Munmun(81)

“Look, dave, it’s too late,” he said.

I just stared at him, shoved his big eyes with my little ones.

He sighed, “Fine, tell me if you need.”

I told him.

Here’s what I can do, here’s what Prayer can do, here’s what Usher can do.

Here’s a new corporate partnership for the faceboys.

Here’s how I make us all big.

His bored face didn’t change as I told him, except maybe the eyes.

Afterward he said nothing, just caged me.

Carried me to the facecar, put me in the backseat with some other cages, other littles, druggy or scared.

From the frontseat boomed a friendly happy voice.

“Ohboyohboy, does Shoulderheads have a cool surprise for you, and just incase you forgot, I’m Shoulderheads,” thundered Shoulderheads from the frontseat.

Puppyneck climbed in next to him, and I heard him mumble something to Shoulderheads, I could tell it was something like, maybe let’s not kill Warner justyet.

But Shoulderheads said, “Nope, way too late for that crap.”

Puppyneck murmured something else, Shoulderheads cut him off.

“Come on, Neck, don’t be an idiot, I already sold him,” snapped Shoulderheads, cranking Famous Randy as we drove out of Lossy Indica and into the desert.

Couple hours later we pulled through the gates of a random desertburb, terrible smells in the dry air, rots, gases, chemfires.

Shoulderheads and Puppyneck pulled me and the littles out of the trunk, dumped us into a sandy barbwire pen.

A boneblue todd welcomed us.

Other littles groaned and cowered.

I looked up at this fiend with his one ragged nosehole and his sunshrunk pinprick eyeblacks and my angry crazy thought was, good.

“Munmuns, please,” said Shoulderheads, calm but quiet, he’s secretly terrified of these maniacs, maybe not so secret.

The todd gave Shoulderheads a thin ziplock of bills, seems like it should have been more for ten humans. Meanwhile other skeevy todds trickled out of their identical houses, gathered around the pen, and held out some phones at us.

Good, I thought again, take your stupid pictures, stupid vids, you sad middlefreaks.

“Don’t you want to stay and watch,” asked the todd, strangly raspy voice.

“Nothanks,” Shoulderheads said. “See you on the gladvids,” he told me, getting back in the car.

Boneblue todd said nothing, just took a jar, unscrewed it, and flicked a desertspider in the pen.

Shouts, screams, we all scrambled from certaindeath.

Desertspider was just a little littler than us, fiveinches backtofront, fourinches sidetoside.

Jittery hard white twoknuckle legs like fingerbones, oily toxy fangs as long as half a littlearm, twenty bubbly eyes like oilfoam.

Littles cowered all in one corner, everyone was trying to get behind each other, spider skittered to the other corner, tensing.

“Spread out,” I screamed, nobody spread out though.

Spider gargled, whispered.

One little shoved a second at the spider, here, eat this guy.

Shoved guy scrambled back, tried to yank the first guy out into the middle of the pen.

The todds shrieked with laughter, leaned in, shoved phonecams at us.

Oh was I mad, mad at every living human, especially these other stupid littles, if we don’t team up we’re all getting eaten, idiots.

“Freaking spread out,” I yelled again, but the spider decided now’s the time, darted at the scrum like a twitchy tenleg bull.

Not a ton of time to think about it, I looped around to one side and then charged in after the desertspider, chased it from behind, as the beast pinned a screaming little and gored him I grabbed one of its tickly backlegs and yanked back, hard, the spider twisted around to fang me but I flung this scrabbling monster up, out, out of the pen, spider landed in some todd’s collarshirt, biting and shuddering, more screams of laughter from the todds except for the bitten one who was just doing some medium screaming, no more screams from the spiderbitten littlepoor though.

Turnsout gladvids are a thing, spiderfights, todds tape them, sell them, trying to go legit with a teevee channel, brainy newspeople stroke their chins and wonder, Is the Yewess really ready for a nonstop channel of humans fighting spiders to the death.

“How come police don’t stop it,” moaned some foreign little that night.

“Desertlaw is different from citylaw,” muttered another.

“What does that even mean,” complained foreign little. “Let me tell you, where I’m from, law is just law everywhere, the end.”

“Then go back, idiot,” yelled another poor.





DREAMWORLD


The plan still lived in my furious head.

“Let me sleep deep tonight, daves,” I told them. “Keep watch and let me get to Dreamworld, I’ve got a plan.”

But I didn’t get there, too small, too tense.

Littleheart pumping too fast like a rat’s, instead I just dozed lightly, woke up in the baking sun, another ugly day.

Roundtwo was a big clanky scorpion, eightinches atleast, way too big to fling this freaking toxy lobster out of the pen. The boss of the todds had some fun this time holding the jar right over our heads, oops am I going to drop this stinging maniac right on top of you, haha lol look at you idiots running over to the other end of the pen, you know I can just fling it there too right.