#that guy will never get the taste of rotten jerky out of his mouth

[magic5ball]

Nature Trail to Hell Arc V: Back into Hell (II)

Chapter 2: The Reunion

“Face me, demon!” the Shatster kept at with his cleaver, breath forming fierce clouds in the air. First I was right scared, sharp object and all that, but seeing how I was a ghost, it wasn’t really a problem.

No, the real probelino was getting Shatner to NOTICE me for a sec.

You know how in the movies they’ll show ghosts moving stuff around like its’ nothing? From experience, I can promise you that is GRADE-A BUNKO! When you’re spectral, you don’t have muscles and living stuff, so while going through walls is pretty neat, it also means lifting a q-tip is a complete workout!

Fortunately, my ghost lungs were still in working order, and with a bit of work I could make my breath mist. From there, I just blew on a wall, painted words on with my index finger, and… voila! Instant messaging without the phone!

SHATER YOU NERD IT’S ME

The big guy, for his part, stared like he’d just seen a ghost, which wasn’t really surprising.

A few seconds of gaping like a flounder at my little message, he stared just to the left of me, coughing out

“W-Watterson Tostig? After all this time?!”

YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT, BOOGER BRAIN.

One more deep breath.

WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON HERE?

“R-right!” Cried Shatner. “I’ll get us some tea!”

                                                        .   .   .

My mouth was too stiff to tell him I’d rather drink sewage than something that came from a vegetable (tea does come from vegetables, right?), so I kinda just sucked it up and went along with it.  

Without even asking me what I wanted, Shatner led me to what I can only call some sort of break room.

           Empty, grey place, lit only by a birthday cake with ten little candles at its’ center. Surrounding this cake, like the world’s crappiest campfire, were a pair of overturned egg crates. I plopped my keister on one of those crates as the big guy left for the kitchen. I could only sit there, teeth chattering, wondering how my dinosaur friends were doing. There, in that barren room, paralyzed, helpless, barely able to move my teeth, realizing what a stupid not-really-a-full-fledged plan I had was, I realized something. A great, sudden revelation that strikes like lightning but leaves just as quick, but changes your life forever:

Global Warming is never there when you need it.

And who would barge in at this moment with all the grace of a sixty ton mammoth but Shatner, carrying two piping hot mugs of plant juice, a hideous abomination (‘sweater’, he corrected me) draped over his shoulder.

The sweater faded right through me as he flung it on my seat. Then, he added

“And don’t bother trying to eat the birthday cake. Bloody thing’s frozen solid by this point ( believe me, I have tried) and those candles may very well be the last source of heat in this blasted wasteland!”

Not like I could sneak a bite anyway, being spectral and all that.

Instead, I inhaled the steam coming off my tea, just the slightest bit of feeling returning to my limbs. Then I exhaled on the table, writing

WAIT. IF THE ONLY HEAT IS FROM THAT CANDLE, THEN HOW’D YOU MAKE THE TEA?

“Well my friend, that warmth you feel is the product of none other than yours trulys’ body heat!”

Just like that, I wondered if it was possible to un-inhale something. Then I remembered breathing out is a thing and felt real dumb.

“But try as I might to conserve body heat, I find it slowly, inexorably lost to the throes of entropy.” He waxed, making me forget my woes for a sec. “But enough about me, let’s talk about you. Specifically, your state of life. Or lack thereof. Because I do believe you have been dead these past few weeks. I’ve even seen the body! So-“

he said the last part real quick, like emphasizing something, “How did you get here, Watterson Tostig? How did you do it? Or are you simply an apparition brought on by the steady diet of Salisbury Steak I have subsisted on for the past few days?”

IT’S WATT, YOU NERD!

I set the record straight, really digging my index finger into the table.

“Watt. Yes, yes. My apologies.” He countered. “Now as you were saying…”

Of course, I didn’t really feel like writing down the whole story then and there. My ghost index finger was starting to get right numb. There had to be some quicker way! That’s when I remembered that, besides moving through walls, ghost can also do a crazy little thing called possessin’ folks! Now, they were never real specific about how they do that in the movies, but I figured it couldn’t be THAT hard.

Long story short, it took a good ten minutes to cram my ghost body into the Shatster’s confused mouth. If I’d only waited a year later, I’d have found you’re supposed to go through the butthole.

Not that I would have done that, anyway.

It was warm, in Shatner. Warm and moist. But most important, I could mentally project the entire story up to this point into his thick noggin in seconds. Every single crazy adventure I’d been through over the summer. By the time I’d I could see his face reflected in the linoleum floor, gaping like I’d told him the moon was made of rotten bananas.

“I’ve seen a great deal of oddity in my life,” he began, “And I can safely assure you that what you have just describe transcends nearly all of it.”

Not sure if the guy was complementing me or not, nor did I care, my eyes more focused on the beef jerky poking out of his pen holder (which all nerds have). I grabbed it, shoving the thing into his (our?) mouth.

Actually tasted half-decent! (Then again, most things taste half decent after you’ve been eating nothing but stale Cheetos and air for the past few days).

“What’s this? Tastes fancy.” I asked.

“Reconstituted Salisbury Steak.” He replied “Hilda’s terrible management of this camp irreparably botched up our food deliveries, so it was cast upon me to find a substitute.”

“Speaking of that, how did you get back here, anyway?” I asked, my voice coming out of his mouth, which was kinda weird.

“Well, if you must know…” he began. And I sat, realizing what massive torrent of WORD I had unleashed.

Shatner lectured me longtime, but the short of his story is: he ran right back home to where his little spider was waiting for him. Amazingly, he had memorized the path all the way back to his house. But when he got there, it turned out his aunt had in fact kept his spider fed, and was none too pleased with her nephew’s devious act of truancy.

“Though knowing Auntie, she was likely more furious at me for having doubted her responsibility than for absconding as I did.” Is how he put it.

After that he was dragged back to camp with all the ceremony of a death row inmate. And not metaphorically, either. His aunt literally dragged him by the collar all the way back!

“When we got there, it didn’t seem so bad. It was, I daresay, idyllic: birds chirping, sun high in sky, glowing jade green as it filtered through the tree leaves…(an entire page’s worth of pretentious crap yours truly has cut out for your own sanity), but the moment she left, the grand curtain of deception dropped, starting Act I of Hilda’s terrible play.”

           Of course, calling what Hilda did a ‘terrible play’ is like calling the first day you got soap in your eyes ‘an experience’. Kind of an annoying thing about the Shatster: rip the guy’s arm off and leave him bleeding on a cold linoleum floor and it would just be a ‘minor inconvenience’.

(Incredibly long and kinda violent) story short, Hilda basically started using Ms. Hoebag, now demon possessed, as her puppet,  giving the kids complete and utter control of the camp. Almost made me wish I stayed. Almost.

“The trouble was, this age of prosperity lasted but a few paltry hours. For as lofty as Hilda’s goals were it seemed she was not so adept at ensuring food and electricity were paid for.”

This little statement almost made me drop my jerky.

“What, did she not leave any teeth for the food and electricity fairies?”

“As a matter of fact, she forgot to pay the camp’s bills.”

“What?”

“You know, bills. What the grown-ups use to pay for stuff?”

“That’s not what my Dad told me.” I protested “He says we get it from the food and electricity faeries. I have to leave my loose teeth under the bed as payment.”

I could see Shatner’s left eye twitching. Poor guy just couldn’t handle not being the smartest in the room.

“Anyhow,” he continued, “as I was saying-“

           Without bills being payed and whatnot, it wasn’t long before Hilda stepped in to form a government, a government based on SHARING! How in the name of all that is good in the world the other kids agreed to that, I’ll never know, but apparently it had something to do with Vernon hiding all the ice cream sandwiches under his bunk. And by ‘government’, Hilda basically set up the exact thing Ms. Hoebag had going! Well, except for turning me into a martyr. And claiming everything she did was my will. Not exactly a fan of that. So once Hilda had set up her sharing policy and assigned some of the kids to enforce these laws (who might I mention were the SAME LOSERS WHO KISSED UP TO HOEBAG) it was time to vote on a camp currency. Since everyone liked ice cream sandwiches, those were chosen. Problem was, without the electricity the sandwiches melted fast as, well, ice cream in the summertime.

“Though I am not completely certain regarding the details of the matter, it seems Hilda proposed a plan to make it Christmas every day. The logic being, of course, that since Christmas is cold, and ice cream thrives in such frigid conditions, by making it cold the camp could preserve the last of the ice cream. After they sold their collective souls to a demon under the guise of a “character building activity”, their wish was granted… in the form of the most infernal, unsavory aspects of what I quite frankly consider an incredibly cynical interpretation of the winter solstice.”

“X-Mas…” I whispered, on account of that’s what we called ‘Evil Christmas’ back at my home.

Didn’t know what to be more amazed by: the fact that there was Christmas in July, or that in spite of everything, there were still mosquitoes buzzing around.

           At this point, Hilda realized that she was going to have to make the camp some money, because they (and by ‘they’ I mean she) desperately needed heat and they weren’t going to make any singing old Russian choir chants in front of the mess hall, even if it did make for some admittedly awesome camp postcards. So the kids at arts and crafts were assigned to make Papier-Mache Yugos. Amazingly, they sold because at the end of the day, they were still better than the real deal. Too bad most of the cash went into purchasing tigers. With the rest of the money, they were able to afford sixty pounds of Styrofoam, which Hilda told everyone to rip up and pretend it was heat.  (How the FUDGE does that even work?!)

“And such is the camp I arrived back at that terrible day, when Auntie returned me.”

Now, you might have noticed this has been a bit long, but gosh darn it, its’ still shorter than the little spiel Shatner gave me!

“And so I arrived here.” He sighed. “Slowly freezing to death in this wretched Gulag. At first Hilda made me haul snow like everyone else- pretended she never knew me! -before she saw my talents might be able to produce something edible from the snow. Like I could just pull food from thin air!”

“So how’d you do it?”

“You might remember our altercations with regards to the camp’s disreputable offal known as ‘Salisbury Steak’.”

“So what of it?”

Shatner wretched open a pair of creaky wooden doors leading into the floor, after undoing several rusty old locks. Even with the darkness, I could see something fleshy, pink, and BIG!

“”Oh. You’ve gotta be kidding me!”