Munmun(75)

But when I opened the door my dumbluck ran out, I walked right into Puppyneck.

That dave was faster than me, a gun nosed my neck immediately.

“You’re lucky I know you,” he joked.





DREAMWORLD


And thatwasthat, gameover.

Didn’t beat the level in the shootemup, didn’t even shoot the gun once, instead they captured you, unfortunately in this game you get no extralife.

All will be explained, Warner, first though here is what happens to you, you get a good carefull pulping.

Instead of Mathy Retrack at Eat Votech you are now enrolled in Painy Track at the Sitadell, firststep, biggest faceboys take you into the bloodyroom, toss you backandforth like a ball, sometimes they miss, oops, you hit a wall, crash through chairs, land on glass, ourbad, lol.

Then it’s time for some whippings, grab whatever’s handy, belt, twig, shoelace, cactus, let’s all team up and stripe Warner’s skin.

Shoulderheads drowns people as a personal hobby, it turns out, dunk your head in some filth and hold it there, rinse, repeat.

Finally Puppyneck takes a littlehammer and pounds your fingers flat, toes flat, ears puffy. He’s not happy about it, not sad either, just a dave doing his bloody bruisy job.

Funny how you can not get pulped for a year but when it starts again it’s like it never stopped, backinthesaddle again, you remember all your old techniques, fight until you can’t and then let go of everything, just float high above yourself, watch yourself bleed and choke and bellow, feel every color of pain, dark, bright, every highlow note, every dullsharp smell.

After you let yourself go it’s hard to get yourself back, takes a few days this time.

A few days, a few nights, no visits to Dreamworld though, too much pain, too hard to breathe.

Markfive’s drugs are draining out of your body too, that’s part of becoming your sad self again. No more robot focus, no more confident babbling, goodbye orderly brainshelves and spooky spacey weedchill.

Now you’re a sad animal again, feeling emotions, licking wounds, realizing terrible truths as your body tries to tie its broken bones back together.

Puppyneck came in, answered questions, explained things, patiently painted What Happens Next, spoileralert, it’s notsogood.

First question, obviously, what’s Puppyneck even doing alive, why did the grown faceboys not fry and munch Puppyneck when he got moved to grownjail. Answer, he admits now that was all a lie, the grown faceboys didn’t care about Warner, Puppyneck made it all up to convince him to join.

Next question, what’s Puppyneck doing out of jail so soon, how’d he get to halfscale, here’s how. The faceboys have been exploring corporate partnerships. Maybe you’ve seen the notable bigrich named Guy on the news, he’s the one striding around with a dozen beautifull middlerich ladies dangling from his arms on swings. He owns Rich Guy Credit, the corpo that umbrellas all kinds of lenders, Mun World Credit, Halfcar Easy Loan, Leafy House And Yard, Amerrycan Dream Garage.

The faceboys wanted to expand into the loan business, meanwhile businessman Guy has always admired the hungry fresh tactics of a bloodthirsty street squad, so whatdoyousay, boys, let’s make a deal, Guy bought out a bunch of faceboy prison sentences, now they’re out free including yourstruly Puppyneck, scaledup, roaming the streets recovering overdue loans for Guy, everybody wins.

And Usher, what happened to him, here’s what. Some frummy lawstudent adopted him as a pet for some reason, took him to classes where he learned all kinds of usefull details and strategies, gave him minty limewaters to drink and a pillow to sleep on like a little gray prince. I heard this and felt a little joy, dang, Chess, gave a home to Usher afterall, I really didn’t think you would.

But then a few months ago Shoulderheads ran into him on the street and realized, this kid looks familiar, ohsnap it’s one of those nitwits who shot a gun at me, but before he pulped him he realized also, hmm, this guy is attending lawclasses and can probably read contracts, how usefull, so Shoulderheads swiped him, didn’t mash his head to bits, instead tatted the head and started pulling lawadvice out of it.

And now Usher is the inhouse faceboy legal department, that little gray stutterer is a freaking genius, he’s prevented Rich Guy Credit from dismantling and selling the faceboy corpo like three different times.

“It’s badnews he was able to dream himself to you,” realized Puppyneck, “usually we drug that guy good enough that he can’t make it to Dreamworld, might have to start giving him solodream.”

And me, what’s going to happen to me.

“Well ofcourse we want to take your scalemun,” said Puppyneck. “So the first stop is the bank. Then either we stomp you, strangle you, or sell you to todds, I’m not sure yet which one but trustme, you don’t want the todds.”

I looked him in the dull stern eyes, is this even real, can this really be it.

“Which bankbranch,” was my first stupid question somehow.

“Whichever one has the earliest opening, it’s usually Dockseye, they specialize in littlepoors, tons of them over there,” said Puppyneck.

“Okay well hey look, I was all set to take the Mathy Test, live the Mathy life, what if you let me out of here and let me make tons of munmuns and pay you a nice facetax first day of the month,” I offered.

But my panicky words bounced off his shaking head.