flame was about to scorch more
of the blob-flesh, he smelled the gas. “Oh no,” he murmured.
The kitchen exploded.
Part Ten – The Return of Bill Butterfield
As Nerdly and Bruno’s burning
house attracted the usual complement of police cruisers and fire trucks
and a growing crowd of ogling neighbors, Bill Butterfield was in his
Dodge Ram truck a few streets away, a package of fresh fish on the empty
seat next to him.
Bill had no idea what was
about to hit him. He was busy thinking. Rehearsing
actually. You see, Bill had not been on a fishing trip at all.
Bill had never gone on any weekend fishing trips. Bill Butterfield had
been spending weekends with his mistress in the city, buying fresh fish
at a fish market to support his cover story. He agonized over his adultery
only when he was coming home from seeing his girlfriend. He knew he
couldn’t keep this up indefinitely.
Bill Butterfield was not
a bad man; he hadn’t intended to cheat on Ethel, his loyal wife of many
years. But something had gone out of the marriage years ago and Bill
was left with a gnawing feeling of simply going through the motions
of life. Bill was a youthful and vigorous man; he liked to keep both
his mind and body active. Ethel had simply gotten too old for him.
He heard sirens as he made
the last turn into his neighborhood. Several police cars were parked
haphazardly in front of Nerdly and Bruno’s house, which he could clearly
see was ablaze. “Oh no,” said Bill. “I hope the boys are alright.” Fire
trucks and other emergency vehicles blocked part of the road. Bill slowed
his car as a cop approached. The part of the house
where the kitchen had been collapsed and was a smoking ruin.
The rest of the house still burning, but it looked like the firemen
were getting the flames under control.
After telling the stern-faced
cop that he was the next-door neighbor, he was allowed to pass and pulled
into his own driveway. The cop didn’t tell him anything; apparently
the cause of the fire was still unknown. He quickly grabbed the fish
and ran into the house yelling “Ethel! Ethel!” There was no answer.
The kitchen was a mess, which
was strange because Ethel was a neat-freak. Bill recognized the various
pots and pans and spilled ingredients. She’d been baking pies.
Suddenly Bill gasped and
put his hand over his mouth. “Pie day! Today is pie day, the day Ethel goes over to the
boys’ house with a pie!”
He dropped the fish on the
table and ran outside.
Bill Butterfield reacted
calmly when told of his wife’s death in the fire. The fire chief had
found her glasses and had given them over to Bill with a heavy heart
and a supportive pat on the shoulder. Bill was in shock but only until
he remembered the insurance policy he had taken out on Ethel several
years earlier.
Authorities were only able
to find Nerdly’s remains. The other bodies were never discovered and
police and fire investigators concluded after several weeks of poking
around in the ruined house that the other two had simply been burnt.
The large amount of a strange clay-like substance, now black and charred,
in the kitchen and the presence of the high-tech lab in the basement
led the investigators to conclude that some scientific experiment had
gone bad. The police lab couldn’t make heads or tails out of the clay-like
substance or any of the other items found in the lab. No matter, the
investigation was ultimately closed. Bruno and Mrs. Butterfield were
declared dead in spite of the fact that their bodies were never actually
found.
Bill Butterfield made out
like a bandit. The insurance money insured a comfortable life. Seeking
a fresh start, Bill sold his house and moved to the city to be
with his girlfriend. He had never been happier.
Uncle Joe and his wife took
charge of disposing of Nerdly and Bruno’s house. They removed all of
the furniture and belongings and made a great deal of money selling
Nerdly’s laboratory equipment to the local university, an idea pushed
on an apathetic Uncle Joe by his greedy wife. Uncle Joe was satisfied
with that but his wife insisted on having a series of tag sales to get
rid of the other “junk” as she put it. She was all too quick to pocket
the profit from the sale of this “junk.”
One day, after the house
had been on the real estate market for several weeks, a serious buyer
came to look. The buyer was a young yuppie couple with a little girl
about five years old. They were looking for a fixer-upper and they fell
in love with the former home of Nerdly and Bruno.
As they were poking around
the grounds, the little girl grew bored and ran off to explore. There
were various piles of unsold household items and she picked through
the pile in spite of her mother’s constant warnings to “stay away from
that junk.” Finally the couple was ready to leave. The little girl came
running, her little fist holding something gray and squishy, an excited grin on her face.
“Look Mommy, I found some
clay!”
