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Authors: A. Lee Martinez
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“What about garlic bread?”
Se opened her wallet to let Vom see how empty it was. He slouched and stuffed the pillow back into his mouth with a pout.
Smorgaz left.
While she organized her thoughts, Vom noisily chewed like a petulant three-year-old.
“Pork is meat,” he grumbled.
“Yes, it is.”
“Puppies are meat,” he said.
“You’re not eating puppies. Not while I’m around.”
“Have you ever eaten a puppy? They’re delicious.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t everything delicious to you?”
“I don’t care for broccoli,” he replied.
She stared at him skeptically.
“Just because I’ll eat it doesn’t mean I like it.” He leaned forward. “Anyway, when you get right down to it, everything in this universe is just a handful of atoms arranged in peculiar ways. Puppies aren’t different than pigs, carbon and nitrogen. It seems unfair to just eat one because of your own arbitrary cultural standards of acceptability.”
“Arbitrary, yes,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“What about dogs? Full-grown ones, I mean?”
“No dogs.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.
“Just assume that if I haven’t okayed it, it’s off-limits.”
Annoyed, he swallowed the pillow.
“It’s clear we need to lay some ground rules,” she said. “If we’re going to be stuck with each other, we have to figure a way to make this work.”
“Agreed.” Vom snorted. “I just don’t see why I have to make all the sacrifices.”
“My sense of reality has crumbled. I’m bound to a monster that wants to devour everything all the time, including me. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my sanity eventually. So if I’m going to have to deal with all that, the least you can do is not eat puppies.”
Vom shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“What I need from you now is some explanations about how all this… weirdness functions. If this is the world I have to live in, I’m damn well going to understand it. For starters, I need to know why the hell that monster tried to kill me this morning and now he’s hanging around, fetching us pizza.”
“Do you want the complicated answer? Or the simple one?”
A three-inch Smorgaz climbed up the wall beside Vom. He nabbed it and stuffell going in one set of jaws while talking with another.
“The short answer is because of your connection with me, you aren’t quite in tune with your native reality anymore. It’s not a big deal, doesn’t really have a big effect on the universe. But it makes you a beacon, a shining light that draws the attention of certain misplaced inter-dimensional entities, such as myself and Smorgaz, seeking to reorient themselves in a confusing, unfamiliar world.”
“He was confused and frightened and that made him want to kill me.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was just attracted to the nearest thing that reminded him of home. It’s like he’s a lost rat that stumbled into someplace he doesn’t belong and he scrambled toward the nearest… rat hole he came across.”
She snarled.
“Maybe that came out wrong,” he said. “These rules aren’t universal. Plenty of alien things slip into your reality and either perish quickly or adjust without need of an anchoring force. But some are like me or Smorgaz, we don’t die, but we also function at such different levels that without something to ground us, we’d eventually probably do some very bad stuff. Mind you, most of that stuff would be the unintentional damage of a bewildered animal thrashing around in an ill-fitting cage.”
“So you must have known something like this was going to happen,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you have followed me?”
“I expected it sooner or later, but I had figured later rather than sooner. Just the same, I tagged along because… well, it’s not like I had anything better to do. And I like you. I like being around you. Being near you keeps me focused, relaxed, like a soothing
“What about garlic bread?”
Se opened her wallet to let Vom see how empty it was. He slouched and stuffed the pillow back into his mouth with a pout.
Smorgaz left.
While she organized her thoughts, Vom noisily chewed like a petulant three-year-old.
“Pork is meat,” he grumbled.
“Yes, it is.”
“Puppies are meat,” he said.
“You’re not eating puppies. Not while I’m around.”
“Have you ever eaten a puppy? They’re delicious.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t everything delicious to you?”
“I don’t care for broccoli,” he replied.
She stared at him skeptically.
“Just because I’ll eat it doesn’t mean I like it.” He leaned forward. “Anyway, when you get right down to it, everything in this universe is just a handful of atoms arranged in peculiar ways. Puppies aren’t different than pigs, carbon and nitrogen. It seems unfair to just eat one because of your own arbitrary cultural standards of acceptability.”
“Arbitrary, yes,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“What about dogs? Full-grown ones, I mean?”
“No dogs.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.
“Just assume that if I haven’t okayed it, it’s off-limits.”
Annoyed, he swallowed the pillow.
“It’s clear we need to lay some ground rules,” she said. “If we’re going to be stuck with each other, we have to figure a way to make this work.”
“Agreed.” Vom snorted. “I just don’t see why I have to make all the sacrifices.”
“My sense of reality has crumbled. I’m bound to a monster that wants to devour everything all the time, including me. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my sanity eventually. So if I’m going to have to deal with all that, the least you can do is not eat puppies.”
Vom shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“What I need from you now is some explanations about how all this… weirdness functions. If this is the world I have to live in, I’m damn well going to understand it. For starters, I need to know why the hell that monster tried to kill me this morning and now he’s hanging around, fetching us pizza.”
“Do you want the complicated answer? Or the simple one?”
A three-inch Smorgaz climbed up the wall beside Vom. He nabbed it and stuffell going in one set of jaws while talking with another.
“The short answer is because of your connection with me, you aren’t quite in tune with your native reality anymore. It’s not a big deal, doesn’t really have a big effect on the universe. But it makes you a beacon, a shining light that draws the attention of certain misplaced inter-dimensional entities, such as myself and Smorgaz, seeking to reorient themselves in a confusing, unfamiliar world.”
“He was confused and frightened and that made him want to kill me.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill you. He was just attracted to the nearest thing that reminded him of home. It’s like he’s a lost rat that stumbled into someplace he doesn’t belong and he scrambled toward the nearest… rat hole he came across.”
She snarled.
“Maybe that came out wrong,” he said. “These rules aren’t universal. Plenty of alien things slip into your reality and either perish quickly or adjust without need of an anchoring force. But some are like me or Smorgaz, we don’t die, but we also function at such different levels that without something to ground us, we’d eventually probably do some very bad stuff. Mind you, most of that stuff would be the unintentional damage of a bewildered animal thrashing around in an ill-fitting cage.”
“So you must have known something like this was going to happen,” she said. “Otherwise, why would you have followed me?”
“I expected it sooner or later, but I had figured later rather than sooner. Just the same, I tagged along because… well, it’s not like I had anything better to do. And I like you. I like being around you. Being near you keeps me focused, relaxed, like a soothing
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